Team Fortress 2

The gravel under Scout’s boots felt like loose teeth, shifting and clicking with every frustrated step he took into the gray twilight. The sun had long since dipped behind the jagged, iron-ore mountains of the Badlands, leaving only a bruised purple smear across the sky that offered no real light. It was cold—that dry, biting cold that seemed to scrape the back of your throat every time you breathed.

"I can't believe I'm doin' this," Scout muttered, his voice cracking slightly as he shoved his hands deeper into the greasy pockets of his red baseball jacket. "The war's over for the week. We won. We got the intel. I should be in the rec room, or eatin' Miss Pauling’s lousy coffee cake, or... or just doin' nothin'. But nah. 'Scout, go get the bucket.' 'Scout, use your legs.' I got legs, alright. I got legs that are gonna kick somebody's teeth down their windpipe if I gotta walk another mile in this dust."

He was the youngest of the bunch, only twenty-six, though sometimes the way the others looked at him made him feel like he was twelve. He was the fastest—everyone knew that. If something needed fetchin' from the frontline trenches before the BLU team’s scavengers got to it, it was always the Boston boy who got the tap on the shoulder.

A heavy, deliberate clop of boots followed behind him. Tavish—the Demoman—was walking slightly to his left, his broad shoulders casting a long, skewed shadow in the dying light. The big man was nursing a half-empty scrumpy bottle, his eyepatch skewed, though he wasn't drunk enough yet to be singing.

"Ye shouldn't let it get to ye, laddie," Demoman rumbled, his voice thick with the burr of the Highlands. He took a long swig, the liquid glugging audibly in the quiet air.