Team Fortress 2 and its characters belong to Valve. Most of this stuff remains canon; teams are portrayed in a more realistic manner (or as realistic as you can get with a game like this) while trying to stay true to the personalities of the characters involved. Have fun reading or simply close out of it if you don't.

Cheers.

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The Red Sniper found himself flanked unexpectedly by the blonde Scout as the team began darting forward.

It was the first sprint of the day into clear sunlight and open air -- he found it easy to match up to the young man's pace as they veered leftward and followed one another wordlessly up a creaking wooden ramp which lead to an unsafely-stacked pile of wooden beams, crates, and scrap metal curling like a hook around the side of the Blu base.

Down below, the Sniper could feel the wave of Red classes sweeping across the field, taking up positions of half-hearted stealth while the Heavies came in last, two of them bearing an inhumanely large battering ram in their meaty hands. Snipers picked spots near and far from the enemy battlements while Solders came in with covering fire and rockets to the towers flanking the suspiciously silent base.

It wasn't until the first three explosions rocked the Blu base that someone pulled the alarm to call their men to arms.

The Red Sniper slung his rifle up over his shoulder as the Scout whizzed past him and took a running jump up onto the swaying rubble that blocked their path. He glanced around rapidly before an excited grin came to his face and he looked down at the Sniper who had only just made it to the base of the blockade, "C'mon, I see a place, dude." He crouched swiftly and offered an arm, waiting for the Aussie to grab his wrist before pulling the older man up with him.

The Aussie seemed to have no trouble keeping up, swinging himself up onto the boiling metal with a crack from some of the layers below as the Scout stood and darted off ahead of him. He followed with competetive agility, something which caused the Scout to stare a bit once they came up to a short wall of downed wooden beams and the remains of a sniper's tower from a fight weeks ago. "Never told me you could move like that," he said as they both crouched and the Sniper took to setting up his gun.

"There's a lot people would tell you if you'd shut up and listen, mate," the man insisted, a friendly smirk tossed in the boy's direction as he dropped his eyes to the scope. "Draw them out for me, if you'd be so kind.."

"My. Fuckin'. Pleasure!"

A miniature dust devil stirred up from the ground beside him as the Scout bolted ahead and began hollering and taunting the enemy from their towers. They were already peppering the ground with bullets, hoping to hit not only him, but the rest of the faster men who had made it dangerously close to the Blu team's front doors. The hangars barely opened fast enough for a Blu Heavy as he came stomping out shooting. Several dents lunged out of the metal as it hit the top of the doorway, bullets from prematurely-triggered guns lodged deep in its frame.

From his crouch in the scrap yard, the Sniper remained focused, peering quickly from the Scout to the towers and all around the area.

There.

A blue sleeve briefly flitted between the slats of the wood beams in front of him. He quickly threw his scope rightward, following the path of motion and the sound of thundering footsteps until a clear shot presented itself.

The Blu Demo never even saw it coming as the Sniper squeezed the trigger and sent him toppling to the ground below the platform. Again his rifle swept the area, the Scouts calls reaching his ears as they suddenly became screams..

"CAN'T CATCH ME -- I'M JOE DIMAGGIO, YOU FUCKERS! HA HA HA! .. AAaaaaGGHH!"

All the Sniper could see was red and yellow -- blonde and blood. With precision that would haunt him later, he quickly took out a Soldier, a Heavy, and a Pyro, the tank of whom fell to the ground long enough for him to assess its location, aim, and use it to blow a second sniping tower right off its support beams. Men out in the field screamed warning to one another as it began to tilt, metal shrieking as it bent, snapped, and sent the entire structure hurtling toward the earth. A Blu Scout took a wooden beam right through the chest, his agony a mere matter of moments before the weight of the building came to crush him to death. Countless others took on shrapnel, one man even caught fire from the initial blast.

But the carnage was not in the Sniper's scope at the moment -- nothing was. He'd already slung his rifle onto his back and was on the move as he ran full force towards the last place he'd seen that Red Scout.

Smoke rode heavy off the felled tower; it provided decent cover, but it also obscured his goal.

It wasn't until he tripped over the boy's body that he found the Scout, his palms scraping raw in the dirt as he thrust his hands down to catch himself and turned about swiftly to get to his side on hand and knee. A grimace of anger and worry was painted on his sneering face as he grabbed a hold of the boy's arm and dragged him nearer. The Scout punched him -- hard.

"Graaw!"

Well, good, he was still alive. And upon seeing who he'd just decked, he flinched and let his back hit the dirt as pain wracked his body, "Fuck.. fuck FUCK. Dude? Ahh.. Ow, I'm sorry dude, please, get a Medic. F-fuck. I thought you were Blu."

The Sniper hissed, clenching his throbbing jaw as he fixed his glasses and grabbed the boy again. This time he pulled him up onto his shoulder, minding the Scout's obviously broken legs as he trotted under the platform he'd just been using as a sniping post and laying him up against a sandbag. He pointed firmly at him as he got to his feet and began to head off, "Don't die, mate," he insisted.

Running as fast as his slender legs would carry him, the mint-eyed Medic ran with his head down behind a Pyro, the rays of his Medigun flaring around the fire-toting maniac as he charged straight down the line of battle bringing hell on Earth to any Blu that dared to step in his way. But as a sticky bomb flew in from the right and attached itself to the Pyro's tank, it became readily apparent that the Red Sniper wasn't the only tactician in this war..

BLAM!

The nose of the Medigun flew upward, slamming into the Medic's forehead while the blast threw him into the silo nearby. He stood there with wide eyes, the gun hitting the dirt as he stared forward and groped around with his left hand until it tenderly met his right shoulder. A large piece of propane tank metal protruded from the front of it, blood gathering around the twisted shrapnel as he gradually became aware of the fact that it was pinning him to the silo. He hadn't even registered the blast burns on his face yet, the dripping cut on his cheek failing to become noticed as well.

"MEDIC!"

Someone was calling him..

He looked around in a daze, blinking slowly as the wavering image of a Red team member came loping toward him. It was an Engineer -- a badly-wounded Engineer who ran with a definite limp and blood running out from under the right eye of his goggles. Despite the man's hinderences, he felt the metal being grabbed with that powerful gloved hand, felt it being ripped from his torn flesh as he and his Medigun were pulled to safety behind a stack of wooden pallets. Once the shock wore down, he fed on adrenaline, working together with the Engineer to secure his arm and use the gun to seal it shut.

From there it was a matter of healing the Engineer who defended them both with the Medic's own syringe shooter.

"Au! Watch where you are shooting!" a Spy shouted angrily as he ripped a syringe from his shoulder and slipped into the guise of an enemy Demoman. It was the Sniper's friend, his holographic version of the Demoman's weapon clutched convincingly in his hands with clipping so minor that it was seamless as he ran for the right hand side of the Blu Base.

Here he pretended to take cover, looking as though he was reloading as he came to rest beside a Blu Heavy.

"Aye, lad! Let's get oot thar and shoo them wot we've got!" he bellowed at the hulking man, inwardly rewarded as the Heavy grinned at him and turned his back on him to head out into the field.

He hastily cleaned his knife in the dirt, holding his arm out at his side as he ran ever nearer to the hangar doors..

The fighting seemed to be slowing down much faster than usual. The first wave of troops came, they fought valiantly.. and then.. Pausing near the doors, the Red Spy stood poised to kill the next man that dared to come out.. but no one ever came. He waited. ..and waited. No one. It was then that he dared to look away and observe the battlefield.

Several Blus had already been disarmed and now stood at the business ends of Red Guns, Red Sentries, and Red Kukris. Medics had time to tend the wounded, everyone was able to reload, and within thirty seconds, everyone realized what was happening.

Even the Blus started to become aware, their Scouts glancing expectantly at the hangar doors and.. waiting.

The Reds did not allow this for long.

One by one, they herded the Blus toward the front of the Blu base, forcing them all to stand together and stripping ammo and the smallest of weapons from those who still carried them. No one else was coming. There were no reinforcements.. There was no back-up.

"Let's move! GO, GO, GO! Get our men in there, flush 'em out!" a Red Soldier cried.

The Red Spy re-cloaked and slid easily inside the base. He found no men, no Sentries.. not even a Dispenser. A Scout and a Heavy followed him in, a Medic close behind as two soldiers and a Pyro joined them. Half the Reds remained outside, guarding the diminished Blus who had begun chattering among themselves.

'Where is everyone' 'What the hell, dude?' 'The fuck's goin' on!' 'Those god-damned cowards, they left us behind!' 'What happened to our team?' 'Is everyone dead already?' 'How could this happen??'

The Red Scout limped onto the scene, his arm slung around the tender shoulder of the rookie Medic who had since found and healed him. His Sniper friend was already into the Blu base, helping to sweep it and soon coming alongside the Red Spy who had abandoned his cloak and chosen to wear the disguise of someone very.. very confused.

Reinforcements were not going to come.. because there was no one left. The dorms were barren, the labs empty, the intel burned.. He stood with a Soldier in the hollowed-out basement of the secret lab he had found only a week prior, a cold feeling in his stomach as he realized with dismay, "..Zhey've moved everyzhing."

That night the men of Blu were returned to their base. Locked in their own dorm rooms as prisoners of war, the Red infected every aspect of the base they could get their hands on. Disarmed and silenced by the sudden disappearance of more than half of their team, the Blus were strangely compliant. Even the Scouts had gone quiet, their pride broken and their fighting spirits nonexistent as the last of them shuffled blankly into his room and went to bury his face in his hands.

The Blu Spy captured those weeks ago remained at the Red Base though with the fighting at an abrupt standstill, he too was granted a locked dorm room. He was so alienated from the war that he was of no threat to anyone, the news of his team's defeat only serving to push him further from the reality of what was going on.

No one spoke for ten long minutes in the briefing room of the Red base. No one smoked. No one dared to break those ten minutes of complete and utter tranquility until the door shut behind the short Red Spy who had silenced the mess hall congregation just the other day. He walked with a subdued limp, gauze covering the deep gashes which had found a home in his face during the day's battle.

He lit the first cigarette, he said the first word.

"Jhentlemen.."

They could barely hear him as he stood just inside the door and lifted his eyes to them, adding.

"..eet is time to move."

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And that's it for this story. Too much of a cliffhanger? The sequel is already in the works.