As far as first days go, this one could have been better. Only three hours into what had been advertised as a promising internship for entrepreneurial youngsters and already Penny, the only intern in the break room silly enough to tell a frantic supervisor that yes, she did know how to repair simple circuits, was being suited up and ejected into what appeared to be a disused mill yard that, strangely enough, someone had forgot to stop using.

"There's a kind of...event going on." Her supervisor had explained, frantically handing her what appeared to be a vintage army helmet with a sizable dent in it. She stared mildly, tossing it around in her hands for good measure - very little coming out of Reliable Excavation Demolition surprised her at this point, and that breed of apathy was a little too wizened for her taste. A mere three hours and already she had been faced with a fair share of...unusual tasks. Never before had she been asked to collate and file the death certificates of former employees and, quite frankly, the task of removing them from the payroll seemed a little too much for her already achingly curious sensibilities.

"An event?" She hummed, unzipping the duffle bag of tools she had been handed upon first being hustled into the discretely nondescript van. A wrench, a small pair of pliers, and some electrical tape fell out neatly into her lap and, to her surprise, nothing else. She gave the bag another hearty shake, met with the same lint-riddled emptiness. "Are these the only tools you have?"

"Yes, an event." The balding man perched awkwardly in the opposite seat ignored her question in the way only a skilled bureaucrat could, turning his hat around in his hands with a nervous twitch. "It's a kind of...meeting of competitors. It happens every once in a while. Reliable Excavation Demolition...representatives meet with some of the folks over at Builders League United, our biggest competitor, and they find creative ways to solve the problems facing both companies."

Penny whistled, glancing towards the blacked-out windows of the van. "Sounds like an all out war." Her supervisor blanched visibly.

"Well. It can be. I suppose."

"Why are the windows black?" She asked sweetly, tapping on the glass with a scarlet-painted nail.

"Privacy reasons!" He shot back, a practiced statement impaired by only a slight stutter, and within seconds he was reaching over and refilling the duffle bag with her sparse tool set. "Now, we're almost there so just remember what I told you: if you see our representatives, the ones dressed in red, stay out of their way. Don't speak to them. Don't look at them. Whatever you do, don't interfere. And if you see BLU representatives..." He gulped, nervously adjusting his glasses. "Well, run."

She shot him an inquisitive glance that he met with the best extrapolation he could possibly give.

"Very fast."

He swung open the double-latched door of the van and tossed her out without much ceremony, sunlight exploding into view with a warm burst that only exaggerated the precautions taken to anonymize their trip. "Good luck!" He shouted darkly, slamming the door behind her, and upon looking up from the dusty ground she had landed on she found her noble carriage already bee-lining back towards what was presumably the way it came. Very fast.

Penny stood up, brushing the clay dust off of her palms, and admired the two identical mills wrapped up neatly by a barbed wire fence in the distance that, she discovered, she was now inside of. An army helmet, a bag of "tools", and a silly young girl in a red dress - what a morning, she mused, inspecting the helmet with mild disgust before tossing it aside. She threw the duffle bag over her shoulder and strolled closer to the RED building, the hefty noise of voices and shouts becoming more and more clear with every step. Her curious complacency was shattered by a fight-or-flight like fear deep in her bones as a shot rang out only a few yards away, followed by three more and then a deep, maniacal laugh, sputtering curses in a thick French accent. She froze, listening to the shouts and shots that she realized now surrounded her, before bolting those last few yards to the side-door of the closest mill, throwing herself inside.

Suddenly thankful that she had ignored the womanly advice of her mother to wear heels on her first day to work, Penny squeezed herself into a dark corner and watched as a besuited man in a gas mask lumbered into a nearby courtyard, itching at a behemoth sized weapon in his hands. Red, she noted - he's wearing red. That means technically he's shouldn't shoot her down in her tracks. In another moment of strange clarity, she realized that wearing a red dress was also an unintentional stroke of brilliance, despite more disapproving cries from her mother. "That's tacky, darling!" she had exclaimed, alternating between sucking down a martini and a Pall Mall. "Working for a company called RED and wearing a red dress on your first day…" She tisked, "I thought I raised you to have better fashion sense than that!" Who knew it was an actual dress code here, Penny mused, slinking deeper into the darkness as the man swung around in her direction. Another man entered the courtyard, this one carrying a gun double the size of the impromptu weapon the gas-maniac dawned, and it wasn't long before that horse-sized weapon began spinning in preparation of firing. It whirled loudly as the bald man carrying it bellowed with laughter, laughter that was far too short-lived for Penny's liking. The gas-maniac's itchy trigger finger snapped back quickly and from the belly of his weapon came a sputtering of blue flames that quickly licked their way up his enemy's body. His laughter quickly turned sour and gurgled into shouts of help, but the Pyro only cackled in return, raising his flamethrower above his head in a twisted form of a battle cry.

Blue, Penny noted, biting her tongue to keep from fainting. That other man was wearing blue.

As the Pyro lumbered off to find another fresh kill, she checked to make sure the coast was clear before bolting towards a nearby set of stairs. A sign above the doorway happily proclaimed "INTELLIGENCE" with a friendly arrow pointing down another set of stairs, and for once in this entirely bizarre day she was thankful for RED's eerie politeness. Hopping down the stairs and following a few more clearly marked signs between checking for anyone who might want to add to their body count, she found herself in an oddly empty room, occupied by a few afterthoughts of furniture and a less than discrete briefcase marked "TOP SECRET" despite being in full view. Determined to ignore the inconsistencies she found herself surrounded by, she tossed her duffle bag onto the ground and quickly unpacked while searching the room for the hidden camera she was sent to repair.

Behind a ficus, she was told. It's hidden behind a small potted ficus. At the time she thought they were kidding - after all, if you've got the money to invest in hidden cameras and other slivers of modern futurism and technological gadgetry, why in god's name would you decide to hide it somewhere so cliché?

It didn't take long to locate the sad plant in question - a silly little thing that was completely out of place in the mechanized control room dotted with the whirling of machines and the hum of dot matrix paper printing out from somewhere nearby. She shoved the poor thing aside and found the security camera staring her down, its cords severed neatly from the outlet they were formerly plugged into in what could have only been an intentional slash. "How dramatic." She whistled, beginning to unwrap the wires' casing with deft hands.

"I agree, ma cheri." A voice echoed from behind her, growling in the same thick French she had heard when first entering the base. She whirled around on her toes, stumbling backwards upon realizing she was faced by a masked man wielding the kind of polished revolver that would have sent western gun-slingers running. A cigarette hung from his lips, adding another flounce to his debonair disposition and, despite aiming his gun squarely towards her chest, he still managed to dig a lighter out of his pocket and smoothly click it on it with one flick. His suit, instinct shouted as Penny fought off the numbing chill of adrenaline shooting through her chest, what color is his suit? Her mind fumbled to put two and two together. Blue, she realized. It's blue.

Her heart dropped.

"True, I have been here a vile, but I have to zay I have never once zeen a voman on the base. Vat exactly are you doing 'ere, ma petite?" Penny gulped hard, mustering up all of the courage of every heroine she had ever seen on the silver screen, from Garbo to Bacall. Standing up straight, she relaxed her shoulders back and blinked softly, trying to hardest to appeal to the side of him that, as he said, hadn't seen a woman in a while.

"Who me? Oh, I'm just an intern. I'm new when it comes to at all these big machines and..." she paused, husking her voice as much as she possibly could. "Big men." She pouted innocently, tucking her hair back with gentle fingers. "I was only sent here to repair a broken camera. For Reliable Excavation & Demolition." She finished sweetly, emphasizing each word with a nod as though remembering the title of the company was task enough for her gentle sensibilities. The Spy faltered, letting a small smirk fall across his face. He took two steps closer, paused, and then with one deft click cocked his gun. Her careful damsel act shattered with a heart-wrenching smash.

"Ah, see, ma cheri, zat is vere you should have stopped. Because voman or not, a RED is still a RED." His gun trailed up to her forehead. "And RED's do not last long 'ere."

She braced for the worst, stumbling back against the wall behind her for support, and suddenly found herself wishing that she really hadn't taken this job in the first place. Promising internship or not, no girl should have to deal with a surly frenchman with a gun - at least not at ten o'clock in the morning. As last thoughts of all the things she never did and wished she hadn't done flooded her head, she shook in horror as the bullet left the barrel with a fearsome sonic boom. She wondered if she could send out some kind of cosmic projection of a last thought to her mother - a simple "I love you," maybe - but it took her as a better idea not too. Knowing her mother, she'd probably just criticize the fact that she even considered trying something so new-agey.

And so she stood frozen, paralyzed in a slow motion minute, ready for heaven or hell or indefinite nothingness, but before she could feel that itty bitty piece of steel enter her chest cavity and render her gone forever she found herself suddenly tumbling towards the ground, hitting the worn shag carpeting with a hard thud. On her back on the floor she watched in confusion as another shot rang out with a booming echo, this one with twice the oomph and in half the time, and suddenly the BLU Spy's head, splattering across the wall and speckling everything in the room with red, became a mere suggestion. Her heart pounded, fumbling around in her chest as she tried to catch her breath. What, exactly, had just happened?

"Fuckin' rat talks way too much." A slim boy no older than she was crouched down to her level, gun still smoking in hand. He took a deep breath and pushed the microphone on his headset out of the way, pulling her up by the hand. Her eyes shot to his shirt. Red, she noted. Count your blessing where you can get them. "You okay, dahlin'?" He chirped with a comically impeccable Boston dialect. Still shaking, Penny wiped the specks of blood from her face, eyeing the graphic red streaks with a shaky hand.

"You... saved my life?" He let out a short laugh, swinging his gun up to rest on his shoulder.

"Man, you're really not from 'round here, huh?" In one quick motion she pulled him close and planted a hard kiss on his cheek, grinning the way only a girl who's still alive after having a gun to her head can.

"Thank you! Oh my god, thank you!" Dumbstruck and flushed, Scout rubbed the back of his neck in childish embarrassment. Sure, he had realized right away that she was an actual girl on the base and that alone was a first, but the part he would never admit was that had been a first kiss of sorts too. At least one from someone other than his mother. He stuttered to find the right words, averting his eyes from her in hopes that would make his tongue start working properly again.

It didn't.

"You're, uh... you're..."

"Get down!" She screamed, yanking him down to the floor and rolling under the nearby Intel desk. He felt the heat from a BLU Pyro's flamethrower beat against the wall where he had been standing only moments ago and in one slick motion he swung his pistol into position, aimed precisely at the Pyro's knee from the gap under the desk. It took one shot to bring him to the ground, flamethrower finally clicking off, and one more to give him the same kind of face lift that the Spy had received. Penny watched in awe, shielding herself behind the cheap MDF of the desk, and wondered if this is what her supervisor had meant by "creative problem solving". With the enemy eliminated Scout sat up under the desk, readjusting his cap, and gave Penny a quick once over.

"I guess that makes us even." He shot. She smiled lightly in reply, shaking her head out with a deep sigh. Will the adrenaline rush ever end? "So..." Scout hesitated, rubbing the back of his neck again sheepishly. "Do I get to give you the same reward?"

She could tell he was only half kidding, hinting blatantly the way boys always did when they thought they were being clever, and they both paused for a moment. Giving each other a real respective once-over - the only opportunity they really had to do so what with the life-threatening danger and all - the sudden gravity of the situation sunk in like a wet blanket dropped from above. They were both alive. Strangely, surely, they lived thanks to one another. It was an odd place, Penny realized, this base, but the heated rush of adrenaline still pumped under her skin, whispering with every breath that she was still alive, so instead of crawling away with a scoff to finish her job and get the hell out she instead smiled, a bubbly rush swelling up inside of her belly. With a turn of her head she tapped her cheek lightly, a form of expressive permission to give it his best shot.

Scout visibly reddened as something new settled over him - something he hadn't ever experienced before as far as he could remember: shyness. Girls had never been much of an question for him back home since most avoided him completely, put off by his big mouth and bloodlust, and a few years in boot-camp had left him in the perpetual company of fellow XY's. Girls as a whole had always been nothing more than a pleasant thought and a late-night dream, but had you told him a few hours ago that this instinctual reaction to their company was a stuttering shyness, he would have taken out your kneecaps with a home run worthy swing.

Heart thumping in his chest like a wild animal, he leaned in close to her - close enough to smell her faintly sweet perfume like a beacon to his senses - and slowly, gently, he planted a soft kiss on her cheek. He hesitated, lingering as he pulled away, every bone in his body telling him to find a way to her lips - to taste the cherry flavored lip gloss that he could smell from here and lick her lips clean of it. She exhaled slowly as he hung in the air next to her, struggling to fight off the urge to take this new creature in his arms and explore her completely right then and there. Sense fought a hard battle in his head, but in the end, as always, it was the Administrator that won. His headphone sizzled back to life, words crackling through the campfire fuzz of static still whispering in his ear.

"We have dropped the enemy intelligence!"

He snapped back to reality, attempting to stand up before realizing with a hard thud to his head that he was still under the intel desk. Penny watched on with a teeny chuckle, finally able to catch her breath from the passed moment.

"Aw, fuck!" He coughed, rubbing harshly at the small bump now forming on the back of his head. "The friggin' match!" He scrambled out from under the desk, fumbling to pick up his gun in the process. Wiping the blood off his pants, his eyes shot around the room - alright, the intel was still there. That's a plus. Nobody seemed to be nearby either, but you could never be too sure with Spies around. He fumbled to reload the Force-A-Nature's now empty barrel, chucking the empty shells onto the floor. "Goddamn, I bet there's only like twenty minutes or somthin' left now. We probably haven't even made a capture yet - friggin' dumbasses." Penny picked herself up slowly, wearily eyeing the room around her.

"A capture?" Scout laughed, looking up at her in-between shoving shells into his gun.

"Yeah, a capture. We take their intel and they try to take ours. Doesn't work out that well for the poor fuckers, usually." Cracking the barrel back and cocking it in one swift motion, he swung it back over his shoulder and took a breath.

"So what are ya doin' here anyway? I mean, ya obviously a RED," he nodded lightly towards her now blood-splattered dress, "but you definitely don't seem like a new recruit."

"I'm an intern," she explained with a sigh, "from Reliable's headquarters. The wires to that camera over there were cut and since this little 'meeting of competitors', as my supervisor called it, was taking place no one else would come. So, they sent me instead." She paced around the room lazily, examining each little thing with a curious meticulousness. "I guess they figured there's no harm in killing an intern." Scout whistled low, finally finding his way to the room's dispenser and leaning against it. The flow of health was immediate, and he could already feel his burns start to peel away in a minty antiseptic rush. Thank god for Engineers, he thought to himself. Anything to avoid the damn Medic.

"That's fucked up, man." He hummed, crossing his arms. "They expected you to get snuffed out here? So, uh, does that mean..." he paused for a moment, catching her eyes as she continued to loll around the room. "Does that mean that once the camera's fixed...you're outta here?" Penny sighed, taking a seat against the bullet-riddled intel desk. Even its wood, she noticed, was lacquered a faint cherry red.

"I don't know. At first I thought so, but no one really had any interest of coming here to drop me off in the first place, let alone pick me back up." She traced out her initials with her finger on the surface of the desk, inspecting it haphazardly for dust. Scout watched on in anticipation, the color slowly coming back to his face. "I suppose they'll come back once you guys are gone." She glanced at him briefly as he rubbed his mouth on his sleeve to cover up a smile. "When will that be?"

"Sweetheart, you're gonna be here a while."