this is a rather long chapter, so I might have left wrong spellings and such if you find any, feel free to tell me so I can fix it.
Back at Boston, Nathan's mother has just told Dell that Nathan hasn't come home and feared the worst. Dell does as well; many from the Magisterium will be very interested in Nalini's ability in continuing changing form even after Nathan has passed pubescence and become an adult. He wants to save the kid but sadly; no one knows where Gobblers takes those kidnapped children. The many teams around the world would've made Gobblers stop, but they can't, all thanks to this mass genocide that has eliminated many of the teams. Still, it won't stop this small team of friends. "Don't worry Saffira, we will find those sons of bitches and get your son home."
Nathan's mother; Saffira smiles, happy someone wants to help her. "Thank you, the police wasn't much help... bastards." Her daemon Adrastos lets out a sneer, angry that the men supposed to help did it in a very halfhearted manner, as if they didn't dare enrage the Magisterium or just wanted Saffira to leave so they can get back to work and helping the Gobblers taking more innocent people. Turning back to the wounded man. "But wouldn't it take a while before you can leave the hospital?" She asks, not wanting Dell to get more hurt than he already is. "Isn't it best you ask someone else to do this?"
Saffira is aware of the secret resistance the Magisterium has been fighting for several decades from her lover, he never told her the name of this resistance though, for fear it might endanger her and her family further; but he did tell her that Dell is part of it.
"I will be leaving the hospital very soon." Dell says, glances to the missing arm; it still bothers him seeing a part of his body missing and looks forward getting the gunslinger attached. Much to his luck, the Magisterium goons hadn't found his grandfather's inventions. "It's only matter of time before they realize I'm still alive." His bright blue eyes meet her bit duller blue. "And I'm not planning going down easily."
She can understand that, unlike his father who has never questioned the world power and just did what he was told. Dell might look like a laidback and docile Texan but like her lover; that is all a ruse. Dell is a fighter and will not hesitate to use his smart brain to build machines that can wreck a whole army if that army has been stupid enough to provoke him. "I know, and when you find Nathan." Saffira places her hand on his remaining, giving it a small squeeze. "Tell him to kick those men asses."
Nathan's mother is probably the only woman who does not try and stop her boys fighting against the police and local gangs. Dell did once ask her about it and she came with the explanation that she will not stop her boys fighting for what they believe in, so long they do it with good intentions. That way of thoughts had mixed effects on the boys.
He smirks. "I will ma'am." Nathan is one a fine proof of that belief of hers. He will fight if he sees injustice even if he will get in trouble for it. "And I will bring him back home safely." He promises.
"Bring them both back home."
She doesn't need to say who the second person is, Dell already knows. Sadly he cannot make the promise that he can reunite her with her lover. That choice has to be Antoine's and his alone.
Early the next morning and after having taken a stash of painkillers and antibiotics, Dell leaves the hospital without the doctors knowing in case they decide to inform the ever watching Magisterium. He heads back to the now destroyed factory, here he finds the Sniper, looting the place for anything useful and placing it in the middle sized airship hidden behind the building.
Dell cannot help but smile when he sees that airship, unlike the ones he makes to those rich people this airship has a lot more of his personal touch. This airship is made so it both light enough to fly in the air and strong enough to sail on the water. The mast is made so the owner of the ship can change it to either sea or water. At the middle of the ship are the helium tanks, having enough gas to let the ship fly for about a week, then it has to replenish. The deck is mostly free and open, allowing people to walk freely around and need little worry falling over board with the high glass railing. Below deck Dell builds a small kitchen, which is the hallway to the sleeping quarters and machine room, above the machine room is the storing room; big enough to transport supplies to the many teams stationed around the world. This ship was made as a sign of friendship to Lawrence and Antoine, both have been using the ship to its fullest potential over the years.
"Don't worry." Lawrence comes up beside the creator of this airship, carrying a box filled with food supplies. "I have taken good care of her."
"You better." Dell says smirking. "Cus I would hate bashing your head— oh did you find my grandfather's secret stash?"
The sniper nods, gesturing with his head towards the airship. "It's in the living quarters. You can look at it if everything is there before we take off. Oh, and your official class uniform is on the table."
With a nod, Dell walks up to the ship and heads downstairs to see if everything he's going to need will be there. The living quarters has a very roomy feeling with its tree coated walls, the kitchen is located just a bit further down, not far away from a long seat with soft light brown pillows; giving it a feeling being a sofa people can find back at their homes. Before the seat is a table made out of tree as well, and on it is the box with his grandfather's last inventions. Dell sits down on the sofa and empties the box. He smiles seeing the gunslinger, a robotic hand that can move just as well as a real hand but ten times more powerful. Dell takes the wondrous machine, remembering how excited he felt when his grandfather showed him the gunslinger for the first time and how he actually considered chopping his own hand off just to try it out. But both his parents talked him out of it, so he merely had to admire it from its shelf.
"At least one good thing came out from all of this." Naira remarks besides him. He smiles, still with his eyes plastered on the metallic hand. "Remind me to thank those people."
"With a handshake or a bullet?" She asks dryly, jumping onto the table and eyes the gunslinger. "Heck, with the gunslinger you can give their heart a handshake."
Dell cannot help but laugh at his daemon's remarks, putting down the metallic hand. "Let's us not go too much overboard with ideas." Or he might follow her suggestion, which does often end up with him hurting someone terribly bad, he doesn't really know why, but his daemon really has a twisted sense of humor which he somewhat lacks.
Naira grins. "Alright, but you shouldn't try and attach it without help." She remarks calmly, yet her tone has the hint she's worried what might happen if he tries do it on his own.
Dell hates to admit it but she got a point, it would be best he has another engineer or and medic around when he attaches this machine to his arm.
The gunslinger is made to read the nerves system and that means he has to cut open the wound in order to attach it, and he doubts he can do it with one arm and in his currently weaken state. "Alrightly then, I will wait."
"Good." And his daemon turns to two shirts, one red and one blue. They do not look very special at first glance, but Dell knows how important these shirts are for the resistance. His gaze lands on the icon on the shoulders on one of the shirts. It's a round and yellow, having an icon of a wrench. Dell picks up the blue shirt; still remembering the day Antoine gave him a red shirt when he invited him to join Team Fortress Resistance, but back then he had declined it; saying that he will help the resistance but did not consider himself a true member.
Naira looks up to him, but she does not need to speak, a simple nod is enough. He returns the nod and put on the blue shirt, looking a bit proudly at the logo for a moment and the Engineer heads back to the deck.
"You got everything?" The Sniper asks, like the Texan, also has a shirt on. His red shirt has a sniper scope logo on the shoulders.
"Yes." Dell answers, nodding towards the stairs. "Predicate it."
Lawrence smirks. "No worries." And after he has put the last crate's contents to their proper places, he starts removing the ropes and with the ship leaving the ground he explains to the Engineer that they will be heading to the team in Mexico. "They were the last who saw Spook, not to mention they still want those portable sentries from you."
"Of course." Dell nods, he can see reason in that but he still would've preferred if they tried to find Nathan and his kidnappers.
Sadly Dell knows that sometimes people have to sacrifice one person so several can survive, especially in a war like this...
After having reached the needed altitude and dressed to the colder weather but also protect them against the sun's rays; the two men can do little but wait to get to their location. Lawrence put the ship on auto pilot and kills the hours cleaning his weapons to once and a while look up to watch his daemon fly around beside the ship.
Dell spends the slow hours drawing an easy to understand blueprint to the Engineer in Mexico, or at least he is trying but soon has to realize that drawing anything with his left hand is practically impossible. He groans; reminded that how worthless he has become without his dominating hand, and how happy he is that his grandfather invented the gunslinger. Without it, he might as well been dead since an engineer is not much worth without his ability to build.
A day plus a couple of hours of travel, Lawrence put the airship down in the middle of the desert, but from what Dell can observe the Sniper has been here before since he packs the ship and makes them both push it into a cave located nearby. With the airship hidden, Lawrence brings the engineer to the nearest city which is located about an hour walk from the cave where the Sniper loans a vehicle in form of an old truck, drives back to the cave, fill the truck with supplies and then finally taken them to where the resistance is at the moment. Lawrence stops the truck near what looks for Dell a mining town- or rather what is left of it. Many of the buildings have been burned down or blown to bits, sign there has been a battle here. "Wait here." Lawrence tells the shorter man and jumps out from the truck with his sniper rifle drawn and daemon on sharp lookout on his shoulders.
Sniper scans the area briefly and when at least a little certain the place is safe; he runs over to the destroyed buildings that were the Mexico's teams headquarters a week ago. Inside and to his horror he finds several bodies of fallen comrades, from the looks of it; they have only been dead for a day or two. He knells down before one which has been the teams pyro and a good friend of his. "I'm sorry mate." He muses to the body, taking off his hat in sign of respect; noting himself that if this place is safe then he should give these people a proper burial. He leaves the body to check on the rest— from what he can tell from the building's destructions and how close the bodies are to one another the Mexico team got hit very fast and very hard, barely giving the survivors a chance to recover. That is bad news since this team has been known to be very good hiding their tracks as they have specialized in the hit and run tactic. The only reason he knows about this place is because the team told him and if he know this team right; then they won't be here anymore. He leaves the base, but jumps back inside when Laraine makes one of her warning sounds. From his hiding he scans frantically the area for what she spotted, there, on the roof. That's a sniper's scope reflecting the sunlight. Lawrence draw out his own rifle and aim to shoot, then he stops when he realizes who it is. He smirks and steps out when the other sniper realizes they are on the same side, the same aged man on the roof straighten up, pulls down his hood and waves which Lawrence gladly returns.
Moments later the other sniper dressed in blue joins Lawrence on the ground and shakes the other sniper's one's hand with a chuckle and his bobcat daemon playfully whacks out after Laraine. "I'm sorry about that, glad you spotted me; might have shot you otherwise."
"That wouldn't have looked good on your record mate." Lawrence smiles, he does not know this blond sniper's name but he does respect this man and consider him a friend. Before joining, this Canadian spends his time hunting out in the wild and like Lawrence; knows the beauty of it. When meeting they do share some of their hunting stories, but now is not the time for playful bragging: now it's time to figure out what happened to the team. Lawrence nods towards the base where half the Mexico team is. "What happed?"
The blue Sniper frowns deeply and the hash sun illuminates four long scratch marks over his face he got from a fight with a cougar in his youth. "We're still trying to figure it out. The enemy arrived so darn suddenly it was like—"
"Like they knew exactly where you were." Lawrence finishes for him, he has heard that one before and he hates admitting it that they are losing too many people because of this. "You are not the only ones who got attacked like this. The team from Florida and Colorado got ambushed as well."
"How many survived?" Sniper asks.
"None, Florida's Medic survived just long enough to tell us about a new alethiomist from the prisoner they interrogated before they got attacked." Lawrence explains, he and Antoine found the man more dead than alive and yet he used the last of his strength to give them this crucial information. "My partner: a Spy is currently following on the lead. Last I heard from him that he was here." Eyeing the Canadian. "Did he pass through lately? He's dressed in blue and has a ladder snake for a daemon."
The older man nods. "Oh yeah, a spy with such a daemon visited us only a week ago; warned us of an attack so we fortified the base and planned several escape routes." Eyeing the remnant of their former base. "Probably what saved the rest of us."
It's nice seeing some of the teams are still alive, speaking of team. "Where is the rest of your team?" Lawrence asks and guides the other sniper to where he left the truck and Dell. "I have supplies, weapons, and someone your engineer might want to meet."
"I'll take you there." Sniper says, he jumps into the truck and makes a polite greeting to Dell, noticing right away that this engineer is wounded and missing half his of his lower arm. "Your team got attacked too eh?"
"No, just me." Dell explains him, holding his left hand over the stump. "The Magisterium does not take no for an answer."
The other Sniper narrows his eyes slightly by this, he does not fancy the thought brining a Magisterium main target to their current base. Besides, for all, he knows this one could work for the enemy.
"You can trust him." Lawrence tells him, eyeing the man deadly serious. "I trust this Engineer with my life."
The blue dressed Sniper blinks, coming from his Aussie co-worker who is bit of a lone wolf; that's saying something. "Alright, and sorry about this, but I have to keep an eye on you." He warns Dell with his bobcat daemon staring suspiciously at Naira.
Dell blinks how this sniper said it, not many people warn him about such things. Glancing to Lawrence he notices the Aussie is struggling not to laugh. "Um thanks?" he says, but does not blame this blond sniper for being suspicious of him, no need seeing what's inside the buildings to know this Sniper has lost co-workers and friends.
The other sniper guides them to this team's new base which is an old gravel mine, inside the Canadian asks Dell. "You got the uniform?"
A bit confused the engineer nods and remove his jacket so the sniper can see the blue shirt with the wrench logo on.
That seems to satisfy the man. "Good, otherwise you will be shot." Just as a familiar bibbing sound echo's through the underground hallway. Dell and Lawrence turn, spotting a sentry placed at the second hall at the crossway. The machine's scanners did spot them but never turn hostile against any of them. The engineer smiles seeing one of his inventions have been put to good use.
The Canadian sniper blinks a bit baffled seeing this engineer look at the sentry gun in calm, almost proudly way; like he has seen it before. But only the Team Fortress Resistance has this kind of machines, so how in the world would this new engineer know to it? "How do you know this machine? I thought you said you are new."
Dell turns to the sniper, still smiling. "I invented it."
That catches the sniper off guard. "You.. invented the sentry gun eh?"
"Yuep."
"Told you, your engineer wants to meet him." Lawrence smirks, many of Dell's machines have been very popular among the other engineers, everyone has blue prints to a sentry gun and boy has those machines made life hell for the Magisterium soldiers.
Sniper scratches the back of his head, a bit shocked that he actually would meet the man who has created the portable sentry guns and a load of special weapons, hell his favorite weapon is made by this guy. He grabs the bow hidden behind the old rifle and after it has unfolded itself, he shows it to the engineer "Recognize this?" The man's face light up as if he just received a million bucks.
"The Fortified Compound." Dell takes the metallic bow, it hasn't been the first bow he has made, but it is the first made out of metal. He's still proud of how it came out, though. "I recon you're the fella Sniper spoke about; he said one of his fellow snipers preferred using a bow instead of a rifle and asked if I could build a stronger bow which can be hidden very easily as well." He draws the bow as if he's aiming a none existence arrow at the wall. "It doesn't shoot as far as a sniper rifle, but I'm sure the incendiary arrows I made will make up for it. It's firing well I hope?" He asks and returns the weapon back to its owner.
Okay, this is diffidently this bow's creator, for he hasn't told anyone about those perks; not even his Aussie counterpart knows about the incendiary arrows that came with this weapon. Sadly he can't set people on fire anymore since he has already used up the last incendiary arrow and cannot get more since it had been their Pyro who made him those arrowheads. "It sure is." He puts the once again folded bow back on his shoulders, this time smiling and trusting this fellow a bit more. "But I do have a few... let's say suggestions I would ask you could do. Can you build arrows that can hold tear gas eh?"
"I can, but I would need two hands for it." Dell replies, gesturing at his missing right hand. "And I would need your engineer or medic's help for that." Hoping one of those two has survived the onslaught.
Sniper blinks, not sure what this Engineer means but he is sure he will find out. He takes the two into the base. At the entrance of the base stands a man with as much bulk as he has fat, he wears a pair of brown pants, covering over his military shoes. His blue shirt is covered in dirt and blood, yet the yellow logo with a fist can be clearly seen on his shoulders. Besides him stands his boar daemon, narrowing her eyes at the beaver which makes Naira quickly seeks cover behind her human.
Sniper greets the man with a hand sign before introducing him to Dell. "This is our Heavy."
The Heavy fits his right hand and put hit left flat on top on it, bowing towards the engineer and sniper with "Ni Hao." They both return the gesture by the other sniper's suggesting them doing the same. The Heavy seems satisfied with it and returns back to his guard duty.
"He's still learning our language." Sniper explains the two, leading them away from the Heavy. "It's bit hard. This big guy is quite the stubborn oak learning English."
"Where's he from?" Dell asks curiously.
"China, don't know his story of why he's fighting, though." Sniper replies with a shrug. "Spy was the one who found him, but I can't ask him since he's dead... I might not have liked him but Heavy did, so... yeah... this way." He leads them through the base, and it is clear that the team hasn't been here for long since as is pretty nothing down here. The only place having any sense of this place being a base in is a shaft where several tables filled with papers, machines— most of them are broken lies around. Before these tables stand two people, a male and a female; both in a heated argument.
"— I don't care, he's my brother!" The darkly skinned woman snaps, glaring at the man in the ruined and bloodied blue shirt before her. She has a red shirt with a wrench logo on; both her hands are covered in black gloves, looking ready to fall off when she makes an angry hand-move against the male. "No way in hell I am letting him get eaten by vultures, he deserves a proper burial!— they all do!" Her daemon, an Aardvark digs his powerful claws into the dirt in sign of her frustrations.
"Don't you think I want that too?!" The man retorts, besides from being quite muscular, this man is very normal looking, and by first glance most would mistake him for another class by his attitude and his daemon which has the form of a gray fox with a bit deformed face from a huge scar. But his class logo reveals what he is. his dog-tags starts swinging from side to side when he begins pacing around before the enraged woman. "They were my comrades— my friends as well! But—" The two newcomers notice that this man has a small limp. "We cannot return before Sniper says it is safe, I do not want to lose any more people and you will stay fucking right here until I say otherwise!" He steps over to the woman, giving her a stare that dares her to defy him. "Do I make myself clear?!"
They glare at one another for several moments, with the gray fox barking at the aardvark to stand down as he looks ready to charge out from the base. Then the woman's daemon backs away and seconds later she does as well with a hash. "Fine!" And she stomps deeper into the mine. The man lets out a long tired sigh and drops down onto the makeshift table, right that moment; looks older than he probably is.
"Scout." Sniper calls, the man with the title Scout snaps his head up and notices right away the two other people behind him.
"Who are they?— wait I know the Sniper." He points at Lawrence, before turning with a frown over to Dell "But I don't know this one, who are you?" He demands in a tone that clearly reveals he is the leader of this group, explains why the engineer backed down when he commanded her and why the sniper went to him after having returned.
"I'm Engineer." Dell replies he does remember Antoine once explained to him that no one in the resistance calls each other by name unless they truly trust one another. The reason why people use title instead of name is a way to make sure that if one of the groups gets a traitor then that person cannot snitch the others by name.
"He's the guy who builds us all our weapons and invented the sentry gun." Sniper explains the Scout.
Scout nods slowly. "I see." But unlike the Sniper he does not seems to calm down and for some reason, his eyes are plastered on Naira who sense something is wrong and steps closer to her human. "It's nice having all your inventions and all, but..." The Scout turns his blue eyes back to Dell. "I do not fancy having a Conagher in my base."
Dell eyes wide of this man knowing his last name, the Scout looks at him with eyes filled with anger and before anyone can really react: Dell has a gun pointed straight to his face. "So you better give a fucking good reason not to blow your goddamn head off!" The Scout sneers and his fox daemon jumps at Naira, quickly dominating her and keeps her down onto the ground.
"Scout! What are you doing?!" Sniper demands in disbelief of their boss is aiming at one of their own, his comrade; the Aussie Sniper clearly does not like this one bit and proves how much he cares for the other man as he is ready to shoot Scout with his submachine gun. The Heavy and Engineer both come over to see what all the fuss is about, however; like Sniper not drawing weapons as none of them are certain what is going on.
"This man is not one of ours." Scout sneers and completely cold he has a gun pointed at from Lawrence, he keeps his eyes right on the startled Dell. "His family has been working for the Magisterium for generations! His fucking father tried to kill me!" Nodding down to his daemon large scar across her head. "We still deal with migraines from that— surprisingly how deadly a beaver's teeth is when used against someone, especially when she was just as nice and calm as yours is this very moment."
Even when forced down by the fox daemon, Naira stays calm not to enrage both further. She only moves so she can speak to the fox's human. "I'm awfully sorry you had to go through that, but I and D- I mean Engineer is not like his father and I'm not like his daemon." She feels the fox loosen her grip for a moment of the surprise she actually spoke directly to her human, but she does not use it to her advantages and overpower the other daemon in fear the Scout will shoot Dell. The fox places a paw onto her head so she can let go with her jaw. "And why should we believe you?" The gray fox asks, baring her teeth at the beaver, Naira tries her very best not to show how scared she actually feels towards this other daemon.
"Because I am not like him." Dell answers calmly, all the time keeping eye contact with the Scout in case he decides to shoot. "But I do not think words can convince you."
"Darn right you are." Scout snaps.
"Then use me." Dell says, catching the man and his fox by surprise. "Tell me what you need and I'll make it."
"You're forgetting something." Naira muses, and points to his missing hand.
"Oh right, well..." Dell turns sheepishly back to Scout. "After your Engineer has helped me install my new hand, then I will build you whatever you need."
Scout only removes his eyes from the man to look at the missing arm, then he turns his attention to the still gun aiming sniper. "From how you're treating to shoot me I say you trust this man."
"I trust him with my life." Lawrence answers calmly, yet his eyes and how his nankeen kestrel is angry glaring at the fox shows what he truly feels about this situation. "And I would appreciate it if you didn't smear his brain over the walls and I have to return the favor for it."
After what feels like hours, Scout finally lowers his gun. "Fine... but I want eyes on him all the time. Heavy; you're guarding duty." He looks to Heavy and points at Dell to which the big man nods, understanding the order just by the gesture.
Scout turns to the female Engineer. "Help him with this hand, whatever the hell that means. I'm allowing you to shoot if you feel threatened."
"Aren't you just a bit paranoid?" She asks him unconvinced that this new engineer with apparently the name Conagher is any threat.
Scout snorts annoyed over her question. "I think I'm not paranoid enough with this man. For all I know he can turn our weapons against us with a switch of a bottom." Turning to Dell with a glare of pure disdain. "Don't let his amiable demeanor fool you; I got a bullet shot into my stomach and my daemon half her face chewed off the last time I let my guards down around a Conagher. If he tries anything: kill him." To then turn to Lawrence. "If your words are true; then it won't come to that— Sniper how is the status at the former base?" He asks dumbfounded Sniper, and leaves the others while the team sniper explains the situation from their former and now destroyed base.
Lawrence stares pissed after the Scout. "And that's why you never should make a Scout the boss. They let their emotions control their action."
"He has kept us alive so far." The female Engineer points out dryly to him, glancing to where Scout and Sniper left. "Even if he can be infuriating at times."
Dell can't help but chuckle. "Reminds me of someone else I know, not a Scout mind you." He smiles friendly to the other Engineer there now looks a bit confused at him. "He's a Spy."
"Oh, well spies are a pain in the ass, ours was especially, never knew where he was half the time." She remarks with a smile and adds a bit apologizing. "I would like to shake your hand but well, Scout's orders."
"I understand." Dell simply says, he can't say he blames this Scout from being suspicious of him, or rather at his father. Ever since he left the family business of serving as a head engineer for the Magisterium to "build" zeppelins, he and his father no longer see eye to eye. He can't say they hate each other; no in fact they both still care for one another. It's just... well their relationship was never strong to begin with and now with their so different point of views on the world has slowly torn them apart. Dell actually had a stronger relation with his grandfather than his old man, kinda sad now that he thinks about it. But now is not the time to dwell on the past. "If your boss would allow it, I would like you to help me attach one of my grandfather's invention onto me."
Engineer blinks. "Depends on how complicated it is. I'm more specialized in radio waves than the machine itself." So without the aid of other engineers, she wouldn't have been much of an asset for her team.
That explains why the sentry hasn't attacked anyone with the blue/red shirts on, Dell is confident that this lady has used her talent in radio waves to convert the "shield" he made to keep his sentry from shooting anyone on the team by putting a smaller vision into each teams uniform. Very smart of her. "I recon you used my contraption on the wrench I send you to keep the sentry shooting anyone on the team."
She nods. "That's right- with the help from another Engineer stationed at Colorado, we built a smaller vision of the shield you made and Cypher made sure each uniform has it in each class's logo." Pointing at her own wrench logo on her red shirt. "Every team has it now, even those stationed in Europe."
"Impressive." Dell says sincerely, he has been working together with the Colorado Engineer to several projects, such a pity they lost him... but who this Cypher is she talks about? That sounds like an important person. "Who's Cypher?"
The female Engineer smirks. "He's the Elite Engineer— do you know the Elite?" Dell nods, yes he has heard about those guys from other members. "Good, means I don't have to explain. Well, Cypher asked me and the Engineer from Colorado to do the same thing on the guns but..." Engineer's proud smile fades away, replaced by grief. "After we lost contract with the other teams and from how we barely survived that attack... I fear the worst..."
Lawrence lowers his eyes. "They are all gone." He tells her somberly, not seeing any reason keeping the truth away from her or anyone else. Truth is an important factor that keeps the teams from falling apart.
Engineer's head drop. "I see... thank you for... telling me." She steps away from the two, staring out to this far from perfect hideout. "The spy that warned us refused to say anything but I knew something terrible had happened to the other teams. He only promised he would put a stop to it." Her daemon places one of his front claws up against her leg in hope to comfort her. She scratches his head.
"And we will." Lawrence promises, she turns back to him and he nods towards the still limp missing Dell. "But right now we need your help."
She gives them a determent look and fully back to business again. "What do you need?"
The female Engineer did voice her concern that she might not be able to help Dell install the robotic hand, but Dell is confident she can and he is proven correct. After a couple of hours of explaining and attaching the gunslinger; Dell can finally look at his new hand and move it with relative ease. It is not fully functional yet as his body is trying to reject it by giving him a fever. He would need to spend the rest of the day and maybe also the next to recover from this small surgery.
Engineer does her best speeding up the recovery by keeping the skin around the metal clean. She watches the hand flex slowly and must admit that her inner engineer is really intrigued by this piece of machinery; not enough to attach one to her own arm though. "Your grandfather must've been really smart if he could build machines like this." She remarks with a smile to the fever stuck man beside her.
Dell nods slowly, flexing his new hand a bit. "That he was." Eyeing it with a smile. "I always wanted to be able doing the same; invent machines that will blow people away."
"I say you succeed that quite literal." Engineer giggle on the thought what this one's sentry gun can do to an enemy soldier. "I have met a lot of smart people in my lifetime but never one who can build a sentry that can pack itself up and be light enough for travel, yet strong and deadly enough keeping the enemy from steamrolling a team of nine. From what I heard you also are the one who builds most of our weapons, and not many can make weapons as fast or effective as you." Her Aardvark daemon gives Dell beaver a friendly nudge as his human tells him. "So I am happy you are on our side. You could be a dangerous but spectacular enemy and if your father is just a fraction of what I see in you: I fully understand why Scout is wary around you."
"Ah shucks." Dell looks away, he is not used to this kind of praise. Most people just praise his work on the zeppelins he has made, but they never gave him any sort of joy. This Engineer, however, did not really praise his work, no she praises his abilities to build said machines. "I appreciate your kind words and—" Turning back to her, no longer smiling. "Hear your warning. Do not worry ma'am, I will keep my head down."
"Good, Scout's not a bad guy." She says and glances with her dark eyes to where Scout stands and speak with Lawrence about the situation of the other teams. "He just... really does not trust the Magisterium. He was once a soldier for them."
Dell blinks, it does not really surprise him hearing that this Scout has a dark back-story with the Magisterium; that is the only reason why his old man would've tried to kill him. What does surprise him that if Scout has been a soldier and actually gotten away, then why is his daemon not in the shape of a dog? For some reason he still cannot wrap his head around: all soldiers in the Magisterium has a dog daemon. Clearly, the world power doesn't go around and pick out any person that just happens to have a dog daemon. He is about to ask her about it but decides that question should be asked to the Scout instead; if the man ever comes to trust him that is. What he can ask her though. "How did he get away? The Magisterium does not take someone leaving very nicely." Nodding down to his right arm.
Engineer shift a little uncomfortable. "I am not sure I should be the one telling you... only that your father attacked him because of his desert."
"I see." Dell nods, that small explanation has been enough. He needs to be careful not to accidentally enrage the Scout, for if he knows his father correctly then his old man attacked the Scout because the scout did something to piss off the Magisterium.
several from the Mexico team are secondary characters to this series, three of them is made to belong to the original world of Team Fortress 2. the scout, sniper and heavy would all been part of the BLU team. the engineer would have been the female engineer of the fanmade female team.
the scout being from New York, the sniper Canada, and the heavy from China and the engineer Africa. I will be trying to put a bit stereotype in them. and in case any of you think I am doing it to provoke anyone from those countries, I don't. just want people to laugh.
and again, I would like but can't write accents and dialects, so if anyone of you readers will help me on that. I would be very grateful.