Did I enjoy writing this, No. But I did, so here you go. Valve owns TF2.

I looked at all eight of them. All eight of my fellow mercenaries, from the giant Heavy to the tiny Scout. From the in-your-face Soldier to the anti-social Sniper. We knew we were going to die, but we would help put a dent, even if it was a small one, into their forces. Or should I say his forces. His army of us, exact copies of us, except in robot form. Their spies had already sapped out respawns, and it was just a matter of time before… before the inevitable happened. We had already almost lost the Scout, and in just one hour, he had lost his, so to say, fight. Don't get me wrong, Scout fights as hard as any man could, but the laughter in his eyes, it just disappeared in one hour.

~flashback~

The robots were surrounding us. We had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. My medigun was almost out of charge, but the day was about to end, so I thought we would be okay. Boy, was I wrong.

The giants, they were coming. We could see them in the distance. We tried to move their front line so we could run, but they wouldn't budge. Then Scout had a crazy idea. He ran straight at them. He wove through their line, causing confusion. We were able to put on an Uber, causing havoc through their lines. As soon as our Uber ended, we heard it. A scream of pain. Not just any scream of pain, Scout's scream of pain.

All throughout our line we had shock, shocked that something actually struck Scout. It couldn't have been a bullet, he always managed to suck it up. No, something had burnt him. Something had hurt him worse than a bullet. He could be dead now, or about to die. That filled us with rage. Why would someone do that, he was just 20, just out of boyhood. He hadn't got a chance at real life yet, life outside of gang wars, the RED/BLU war, or this war, this man vs. machine war. And if we don't hurry, he might never get the chance. Oh, he wouldn't get the chance anyway, but we could help him have hope that he would. Frankly, that's all we could do.

We put on our best. We charged towards the place where the scream had come from. The robots panicked and scattered. We still charged. And then sniper found him. The boy was black and blue all over, but the only thing I noticed were the giant, deep scratches along his face. We knew right away that a sentry-buster malfunctioned, and from the shrapnel embedded in his face, we could tell that it was probably write under his nose.

My healing beams were weak. When I pointed them at his face, it healed him up all right, but he scars, if I hadn't seen so many scars in my life already, I would've been shocked, disgusted, yet amazed, all at the same time. My mediguns sadly don't heal scars. The boy would live with the three gigantic, lightning-shaped scars over his face for the rest of his days.

~ End of flashback~

The rest of the team was gentle with him at first, but he made it clear he wanted to be treated the same way. But we couldn't. He just wasn't the same lively, happy-go-lucky boy that we knew. He didn't even try to make a move on Miss Pauling when she came around, he more-or-less tried to stay away from her. She didn't even seem to mind that one bit.

The boy was a pure image of what people would call a victim. What I would call innocence. But nothing can change that now. He has accepted that he would always look like that. But that doesn't make it hurt any less. He never did get the happiness back into his eyes. He never was the same. None of us will be. Not like it would make any difference. We were all goners. All of us were different. We were from different parts of the globe. But we were all the same. We were just one big machine. We are one big machine. We are a family. And when won of us go, all of us will go. And that will be true to the end.

Thanks for reading

~SS