#SCOUTED EVENT | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

acefictionwriting · 3 months ago

Text

Scout’s Med Bay Stay (TF2 Bang)

-Hi! This is my contribution to the TF2 Big Bang Event! Scout wakes up after being injured to find some new strange people he’s going to get to know.

Made with Artists

@ermg33 - here is their Art Post

@sicc-nasti - here is their Art Post

As the man awoke, he had no idea what was happening. He had no idea where he was, no idea what was going on, or why he was here. It started coming back to him, but before he could put everything together, the pain shot up his legs.

Ow. Right, the enemy grenades. Shit, I hate enemy Demolition bombers. What did you get yourself into, Jeremy?

Jeremy opened his eyes and looked around, discovering he was in a med bay. The Scouting mission must have gone wrong, really wrong, since the other scout wasn’t there. He didn’t recognize anyone in the room.

“Ah! You are awake! I was hoping to harvest your organs, but at least the replacements worked!”

“What?”

The Scout looked at the man, and he nearly pissed himself.

Oh no, not the medic guy again.

“Uh, I don’t—” Jeremy tried to make an excuse for the man not to get too close, but before he could, the Medic was pulling him up from the bed to sit him up.

“You stay here Späher, I will get you the new medicine. You will make a great first test!!”

Jeremy didn’t have time to stop the man, nor did he really want to. He also didn’t ask why the American medic was German.

His legs were still killing him, and despite the dread he felt thinking about everything that could have happened to him, he ripped off the sheets anyway out of impulsive curiosity. They looked perfectly fine, besides the fact they had been cut off and reattached and left a giant scar. That’s probably OK. He moved his foot to find out if they still worked and jumped up in pain.

“He is brutal, but he always succeeds. Your legs work alright, Erreur?”

Scout looked to his right, and a man he hadn’t noticed before was there. The man had a bandage covering most of his face and was standing in the shadows enough that the rest wasn’t showing. It sounded like he smoked enough to kill him twice a day.

“Jesus, man, didn’t see ya there. Yeah, they work. If they didn’t, I dunno what I’d do. I’m a runner. I do the Scout work, finding out where the Germans are gonna be and making sure there’s no trouble. And if there was trouble, well, I took care of it.”

“You aren’t supposed to do that on scouting missions.”

“Well, I did. And that’s gonna make me a hero or something when it works out. Then I’ll go home to my girl, and she won’t be able to resist me!”

“WE WILL GO HOME TO OUR WOMEN WHEN WE WIN THIS BLASTED WAR. KEEP AT IT SOLDIER. WE’LL KEEP THOSE GERMANS AT BAY AND—”

Scout turned his head to see a man in full restraints on a bed, wearing an oversized helmet over his eyes. The Medic seemed to know this man and definitely didn't like him.

“Nein… not again. You are not a soldier. How do you get in here…”

“I AM AN AMERICAN SOLDIER THROUGH AND THROUGH—”

“You have a head injury, du verdammter Idiot.”

Scout turned his head away from the half-shouting match, half-desperate argument. The bandaged man in the shadows had disappeared, which Jeremy thought was fucking weird.

With nothing else to do, he pulled out his locket with a blurry picture of Pauline F. Pauling.

She’ll like me for sure now that I’ve got manly scars and stuff. I’ll come home her hero, and we’ll get to kiss and—

“MMMFF MMMH MMM.”

“GAH— WHY ARE YOU ALL SO QUIET UNTIL I’M TRYING TO FOCUS?”

Scout turned to the bed on his left, seeing the not-a-soldier and the medic fight in the background, and someone entirely wrapped in bandages in the bed close to his.

“Jesus, what happened to you?”

“Mmmhff mmmhb mffhh mmmmffhhhh mmm MMMFF mmmh.”

“Ja, we don’t know who that is. Don’t even know what side they’re on. I’ve just been using them for my experimental injections. Beyond that?” The medic shrugged and resumed his argument with the American.

“I gotta get out of here. We gotta get out of here; you gotta be real messed up from that.”

The burned patient muttered a muffled something that sounded like a verbal shrug. They then pointed to the locket.

“My girl? Yeah, she’s a real beaut, huh?”

“Is that ‘your girl’ mon étrange collègue enfantin?”

“OK, we’re getting you a bell.”

The French man sighed and stepped away from the shadow of the door. He stuck to the shadows and the wall, but stood next to the scout. Despite not knowing the man, Jeremy felt like a stray cat had sat next to him while not getting close to anyone else. It would be some sort of honor if the stench of cigarettes wasn’t so overpowering.

“Écoute, mon ami, you have been injured. Is there anyone you would like to inform? This girl? Perhaps your mother?”

“Well, I gotta tell Ma about this. I bet Pauling would love to hear about me and my cool battle wounds now.”

“Right… I’m sure. I will get the communications officer.”

Even Scout could see the man just wanted to leave the conversation.

Why’d he look so uncomfortable?

There was silence then, or as much of a silence as there could be in the overcrowded room. Scout never liked not being part of a conversation in a group of people. He felt left out. His brothers always seemed closer to each other than to him, so he was pushed out of conversations often, even when they did not mean to exclude him. Scout looked around the room. He supposed the same thing had kept happening in the army. He had had brief conversations with everyone in the medical area, but they all ended suddenly. He preferred the chaos of everyone popping up suddenly to the emptiness of everyone ignoring him. Jeremy looked over to the burn victim to his left, but they had fallen asleep, it seemed, as they made a cartoonish mimimimimi sound from under the seemingly infinite bandages. The silence was uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough for Jeremy to wake up someone with severe injuries.

“Ah. You’re no help.”

The Scout briefly considered talking to himself, but remembered when he was caught and teased by his brothers for that. Ma had said they meant well, but even so, Jeremy never wanted to seem crazy. At least not in a nonviolent way. Instead of talking to himself, he decided to do what he usually did when he was nervous or unsure. He counted all the ways he was the coolest person alive who would totally live the most incredible life anyone ever had. He was on reason number seven (he had miscounted severely. It was the 16th reason) when the door opened again.

“Hey, face guy! You’re back! Is this that letter guy? Make my injury sound really bad so it looks better when I go home. Hey, wait, there's two guys.”

The first man was tall and had an eyepatch. Scout thought that was awesome. He had a bottle of… what smelled like 100% alcohol in his hand and was leaning against the doorway, half asleep, half on high alert. Scout thought it best not to disturb this man until he became more aware of his surroundings. Instead, the scout turned his attention to the other man, with papers in his hands.

The second man was short and had other features that Scout immediately ignored in favor of the robotic arm the man had.

“WOAH, ARE YOU A ROBOT?”

The man laughed warmly, as if he’d heard it before from others.

“Well, I’m technically a cyborg,” said the man, with a warm smile, “and I’m also the correspondence officer until we find another guy who isn’t dead to do it. I’m Dell, but they call me Engineer most of the time.”

“Can I ask, like, a bajillion questions about the—”

“No, you may not! But my friend here is gonna ask you a few questions before we get this letter written. Tavish, I think you’d better do the talking.”

Scout had thought Dell was friendly, and he generally seemed to be, but there was a tone to the man’s voice that said another question about his arm would make him far less friendly. So Jeremy decided to do the most difficult thing he’d ever done, and be quiet as the Engineer stepped aside to make room for the hulking man with the eyepatch.

“My name is Tavish. I’m a demolitions expert addicted to alcohol and explosives—”

“Wrong speech, buddy,” said the Engineer encouragingly, as though this had happened many times before.

“Aye, right. Ahem.”

Tavish took out a piece of paper from his back pocket that was surprisingly pristine. He took a stick of dynamite out from the other, put it back, and looked around for something else. The French guy handed him a small gun as though knowing what he was looking for.

“Right, thanks.” The demolitions expert shot the ceiling twice to gather everyone’s attention. He handed the gun back and took reading glasses out of another pocket.

“You are all hereby requested for a special secret mission. The people hiring you will not reveal their names or the mission’s purpose, but we assure you that it is of utmost importance. You will be relocated to a strategic and secret area that may turn the tide in this war. Each of you has been selected due to the special skills you possess, as well as a general lack of morality. Also, we will pay you. We know some of you are here to be paid. We implore you to consider this opportunity and join our team.”

“Hey, where did your British accent come from there, weren’t you Irish or Scottish or somethin’? Also, yeah, I’m gonna do that. Can I tell my Ma?”

“Aye. Any other questions?”

“Ja, will there be room for my experiments there? Also, mein vögel, can they come? I can go with du all if I’m not taken from my work.”

“Aye, your experiments are why you're here, and experimenting with test subjects is encouraged.”

“Oh, then Ja!”

Each person asked questions, but since Scout had already accepted, the Engineer gave him one of the papers to sign and started writing Jeremy’s letter on another paper that was not a contract. Jeremy let everyone else fade into the background as he told his mom and his girl all about his injuries and how much he missed them in the letters. He took a while to sign his name, struggling with the letters, but Dell was quite understanding. Jeremy decided that he enjoyed the Engineer’s company.

The only thing that seemed off was the Spy. He did not seem excited about the contract, but he did sign the papers.

Each of the men, now called The Teufort Mercenaries, were helped out to the vehicle, except for the burned one, who was driven in a personal ambulance since they couldn’t move.

Scout wondered how they signed the paperwork. He wondered how his Ma would take it, with him being gone even longer than planned, but how much longer would it be? A week? Probably a week. Ma would be alright, he explained everything in his letter. She had his brothers to take care of her. He smiled, excited to drive off to a new, exciting, and important life.

The Spy, Demo, and Engineer stayed behind longer than the others.

“These letters, they will not be sent, non?”

“No, unfortunately, we have to burn ‘em. Gonna tell everyone these guys died in battle.”

“What about ze medic?”

“Oh, we don’t know where he came from. He just started saving lives by making abominations to god, and we let him.”

“What ze fuck is wrong with you all?”

“Ask the higher-ups.”

Meanwhile, Tavish was getting paid by a woman who addressed herself as P. He assumed that was because of her purple attire.

“So you’ll take them all to the desert location, right?”

“Aye.”

“And you won’t ask questions?”

“Aye. Not my job.”

“You’ll be perfect. Here’s the hundred. Go take them to Teufort.”

The woman then started calling her boss and walking away, and Tavish walked away as well. He thought he had heard, “They’re out of our hair now,” but he did not question it because it was his job now not to ask questions.

They all rejoined the group in the van, everyone having been ignorant of their absence. The lively chatter continued as everyone awaited their trip to a new life. A life that was not the heroic one they had expected, but simply a way to rid the world of these strange people.