A/N: GASP! One of my TF2 stories where Pyro is not the main character?! Whaaaaaat? Well, I couldn't resist and have Pyro have some bigger part, than the other mercs. UwU

Chapter 1: Just another holiday

Many years ago, in this world, a small percentage of people are given at birth the gift of Holiday. The way to tell these people apart from normal people is the mark at the bottom of their right foot, which comes in the shape of a distinct yellow star. The Mann brothers wanted to find as many people as they could with the Holiday to hire to work as their mercs to fight for the land their father had left them. They heard a rumor that these Holiday people have some sort of special power that could help them win against the other brother and get all the land, instead of just half due to their greediness. One brother was able to have all nine mercs with the Holiday, but the other brother wasn't so lucky with only five out of the nine mercs having the Holiday. The two brothers died long before they knew if the rumors about the people with Holiday do or do not have a special power. If they hadn't died at the time they did, they would've found out that the rumors are in fact… true. When all the mercs on both sides were first assembled, they did not know who had the Holiday, but four years has passed and mostly all of them know they are working with merc's who have Holiday.

Now, let's go back two years after these two groups of mercs came together to fight against each other. This is where one merc, a bushman from the RED team, begins how he came to terms with his Holiday and more.

This all started on March 16th.

oOo

Sniper wakes up and readies himself for the day, but is still half asleep because Scout kept bugging him about random things the night before. He leaves his camper and heads inside the base from the back door, heading towards the kitchen to make his morning coffee. As he makes his way over, he notices a small piece of decoration on the wall, which becomes more and more as he goes further into the base. At first, he thought nothing of it with his tired brain this early in the morning, although as he gets closer to the kitchen, there are more decorations everywhere. Sniper enters the kitchen and makes a bee line to the coffee maker, giving off a don't-talk-to-me-before-I-have-my-coffee irritable vibe. Engineer is the only other one in the kitchen and is making breakfast, but Sniper is having his full focus on the coffee being made than the smell of food.

Once the coffee finishes and he pours himself some coffee into his #1 Sniper mug, he turns around and takes a sip from his favorite brand of coffee. The caffeine helps wake him up and feeling less irritable. Seconds later, Sniper finally notices the delicious smell of Engineer's breakfast and looks over at him. "Mmm… Yer cookin' is always the best, Hardhat. Well… Heavy's is too. Can't denoie that." The ones who are really good at cooking are Engineer, Heavy, and Spy. The ones that are alright at cooking are Demo, himself, and maybe Medic. On the other hand, the rest of the team should never cook at all because they would either ruin the food where it isn't edible or they would unintentionally cause the building to burn down if there wasn't anyone to stop it. he heard from Demo that Pyro can make a decent meal, but only if they were drunk. Sniper would actually like to see this happening, but unfortunately, it is hard to get Pyro to have beer willingly.

"Thank ya, Stretch. Now, go get them. Breakfast is almost ready. Ah want to give it to them while it is still hot enough to eat." Engineer only steals glances at him a few times as to not have his food burn. If he were to look away for too long.

"Will do, Hardhat." Sniper takes another sip of his coffee before leaving Engineer to his cooking in the kitchen. When he is now out of the kitchen and is met with the recreational room, which is used as their version of a living room. It is at this moment that he finally notices the decorations on the walls. All he could see is green everywhere and some other ones that are different colors, but the color that stands out the most is green. If people where to see what he is seeing right now, they would say that the decorations were too much… and they are right. "Ah… bugger." Sniper sees Soldier walking towards his direction from the short hallway to his left. He turns to Soldier and gestures for him to come over. "Oi, Sol, Whot's with all these decorations? It is more than last year!"

Soldier stops right next to Sniper and doesn't hesitate in answering his question, clicking his heels and saluting as he began to reply. "Demoman requested help with putting the decorations. He had asked me and Scout to help. Scout bet who would put the most decorations up before a certain time and I accepted because… I knew I would win!" Soldier kept his saluted stance, waiting for Sniper to respond back, but clicked his heels once more and straightened his posture.

Sniper facepalmed himself as he sighs in annoyance. No wonder. These two drongos need to stop overdoing things or else he will snap and they wouldn't like it if and or when he finds them. Those two tend to get on everyone's nerves, including himself. Sniper isn't the one to talk, since he also isn't one of the smarter, although he knows better to not do unnecessary things. Putting this matter aside, Sniper easily convinces Soldier into helping him get their teammates to come to have breakfast. The two of them agreed to look for and bring back half of the remaining teammates, he got Demo, Heavy, and Pyro; while Soldier got Scout, Medic, and Spy. Sniper is glad he got Soldier to go get those three because he dislikes how chatty Scout is compared to himself, Medic because he keeps pestering him about his bladder, and then Spy because- well… water and oil, y'know?

First up, Demo. He can be a pain in the butt to get him to come and eat when Demo usually only has his scrumpy, but thanks to Medic, he has been having more than the bottle for food. Sniper goes to Demo's bedroom door and knocks. "Oi, Demo. Brekkie is almost ready." He waits for a moment before knocking again. "Y'comin'?" He waits for Demo's reply, which comes a minute later after he knocked the second time.

"Ey, I'm tryin' tae concentrate here. Makin' more of me grenades. Ye tryin' tae blow us all oop?" The question's tone sounds like if he were yelling it, but not due to the volume he said it. Suddenly, Sniper remembers something from just Demo's reply. He realized now, that tomorrow is Demo's day to celebrate his Holiday. Demo made it really clear one day after his third drinking contest on the same day, which made him really drunk, like a normal person drunk due to him having a high tolerance to getting drunk from many years of having his scrumpy. He had told him and the team his Holiday and now Sniper knows why there is so much green everywhere. Sniper has been told that the scrumpy has the highest record of alcohol content, but when he tried it, he told Demo it is second from the top alcohol compared to his family's moonshine.

"Can oi come in at least? Oi prefer to see your face, mate." A minute passes before Demo replies with his version of a yes, which didn't take Sniper long to figure out and he enters. Sniper doesn't pay attention to the way Demo has his room and walks up to where Demo is currently in the room. He stays quiet as he watches Demo finish three more grenades before he finally is done and looks at Sniper. "So, you were sayin', lad?" Sniper repeats what he said when he had reached Demo's room, plus he gives him one of his special nicest facial expressions, which is only possible to Sniper's Holiday and can't be perfectly replicated. Only two of the RED Team members' Holiday is known, his not one of them, so this kind of face goes unnoticed because if other were to look at it, they wouldn't be able to figure out what Holiday he has. Usually, most of the Holidays are easier to tell when the person shows them part of their Holiday's power, but for Sniper it doesn't.

It doesn't take long for the look Sniper has to work on the stubborn Demo and he finally agrees to come to have breakfast with the team. "Thanks, mate. Brekkie is very important. Meet ya there." Sniper nods once at Demo before leaving his room and now he goes to find Heavy. He first checks Heavy's room, but he isn't answering, so he goes to where he would find him next- the Respawn Room. Sniper, being a good hunter, which means he has a whole range of skills besides just sniping. Being with his team for little over two years, Sniper has learned his teammates habits… and a few other things. Once Sniper makes it to the Respawn Room, he finds Heavy cleaning his main weapon, while sitting on the bench closest to where the team's lockers are just like he thought he'd be.

"Oi, Heavy. Finish cleanin'… uh…" Sniper never took the time to learn his teammate's weapon's names, so he is drawing a blank on the name of Heavy's weapon to be polite, unlike the last time one of his teammates just called Heavy's weapon a minigun instead of by the name Heavy gave it. He shudders at the thought of what happened to Scout who actually did it and couldn't run for a week because of it.

"… Sasha." Heavy didn't look up as he said this, too focused on cleaning his precious Sasha, but not enough to not talk back to Sniper.

"Whot?" Sniper blinks in confusing at first, but then realizes what Heavy meant and nods. "Roight… Sasha. Anyways, finish cleanin' Sasha and then come have some Brekkie, Alroight?" All Sniper got from him after he said that is a Da and a nod. He is satisfied with Heavy's answer and leaves he Respawn Room. It didn't take a lot for Sniper to get Heavy to do anything because he is willing to do mostly everything to help his team out and Sniper is glad of this fact.

The only one left now is to get Pyro and from what Engineer has told everyone, he'll need to treat the firebug as if he were talking to an ankle-biter. Based on his observations of Pyro, he can see why Engineer would tell everyone this. As for Sniper, he already could tell after a half year of working alongside the firebug. He had been walking towards Pyro's room as he remembered these things, but finds Pyro isn't in their room. Now, with Pyro, it isn't as easy to find where they are as Heavy and the others because they tend to wonder the base for reasons he hasn't figured out yet. Sniper didn't want to go ask Engineer, so he searches all the spots he'd think Pyro would be. At one point, he ends up outside, since it didn't look like Pyro could be inside.

Sniper looks around the front of the base before moving to the side of it. By the time he gets to halfway to the back of the base, Sniper stops when he hears a familiar sound, a smile appears on his face. "Got ya." He follows where the sound is coming from, which so happens to be in the same direction he is currently heading in before he heard the sound. When Sniper rounds the corner, he soon spots Pyro near the middle of the back wall of the base, sitting on the ground cross-legged and doing something he couldn't see from where he's at. Once he gets close enough to Pyro, he recognizes immediately what is keeping the firebug's attention- Medic's bird, Archimedes. Even closer and Sniper could tell Archimedes has something in his beak, but Pyro's hand is blocking his view of what it could be.

"Oi, Pyro. Been lookin' for ya. Engie got Brekkie ready." Sniper moves closer again and with how tall he is, he now can see what Archimedes has in his beak. His eyes widened and he becomes beat red at what he saw- a torn piece from one of his Holiday decorations he has been working on. He had never liked those you would find in stores, so Sniper prefers handmade ones because it becomes more special as you took the time to put all that work into it yourself. The thought of someone finding out, especially one of his teammates, would be mortifying to him and that will affect him emotionally because he is a sensitive guy under this professional façade.

Pyro stops what they are doing for a moment to look at Sniper, whilst standing up, still holding Archimedes in their hands. Sniper now had a better view, which he could now see that not only there was a piece of his decoration, but a card he had just finished that morning. His head turned quickly to his camper, one of his windows are open and a gasp escapes him before a moment later, Sniper remembers why it is open- instantly regretting having forgotten to close it next morning. "… Ah, bugg'a." Sniper could have closed it, but Soldier sprung on the team a surprise meeting, that he considers important- which wasn't. "Brekkie?" He sees Pyro tilt their head, then snapped their fingers and moves their head back to normal a moment later. "… Oh! Breakfast." Pyro pets Archimedes a little more before taking what's in his beak, Archimedes then flies in the open window leading into Medic's Med bay. Sniper saw a glimpse of Archimedes going into the window just as he looks back at Pyro. At this point, Pyro shows Sniper the two things Archimedes had in his beak. "Look what Medic's birdy found! Do you think these are from Scout? He is in-."

Sniper interrupts Pyro by holding up his hand. "Pyro, oi can't understand you. Use your hands, Rememb'a?" At that, Pyro nods and then repeats what they said, but in sign language. Sniper had dated a mute woman some years ago before working for RED and learned how to sign with his hands. He is glad to find out Pyro, Engineer, and Medic knew sign language because there are some times he couldn't explain or say things properly with words. Sniper sighs in relief at the mention of Scout's name. To hurry Pyro up, he first takes the two torn things from Pyro's hand and then ushers Pyro, with a hand to their back, back to the front of the base. Right before they enter the front entrance, what Pyro signs to him next stops him in his tracks from entering the base.

"I know."

A/N: Sorry for the slow start. It will pick up later on. Btw, I wanted this to come to a certain point before I start the next chapter because my minimum of each chapter, I want is 2k.

Anyways…

Thanks for reading and please review, it will help motivate me even more to finish a chapter quicker.

Aussie Slang:

Drongo: a dope, stupid person

Brekkie: breakfast

Ankle-biter: child