Chapter Text
As Engineer drug Soldiers limp body into the shed and on the old arm chair, Spy and Scout stood around Tumble. The air was stifled and tense. Almost as much as when he was around. Scout lessened the effect though, being starry eyed and buzzing with excitement.
“You were hiding an entire ROBOT from us? Dude do you know how insane this is? Does it have guns or lasers or anythin’? Is it super strong? Did you make it? Why’d you make it blue? What's with all the paint and stickers?”
Spy whacked him in the head with his hat again. “Scout.” A warning tone in his voice made Scout stop talking, instead grumbling to himself over “how much of a bitch” Spy was.
Engineer came over, having enough of trying to situate Soldier in the chair correctly, its arm was grabbed and brought up to eye level with Spy looking away innocently when faced with his knife. He gripped the handle and yanked it out, the blade screeched against its metal, yellow sparks flew from the conflict. Engineer turned and sighed at the mess that’d been made of his work space while Spy glared at the deep scrapes now permanently engraved on his knife. Tumble flexed its hand, it still seemed to work well enough. It was slowly getting a collection of metal “scars” with the screw indent on its knee and hole in its arm. As the men began to talk, it started picking at said indented screw.
“Either of ya’s wanna explain what happened?” He lifted a hand in front of Scout's face to stop any oncoming over-embelishments or pure excited energy from him, “Not about the robot. Why were you messin’ up my damn shed?” Scraps of broken machinery and wood were littered everywhere, the neatly carved animals and objects were now covered in sawdust and buried under debris, the tools that made them had been lost in the mess and a pail of polish spread over the ground and seeped over shards of wood, metal, and plastic.
Tumble picked things up while they spoke, details were recounted and interrupted over as Spy corrected Scout's wild tales of murderous robots and their brave battle in the middle of the night. It carefully walked around them, only Spy noticed its behavior and flicked his eyes to it when deemed too close for comfort. He didn’t do anything though, just watched. Some of the boxes were beyond repair and so their contents were gathered in piles or placed on other boxes or the workbench. Outside, Tumble grabbed the shovel that was thrown and forgotten, it was placed on Soldier’s lap gently. Spy seemed wary at its ability to work so autonomously and go wherever on its own accord. Thankfully, he stayed silent on it regardless.
When everything was as it was before the scuffle (at least as well as it could be), the Medic-bot returned to Engineer's side as though it’d never left. Scout glanced up every few seconds into it’s face and tried to keep his mildly annoyed demeanor from faltering into nervousness. It stared blankly back, blue lights reflected in his eyes and seemed to offend him based on the color alone.
When the three men were done with their tales and rebuttals over who was in the wrong, Engineer ushered them out and returned to hoist Soldier onto his back. Tumble was given a short “goodnight” before the door was closed and the workshop was covered in darkness once more.
Did they forget that they’d meant to ask about who made it?
It pondered for a moment, about to move to the chair and settle in for the night, but two steps before it could’ve sat down, a fizzling noise came from behind it.
A metal hand shot out and grabbed a skinny arm that flickered in and out of sight, settling on a red jacket and black gloves. Spy, who tried and failed to yank his arm back, shifted his face from shock and anger to calmness in a few moments. No weapons were in his hand. Smoke curled lazily out of a cigarette that hung from his mouth, one newer than when he and the others conversed.
His face was strained as he spoke, “Apologies, I simply wished to speak to you. If that is possible.” He wouldn’t be strong enough to incapacitate it, Spy’s arm was released. Cloth ruffled as he rubbed the area softly, straightened out the sleeve, and kept his eyes on it. “Good…Well then, I believe a certain question was left in the open during our justification of why the laborers…” He glared around the room that smelled of hay and wood, “workspace has been disturbed. Who made you?”
Of course he would’ve brought this up, and alone too.
It shuffled in place, trying to think of a way to convey things. It also didn’t want to attempt speaking again, though it had been largely ignoring them, the warnings were still an ingrained part of itself and many were about making sure that the Spy had as little information about it as possible. It pointed to Spy’s coat, he shifted back to keep it from actually touching the fabric, then to the paint applied to its arm. His eyes squinted just slightly as he tried to piece together what it was trying to say.
“Cover?” It shook its head and pointed to Engineer’s desk where the metal was painted red. “Red?”
Yes!
It nodded and then pointed to Spy who raised an eyebrow in suspicion. “Spy? RED Spy?”
Another shake of its head. How to convey this?
It scratched the end of its jaw, trying to emulate how Engineer would fiddle with his stubble. “Chin…Beard…” Spy mumbled through different combinations of words to figure out what it was trying to say. “...Man? Red man. Redmond Mann?” It nodded and then pointed to its other ‘gloved’ hand. “And Blutarch.”
With two fingers extended, it mimed shooting Spy in the head, he tilted his head back with a furrowed brow and was obviously trying not to react. It then pointed to the back of its arm where all of the paint had scraped off. “Were killed…By Gray…?” It held up its two fingers and thumb. “There are three brothers.”
Spy stood stunned in the middle of the room, sorting through thoughts and attempting to rationalize everything just revealed to him through charades, he shook his head before long and tried to reapply his normal facade. The cigarette held in his mouth was taken and ground into the wall as he turned to leave. He opened the door, turned back to it, and disappeared into the night like nothing had ever transpired in the first place. Tumble watched the route he had to have taken to return to the building but not even footsteps gave away where Spy had gone. It closed the door and began to sort through its own thoughts.
Things had just gotten much more dangerous for it. But, maybe, things would turn out alright despite nearly the entire team of men it was meant to destroy now knew of its existence. It would have to prove its worth to stay around.
The night was used to further attempt to organize Engineers things after the kerfuffle brought upon it hours earlier. Yes, he did previously say he had a way that he liked things but surely a more efficient way of organizing these items would be beneficial in the long run and excuse its interference. Tumble spent hours sorting screws, scraps, gun barrels, metal plates, washers, drills, hammers, welders, any and everything within the shed so that it would be easy to find and use each tool and resource without having to rummage for them in the endless cardboard and wooden boxes. It was even able to fold away most of them after putting many of their contents within a large shelf with many compartments that was buried among everything and looked like it hadn’t been used in years.
The only thing that stopped it was the sound of the sheds door opening and allowing sunlight to bleed into the room. It was almost done when Scout peeked inside the door frame and looked around for any sign of the other members of his team. When he deemed it clear, he closed the door just to bust it open with a kick which rattled the tools it’d taken the time to hang up on a peg board.
“Yo! Robot!” It deflated at the degrading moniker but still approached Scout with a pallet tucked under its arm. He wore a pair of casual brown pants and a red t-shirt with the sleeves seemingly ripped off, his grey hat was also on his head but without the headset. “Geez, I dunno if I’ll ever get used to you. C’mere a sec, drop that thing too, you’re gonna need both hands.” He slipped away and tried not to laugh at something, was it being led into a trap? Was he going to beat it with his bat? Lead it to the others? Make it fight in battle with no weapons and watch as it was torn to pieces and reduced to shrapnel?
Why would it need two hands for any of that?
Despite all of the potential for destruction, the need to know what was going to happen won and it followed Scout's lead and exited the shed after dropping the pallet unceremoniously onto the floor. The sun wasn’t even on the horizon yet, the sky painted pink and yellow with wispy light blue clouds instead, long shadows casted the sand with dark blue. It was faced with Scout holding a baseball, he tossed it up into the air and caught it absently before he spotted Tumble and ceased the action.
“Heyy, there ya are! Okay, so, I was thinkin’ that I could like, try and make up fer beating the shit out of you, I mean getting on the bad side of a robot would be SUCH a missed opportunity. And! Maybe we could get some use out of you.” Like it didn’t have any before? Did the entire reorganization of Engineers mess hold no meaning?
Scout jogged backward until he was 20 feet away from it and chucked the baseball toward it. Tumble caught the ball with one hand without moving and inspected it, turning it around with its digits, the surface of the ball was quite old and worn with dust staining the white surface. The once reddish stitching threatened to fray and snap and reveal the core of the baseball.
From across the distance, Scout waved at it before cupping his hands around his mouth to shout, “How about a game of catch!?”
A game of catch? The ball was already caught. Was the game already over?
A few more beats passed before Scout shouted to it again. “You gotta throw it back, dummy!” That was not its name. But it understood his meaning behind the command.
Well, the game was already initiated then.
It placed its feet apart and wound itself much like Scout had done just prior and threw the ball back to him in return.
Apparently, far too quickly.
A dull “whap” cracked through the flat sands as the ball flew across the sky and hit Scout squarely on the head. Tumble stiffened as Scout fell backwards into a puff of sand and dust.
He wasn’t getting up.
It ran over to him while trying to be mindful of its feet sinking into the sand. Scouts head was covered in blood and had quickly begun to bruise an ugly combination of purple and green. There was mostly red though.
What would they think if they saw this? Surely it’d be blamed and thought to have attacked him and injured Scout on purpose.
But what if it tried to help?
Tumble didn’t possess any data on human biology or how to repair wounds. Its hands weren’t dexterous enough to do much even if it did.
But it knew of someone that would.
The real Medic.
Was he even told it existed yet? Would it start a chain of events that would delve it back into enemy status? Would he be able to disarm it? Would others join the fight and destroy it? Would anyone defend it? Was it considered an ally by anyone within the base?
It didn’t matter, Scout was bleeding out and it was the only one that knew about it.
After some finagling with Scout's limp body, Tumble managed to get him on its back to be carried into the RED base. It was sure that the sharp metallic angles of its back and shoulders were making for an uncomfortable surface to lean on but, if its basic knowledge on the medic was anything to go off of, it wouldn’t matter thanks to the supernatural power of the medigun. It also grabbed the bloody baseball so that it wouldn’t be lost.
Or as evidence that this was an accident.
It trudged around the edge of the base, where the ground was far more solid and wouldn’t make Tumble near inoperable after Engineer took all that time and effort to fix it up, and neared the entrance of the base. It pushed open the door and thankfully saw no one in the hallway. Its footsteps loudly clunked across the smooth granite flooring, if only it had real shoes, a large room opened up with a simple kitchenette and a couch with a table that faced a small television. This was not the medics room.
There were three more hallways that opened up and a closed wooden door next to the kitchen counter.
The door just ended up being a pantry filled with canned food and a horribly old bag of flour obviously pilfered by bugs over the years.
One of the hallways it was, then. It took the hall to it’s left from the entrance, past the couch, it was rather short and came to a stop with one door to the right and another at the end. The end door was much more expensive than the others it’d seen, this one being made of thick red stained wood with a lacquer sheen to it, a gold plated doorknob with an ornate pattern also adorned it. The first door on the side of the hall was a room full of books, piled high in large uneven stacks and atop tables, shelves, the floor, any free space. Many of the shelves just for the books were empty or barely held anymore of the books anymore. A few chairs that didn’t match each other at all were scattered around the floor, some empty, some also piled high with books.
The door to the end of the hall was locked, a bit more force used on the door snapped something and allowed it to be opened and reveal another large room, this one very lavish. An armchair sat across from an empty fireplace, a modest shelf of books lined one wall and several cabinets lined the walls with glass doors that showed bottles of presumably wine and little expensive looking trinkets in them. An ashtray sat on a wooden round table.
This hallway did not have Medic in it, nor any tools that would relate the rooms to him.
Before they could return to the main room, Tumble noticed a thin splatter of blood on the floor that traced a path from where it had been walking. Scout was still bleeding out on its back. Oops.
After returning to the main room, the couch complained when Tumble slid Scout off of its back and onto the plush cushions. Hopefully being stationary would help with the bleeding, half of the base remained unexplored for the moment.
It ventured onward for help, this time, going down the next hall to the right, this one had a few more doors before leading to an open room. The doors proved to be further useless as it found a supply closet, a storage room with familiar looking boxes with red wrench stamps on them, another locked room which turned out to be another supply closet turned into Spy’s bedroom (surprisingly modest in decoration), and a room that was full of random gym equipment. Possibly. There were also boxing gloves, bats, and other objects that didn’t correlate to “gym things” as far as it was aware. But, it made more sense when it arrived at the last room.
A massive sports room opened up before it, wood paneling lined the floor and was very worn down and scuffed and stained with many different fluids. Most of which was more than likely blood. A large boxing ring was set up in the first third of the room with another large square mat next to it with some random practice weapons near it. Another smaller room was connected to it.
It turned out to be a locker room and a communal shower. Still not the doctors residence.
As Tumble returned to Scouts body in the main room, a trumpet sounded and played an off-tune rendition of the star spangled banner from the remaining hallway. Tumble startled and dove to the couch for cover, feet slipping on a stiff ratty carpet and knocking over the table, and poked its head above the cushions after dimming its eye lights.
Soldier stood in the middle of the hall, chest puffed out regally and hand held tightly onto a very well loved bugle, in contrast with his equally well loved dirty white shirt with patches of fabric so worn thin that Tumblr could see his unruly chest hair poking through. Unceremonious groans emit from the rooms down the hall and one of the doors open to Demo tackling Soldier and attempting to smother him with a pillow, the Demomans hair is wild and much larger than one would think after only ever seeing it apparently stuffed under his hat during most hours of the day.
Avoiding such conflict would be much preferable to Tumble, it thinks, as it hoists Scout back up and attempts to run back to what it identified as the Spy's room without being noticed.
The door closes behind them and Tumble deposits Scout onto the bed and begins to look around more thoroughly. It’s stopped when Spy rematerializes in front of a closet it was planning to rifle through, his face looked unimpressed and accusatory.