Between the Medicbot's shield and their own Medic's shield it was a miracle Engineer could hear himself think - the sounds of rockets, grenades, and bullets shattering was deafening and actually giving him a headache, and he was regularly around this stuff to begin with.
At any rate he could add a sore throat to the headache as he had to bellow a few times to be heard over the cacophony. "PHASE TWO, BOYS - GET MOVING!"
Without waiting for much more than a hint of acknowledgement Engineer turned, scooped his shotgun up, and headed back the way they'd come at a pace a bit faster than a jog; behind him Pyro and Scout fell in behind the safety of Medic's shield, Scout bleeding from minor cuts and a single bullet hole in his right bicep but otherwise the two males were still healthy. On the outside of the shield Soldier and Demoman continued to harry the Medicbot, being driven away by their robotic counterparts as well as sudden bursts from the Heavybot attempting to keep them at a distance. When they took note of Engineer and the others retreating down the hallway they broke off their attack and scattered - Demoman rushing for a side hallway and Soldier making one last frenzied gamble on reaching the Engineerbot's position.
Soldier took a few stray shots to a shoulder as he plucked the two grenades from the front of his jacket and tossed them as he ducked and dodged, weaving in an almost drunken pattern to avoid the Sniperbot above him, the Demobot lobbing grenades both at and ahead of him, and the Soldierbot's near misses with its rocket fire.
Right as Soldier stepped within range of the Engineerbot's sentry the grenades he'd thrown detonated; a part of him was amazed his wild throws had gotten that near to the sentry so he wasn't too heartbroken over the fact that the sentry was only knocked over rather than destroyed. In that same instant a near miss from one of the Soldierbot's rockets was a bit TOO near - the shockwave lifted Soldier off his feet and flung him forward toward his destination directly into the sideways sentry.
The collision sent the sentry skidding across the concrete floor under the combined force of Soldier's weight and its own wild firing as it tried - and failed - to track and aim at the male; Soldier, helmet slightly askew from colliding with the sentry, blindly dragged himself forward into the hallway and the limited cover it provided, lifting his helmet and blinking to try and clear the stars from his vision as his breath hitched...it sort of felt like he'd shattered his ribcage against the damn thing, but that was silly - if he'd shattered his ribcage he wouldn't be breathing at all and this was no time for indulging in exaggeration.
Out in the main room behind him he could hear the Heavybot's minigun spinning but it sounded fainter now - it must be following the others down the hallway. This was good, it was one less thing for Soldier to worry about and gave phase two of their plan a higher chance of success since the Medic and Heavybot combination was the deadliest threat facing them right now.
There were, however, metallic feet pounding toward him, THAT much he could tell. And where was that damn Engineerbot anyway?
Lifting his head and hobbling along partly on his knees and leaning heavily against the wall as he waited for his diaphragm to stop aching, Soldier took a quick look around - there was the sentry pointed uselessly at the back wall, unable to turn around toward him; there was some sort of fancy crate full of ammunition for the sentry, already half-empty...but other than that the hallway was empty and he knew there had been an Engineerbot cowering back here not five minutes ago.
Soldier continued down the hallway, the footsteps getting closer; he staggered over to the crate of ammunition and then got behind it, ducking down with just the top of his head visible over its edge. The thought that he was sheltering behind a crate full of explosives hadn't escaped him...actually, as his breath became less ragged, a plan was forming in his head. After a moment to mull over his half-formed plan - and with the footsteps dangerously close now - Soldier gripped the edge of the crate and turned it on its side, sending bandoliers of bullets tumbling out and small rockets rolling across the floor accompanied by dislodged bullets.
The metal crate, it turned out, slid rather well on the concrete floor - Soldier had laid his launcher across his lap, braced himself against the floor and planted his boots against the crate's side, then kicked out with as much force as he could manage; this had sent the crate skidding across the floor until it came to a stop right at the hall's opening, further sending its contents rolling everywhere in something akin to a miniature tidal wave.
He picked up his launcher, grunting a bit, then leveled it at the crate and fired and was treated to a brief glimpse of the Soldierbot coming into view right as the crate and both what was left in it and what ammunition had spilled around it detonated.
When Pauling came back to kneel down beside Shiloh and Javier a second time she had one of the other mercs with her, a man that was painfully pale and platinum blonde who immediately reached to take the cloth and antiseptic Shiloh held and began to tend to Javier himself.
"Shiloh, this is Blu's Medic - help him if he needs it but you can let him take it from here."
With a nod Shiloh scooted out of the other man's way, moving around to Javier's other side and silently watching the Medic inspect and doctor those injuries she hadn't already cleaned up. He was carefully cleaning away the crusted blood from a gash at the corner of the man's eye when Javier's eyes fluttered open and he flinched from the Medic's touch, gaze darting around without seeming to see anything; Shiloh grabbed at his hand as, with an agonized groan, he weakly moved as though he were trying to reach into a jacket pocket that was no longer there.
"Easy, ea- hey, easy-"
After a moment his attention fell on her and she finally saw a light of recognition in his eyes after a pause.
"...you..."
"Hold him still," the Medic instructed, German accent much thicker than Medic's - Red...Medic's...the Medic Shiloh knew, not this blonde man.
Not for the first time Shiloh wished she had more than a job description for the majority of these men.
Javier's eyelids fluttered shut for a moment before he opened them again, blinked heavily, then turned his head to stare at the Blu Medic. "...where..."
"We're in the lion's den, you could say," Shiloh answered, resting her free hand lightly on Javier's shoulder. "Just lay still, we'll get you out of here."
"You...shouldn't be...here." He sucked in a breath and attempted to sit up, Shiloh's hand on his shoulder preventing upward movement. "He will know-"
"Just stay put."
He went limp, eventually shutting his eyes again; Shiloh took a moment to eye first the Blu Medic, then the rest of the men that were milling about - the syringes appeared to have done their job as everyone save for Javier was on their feet and clustered around Miss Pauling. From here Shiloh could hear Pauling giving them an update on what had happened and on what was happening right this moment in the other part of the facility; the men looked battered, many of them bruised and dotted with scars and scabs from badly mended or slowly healed past injuries - Shiloh could recall Javier saying his team had been hunted down and captured - as well as minor injuries they all shared: raw marks around their noses and mouths from the breathing mask, open bloodied holes on their heads from sensors, reddened marks from where restraints had been for weeks and pressure sores from being trapped in the same position for so long.
The bleeding sensor marks on Blu Medic's head were especially noticeable against his unbelievably blonde hair and in an attempt not to stare at Javier Shiloh found her attention kept being drawn to the splashes of red. At one point the Medic caught her looking at them, wrinkling his brow.
"What is it?"
"Sorry, you're just - you're bleeding, doctor."
The Medic paused and reached up to lightly touch a ring finger to one of the open wounds, looking at the bloodied tip of his finger for a moment before wiping it clean on his trousers. "It will stop. This is more important, yes?" he said, nodding down to Javier. She nodded in response, was given a small smile in return, and then he went back to doctoring the Spy.
"What has happened?" Javier finally hissed, opening his eyes and staring up at Shiloh.
"Storming the castle," Shiloh said, blowing out a sigh as she glanced up at the cluster of men again. "The other team - my team, Red, I guess - is assaulting the building to draw attention off here, so we can set you guys loose and get you armed...um, somehow. I wasn't included in that bit of planning, just in the plan to get in here and set you all free."
Javier grunted and tried to sit up again; Blu Medic slid an arm behind his shoulders to help lift him, Shiloh moving to assist at the man's nod. Now upright Javier swayed a bit unsteadily before hunching forward - the Medic took this opportunity to examine the sores and injuries on the Spy's back - and grimacing as he tried to straighten his bad leg.
"How long do we have?"
"I have no idea."
"Miss Pauling knows."
"Um...probably?"
"That was not a question."
Shiloh's response was cut short when she was almost yanked to her feet by a rough tug on the shotgun strapped to her back. "Whoa-!" she staggered, then a hand grabbed her by the waistband and set her fully on her feet; when the hands on strap and waistband let go she turned and stared up into the face of the male she assumed to be Blu's Soldier.
"What idiot gave you a strap that doesn't break away?" he growled down at her. "Give me that weapon, woman - you're being relieved."
"...did it not cross your mind to ask for it first?" she blurted out, hands fumbling for the strap's release.
He snorted and crossed his arms, waiting; he had a shaved head and was muscled with a tattoo on each bicep of a stylized eagle in black. The army pants he wore were threadbare around the corners of the pockets - and there were a lot of pockets up and down the outer pantslegs - and they were bloodstained on the inner left thigh, and like all the others he was bare to the waist and bearing the marks of prolonged captivity in those tubes.
She finally got the clasp to release and handed over the shotgun to him; he took it and ran his hands over it, ejected the two shells already loaded and checked inside there before loading them again and snapping the gun shut.
"Ammo."
She handed over the leather case clipped to her waistband. "I didn't use a lot of it."
"Good, I'm going to need it. You're the one who shot those?" he nodded curtly in the direction of the pile of ruined robots. She nodded mutely in reply, and he sniffed. "It could have been done better, but decent job nonetheless. Let the men with training take it from here."
Now it was her turn to snort and roll her eyes. "If that was a jab at my gender-"
"-I don't care what you've got swinging between your legs, you're not trained, end of story."
She watched him stomp away; the cluster of mercs was breaking up some, with Spy leading three of them over toward the double doors, leaving the others to stand around or lean against the computer console and glare balefully at their prisons. The Soldier that had just taken her shotgun moved away to loom over those near the door - they looked to be trying to pry open the wall paneling and keypad next to it - and the Medic was still finishing up with Javier.
Then, without fanfare, the doors slid open, and a chrome-covered Engineerbot was framed in them.
From where she stood Shiloh clearly heard the Soldier growl a "Well, shit."
Sniper had been slowly working his way toward the ladder, moving only when a thrown light was crashing across the catwalk; they were getting uncomfortably close and he hoped the man wasn't observant enough to notice a few stray bits of shrapnel striking something in midair and dropping away, as Sniper couldn't make himself incorporeal as well as invisible. He was twenty feet from the ladder...just a bit more-
"Sir."
Sniper froze, as did Zane, when the Sniperbot flew up from below; it sounded like the fight had died down again down there - he'd been far too focused on not being crushed under a light to keep tabs on the goings on - and Sniper spared the floor a glance to see Engineer and the others were retreating. If they were leaving it was time for the second part of the plan and Sniper would have needed to get out of here regardless-
"What is it?"
Sniper glanced back over to the man and the bot as the man let the light hovering in front of him crash to the floor below.
"We have a security breach, Stasis Room. Engineer Elite reports the test subjects are free."
The man's expression darkened and Sniper sucked in a breath as the other's gaze roamed over the catwalks a final time before he simply...wasn't there anymore.
The Sniperbot, on the other hand...
Sniper exhaled and inhaled, and in that quick moment lifted his rifle up, took aim, and fired a shot that was neatly threaded through the openings in the catwalk's floor. The rockets on the robot's legs were built into the leg itself; there was an opening that visible fire and exhaust rushed from but there were no other discernible edges, so Sniper's shot was purely instinct and estimation but he had a brief surge of satisfaction as his round struck just above the exhaust opening and collapsed it partly inward.
With the port damaged the downward thrust was no longer funneled in one uniform direction; the robot's leg shifted outward, and even though the angle wasn't much it was still enough to send the bot slamming into the catwalk at the knees, which then sent it falling forward onto the catwalk from momentum alone.
Sniper stood, catwalk groaning under him with the added weight of the robot, and began to fire rapidly into the top of the robot's shoulders; deep dents began appearing as the robot hauled itself to its knees and Sniper could easily the track the robot's gaze as it stared in the direction his shots were coming from, looked down to where the empty casings were falling, then pulled itself into a kneeling position and aimed its rifle in his general direction.
He tried not to flinch as two bullets whizzed by close enough he felt a breath of wind against an ear as he reloaded and placed a bullet directly into the robot's scope - at this distance the loss of the scope wouldn't mean much but it at least had the effect of making the Sniperbot cautious enough to dip to one side in anticipation of a follow up shot.
Sniper tracked it and fired a second time, this time aiming for the metal hands holding the rifle; sparks flew and the robot actually made a strange noise and flinched its shot hand away.
Now THAT was interesting, the damned thing had almost acted like it'd felt pain. Sniper had sometimes seen robots take steps to prevent their immediate destruction but that generally only included things like ducking around corners or even behind their own fellows (and they had steadily been getting better at imitating the mercs, even before this mess with Shiloh and the upgraded robots) but...this was the first time Sniper had ever seen an out and out human-like reaction.
Blu had been beamed into machines...what if Spy was wrong about those tubes? There wasn't an actual human being in those metal bodies were there?
The idea wasn't pleasant and while he hadn't thought too much on what would happen if Blu wasn't able to be saved the tone of this fight would certainly change if each destroyed robot was actually a mercy killing. 'Bad luck for you, mate, if that's true' he thought somberly, taking aim and beginning to pepper the robot's hands with shot after shot.
With each successive strike Sniper began to see little bits of metal fly until finally a finger or two dropped free; the Sniperbot at this point had stopped trying to get a finger into its trigger lock and began to half-crawl across the catwalk in Sniper's direction.
With the robot's rifle blocking a clean line of fire at the head Sniper went for body shots even as he backed away toward the ladder, leaving increasingly deeper dents in the bot's armoring.
The robot suddenly went to get its hands back into position on its weapon. "I know exactly where you are now."
As it spoke it moved next to a light that was still hanging untouched, and in that moment Sniper noticed something odd; up to this point he hadn't really been able to pick out facial "features" such as they were - the grunt robot fodder he was used to always had the same type of imitation facial features like mouths and jawlines along with their eyes. There was a persistent glare on the lower half of the robot's face and it wore a metal hat that shadowed the upper half, but as the robot moved next to that hanging light the glare on the lower half shifted and revealed what looked like a slightly duller patch of metal where the mouth should have been on its otherwise blank face.
Did that thing have a mouth then or was that a trick of the light? Its voice had to be coming from somewhere...
Sniper felt his hat lift off his head and fall away as the bot shot at him even as he raised his scope to his eye and focused on the bot's face.
...that was a speaker. If it weren't for the angle of the lighting up here it would have been unnoticeable, but through the scope Sniper could just barely make out the fine hatch-mark pattern.
Sniper ducked and fired in the same breath as the robot did, and while he wasn't a religious man he imagined this would be the time he'd pray - for his shot to hit and the one coming for him to miss.
There was a sting of pain and a hot sensation blossomed from his left ear but across the way the robot jerked back and convulsed slightly, the barrel of its rifle slamming into the catwalk beneath it.
Despite the hole in the top of his ear Sniper smirked when he saw the large open, sparking bullet hole in the robot's mouth. He slid a new round into his rifle and tracked along with the robot's movements and fired again, widening the hole; there must have been something vital that he'd at the very least clipped with that first shot and then made worse with the second as the Sniperbot's jerking movements became more pronounced...maybe he'd hit whatever controlled its movement or balance.
He kept firing, widening the hole until finally the upper section of the robot's head fell open entirely, revealing a mess of sparking and glowing wires, circuit boards, blinking lights, and other such mechanical nonsense that he knew Engineer would have a damn field day with.
Sniper flinched and jumped back when there was a sudden loud detonation from below, his movements and the shockwave from below making the catwalk heave and then sag alarmingly; taking a final look at the Sniperbot, he turned and then sprinted in a hunched over and awkward gait until he got to the ladder and all but threw himself at it and hauled himself off the catwalk and down to the hallway beyond the ladder.
Leaning against the wall in the hallway, facing the door that led to the ladder, he gingerly touched a hand to his ear and brought it away soaked with blood; it was going to hurt like hell when the medigun fixed it but as he caught his breath and heard the creak and groan of the catwalk - or part of it anyway - giving way he counted himself lucky, miraculously lucky even, that he'd only lost his hat and gotten a large hole in his ear. That had been by far the closest he'd ever come to being on the receiving end what of he was usually the one dishing out...
All right, with that behind him...
The Sniperbot had said something about a security breach in a Stasis Room, and whatever that might have meant it was important enough to draw their main target away. He had a sinking feeling in his gut that that meant Zane was about to teleport in on top of Spy and the others.
Right on top of Shiloh, and Miss Pauling too.
He shot a glance up and down the hallway; he was supposed to make his way to the roof now and cover his teammates from above, but hell...if Zane really was about to burst in on Pauling's group then they'd all be sitting ducks, and Shiloh would no doubt be the first one the man targeted.
...his teammates would just have to handle themselves without him for now, at least until he assessed the situation happening elsewhere.
He had no idea where this Stasis Room was in relation to his current location but now he was damned determined to go find it.
As he ran Demoman peppered the floor and walls around him with sticky bombs, humming cheerfully as he could hear footsteps somewhere behind him and so long as he didn't hear the familiar 'whompf' of a grenade shot he knew he still had time to reach his destination and set up his next little surprise.
The sticky trail he was leaving was of regular stickies, not the special ones Engineer had slipped to him before they'd headed out - apparently there had been just enough left of that fancy pants robot for five special bombs, just for him, and he knew exactly what he could do with them providing he got there in enough time before his pursuer caught up to him.
This part of the facility he was running through was full of storage rooms and a few scattered break rooms that had once serviced the men that had built the dam years ago. Thanks to Spy's investigation he knew this hallway hadn't been altered in any way, and if he could get down it, then up a half-flight of stairs to a landing, there was a set of heavy metal security doors that...well, he wasn't sure what they'd been installed for since they just led outside and there wasn't anything of importance in the landing, but it was the doors he was needing for this plan to work.
He took the stairs four at a time as the thudding detonations of his stickies echoed up the hallway behind him, and then there he was, right at the doors.
With a grunt he pushed through them and then dragged them shut again before turning and quickly laying a very specific pattern of stickies against the borders of the doors and at the hinges; after that he quickly laid out a cluster of stickies right inside the doors and then ejected all that were left in the gun before loading the five special rounds in.
He backed away to the far wall, gently rotating his shot arm and waiting.
"Come on you rusty hat stand, right on through the doors..."
The doors were shoved open with much more force than Demoman had actually anticipated but the stickies held; he watched the Demobot glance down at the nest of stickies in the floor before it began to rapidly backpedal as the doors began to swing shut. Demoman hit the detonation button on his launcher and was deafened as all the stickies went off at once, sending the doors ripping free from the wall and firing backward into the room the Demobot had just backpedaled into.
There was a mighty clang of metal meeting metal as the doors hit the robot and blasted it backward, with Demoman rushing along in their wake and firing beyond the robot as it shook itself free of the doors and rolled away from the human...directly into the special sticky rounds Demo had just fired past it.
It stood with the stickies clinging to its back even as Demoman was sprinting back into the other room, swinging himself flat against the wall as he hit his detonator again.
When it began to rain robot pieces he started laughing as he slid down the wall to catch his breath.
