Dell wakes up with a pounding headache and too much damn blue in his vision.

"Ah! He lives!"

He's outside. Only explanation for the cloudless sky above him, either that or he's in a children's nursery. It definitely feels like the former with an array of rocks poking him in the back. He sits up and hacks away a lungful of freshwater.

"You fell in the river," the nasally voice continues to explain, in a bedside manner that might make a hungry shark proud. At least its owner has the decency to pat him roughly on the back while he coughs up an entire river.

"Fell off a cliff, more like," Dell says. He clears his throat and looks around, realizing the one supporting him isn't the only one gathered uncomfortably close. "…You all fished me out then?"

Of the remaining two huddled around, the closest squirms in delight and mumbles something Dell can't understand through their scuba(?) equipment. Probably the one that hauled him to shore. He doesn't have time to ask before a rubber hand closes over his own, which is surprisingly sweet. Despite still being drenched all the way to the uncomfortable squishiness of his socks+6, Dell finds himself touched by the gesture.

"Heavy saw fall," the big man that's halfway blocking out the sun with his shoulder blade. "Rescue little man."

"Who's Heavy?" Dell asks, fundamentally understanding that he is 'little man'.

Heavy points to himself. "Heavy is Heavy." He swings one of those dinner-plate sized hands toward the man still patting Dell on the back even though he long ago stopped coughing. "Is Medic. Little Pyro."

The scuba diver hums and pats Dell's arm again.

"…And Soldier is. Somewhere."

Dell isn't sure if he's imagining the shadow that falls over Heavy's face. He'd blame it on a passing cloud but. You know.

Medic doesn't leave him time to speculate, saying, "ah he is most likely patrolling. It is at least his third favorite activity, behind drills and canned meats."

"Canned meats. This is not activity."

Medic waves Heavy's accuracy away and fixes Dell with a delighted grin bordering on the bizarre, "and you are?"

"…Engineer," Engie admits with a sigh.

He can feel the level of excitement hike up several notches.

"Oh wunderbar! Because we have several machine in need of repair that-"

"A'course you do," Engineer resigns himself. "Before we start this whole rigmarole, d'ya have a towel for me? Or, I don't know, a chair?"

They get him a chair.

It's a foldable lawn chair, blue and white plastic weaving together in a mock weave, that feels just the right level of patchwork and artificial here at the bottom of the cliffs. As Medic delves into the long list of things around their settlement that need fixing—the dam controls, the lights in the dam, the water purifier (honestly the whole thing sounds like it's on the fritz)—he towels off and observes what they've built. Fresh crops spring along the river's edge, green shoots this time of year but Medic assures him that they've got plenty from last year in the stores and wouldn't it be lovely to stay here and never have to worry come winter again?

Engie thinks about running up above in the wastes. A whirring behind him, so loud he'd glanced over his shoulder tripped. He shivers and doesn't answer.

He didn't get much of a chance to look at the homestead as he'd been falling to his assumed death, but now that he has, he has to admit it's been a long time since he's seen a human settlement that looks this healthy.

"And of course Pyro has been doing well with the crops, each year better than the last!" Medic boats.

"They really called Pyro?" Engineer asks. "Wouldn't something like…Farmer, or Tender be better?"

"No," Medic replies cheerfully. "It really wouldn't."

He watches the blue-suited not-actually-for-swimming little body bob between the rows, cooing as they go, as though each plant were worth its weight in jade. He glances above, to those red rocks that from here seem to almost curve inward instead of slope up.

"Alright," he says, having toweled off best he can. Medic brightens considerably as he stands. "Show me this generator of yours."

"So like," Scout begins, and Demo closes his eye and groans internally. "I gotta ask. What's with the sword?"

Oh boy. My favorite question.

Demo feels the migraine coming, and covers disinclination by pretending he's looking under the counter. The veterinary clinic they're currently raiding offers no helpful distraction. While he's there, he rubs the bridge of his nose.

(Rubbing the bridge of your nose while wearing an eyepatch is actually a lot harder than you'd think.)

"What about it?" he asks, rummaging through rotten dog biscuits and long forgotten flyers.

"It's just kinda. Really hard to ignore."

Demo's been the new guy before. He knows how it is. Barely been a month living with this unfamiliar team and already they're starting to get a bit antsy around him, mouthing questions behind his back, wondering why he's like…all this. He can't jeopardize living here though. He's got nowhere left to turn.

Just don't let them know you're crazy and you'll be fine.

If reaching around and slapping the sword attached to his back wouldn't give himself away, he would have done it gladly.

"The Eyelander's an ancient blade," Demo says, finding a flashlight that still has some batteries in it. "Historic."

"Uh. Ok?"

"It's killed more men than you've ever seen! It's a great weapon."

"Better than a gun?"

"Yes."

"What makes it so great?"

Demo feels his sentences sticking together like toffee between the teeth. "It's. Er. Magic."

Doing great so far mate!

As Demo cringes, he peaks over the counter to see Scout raising an eyebrow, his hands full of decades old magazines.

"Uh-huh," he says, shoving his haul into the satchel. "And how do you know it's magic?"

"Well. It, uh, told me."

(Eyelander imitates the sound of a plane falling out of the sky.)

After a moment, Scout shakes his head, then goes back to looting magazines. Demo puffs out his cheeks and releases a breath, figuring that could have gone a lot worse. It could always come back to bite him later if Scout starts spreading it around to the others, but-

The thought is cut short as Demo reaches for what he thinks is part of an examining table and what actually turns out to be a not-quite-dead robot.

"Shit!" Scout whoops as the thing fires to life.

And really fires, as there's some sort of jetpack welded to it, which it uses to propel itself off the floor and crash into the ceiling. It hangs there for several seconds, inertia forcing it upwards, until the combined pressure turns the angle into a skid and sends it skittering around the ceiling's corners.

Scout whips the sawed-off from his back and empties a shell into the spasming target. The Eyelander is out and in Demo's hands, but he can't do anything, not until it gets a wee bit closer…

It's not clear whether there's still a mind behind those colored-plastic eyes after so many years of atrophy and water damage. Whether actually attacking them or merely acting on reflex, it launches itself at Demo in a sudden dive. He steps to the side and swings Eyelander clean through the robot's body; it crashes into the opposite wall in distinct halves.

"Crap man," Scout hisses, pumping out the empty shells and dropping in a fresh pair. "Crap. They're not supposed to be this active. This is supposed to be a dead city."

"They're mobilizing," Demo agrees dourly, looking at the remains of the robot still half-sputtering flame.

Scout shivers. Demo agrees. If more robots come to their city, their little lookout tower is going to be right on the front lines.

"C'mon," Demo nudges Scout's shoulder with his own. "Let's go see if Spy found anything, eh?"

The haul from the veterinary clinic wasn't great, and Spy hasn't done much better. Within a half an hour, they're walking from the city, out into the wastes again. Demo wonders if Sniper is watching from his favorite perch on the top of the dam. Not that long ago the thought would have unnerved him, but now it's oddly comforting that that little red dot is watching their backs. He waves, on the off chance his mate is looking.

"Oh, hey Spy," Scout says when they're almost there. "Found these for you."

Scout slips a bottle of painkillers into Spy's palm. The relief on his face is obvious. Some days the twist in Spy's leg is worse than usual, sometimes it's less, but Demo knows enough about gammy legs that it's always paining him.

"Merci," he says genuinely, pocketing the bottle.

Demo watches the interaction silently. When it's done, he folds it up and sets it down in the back of his mind, somewhere among the storage boxes and one rusty old sword.

"There's been more of them," Spy informs Sniper as the scouting party deposits their bags at the bottom of the stairs.

Sniper isn't even surprised. "Shot three of 'em while I was waiting for you to get back."

"How close?"

The pair move further into the base. Demo could go with them, listen in on a conversation that probably won't make them any better prepared for what's to eventually come, but instead he stays with Scout and continues to unpack.

He says, "we didn't find any painkillers in that clinic."

Scout stiffens, halfway to removing a pair of pliers from the bag. He shakes it off quickly. "Uh, yeah, we did bozo. I just didn't tell you when I found 'em."

"Scout," Demo says more lowly. "You didn't even go near the medicine cabinets. You spent the whole time cramming old magazines down the front of your shirt."

Scout remains frozen. Maybe he meant to make a show of finding them, but got distracted when the robot attacked them. Maybe he thought no one would notice. Either way, Demo knows they didn't come from the vet.

"Scout. Where did you get them."

Scout glances to where Sniper and Spy disappeared to, working his overbite into his lip. "River encampment."

"Dammit lad." Demo takes Scout by the arm and marches them both outside, out of earshot. He's pissed, but he's not about to turn in Scout either. "What are you thinking? You know we can't afford to have another team breathing down our necks, and you're willing to piss off the closest one by stealing medical supplies from 'em?"

"It ain't fair alright!" Scout shouts freely now that they're away from the base. "I've been in their half of the dam and they got tons of supplies, all stockpiled up."

"Enough that they won't notice a bottle 'a painkillers going missing every month? How'd you even get down there anyway? It's half a day's hike at least to get to one of the scalable areas."

"There's a tunnel through the dam." Scout says this with a small twinkle in his eye, and no small amount of ambition. "I found it while you chucklenuts were wandering around moaning about the robots. It leads straight to their base. Think about it Demo! There's more 'a them sure, but they don't have enough guns between 'em all. We could take the plain, control the whole sector."

A tunnel through the dam…Demo can't pretend that doesn't change everything. He files that crumb of knowledge away too.

Still, he shakes his head. "Spy's barely up to fighting 'bots, and Sniper isn't going to be able to help us at close range. It'd be a suicide mission."

"Then we'd have Snipes shoot a couple of 'em before we go down there! They're always wandering around, I bet he could do it easy…"

"Scout."

Scout looks away.

Demo comes closer, puts his hand back on Scout's arm.

"Okay," Scout admits. "Maybe I don't want 'em all dead or whatever. But Demo, you should have seen what they have down there. It…ain't fair that they got so much and we got… this."

He gestures to the plateau, the abyss of twisted metal that stretches out to the city, their one font of resources.

"Mm. Well, we got a couple of things those soft-bellied farmers dunnae have."

"Yeah?" Scout accuses. "Like what?"

"Like…" Demo takes a long hard look at the horizon. He solemnly concludes, "…Trees."

For a second, the ever-present wash of the dam is the only thing hanging in the air. Then, Scout's face splits and he laughs. "Yeah, I guess we got trees. All those idiots down in the valley might have crops, 'n medicine, and a big sheet of rock between them and the bots, but they don't have trees, do they?"

Demo mirrors his grin. "They do not! And they're beautiful this time of year, all the colors of a sunset."

"Hell yeah!" Scout begins to jog off in the direction of the steepest slope. "Race you to 'em!"

There's no chance. Of course there isn't, it's Scout and Scout just does it to brag, but Demo's just glad the kid's out of his murderous funk so he just scoots on after him. It takes ten minutes to reach the outcropping, the few still standing trees rustling with a familiar rustle that's oddly comforting; it almost seems like the war never touched here at all.

Demo is huffing by the time he catches up to Scout, who of course is as sore a winner as ever. "Ha! I think like every bot just had its core wind down."

"Oi!" Demo says, leaning over his knees. "Go easy, aye? You're not the one carrying around a two-foot hunk 'a pure steel on his back."

Scout snorts. "Bet I could still beat you even without you carrying it. Shit, I bet I could beat you if I was carrying it!"

If he puts sticky little chewing gum hands on me he's a dead man.

Scout, not nearly as out of breath as Demo but at the very least winded, spreads his arms and falls backwards into a leaf pile. After a moment, Demo joins him. They sit, breathing pure oxygen, the canopy golden above them.

"You have to stop going into the basin, lad," Demo says after a while.

Scout throws both arms over his face. "Yeah. Yeah I guess I know that. It was just…to see all that again. Security. We used to live in a homestead like that, Spy and I, a little after the invasion when everyone realized that the robots didn't go to rural areas. It was great. People growing stuff, treating everyone like a community…there were even kids!"

"Really?" Demo turns and props his head under his arm.

"Yeah! I mean, sucks that they'll never know anything but a world where a bunch of tin cans rule everything, but it's nice to know…there's hope I guess. That we ain't out of the race yet."

"We?"

"Humans. People."

"Ah."

Demo waits.

"There's just so much…" Scout trails off. "I missed out on all that 'being normal' stuff. No college, no prom. Never got to go on a normal date."

"Isn't this a date?" Demo jokes. "We chatted, took a nice walk in the park…"

"This isn't a park, numbnuts. There's maybe like, ten trees total."

"They're giving it their best shot."

Scout kicks him lightly on the ankle. "Anyway. Thanks for…not telling Spy and Snipes right away."

"I wouldn't've," Demo says.

"I know," Scout assures. "I just want you to know that I don't even care if you're crazy and talk to your sword. You're a good guy in my book."

Demo smiles, and leans back into the leaf pile. "Alright. Good enough for me."

Despite the name, the suit isn't actually fireproof.

Pyro takes it off to mend it, sticking it deep into the charcoal until the sides of the tear are jammy and pliable, then drizzles it over with a small amount of hot rubber they'd heated up beforehand. The suit—fire retardant, not fireproof—accepts the new material, binding the edges of the jagged cut until it's lumpy but airtight. They sustained it while helping Engie inside the dam, no matter how many times he's told them he has it handled and they're just getting underfoot. They like to be helpful, but then their suit had gotten shut inside one of the various swinging hatches covers, and then it had ripped, and then Engie had laid into them so that was the end of that.

This is the perfect spot for the fire. It's equidistant from the dam, the bunkhouse where they all sleep, and the auxiliary generator building. Cables snake from the dam to the much more manageable sized shelter, squatting like an old toad and clearly not of the same make as the pre-war buildings. Pyro likes it though. Its haphazardness gives it character. Above the auxiliary hangs the silo; domed and satisfied, like it's watching over them all. So much more comforting than the lookout tower on the cliffs above, which are cold and distant. Pyro enjoys working under its gaze.

The suit is nearing good-as-old. They lift it out and check it over a few more times, simply enjoying being by the homestead's pit fire under the stars. The corn stalks are long and sweeping now, rustling music to join the fire's crackle, the ongoing whoosh of the river the underbeat to the whole symphony.

Soldier's joined without them even noticing. He can be real quiet when he wants to (which admittedly isn't often). He says nothing, but as he takes a log across the blinding rays of the campfire—obscuring even as they alight—he squints at Pyro like he can't quite place them.

"It's me Soldier," they say. "You've seen me out of the suit before."

"Right," Soldier says. "Of course. It's…you."

Arguing with Soldier is unlikely to yield results. They sigh, and go back to flattening the hot rubber in place. It could almost resume being a nice peaceful evening, but Soldier barks up suddenly again.

"Good weather tonight!" he says.

Pyro hmms in the affirmative.

"Sightlines for miles! No busted up old robot is going to get at our reserves of battery acid tonight."

"Unless they come from the dam," Pyro points out, not looking up as they test the malleable patch.

Soldier falls to silence. For anyone else it would be a natural sort of conclusion to the conversation, but on Soldier it's eerily abrupt. They lift their head and raise an eyebrow at him.

"Private," he says. "You. Hm. You're the only one trustworthy of this intelligence."

"That's because no one else in the 'stead wants to talk to you," they point out. "They think you're crazy."

A dark look over his features, competing with the night around. "They won't when I tell them there have been noises. In the dam."

"That's the water, Soldier," Pyro says, laying out the suit to cool.

"Living noises."

They shrug. "Raccoons maybe?"

"Negatory! Raccoons sound like," Soldier opens his mouth and emits a hyper-realistic raccoon noise from his vocal cords. "This was not that. It was more a ooooOOOOoooo crashnoise."

Pyro, who'd fallen off their plastic lawn chair in flailing alarm, asks, "how did you do that with your mouth?"

"Anyway. We should redouble patrols. I will bring it up at the next team meeting, and I expect your vote!"

"I'll think about it Soldier." They gather their suit off the ground, at the same time gathering themself off the ground, until everything is nicely gathered and ready to be on its way. They'd rather not be seen with Soldier, truth be told. They want Engie to know they're helpful, and associating with the unstable man who'd assigned himself with the homestead's protection isn't a good way to do that. "I'm going inside."

"Head on a swivel, son!"

His parting words are meant to be rousing and helpful. They think.

Inside and away from Soldier's crazy. They're not like him, no matter what everyone at their first homestead said, words behind hands and then in front of hands when things started crumbling to ash when they shouldn't have. It hadn't been Pyro's fault, but they'd felt the eyes on the back of their neck and known as sure as sugar that they'd be dead if they hadn't run when they did.

Things are different here. They're trusted, useful , and this time they won't-

Pyro pulls off into the shadows. Here in the generator building attached to the silo things are always rumbling in their sleep, but even so Pyro can pick the meandering strings of voices through the buzz. They don't know why they creep closer instead of just stepping into the dull light where the overheads hang; maybe their conversation with Soldier set them on edge more than they thought, maybe they aren't as much of a perfect citizen as they pretend to be. In the end, they approach the heads hiding in the iron-flavored room on silent feet.

"Food. Gone," Heavy is saying.

"You're sure about that?" Engineer asks, his form dubious beside Heavy's, which blocks most of the incoming light.

"Heavy does not make mistake with food," Heavy says. Even wrapped in darkness, Pyro shivers. "Heavy counts. Every day. Food is gone that was not eaten during meal."

"Medical supplies too."

Pyro hadn't even seen Medic until he spoke, partially blocked by Engineer. He's facing Pyro though. If Heavy's expression had made Pyro shiver, then Medic's feels like being dunked into an ice flow.

Engie, facing away, rubs his hands over his face. He sighs. Builds to say something. Loses it. Tries again. "We don't know that-"

"Engineer," Medic says testily.

"We don't know that." Engineer finds his resolve. "We're not going to do anything rash, alright? No questions, no accusations, nothing . We're going to sleep on this, and only then start figuring out what we're going to do."

By the time Heavy and Medic voice their grudging ascent, Pyro is already backing up the way they came.

"And fellas…?"

Pyro's heart is spiking, their feet with minds of their own.

"…Let's keep this between the three of us, alright?"

Their backward pedaling takes them straight into one of the hatches welded to the floor, dragging them to the ground with a resounding clang . The reverberation and the echo of their heartbeat is too loud to know if they've been discovered, their hands flying to silence the still vibrating hatch lid. Had it always been open? Will Engie know they were here if they don't put it back on? In a panic they slam it closed, sprinting off into the bowels of the residency before their teammates can investigate.