Prologue – Game Night

Frau sipped at a bottle of water sitting on her desk, her eyes scanning the monitor in front of her. She saw that three of other regular team members were on the servers tonight, two being Paul and Jeremy. A slight tick of a smile flickered across her face as she typed out a quick message to the three.

Frau: You guys up for a quick couple matches.

Froggy: Yea…public?

ClipBuddy: I could probably rouse BoxerTopp & LlamaDrama101 if you wanted.

Ki115treak505: Naw they've been on each other like cats and dogs lately, Boxer was pocketing

another Heavy and Llama is pissed.

Frau: I'm not up for drama tonight, we can just jump into a pub and go from there.

Froggy: I'm up for that, you going main or secondary?

Frau: Was gonna run Sniper but if you want support I can run main.

ClipBuddy: Technically Sniper is support but…

Ki115treak505: Yea I'll Pyro for ya, you know you wanna, don't fight it ;P

Froggy: I'll run main too.

Frau: Fine fine, you twisted my arm…

ClipBuddy: Yea like she needed an excuse…

Ki115treak505: Riiiiight it was soooo hard…

Froggy: Hush children, random mode?

Frau: Yea

Frau chuckled to herself as she waited for a server to be found. She was a competitive TF2 player and had been for years. Though she was fairly proficient with all the classes, she favored Scout and Sniper, but mained as a Medic. He held a special place in her heart. She absently tugged at the medic symbol choker she wore around her neck, her mind drifting slightly before refocusing as the computer pinged that a server had been found.

There was a couple seconds of loading before she was dumped to the character select screen. The team they were joining looked to be made up of two engineers and three Spys. Fairly typical for a public server, especially one chosen at random. She'd hadn't edited the map or games choices and they were be dumped into a payload map. Frau immediately chose her Medic, minus all of his cosmetics except the Tomb Readers. Since she often played competitively with chosen cosmetics, she would run without cosmetics in pubs. That was she was only ever accused of pretending to be herself while also being too cheap to by "Frau's" cosmetics. Secretly she thought it was hilarious when she came upon medics claiming to be her wearing the exact cosmetics. The only constants were the Tomb Readers, she just liked the way the sunglasses looked on Medic.

They were dumped into spawn and Frau immediately buffed up Froggy, giving him some extra health for that first rocket jump. Buddy had picked Scout, per the usual, and was out of Spawn before she could even offer to buff him. Streak was waiting patiently as Froggy, playing Soldier, headed out rocket jumping a few seconds later.

Frau: Ok Pyro let's move a cart.

ClipBuddy: Hey they got at least one Heavy and a Medic of their own!

Froggy: I'm on it, can one of you Engineers get a teleporter up?"

Frau followed Streak out of spawn, heading toward the cart…which was almost in the same spot it would have started in. With all those Spys it was no wonder they weren't getting anywhere. They passed an Engineer heading back toward spawn, presumably to start building a teleporter. Frau maneuvered behind the cart, using Streak and the cart to help block any creeping Spys. The cart strated moving forward and she saw Buddy weaving in and out of the other team, concentrating very hard on wiping out the opposing Medic.

Frau: I'm at 89%.

Ki115treak505: Stay close they got at least two Spys and…

Frau lost the rest of the sentence as she saw her Medic ragdoll across the map.

Frau: Three Spys…damn it…

Ki115treak505: That one is on me, sorry.

Frau absently tugged at her necklace as she waited for respawn. She finally clicked back in and immediately headed for the teleporter. Presumably the Engineer had set the exit close to the first checkpoint. She might be able to get behind the enemy and take out their Medic. She didn't play Battle Medic often, but was rather good at it and she could expect the guys to keep themselves alive for at least a few seconds.

As she stepped onto the pad, watching the timer at the top of the screen, she suddenly felt both dizzy and sick to her stomach. She leaned back in her chair, pushing her glasses up to her forehead to rub at her eyes.

She felt a pull in her chest then…black…