Hello everyone, this will be the first story I have yet to submit online. Scoutcest involved.

Chapter 1:

Day in day out it was the same routine in the same facilities across the same stretch of sun baked New Mexico. Teufort and the surrounding counties have become a veritable hell on earth, which for over 100 years has seen the same two decrepit brothers fighting over this useless region rich in only one useless resource. Gravel. Good for very little, very inexpensive and available anywhere geologic forces are at work. And yet, this spit of land has been the site of an ongoing blood feud, spanning generations and costing thousands of lives. Were it not for the re-spawn machine, many of those lives would have been lost, but even a bullet to the head, knife to the spine or a fiery blast of napalm are no match for this seemingly wondrous device. Within a few seconds you could be patched up and put back into service ready to keep the process going day in day out. Hopefully you achieved more in each try than the previous one but after a seemingly endless amounts of re-spawns, even immortality loses its luster and simply fails to impress. Out of the constant conflict have come two distinct factions, BLU and RED, bitter enemies from their inceptions as corporate entities, they employ nine mercenaries to kill each other for money. Acronyms for Builders League United and Reliable Excavation Demolition. Each of the hired guns pledged themselves to their factions, sworn to uphold the values of each team, they vow to destroy the rival team at any cost. However, absolute loyalty cannot be imbued in everyone. Having to remain within the confines of a facilities grounds during a campaign, for some classes, can't be done. After all, some rules are meant to be broken by certain people who are in absolute need of something.

Our story begins with the scout of RED team, who at the moment was attempting to evade an active sentry gun guarding a vital intelligence up-link room on a facility affectionately dubbed "2fort" because of its layout featuring two opposing compounds within spitting distance of each other. A frequent area of combat, 2fort features an intelligence room containing an advanced electronics centre that connected directly to a wireless relay station directly feeding information about a team to the administrator. Also contained within the room is a physical briefcase which contained vital information on new weapons projects and troop movement information. The only thing that scout could see was the twin barrels of the automated sentry gun protruding from behind a wall within the briefcase room. He could also hear the occasional mumble of an engineer tending to his machines and routinely checking for enemy spies. All day the briefcase room had been a slaughtering ground for RED team, the engineer in there had barricaded himself in well enough that only one person could enter the room at a time and whenever he would call his Pyro buddy down, things only got worse. He had proven himself impossible to dislodge, no matter how many people RED team threw at him. As scout peered around the corner and into the briefcase room he was greeted by the beep on the sentry spinning around to meet his gaze, its target locator trying to find a mark and the site of the twin barrels spinning up preparing to fire. Luckily scout was able to just as quickly duck back behind to corner and position himself in a crouched position still facing the entrance to the briefcase room. He knew that there were only two hours left in the day and he had to get the briefcase soon or else the assault and the slaughter would continue into tomorrow. Driven by either his conviction to finish the task assigned to him or to prove something to himself, he immediately thought of any alternate route into the room that could avoid the targeting sensor of the BLU sentry gun. He rose from his crouch, but didn't even turn around before he slammed his face into the chest of someone he knows he hasn't seen before, but of someone he thought he recognized.

As he began to pull away from the currently unknown person chest, he realized that he was now standing before a young boy, around the same age as the RED scout, who looked vaguely similar yet strangely dissimilar. His heart stopped when he noticed the blue t-shirt the boy was wearing, he couldn't have been more than 19 or 20 years old, with the RED scout being 20 himself. The boy wore a simple baseball style hat and earpiece. He also wore grayish brown pants tucked into white socks and a similar coloured shoulder bag and running shoes. Around his neck were two dog tags on a thin silver chain dangling loosely and clattering together slightly every time the boy took a breath. The most alarming part was the pistol he had drawn and aimed squarely at his head. From the red scouts position he was sat on his rear with his legs splayed to either side, while he looked straight up at the boy in the blue t-shirt. The pistol itself was like something he had never seen before, more slender and stylized than his own, it seemed to be much older, with a strange slide mechanism and wooden handle carved with tiny intricate lines on the grip. After a seemingly endless silence, the boy looked down at him and said, "You do know what this means don't you?" To which the RED scout replied " I suppose it means you're going to kill me right here right now, it means a conclusion to the rest of my day and it means a return to my fruitless attempts at hacking into that up-link in there or snatching the briefcase your friend has been guarding all week". Scout was surprised even by what he himself had said, it just came out so dryly and without filter. He felt truly defeated and this little out pour was just one way he was beginning to crack from the inside out. It did not seem to affect the BLU the same way however, he only slightly winced at hearing this. He simply replied to this by saying "I'm sorry for what I have to do, but when you re-spawn meet me out behind the facility after dark". The RED scout looked up slightly at the BLU, a single tear falling down the unknown right boy's eye. With that, all the RED scout heard after their brief exchange was the click of the hammer of the pistol collide with the brass casing of a fresh round and the slight crack it made as it exploded and exited the guns chamber. All that came next was a seemingly endless fall through a black tunnel, the end of which being a hard white floor you were spat out on when a certain amount of time had passed. As your eyes readjusted to normal light after being completely deprived of it, you realized you were back in the resupply room. Once you became mobile, you were loaded up with a weapon, proper ammunition and you were ready to head out to die again. What a cruel device, in theory it could make the world immortal, but it was quickly used for the lowest possible purpose. This device kept anyone unlucky and unwise enough to enlist in the Badlands, it kept anyone here in perpetual purgatory, doomed to do the bidding of two long dead brothers fighting over pulverized rock from beyond the grave.

He had to escape, he needed a friend and he needed someone who would care about him and keep him safe. He had become a tool, a tool designed to fix a machine designed to break itself.