The next morning, the sound of the alarm I had set roused me from my sleep at 6 am. I did a mad scramble out of my bed and down the ladder to turn it off so it wouldn't wake Scout. He had no reason to be up this early, so I hastily shut off the insistent beeping as soon as my finger landed on the device. I looked towards the boy. He had stirred slightly but was otherwise still deep in sleep, the sheets all bunched up around his waist. He'd gone to sleep that way last night. If I hadn't insisted otherwise, he'd have climbed into his bed fully dressed, shoes and all. But I had stared him down and he reluctantly stripped down to his boxers, and then promptly fell asleep, snoring on the feathery pillow. It had taken me a while to dig out the alarm clock he'd said he had. Eventually I found it hiding beneath a pair of shorts that I'd reckoned I'd be needing anyway. So I'd set the alarm, put the shorts aside, and crawled into bed. And just as it always did, morning came too soon.
I doubted I would ever get used to wearing a boy's clothes. The fit was so strange, especially the pants. There was way too much space up front and not enough in the back. If I lifted my legs too high, the material bunched up around my hips in the most uncomfortable of ways. I tightened the strings as far as they would go and it was somewhat better. I just hoped the soldier wasn't planning on making me do leg lifts. I'd found my headset again too and pushed it down over my ears before leaving the room. As we were returning from the cookout the previous night I had payed very close attention to the corridors we passed through so that I could find my own way in the morning. I nearly took the wrong turn, but corrected myself at the last second and successfully managed to maneuvre to the front wing. I was rather proud of my little achievement.
I had nearly fallen back asleep where I was standing when the soldier marched in, heavy boots making echoing stomps as they struck the polished floor. I shook myself back into focus and stood up straighter when he came to a halt directly in front of me. As usual, the helmet obscured the most part of his facial features, but he still saw the uncertain salute I gave him. "At ease, private," he said with a nod of approval. I lowered my arm, and uncertain what else to do with it, put it behind my back. "Are you ready for your training?" he asked in a voice that suggested he was going to start regardless of my answer.
"Sir yes sir," I replied. Humour him, the Scout had told me last night around the fire when I shared with him my anticipation of the next day. So I did just that. It didn't seem to annoy the man, at any rate, so I guess the boy hadn't been wrong.
"We are going to perform a series of circuits around the training ground. Move quickly and try to keep up!"
I didn't even have time to react before he took off at a brisk, jogging pace. I murmured a few choice words and bolted after him as fast as I could manage. I was lucky the Soldier was not the fastest of men. I would never have been able to keep up with him if he were going any quicker. Our current pace was already a struggle, but not unmanageable. I was not completely out of shape after all. I had been on the girls' cricket team back home, and I had a mean swing on the field. But that's just the thing with Cricket; you don't do an awful lot of running. I had my reasons for favouring Cricket over other sports, but I wasn't about to divulge them to the Soldier.
Time wore on slowly, and as we started the circuits, I found it steadily harder to keep up. Jogging across flat ground was one thing, but maneuvring through mud-filled ditches, knee-high dirt mounds and low strung barbed wire was quite another. The Soldier found no issues with the obstacles, but my inferior body was not so lucky. My lungs were on fire, and I could not reply whenever the Soldier turned casually to give me what he imagined to be an encouraging taunt to speed me up. My heart was close to breaking down when he finally came to a stop at the end of the circuit. And just in time too; I was positive my legs would not have carried me one step further. I looked down at them as I stood hunched over, desperately trying to regain my breath. They were each bleeding from a dozen tiny cuts where the skin had snagged onto the barbed wire. I knew that if I didn't do something about them soon, they'd probably get infected and scar over. I'd probably ask the medic for some of that medication he provided on the battlefield. Or I could get it myself really, I knew where it was stored now. Either way, the Soldier had started moving again, but this time it was towards the building, and I followed him eagerly.
"Damn, you look horrible," the Scout remarked when I sat down beside him at the breakfast table. His hand was hovering halfway between his bowl and his mouth, holding a spoon loaded with chocolatey cereal.
"Good morning to you too," I joked in response. The cuts on my leg stung painfully when I accidentally brushed them against his.
"Aw jeez, where'd that come from?" he asked, looking at the blood oozing slowly from the slits.
"The friendly barbed wire down at the training circuit," I answered. I pulled an empty bowl in front of me and filled it partially with cereal. I didn't fancy any milk, so I picked it up with my fingers and munched on it dry.
"Ach, here," the Medic said from across the table. He pulled something out of his pocket and pushed it across the wood towards me.
I held it up in my empty hand. It was one of the medicine bottles he'd showed me yesterday; the small green ones with the red cross on them that looked like soap bubble bottles. I opened the lid and downed the contents. I grimaced as the foul liquid made its way down my throat, but I was grateful anyway. "Thank you, Doctor," I said graciously, resealing the bottle and placing it back on the table. Already I could feel the pain dulling away in my lower body. I picked up another piece of the cereal and popped it in my mouth. I noticed how only a few of the men were seated at the table with us. Besides the Medic and Scout, there was the Sniper and the Heavy, but no one else. "Hey, where's the rest?" I asked the boy beside me. But he just shrugged nonchalantly.
"Demo's probably too drunk to get his ass outta bed. Engie's working on his projects down below. I don't even wanna know what the Pyro's doin, and Spy got five days off for some errand he's been assigned."
"Errand?" I asked with a quizzical raise of the eyebrow.
"Yeah, that's what he said," Scout replied with a roll of his eyes. "The creepy fucker's probably torturing someone right now."
"Charming," I remarked, pouring myself some water from a transparent jug and wetting my throat. The dry cereal had scratched at my parched mouth so that I could barely make out the taste of chocolate. The water helped me regain my sense of taste, and immediately I was aware of the curls of milk-chocolate melting on the tip of my tongue. I smiled from the sweetness of the food. The Scout certainly loved sugary things. Even with the already too-sweet cereal, he was chugging down a can of Bonk. I fought the urge to reach out and place the can down on the table. Just because I couldn't handle it, didn't mean nobody else could. And the Scout certainly seemed to enjoy it.
"Oh, almost forgot," Scout said, wiping the milk from his lips against the back of his hand. "A crate came for ya bout half an hour ago."
"A crate?" I asked. I didn't remember packing anything so big it would need to be boxed into a crate to be delivered. The biggest thing I had was my cricket bat, and that fit into my suitcase well enough.
"Yeh, we get crates sometimes. Mostly weapon upgrades or supplies," he explained.
"It's probably her basic loadout," the Sniper told him from behind his coffee. The mug he had was a dirty white, with the words "#1 Sniper" printed on it in faded blue. "You should probably check them out, Soldier 'ill want you to train with them Sheila," he said, to me that time.
I nodded and put down the piece of cereal I was eating. "Where's the crate?" I asked the Scout.
"I don't know, Heavy brought it in," he replied, leaning back to look at the man, "Hey fatty, where'd you put A's stuff?"
"In tiny baby men's room," he said after narrowing his eyes at the boy. To me, he smiled, revealing two rows of enormous, hot chocolate-smeared teeth.
"Thank you," I said, averting my eyes from the sight of a dentist's worst nightmare. "Come on," I said to the Scout as I stood up. "Soldier wants me to meet him in thirty minutes and I want to see what I got." I felt slightly excited, like a child about to open her presents on Christmas, only my parcel was a crate full of destructive devices.
We found the crate lying in the middle of the room atop a horde of cans which were most likely crushed to powder. The box was huge. The Heavy was big and all, but even he must have struggled to carry that monstrosity up those stairs. That thought made me worry about the contents. Just how big were those weapons? I could carry a fair amount of weight, but not for extended periods of time. I knew that no amount of training was ever going to change that.
"Christ, what's in this thing?" Scout asked, walking around it. When he was completely behind it, the box came up to just below his ribs. He pushed the lid out of the way with some degree of effort and leaned it against the side of the crate. He peeked in. "You comin or what?"
I had stood at the entrance of the room right up until the Scout asked me that question. His words pulled me out of my thoughts, and I approached him. I precariously put my hand down into the sea of Styrofoam balls. I fished around a bit until my fingers brushed against something long and slender. I gripped it, and felt a wave of familiarity wash over me. I knew what it was even before I pulled it out of the box.
"What the?" the Scout gawked.
"It's a cricket bat!" I exclaimed, happily holding out the sporting device at arm's length. It was somewhat different to my own personal one in that it was made out of aluminium. I thought that a bit strange. Cricket bats were always made of wood. But then I realised, the bat probably wasn't made to hit balls so much as it was made to break open skulls. Still, I couldn't help but wonder… I reached into the foam again in roughly the same area I'd found the bat, and sure enough, my fingers closed round a ball. "Yes!" I said, holding the blue-coloured ball in my hands. It irked me that they'd changed its standard crimson colour, but I supposed they weren't about to give the BLU team a red weapon.
"Is this like some retarded form of baseball?" the Scout asked, frowning at my findings.
"No way mate, baseball is a retarded form of cricket. Cricket came first, then you Americans screwed it up and called it something different," I explained, still clutching the two weapons in my hands.
"Yeah right," he sneered playfully. He stuck his arm down into the box up until his shoulder and pulled out a small, typical-blue coloured cardboard box. He tore it open and I saw his eyes widen. "Whoa," he remarked, holding the thing out to me delicately.
It was a slingshot, but believe me when I say, it was no ordinary slingshot. "Wow, they really don't kid around with their stuff here huh?" I asked, analysing the weapon from every angle. It was quite the beauty in polished steel and heavy duty rubber.
"That must be one of mine." The voice came from behind me in the doorway. I turned around so fast I nearly dropped the slingshot. The Sniper and Medic were leaning against the doorframe and looking at us with interest. I hadn't even heard them approaching.
"One of yours?" I asked, confused.
"Yeah. Your job's to help everyone out right? So you got the cricket gear to help out Scout, and the slingshot for when you're with me," he explained.
"Oh, right." It made sense, in hindsight. "So there's got to be stuff here to help the Medic too," I figured, diving back into the box.
"Hey lookie here," Scout said, emerging with yet another treasure. "You got a sawed-off shotgun."
"And… Um, I'm not sure what this is," I admitted, holding out a queer-looking sort of jacket. It was without sleeves and was more buckles than material. Even more frequent than the buckles were the pockets, and when I reached into one, hundreds of tiny pellets came up. "What are they?" I asked, perplexed.
"I think they're Demo's stuff," Scout guessed, looking closer at the things. "They look like smaller versions of his grenades." Now that he mentioned it, they did look like grenades.
"Ok, so that's you, Sniper, Soldier, and Demo. What's next?"
"This has Pyro written all over it," Scout exclaimed, holding up a queer looking sort of gun. It was very small, with a very short barrel and a bell-shaped mouth. He tossed it to me, and I barely just caught it.
"What does it do?" I asked, perplexed by the odd-looking weapon. I turned it around in my hands to see it from all sides. "It doesn't look like i-"
BLAM!
I had let my finger get too close to the trigger, and it had gone off. I was very, very, very lucky the gun had been pointed away from me, or I'd have shot myself. Or worse, I'd have shot an alarmed looking Scout straight through the chest. Thankfully, the flare went straight through the open window, trailing a tongue of fire behind it.
I promptly put the gun down on the desk. "I don't think I'll be using that often," I admitted.
"Aye," a wide-eyed Sniper agreed, "I think that would be for the best."
"Vhy give her a flare gun though?" the Medic pondered, moving to the window and looking out. "It hardly caused any damage." His eyes seemed to scan the landscape until they settled on whatever it was he was looking for. "Ah, there we go," he said, pointing out. "See ze smoke?"
I stuck my head out the window and looked in the direction he was indicating. It took me a while, but then I saw where the flare had landed. Or rather, I saw the effect it caused where it landed. The entire area was engulfed in a cloud of thick, dark, blue smoke. I couldn't even see the ground beneath it, like a blanket had been spread over the place.
"Fuckin hell, that gun's sick," the Scout said from behind me. He'd come to look out the window too and nudged his head onto my shoulder to get a good view. I noticed how close his face was to mine, and once again I found myself fighting down the blush.
"Ja," the Medic agreed, nodding thoughtfully. "I think it aims to cause distraction and confusion in ze opposing team."
"Maybe I'll use it after all then," I decided, revoking my last comment. "Does it come with a gas mask?"
"Nope," Sniper said, peering into the box, "just this." He held up a small respirator the same colour as my headset. It didn't have a visor for my eyes, so the gas was probably non-toxic.
In addition to those five, we found a utility belt armed to the teeth with first-class tools. It even had a tiny battery-powered driller which fit in the palm of my hand. I'd smiled a little at that, though not with a certain undeniable sense of remorse. I had come so close to achieving my dream and running away from my terrible life before the accident happened. But I didn't let myself dwell upon that too much.
After that, the Medic and Heavy related weapons emerged from the crate. Compared to the rest of the previous findings, they were quite unremarkable. For Medic, I got a tranquilizer gun loaded with drug-tipped metal darts. I could choose which drug to coat the darts in; either morphine for my teammates, or a delirium hallucinogen for the enemy. For Heavy on the other hand, I got lead spike-covered boots that delivered killing kicks, but would probably slow me down to a crawl with their weight.
What was truly remarkable however, was the last item I found packed away carefully in a small rectangular box of rich blue velvet. I opened it, and my jaw dropped. "Bloody hell," I said, almost in whispers. Lying on the built-in cushion was probably the most beautiful weapon I would ever live to lay eyes on. I knew its name even before the Sniper told me.
"That's an Apache Pistol," he said, bending down to get a closer look. "Always wanted to get me one of those."
With unskilled fingers, I took the bronze weapon out of its box and held it up to the light. Intricate carvings decorated the polished metal. Even along the length of the glinting, foldable blade, the patterns continued uninterrupted. "I'm guessing this is for Spy," I said, still engulfed in awe.
"No kiddin," Scout said. "It's even got the same type of markings as the Ambassador."
"Ambassador?" I asked.
"It's this fancy gun he has. Real pretty an all, but nothing heavy duty."
"Ah," I remarked. I wasn't really paying attention to what he'd said, I was still too busy overcoming my awe for the new weapon. Out of all of them, this one was definitely my favourite. Ironic, really, since the Spy was probably my least favourite person on base, but one couldn't have everything. I let my eyes drift beyond the Scout, and they landed on the clock. We had got so caught up finding the weapons that I'd forgot about Soldier; my thirty minutes were almost up. "Shite," I said, quickly but carefully putting the pistol back into the velvet box. "I've got to get back to Soldier or he'll have my head," I said to Scout as I shoved the box into his hands.
"More literally than you'd think," Sniper quipped, and the Medic chuckled.
"What?" I asked, not quite getting the joke.
"Eh, you'll find out soon enough," the Australian snickered.
"Right," I said, picking up the shotgun amongst the pile of new weapons. "Later men," I said to them as I ran out the door.
"Good luck Sheila," the Sniper called after me. I could have sworn I'd heard him laugh again.
(Later that Evening...)
"I see what you meant about the heads."
I sat down beside the Sniper with my dinner in a plastic plate atop my lap. They still hadn't fixed the stove, so we were having dinner out back once more. This time however, the Engineer had provided us with white slices of bread and an assortment of fillings to choose from. By the time I'd put mine together, Scout was busy chomping down on what seemed to be an everything sandwich. I could swear I saw cheese and herring poking out of opposite ends of the bread. I myself had buttered two slices and filled them with a thin layer of salty crisps to make a layman's chip butty. I bit into it optimistically, and found it wasn't all that bad after all, even if it didn't compare to the actual thing.
"Do you have any sense of taste at all?" I asked the boy when a mess of chocolate sauce and jam dribbled down his chin.
"Mm?" he tried to ask, but succeeded only in spilling more of the concoction on himself. I suppressed a laugh and pressed one of the napkins I'd taken to his lips.
"Here, try not to make a mess all over yourself," I said as I wiped at his chin before the sticky globs could drop onto his shirt.
He swallowed everything he had in his mouth and flashed me a smile. "Thanks doll," he said with a wink.
"Don't mention it," I said, offering him my own sideways smile. Once more, I had donned the boy's too-large yet comfortable clothing. I'd chosen a light zip up that night too and changed my trousers. It was still just early September, and while the days were still comfortably warm, the nights had adopted a slight, brisk chill. Pretty soon it would get cold, but I assumed my clothes would have arrived by that point. Hopefully. "So how'd trainin with Solly go?" he asked in between bites.
"Oh, y'know," I said, averting my eyes, "alright."
"Alright?" the Scout repeated. "Come on, how bad did you flunk?"
"I did not flunk," I corrected. "I hit the targets he gave me… Sometimes."
The Scout laughed as soon as I said the last bit of my sentence. "Aw jeez, you're gonna suck. How are you gonna shoot those red knuckleheads if you can't even hit stationary targets?"
"Hey, I did hit them. And they weren't always stationary," I murmured.
"He gave you moving targets?" Sniper asked from his chair.
"I don't think he intended to."
"Oh boy," the Scout piped up, seemingly understanding what I was implying.
"Don't," I warned him.
"You hit the freakin Soldier didn't you?" He didn't even wait for a reply, my face was enough of a giveaway. He leaned his head back and laughed that full-hearted laugh of his. "Oh man, he must've loved that."
"Honestly, I thought my head would be impaled beside the others before nightfall," I admitted.
"How'd he let you keep it?" Sniper asked, nearly choking on his food not to chuckle.
"The bullet kinda went straight through the palm of his hand. Then hit the target right on bulls-eye behind him."
"No way," Scout denied.
"I'm not even kidding. That bullet tore straight through his hand and buried itself in the Red Heavy target before I even knew what was happening. I was actually happy before I realised the bullet had taken a little detour. His yelling gave it away quite quickly, though."
Even the Sniper laughed this time, chortling so hard he nearly dropped out of his chair. Even the Pyro, who was sitting nearby tearing petals off daisies, let out something resembling a laugh. The rest were out of earshot, conversing loudly about people I did not know and places I'd never been.
"The rest went fine though," I assured them after they stopped laughing at me. And of course it was, the rest was all just memory work. The Soldier had given me a detailed run-through of every single mission we could be assigned with, along with strategy plans and location data. He showed me map after map of different warzones, pointing out the capture points and enemy bases. The thing we spent most time one however, was the Intelligence. Stealing the Intel, he'd told me, was probably the second most important job we had. When I'd asked him what the first was, he told me it was protecting our own. The Intel contained sensitive and essential knowledge. The less Red knew about us, and the more we knew about them, the better. I had to admit, I was not all that happy knowing the enemy team could acquire such critical information about me, and much less that I had no idea what said critical information was. "Then he showed me his heads," I told them.
"He does that to everyone," Sniper assured me.
Later that evening, I sat on my knees beside the doorframe while the rest of the team hit the showers. Just like the day before, I'd had mine before dinner to avoid unpleasant situations. I was occupying myself with fixing the door while I waited for Scout to get back. Now that I had the tools at my disposal, I could actually do something about the gaping hole in our bedroom. It still wasn't an easy task, especially since most of the hinges had been ripped from their place, but after some time I managed to decently align everything with where it was supposed to be. All I needed now was to screw in the bolts. Good thing I had a power drill. I reached out my hand to grab it, but it wasn't there with the other tools. I thought back a bit and decided I must've accidentally placed it back inside the crate. The box was still there, occupying the already limited space inside the room. I dug my hand into the Styrofoam and searched around until my fingers brushed against something… velvety.
"What?" I asked nobody in particular. Had I put my revolver back into the crate? I looked behind me; the Apache was in its case lying on my unmade bed. So no then, this was something else. I gripped it and lifted it out of the sea of white. It blew at insistent bits of foam that clung to the box and held it in my hands. "That's strange," I remarked. Why would I have an extra weapon for one of the classes? Hadn't I already got my nine items? I ran through them all in my head. Yes, I'd found all nine, so what was this extra one? I figured I wasn't going to find out just by stroking the velvet on the cover. I found the clasp, and popped it open.
"Whoa."
That was definitely not a weapon. Well, it probably was in some way, but that beautiful thing inside the case was not going to be killing any people, any time soon. The object, as it turned out, was a golden pocket watch.
"Damn," I remarked, stroking the polished metal with my index finger. Much like the Apache, the pocket watch was a work of art. When I examined it closer, there was no mistaking which class it was made to aid. It had exactly the same carvings as the revolver, and according to scout, as the Ambassador. I had no doubt this watch somehow helped me better serve the Spy's needs during battle. After all, no other class could be associated with this level of grace and finery. Oh I hated him alright. I barely even knew him and I knew I hated him, but there was no denying he had a certain aura of elegance. "What's your secret?" I asked the watch, turning it over in my hands. Something caught my eye then; an ornately scripted 'D' was embossed in the middle of the golden face. It was flanked by two lambs with palm fronds in their mouths and pomegranates at their hooves. I was quite taken aback by the attention to detail on such a small object, and decided it would join the Apache in the place of honour as favourite weapons. If only I knew what it did.
But I supposed I would have to wait for a few days. After all, it was only just a watch, it couldn't be all that spectacular.
Right?