AN: I meant to post this one shot earlier, but work has been so awful that I was too exhausted to write properly...
This is part of my Varian series. It takes place before the main story and expands on the incident with the Pyrovision goggles mentioned by Scout.
Remember, most of RED thinks Scout is a guy...Maybe I should do a one shot about when Medic confronted her about that.
And I don't own either series.
The weekend had started normally enough. Scout had more or less gotten used to the eccentricities of her teammates and the loneliness that came with not being around her sisters. She'd picked up some hobbies to keep herself busy off the battlefield. She figured she could become comfortable with this way of life.
And then Engineer decided to show off his newest invention. "I call it Pyrovision."
Everyone stares at the innocent looking goggles before looking at Pyro, who was watching their lighter as it was flicked on and off.
"I'm not sure I want to see what he sees," said Demo.
"It's mostly rainbows and kittens and the like," Engineer reassured them. "Well, that I've seen so far."
Medic plucked it up, took off his glasses, and put them on. He frowned. "Ach, it's too blurry. All I can see is that it's bright and colorful."
Engineer frowned. "Huh, guess I need to redesign 'em so they can be worn with glasses…or make a pair with corrective lenses."
Medic took off the goggles to put his glasses back on. Soldier stole the goggles. "It is essential to know how the enemy thinks!" He took his helmet off and put the goggles on. He was silent as his face slowly morphed to a pained grimace. "Oh…" He took off the goggles, glanced at Pyro, and slowly backed away.
Now Scout was curious. She grabbed the goggles and put them on.
Her vision swam in a vortex of colors before settling on an elegant room with plush carpets, men in fancy clothes (Spy barely looked any different.), leather chairs, that bloodstain in the corner was now a puddle of rose petals, and Scout was screaming because she knew this.
She wrenched the goggles off and threw them out the window, which refused to look broken. One of the men ran over. "Damn it Scout! What'd you go and do that for?!"
Scout started to hyperventilate. Why was she still in Little Sister La La Land? The goggles were gone! Why hadn't she snapped back to reality yet?!
"Scout," said one of the men in Medic's voice, "You are going to pass out if you keep breathing like that."
"Why are you panicking like that anyway?" asked another man with Demo's voice, which made sense because he was dark-skinned like him. Had both eyes though.
"I…I…" How was she supposed to explain the goggles had thrown her back into a semi-brainwashed state she'd been in when she was a little kid? And that she seemed to be stuck in it?
Spy, who somehow kept his balaclava even in her delusional vision, smirked. "Not afraid of rainbows and kittens are you?"
"No!" There aren't any rainbows anyway. "I…It's just…Everything looks wrong!"
"Mmph!" said…A person…in a dress that hid their figure…and a really fancy mask that covered most of their head. Pyro then.
"It is incredibly strange!" agreed a man in a military dress uniform. Soldier.
A man too big to be anyone other than Heavy frowned. "Why is little Scout still scared?"
"I…" She was afraid of getting lost in her own mind again. Afraid of not being able to tell reality from fantasy. Afraid that the other conditioning would follow the hallucinations. Afraid they would find out what she really was. "I have to go." And then she was running and she got lost because everything looked different. Even when she finally got to her room she didn't recognize it. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and she fell to the floor and cried and cried until she was so exhausted she fell asleep.
When Scout finally woke up the next day she was still trapped in the illusion. She groaned and groped for her alarm clock, which looked a lot nicer now. According to the clock it was nearly 10:30. Scout groaned and briefly considered throwing her clock before deciding she didn't want to replace it right now. The day was going to suck enough as it was.
Scout washed up quickly, got dressed, and started looking for the kitchen. When she found an opulent dining room she figured she was getting close. She checked all the doors leading out of it and eventually found a homey looking country kitchen.
Thankfully someone had left out a plate of what looked like pancakes on the counter with her name written on a napkin next to them. Scout poked them. They felt like pancakes. She grabbed a knife and fork and took a bite. Tasted like pancakes. She guessed they could actually be pancakes. Engie sometimes made them on the weekend.
Scout thought about what she should do until the illusion broke. Well, first she should try to break the illusion. She concentrated hard, trying to see the kitchen as the messy military room that it was.
Nothing.
Scout groaned. She'd have to keep trying. It shouldn't take long for the illusion to crack, and then she would just need to focus on those cracks until they became so large the fantasy shattered.
So what else could she do? She guessed she should get ready for the match tomorrow…What on Earth would that be like?
Scout started looking for the Respawn room. She figured the Vita-Chamber meant she'd found it. The cupboards with locks had to be the lockers. Getting in was a lot trickier considering the cabinets had key locks while the lockers had combination padlocks. It took a good five minutes to get it open.
Scout took out what looked like a bottle of wine. She was pretty sure it was Bonk. How was she supposed to open a can when it looked like a cork and bottle? She'd have to get by without it for a few days. She pulled out…a clarinet? She didn't play any instruments. She turned it over in her hands, feeling it over. She thought it felt like her shotgun. She was pretty sure the trigger was on the end with the mouthpiece. Her handgun was a fancy toy gun with a cork in the barrel attached to it with a string. Her bat was still a bat, but it was now made with a very shiny wood. Didn't look like it had even been used.
Okay, Scout knew what her weapons looked like, but she had no idea what everyone else's would look like. Well, she'd have to dodge no matter what, so what did it matter? She should make sure she knew what the battlefield looked like first though.
Outside looked weird. The sky was gone and replaced with a very high ceiling painted with murals that reminded Scout a bit of pictures of the Sistine Chapel she'd seen in books. Meanwhile, the buildings had been replaced with various fancy houses. The bare ground had grass and various flowers. A pathway connected the two headquarters. It was beautiful.
Too bad it was all fake.
Scout was still looking for the Intelligence Room when she ran into someone.
"Oi! There you are! Was wondering if you were ever going to leave your room!" shouted clean, shaven, two-eyed, tuxedo wearing, fancy brandy drinking Demo.
"Uh, yeah, I…had trouble sleeping," said Scout. "That's it."
"What was in those specs of Engie's that scared you so much?" questioned Demo. He grinned. "Not a cat person?"
"I like cats." Scout would've loved to have any sort of pet growing up. Cat, dog, hamster, goldfish, whatever. "It just…" She glanced up at the fake sky. "It was so unnatural. I…That might not seem like a big deal to the rest of you guys, but…I draw for fun, and well, there's a difference between what reality looks like and what fantasy looks like, and those goggles seriously screwed it up for me." Scout did enjoy drawing, and she had studied human anatomy in photos. The goggles hadn't screwed up reality that badly though… It was flimsy explanation, and she knew it.
Demo shrugged. "Alrighty then." He held up a bottle of scotch. "Wanna drink?"
It was probably Scrumpy. Scout felt getting drunk would be completely understandable in this situation but wanted to keep a clear head. Besides, it might affect her hallucinations in ways she wouldn't enjoy. Not to mention she was underage.
…And somehow she thought that was important when she was killing people for a living. "Not right now. Maybe later."
"You sure?"
"Yeah, don't like drinking too early in the day," excused Scout.
"It's close to three," argued Demo.
"That's early by my standards," muttered Scout. "Anyway, I gotta go." She turned and hurried away.
This was gonna be harder than she thought.
Dinner looked like a super fancy meal that only Spy would be willing to buy because it was so expensive. Scout just stabbed it with a fork and took a bite out of whatever it was. She was far from the messiest eater so no one commented on it.
For some reason Heavy kept flickering between a fancy suit and the two Big Daddy models. She'd noticed that he sometimes smelled bad, but wow, that was just unfortunate. No wonder he kept complaining about the lack of bathing water.
"You've been pretty quiet today Scout. You feeling okay?" asked Engineeer.
Scout focused on him for a moment and finally got a flicker. "It's nothing. Just tired."
Spy smirked. "Still upset by the land of rainbows and kittens?"
Scout glared at him. "Shut up. I can be quiet if I wanna."
Spy kept smirking at her. It made her want to punch him. Repeatedly. Scout took another bite of whatever was for dinner.
"Little Scout has been acting strangely all day," said Heavy. "Will Little Scout be able to fight tomorrow?"
"Of course! I'm not that messed up!" RED's clothing was still red. Scout was pretty sure BLU's clothing would still be blue.
Soldier suddenly stood and slammed his hands on the table. "Scout! You will fight to your full ability or so help me I will string you up the flagpole."
"We don't have a flagpole," deadpanned Sniper, which was the only thing he'd said the whole meal.
"Then I will make a flagpole specifically for stringing Scout up!"
"Soldier, there's more to making a flagpole than just sticking a rod in the ground," said Engineer. "Besides, we can't change the structure of the base without prior approval from the very top."
"Then I will make a flagpole, string Scout up, and take it back down," declared Soldier. Then he moved to sit down, but missed and ended up tumbling onto the floor because his chair had mysteriously moved back a foot.
Scout smirked.
Turns out no one needed to worry. Scout was still able to fight just fine. Good thing she'd taken the time to make sure she could get around the RED base. The BLU base was a bit more difficult, but she was starting to see reality for brief periods of time, which was enough for her to figure out where everything was.
The weird part was watching the guys fight. They're weapons ranged from more musical instruments, to flowers, to whatever that weird contraption Pyro was using was.
Actually, Scout thought the fighting was helping. Every time she got hit it caused her to see reality for a moment. She wasn't very good at focusing since she was caught by surprise every time, but it still helped.
Also, for some reason the BLU Heavy never looked like a Big Daddy. Maybe Heavy just had weird pheromones. She knew that she and her sisters still produced some of the pheromones from when they were Little Sisters, but no one else seemed to notice them.
Heck, maybe she was the only one who noticed. She and her sisters seemed to be able to smell a lot of other things that normal people didn't notice.
Her musings were cut off when she felt a pain in her neck, reality flashed in front of her, and then she was stumbling out of the Vita-Chamber that has replaced Respawn. "Ow." That had probably been the BLU Spy. Usually he couldn't catch her, but when she stood still for too long because she wanted to think for a moment…
Well, everyone had off days.
The rest of the week passed pretty normally. Scout was a bit more cautious than normal and tried to break the illusion in her spare time. The sky was finally back to normal, and the general environment didn't look quite as perfect as before. The breaks to reality were happening more often and lasting longer. She should be back to normal in a few days.
And then it had to go wrong again.
She'd just been sent to Respawn by the BLU Spy (She'd been trying to locate Pyro.). She didn't need to grab any supplies so she just ran out.
"What the Hell?" muttered Sniper over the radio. Scout ignored it.
"What the fuck is wrong with you boy?" shouted Soldier. "You do not announce such weakness out loud for the enemy to hear!"
Scout blinked. When the guys said 'boy' they were usually talking about her. "Huh? What're you talking about?"
Pyro said something that no one could recognize. "You just announced that rainbows make you cry over the radio," said Medic.
"What?! I did not!"
"Did you just die?" asked Spy.
"Yes!"
"My counterpart probably decided to embarrass you before you respawned." And then because Spy was an asshole he said the next part in Scout's voice. "The disguise kits only change our appearance you see."
"Stop that!" shouted Scout. "Pyro! You're gonna find BLU Spy so I can beat him to death!"
And they did. Several times. It was therapeutic, and Scout was feeling a lot better by the time the match was over.
"Okay, who let the rainbow thing slip?" she demanded as soon as she was back in the respawn room as she glared at everyone except for Pyro.
Of course, she was a twig compared to most of the guys so the stance wasn't particularly intimidating. Luckily, Engineer decided to be nice. "Considering what Spies are like, he mighta just been lurking around our base and overheard someone talking about it."
That was true. Scout knew she'd had a quick talk about it with Demo at the beginning of the week. "Ugh, that's just great. Is this gonna follow me for the rest of my life?"
"Of course it will!" said Soldier. "A shame like that must follow you to the afterlife so that you understand what a-"
Scout suckerpunched Soldier before he could finish. She was just…angry…She did not need to hear his brand of shit so she was going to make sure he shut up. Soldier was bigger than her though and punched back. He hit harder. She growled and tackled him. She stopped thinking and the two kept hitting each other until something picked them up and ripped them apart.
"You two are not little babies," rumbled Heavy. "Stop fighting like babies."
And for a moment the illusion breaks as Scout realized that no one here was taking her seriously. Why would they? She was a child to them, and they thought she was afraid of rainbows because she couldn't tell them what she really saw when she put on those goggles.
She definitely couldn't tell them what happened to her.
So she had to bottle up all the frustration and rage and snarled, "You don't know anything about me!" before storming out.
She wanted to break something.
She wanted to hurt someone.
Scout didn't bother going back to her room. Instead she went to the little used training area and proceeded to start breaking everything that can be hit with a bat. She broke boxes, she dented metal, she chipped stone, she absolutely destroyed the chain link barriers.
And when she finally, finally was exhausted and her anger was drained Scout realized she was going to have to clean all this up. She groaned. "Oh fuck my life."
That pretty much sums up her life.
Scout started sorting the material, thankful that most of it was wood because she can give that to Pyro. They get rid of a lot of trash like that. She wasn't sure what to do with the chain link and stone chips though.
"What the Hell happened to you?"
Scout started and turned to see Sniper watching her from the observation platform. She tossed a shard of stone at him.
"Oi!"
"Spy check." Scout went back to sorting the debris. "What're you doing here?"
"I practice short range shooting here."
"Why would you need to do that?" asked Scout in disbelief. "You're a sniper. Shooting from a distance is in your job description."
Sniper rolled his eyes. Or at least Scout got the impression he did. "Yeah, well, I don't always have a choice."
Scout couldn't argue with that. She'd attacked the BLU Sniper before. He had a machete and a submachine gun, and he didn't always have enough time to grab one. She grabbed another piece of wood. "You'll get your turn faster if you help me out."
Sniper snorted. "I'm not getting you outta this."
Scout made an annoyed sound. "Fine! Do you at least know where to take the metal and stone scraps?"
"Trash pit."
Scout blinked. "We have a trash pit?"
"Yeah, next to Pyro's fire pit."
Maybe Pyro took crap from the trash pit for his fire pit. "Okay." She grabbed some of the scraps of wood. "You'll have ta wait 'til tomorrow to use the range at this rate."
Sniper just shrugged and left. Scout glowered at where he'd been standing before going back to cleaning.
Scout didn't really want to interact with the guys that weekend so she stayed in her room and sketched for a while. She flexed her hand a bit before continuing to sketch it. The picture looked pretty accurate so far. She started drawing a pencil, which was a lot easier.
A knock at her door interrupted her practice. She quickly answered and was surprised to see Engineer on the other side of the door. "Something up?"
Engineer frowned in concern. At least she thought it was concern. It was hard to tell with his goggles. "You've been staying in your room all day."
"I wanted to practice my drawing skills."
"You don't have to skip meals for that," said Engineer. "What's really wrong?"
Scout looked down. "It's private." She could never let them know. "I just needed some time alone."
"Well, do you feel any better?"
Scout shrugged. "I will." Once she stops seeing things. "It…it hasn't affected my performance. So just…just let me deal with it, okay?"
Engineer studied her for another couple of moments crossing his arms like a frustrated parent. "Be that as it may, you still need to eat! So you'll walk down to dining hall and eat some food or I'll drag you there myself."
Scout considered for a moment before deciding Engineer probably was strong enough to do that. "Okay, okay." She closed the door behind her. "I'll go eat dinner with you guys."
Most of the guys didn't really react to her showing up after staying in her room the rest of the day. She caught Heavy nodding towards Engineer. Demo blinked at her for a minute, and then went back to eating.
The food was matching up to reality now so it was easier to eat. Scout ate as quickly as she could. It was awkwardly quiet.
"So, what have you been doing all day?" asked Demo.
"Drawing."
"Oh! That reminds me! Did you finish those drawings of Heavy's organ's I asked you about?" asked Medic.
"What," deadpanned Sniper, Spy, Demo, and Engineer.
"Is long story," said Heavy.
"Photographs don't have the color quality I'm looking for," explained Medic.
"I have five," said Scout.
"That should do. Bring them by the infirmary after dinner."
"Sure." Scout was done by then so she stood and started for her room so she could run the drawings over before forgetting again.
When Scout walked into the infirmary, Archimedes decided her shoulder was a nice place to rest. The bird seemed to like her for some reason she couldn't figure out. "Nice ta see ya too. I better cover the pictures so you guys don't poop on 'em." Scout looked for a moment and slipped her pictures under what she hoped was some harmless paperwork.
Then she realized she'd stepped in a puddle of some unidentifiable liquid. She made a face. "Ew…I thought doctors were supposed to be clean…"
And then she remembered the Orphanage.
Scout stiffened, awkwardly put Archimedes in the bird hutch thing, marched to her room, climbed into bed, and didn't come out for the rest of the night.
Wednesday, Scout was busy trying to avoid rockets from the BLU Soldier when the BLU Scout managed to sneak up on her and hit her in the head.
She heard a shattering sound, like thousands of windows breaking and then she woke up in Respawn.
Actual Respawn.
No Vita-Chamber in sight.
Scout ran to the exit and looked out. All she saw was desolate desert and a bunch of battle torn buildings. She let out a sigh of relief and grinned. Looks like the Little Sister La La Land illusion had finally broken. She didn't even care that she'd had her head smashed in by her counterpart she was so happy and relieved.
She spent the rest of the day with a goofy grin, and the guys noticed.
"Why are you grinning Maggot?!" shouted Soldier. "We lost!"
"Yeah, yeah, I just…fixed a problem I was having. It's hard not to be happy," said Scout.
"About time you got back to normal," slurred Demo. "I kept wondering if you were a Spy."
"That only happened once!"
Pyro giggled and said something Scout could not understand. Scout scooted away. She hadn't forgotten what had gotten her in this situation in the first place.
"I'm still not sure what upset you, but I'm glad you're feeling better," said Engineer, giving her a smile that said he was happy for her.
Scout smiled back and nodded. Hopefully that would be the last time she ever had to deal with her past.
Several Months Later:
Chantal had managed to finish all of her schoolwork before her Daddy and uncles and sister finished working for the day, and she was bored. Daddy had some books for her, but the words were too big. She'd rather color some more!
So she went to the cabinet and pulled out some paper and crayons and accidentally dislodged a couple of boxes.
Chantal winced but relaxed when nothing exploded. Daddy had made it clear that he kept weapons in boxes so she wasn't to go around opening them without him. She started putting them back but then noticed that one had opened and a pair of goggles had fallen out. Curious she looked out of them.
Chantal screamed as she suddenly was back in the Bad Place. She threw the goggles away from her and started crying.
She was still crying when Heavy got back. Heavy might still be getting used to being a parent, but he had three younger sisters he'd helped to raise so he didn't hesitate. He picked up Chantal and rubbed her back until she calmed down. "Why is Little Girl crying?"
Chantal sniffled. "The stupid glasses made me see the Bad Place again!"
Heavy frowned in confusion as he didn't wear glasses before he realized she was probably talking about the Pyrovision goggles lying in the middle of the floor. The gears in his head started turning. "What is Bad Place?"
"It's…like before…Everything looks wrong…fake." Chantal huffed. "It's too nice! Nothing's that nice!"
She must be talking about what Scout referred to as 'Little Sister La La Land'. Why would the goggle-
Heavy suddenly recalled the one time Scout had tried using the Pyro vision goggles and the way she had acted afterwards. Had this happened before? If it had, he was pretty sure it had worn off. "Heavy thinks it will pass."
"When?" whined Chantal.
"Heavy is not sure. Perhaps hours, perhaps days. Is very odd."
Chantal whined. Heavy pat her on the back before picking up the goggles. "Is lucky Little Girl only seeing things. A gun could have killed Little Girl. Is why Heavy instructed you not to go through belongings."
"It fell out," muttered Chantal. She pouted for a moment. "I'm sorry."
Heavy studied her for a moment and decided she really was sorry. "Heavy thinks Bad Place is punishment enough. We will go eat. We will ask Scout how long…this will last. We rest. Then we wait and see if anything must be done."
Chantal sniffled again but nodded. "Okay."