Author's notes: I'll confess, this is the first piece of fanfiction I've written...uh, period. It's also the first bit of fiction I've done in quite a long time so I'm incredibly rusty to say the least and thus would appreciate any constructive feedback. First chapter here is pretty small, more of a taster or prologue chapter before the story really begins.
All will make sense eventually, if I get that far, I have a bad habit of not finishing stories...
Edit: Thanks go to GothicChesire, who's helped correct some mistakes with both chapters. Things should be a little clearer now.

Chapter 1: Destruction of Dustbowl

The air held the stench of death and smouldering rubble as the RED Engineer stumbled, groaning in pain as his eyes fearfully darted about. He clutched his bleeding stump of an arm and winced as he got to his feet, trying to put too much weight on a leg that was currently...missing a few chunks, to put it bluntly.

One step. Two steps. He had to keep moving, had to find somewhere safe, to deal with whatever the hell had just happened. And then… Voices. As much as the Engineer was normally fairly well-mannered and laid back, he thought that for once, cursing was an apt response and so he did so under his breath as he hastened his movements. He could hear them, talking loudly and with mirth in their voices.

He clenched his teeth as he heard the BLU Spy's snorting laughter expand over the grounds of Dustbowl. That damn spook had to have been behind it all, hadn't he? Taking one last glance around, the RED Engineer ducked his way into an alcove and collapsed, fairly confident that he hadn't been seen and that with a little movement of some nearby rubble and intact barrels he could remain hidden.

What had been a routine skirmish between the two mercenary groups at this familiar location had turned into a nightmare of chaos, confusion and pain. He wasn't quite sure how it had come to this, the battlefield reduced to a wreck of its former self. The buildings that had once held control points and supplies were rubble at best and craters at worst. Walls had collapsed, fires raged over what little remained of wooden shacks and the terrain was red and black with blood and ashes.

Even the three respawn rooms owned by RED at each major section of the battlefield had crumbled. Normally BLU would seize the respawn systems to use as their own as they pushed RED back to the next stage but this time things had gone...differently.

With that understatement of the year out of the way, the Engineer frowned, ignoring the tell-tale dripping of his bleeding appendages as he tried to recall what had led to his current predicament. Last he could remember, he'd been defending the last control point on the final stage. He'd been maintaining his sentry, aiding his teammates with some pistol fire every so often and had even been able to get revenge on the Spy that had been harassing him as of late with a good wrench to the skull.

What had happened next? Ah, of course, BLU's Medic had built an Übercharge and his nest of buildings had been obliterated between the Übered Heavy and the Demoman's stickybombs. And so he'd respawned as usual, ready to dart in to aid his team in defending the point and pushing BLU back so he could setup his defenses again.

Or rather, that was what had passed through the Engineers mind as he respawned to see the respawn room suddenly fill with flame, dust and shrapnel as he found himself blasted backwards through the building's walls. He remembered feeling dizzy and slowly getting up, finding himself in the unfamiliar land behind the RED team building as the more familiar sound of the announcer declared his team's failure.

Pain suddenly had caught to him as he noticed the true extent of his injuries: his left arm was essentially missing, his right leg was riddled with shrapnel and with this in mind and no teammates in sight as Humiliation started, the Engineer had made his escape.

Drip. A splotch of red fell down on to his tattered overalls, barely visible amongst the red already present. He raised his right hand, noticing that he had lost his glove at some point during the madness and lifted it to his face, feeling the warm trickle of fresh blood seep from a gash in his cheek.

BLU...their eternal enemies had been sporting new weapons and had been doing some real damage this time around. Normally RED would be able to hold Dustbowl rather easily with their experience and eventually force BLU to admit defeat, but this time...The wounded mercenary and self-professed solver of practical problems shook his head. When BLU captured the last point on Stages one and two they had gone straight to the respawn rooms and not bothered hunting down the fleeing RED team members. What was truly unusual was that with the start of each new round, detonations would trigger, causing mass destruction to the previous stage of Dustbowl and distracting the RED team at first as they resisted the BLU charge.

The air became still and quiet once more, the BLUs heading away from the wreckage of the RED base. The Engineer couldn't have seen from here, but the BLU Spy did stop briefly, glancing at a discarded rubber glove before taking one last drag of his cigarette and tossing the still burning stick onto the rubble behind him. "Labourer..." The masked man murmured to himself before glancing at his inviswatch and returning to his cheering teammates as they returned to their base, ready for the next move.

The surviving RED sighed and lent back in his hiding place. He'd figured that the rest of his team either hadn't had the chance to respawn before the round had ended or had been chased down and killed by now. The actions of the BLU team, directly breaking contract by raining such destruction on a designated battlefield and sabotaging the RED base directly like this? Worrying, but it could be dealt with at the next location during their off time before the next mission. Respawn should trigger any moment now, returning the RED team to the nearest available respawn point, ready to regroup and board the train.

...The Engineer's eyesight was starting to get blurry and his body was suddenly riddled with coughs as he trembled in pain. Something was wrong. Even if Dustbowl's respawn systems had been destroyed, it should have detected the end of round and picked him up. And if it hadn't done so yet and he was now outside the usual fighting area...

If he died right now, would he die...permanently? Another coughing fit, his head buzzing as his vision swam, the Texan unable to form coherent thoughts regarding his current predicament. A mere malfunction, a glitch, permenant damage caused by BLU, intentional or not? He could not answer, lost in the darkening mist brought on by his blood loss.

As it subsided he bolted upright, his eyes blazing with fear beneath his goggles. Throughout this war respawn had always allowed them to take death as a mere inconvenience, a painful setback that cost time and little else. It'd been one of the few things that had allowed RED to convince him to sign the contract with them and turn his brilliant mind from constructive purposes to killing...in a constructive manner, of course.
With his current condition, death seemed to hover over him and without a Medic, any nearby medkits and in no condition to build a dispenser...things weren't looking so great right now. His remaining hand closed itself around his trusty wrench. Despite the chaos, he'd managed to keep hold of it throughout his trek here, only dropping it when he'd collapsed into his hiding place earlier. RED had offered him some newer designs and he'd heard that his BLU counterpart had actually replaced his right hand with a mechanical one but this wrench was special. It'd been with him through thick and thin for most of his adult life both on and off the battlefield.

And now...now it was his last defense as he left the alcove, shifting aside some of the rubble with some well-placed swings, stumbling back to the ruins of the RED control point. For all the damage and havoc that the BLUs had unleashed, he clung to the hope that there were still some medkits left, either left lying unused on the battlefield or protected within a surviving resupply locker under the ruins. And if he could fix himself up?

Well, as much as he appreciated that the fellas over at BLU were in much the same situation as his allies in RED and he usually didn't hold anything against any of them (except maybe that damn Spy, always sappin' everything in sight)...they'd broken the rules of the engagement and he'd been separated from his team, faced with the very real threat of bleeding to death...

The RED Engineer was seething, his mind already running into overdrive even as his body weakly protested, barely able to move forwards...