#tf2k

This right here is the master post for my ongoing TF2 AU, TF2K. New entries Friday evenings or when I feel like it :P I hope someone enjoys this (and even if not I enjoy it and that's what matters).

January, 1975. Soldier and Zhanna are gleefully expecting their first kid. Only Spy knows they're not the first of the mercs to have a child. Not even he knows how "not the first" they are.

Disclaimer: I'm playing fast and loose with timelines and canon here (no more than the source material really) and getting creative in the absence of a final comic. Also, I, of course, don't own any part of TF2.

The Kids, a.k.a. Team Fortress International

Hedy Mayer - the Rocket Scientist

Christoph Osterberg - the Shrink

Patrick O'Bannon - the Shield

Kelly Phillips - the Trapper

Rosa Guzman - the Hunter

Cliff & Lance Nakamura - the Driver & the Ninja

Jane "JJ" Doe Jr. - the Wizard

Dennis - the Beast

Mason Hale - the "Administrator"

Other Characters

"Auntie Pyro"

OHM

The Moms

World Notes

Timeline

Australium

Other

Quotes

Pyro is a lot of things.

A strong independent woman who don’t need no pronouns (He, she, they, it – she’s heard it all, and she could not give a damn if she tried)

A 4-time severe burn victim (the mask isn’t the only thing muffling their speech – scarring around their mouth makes it difficult to form certain sounds).

Noted reclusive children’s book editor I. C. Burns (an industry legend – if you’ve got his attention, you’ve got a bestseller).

Quite possibly Miss Pauling’s partner (they aren’t official yet for any number of reasons, but they’ve got a good thing going).

A parent is not one of them – it would be rather difficult for her to miss that.

They adore being “Auntie Pyro” – chemistry talk with Hedy, girls’ nights with Kelly and Rosa, looking after Cliff, Lance, and JJ, etc.

Next up – Just what (or who) is OHM?

(1975 – 8mo/2000 – 25)

Try though she might to deny it, Barbie Nakamura wouldn’t have a leg to stand on – she is, unfortunately, one of Scout’s “fried chicken tramps”.

The pregnancy was unexpected, unwanted, and unpleasant, with birth complications leaving Cliff paralyzed at the waist and Barbie bedridden for a month - the second she regained mobility, she ran out, leaving the twins with their grandparents and young uncles.

Their Baachan and Jiichan aren’t exactly thrilled at being left with two more children to raise at their ages (twins are bad luck as it is) – they spend months interrogating every man in a two-town radius to try and find the responsible party, but no one in Teufort thinks to point them toward the badlands.

Come on – Jeremy Gryde has seven siblings and you’re telling me multiples don’t run in that family? (Yes, I know that’s not really how it works, shush)

Cliff, despite his condition, apparently has unlimited energy, and seems determined to be mobile, crawling and climbing wherever he can reach – once he managed to get on his Uncle Gene’s skateboard and built up some decent momentum before Baa-Baa stopped him (much to his dismay).

Lance, meanwhile, seems practically inanimate at times, apparently content to just watch the world. For a while the family was scared there was “something wrong with him too”, but he hasn’t missed a milestone yet – to this day, no one’s sure when he first stood upright, they just walked in and he was up. By now, everyone’s stopped worrying about him being nonverbal and started taking bets on first words (Jii-jii has 5 bucks on a full sentence).

As different and independent as they both are, the twins do share a deep bond – not that that’s always a good thing, as figuring out which one has a problem is complicated when they’re both crying.

Post-abduction-and-rescue, Scout… does not handle taking them on well. He’s trying, of course, but twin toddlers will challenge even the most prepared caretakers, let alone some guy who can count the number of kids he’s held on one hand (all of them his nephews, all instances heavily supervised).

Of all the people stepping up to help with the twins (Engineer helps him set up his room, Patrick watches them like a hawk, Christoph is eager to study their behavior), Scout certainly didn’t anticipate Spy getting so invested – he figures the Frenchie just wants to rub his face in his screwups.

Spy, meanwhile, is internally screaming about being a grandfather and how much the boys remind him of his petit lapin. On one particularly rough night, Armand helps Jeremy break radio silence so sa chere Janice can offer advice and meet her new grandbabies.

After a few disruptive incidents, a rule is established on base that you can’t yell at anyone holding a baby. This rule is just as quickly exploited, and pretty soon asking to hold a baby is basically an admission of guilt.

Just when RED thinks they’ve had enough life-altering family revelations, the circumstances force Spy to expose his own dirty little secret – the week of fallout isn’t fun for anyone, and doesn’t get resolved until OHM’s invasion forces the matter.

Once OHM is ousted (and Chiyoko Nakamura harangues Scout within an inch of his life), their new challenge is figuring out a custody situation that will satisfy everyone. The day is saved when Jeremy’s brother Kevin volunteers to foster the twins with his partner David in Denver - the weekly 8-hour drive is worth the security.

After finishing high school, Cliff begins his crusade to master every vehicle known to man – with some help from Engie and Hedy to make his rigs both accessible and barely street legal, he dabbles in everything from delivery driving to drag racing.

Lance, meanwhile, disappears off the face of the earth the night after graduation – everyone spends months searching for him, except the emphatically unconcerned Cliff. When he returns just as suddenly from his surprise two-year trip to Japan, it’s with a lot of new scars, new skills, and new connections.

The twins were the first of the new generation to join up with TFI (Cliff says he was really first, Lance insistently refuses to comment), taking their troublemaking worldwide as the Driver and the Ninja.

Next up – a mad, magical, red-blooded Russo-American…

(1975 – 27/2000 – 52)

Darleane Mayer met Dell Conagher in college studying theoretical physics – her second Ph.D., his sixth. For that one year they were study buddies, and for the one night of their graduation party they were something else.

The pregnancy was a surprise to Darleane, but not an unwelcome one – she had an interest in being a parent but not so much in being a wife, and with a bit of elbow grease she quickly proved herself unfireable from her new position at Black Mesa.

Baby Hedy was named after Darleane’s favorite inventor and actress Hedy Lamarr, and grew up in the halls of Black Mesa, learning the periodic table alongside the alphabet and designing space shuttles before she could drive a car.

While the sciences came easy to her, the humanities really didn’t – in the same school year she was TA-ing 10th grade trigonometry and repeating 6th grade English.

After high school, she spent a year interning at Black Mesa before her mom insisted that she get a degree – though what really convinced her to go was an ex-classmate’s insinuation that she couldn’t.

There is nothing this woman will not accomplish out of sheer spite – among her life’s greatest ambitions is to launch a teapot into stable orbit to get one over on her second-grade teacher.

Zephaniah Mann University took one look at her application and threw so many scholarships at her she’s practically being paid to attend – as of ‘75 she’s 7 years and 4 Ph.D.s deep (chemistry, astrophysics, aerospace engineering, and the college’s first computer science degree) with no signs of stopping.

It's at ZMU that she met Christoph, her best friend, husband for tax benefits, and partner in mad science.

It was Christoph who made Hedy the drunken bet that would change their lives – at his instigation, she invented the polycyclotron (a.k.a. the Tricycle, the Three-Ring-Circus) and became the first person to synthesize Australium.

It was this act that put her on OHM’s radar – and the rest of the kids, once OHM realized her connection to Team Fortress and began looking for others.

Discovering an adult child was not on Engineer’s bingo card when the team went on that rescue mission, and Hedy threw Dell for quite a few loops, but he did eventually get through to her over their mutual eccentricities (technical talents, music taste, mild god complex, etc.)

While on RED base, she becomes “chemistry buddies” with Demo and Pyro and develops a tenuous relationship with her father-in-law Medic (his skepticism is understandable - his marriage of convenience didn't go too well). She also encourages Kelly’s inventiveness, giving her construction tips.

Once everything with OHM is sorted out, Dell immediately calls Darleane for a long talk.

Meanwhile, Hedy returns to ZMU, presenting the Tricycle as her nuclear physics thesis. She accepts her fifth Ph.D. that June and her Nobel Prize the following December – her acceptance speech is the first in the institution’s history to include the phrase “kiss my ass.”

Hedy’s exit from ZMU heralds a hiring slap fight between NASA and Aperture Science – she picks the latter to start, though she’ll work at both and beyond in the coming years (after the fifth time she gets used as an unwitting test subject, she bids Aperture adieu).

The ’76 Conagher family reunion is one heck of an event – Hedy is quickly overwhelmed by her new grandpa’s, aunt’s, and cousins’ enthusiasm.

As Y2K passes uneventfully (with her help), Hedy accepts a position with Team Fortress Industries and joins her fellow “next-genners” in international mayhem as the Rocket Scientist (or “Rocketeer” for short and/or fun).

Next up - her psycho psychologist partner in life and crime...

(1975 – 6/2000 – 31)

Diana Guzman met Mick Mundy at a roadside campsite – her on a free-loving freewheeling roadtrip, him on just another job. They shared a few blunts, shared a bed, shared breakfast, and hit the road their separate ways.

You think a hardcore hippie’s going to stress out about a surprise baby? Diana loved her little gift from the universe from the moment she found out, and settled down with a commune who would support her little indigo child as much as she did.

Rosa is a girl of few words (in English or Spanish), and of few noises in general – Diana dresses her in bangles and flip-flops half for the New Age aesthetic and half to keep her audible.

Every spare moment Rosa has she spends in the fields and forest around the commune, teaching herself to track, sneak, and lure to get up close with the animals. So long as she’s back before sunset, Mama doesn’t worry and doesn’t question – who is she to stop her Rosebud’s journey to be one with nature?

Quietly (as in all things) Rosa harbors doubts about her Mama’s “peace and love on planet earth” outlook. She’s seen hawks snatch up grazing rabbits, seen deer eating roadkill in the winter, seen mother birds throwing runts from the nest, been scratched, stung, and bit many times over – she knows the wild isn’t always kind.

At 6 she started doing chores for neighbors outside the commune to earn money, saving up for a camera to share her animal encounters – it’s on the way back from a leaf-raking job that she gets abducted.

Sniper avoids her at first – he thinks he’s too rough for a kid, that she’d be better off with the others – but he keeps an eye on her from afar. It takes a few “accidental” encounters for him to realize she’s seeking him out, that she wants to know him.

While with RED, Rosa continues to spend her days exploring, as much inside as outside – an industrial compound is very different from a subsistence-and-salvage settlement. She becomes quite taken with the base’s air vents, frequently popping up in unexpected places (she even gets the drop on Spy once – with witnesses, unfortunately for him).

Between all the sneaking and climbing, Sniper starts calling her “Spider” – as an adult she gets a tattoo of a rosebud and huntsman spider in honor of both her parents.

She rooms with Kelly on base – they bond over camp skills and craftiness, and Pyro teaches them the joy of sleepovers. Patrick is also a favorite of hers, particularly when she doesn’t feel like speaking English.

Once OHM is out of the way, Rosa returns to her mother and the commune, but adds a walk into town to her weekly routine – with his parents gone, Sniper’s glad to have someone to call again.

Sniper sends Rosa a camera for her 7th birthday – Diana helps her build a darkroom, and the community soon gets visual proof that her “nature tales” are not a bit exaggerated.

Even as the Flower Children grow up and the commune drifts apart, Rosa’s interests – ecology, photography, stealth and subterfuge – remain strong as she goes to school, goes to college, wanders the world honing her crafts.

To the public, Rosa Guzman is a globetrotting wildlife photojournalist. To poachers, she’s the shadow that stalks the rainforests and savannahs, tearing through their operations before vanishing into the night.

“Poachers” includes Charles Darling and Saxton Hale (who Rosa has not forgiven for his actions against the hippie community) – Sniper supports his daughter’s crusade, but sometimes he does wish she would stop shooting his boss.

It takes Hale’s retirement from game hunting in 2000 to get Rosa on board with joining TFI – with a promise to direct her substantial paycheck toward conservation efforts, she’s happy to be their Hunter.

Next up – twin toddlers of cuteness and chaos…

(1975 – 16/2000 – 41)

It was love at first sight for Mary O’Bannon when Mikhail Bogdanov flew in to stop her being mugged. Learning that her big, strong savior was fresh off the boat, she invited him to stay in her Vinegar Hill apartment until he got on his feet.

When Misha found work out west, Mary insisted on making their last night together special. For her, it was a dream come true that gave her her precious boy. For him, it was a final favor to a friend, and a final confirmation that he didn’t like women that way.

Little Patrick always told his mama that they didn’t need his disappeared dad, that he’d protect her now. When the policeman told him about the car crash, it wasn’t just a loss to him – it was a failure.

With no relatives willing to take him in, Patrick spent the next 9 years being shuffled around foster families and group homes. He learned quickly to make himself a target, a punching bag for feral fosters or problem parents, taking the hits so the other kids didn’t have to.

It helps that he’s a giant for his age – he was 6 feet tall by the time he was 12, and his underfed frame is all muscle.

This kid is a born and bred New Yorker – blunt as hell in every language (he’s got the basics down in Spanish, French Creole, and Mandarin), can slip through a crowd like a fish through water, and keeps a ranked list of bodega bacon-egg-n-cheese sandwiches.

Things actually seemed to be looking up for him as ’75 began – he’d been in the same home for almost three months, he had time to focus on his homework (he actually wasn’t terrible at history), he’d joined the wrestling team – and then he got kidnapped while taking out the trash.

That wrestling training did pay off – he managed to get Scout into a submission hold before realizing these RED weirdos were here to rescue them.

It destroys Heavy, finding out he has family he wasn’t there to protect (his already complicated feelings about that time of his life don’t help) – he’s immediately doing everything he can to reach out, which just puts Patrick off even more than he already is.

Arriving on RED base, he becomes a guard dog for the younger kids around all these strange men. It takes him a while to stop reflexively hiding them in closets when an adult shows up, but he does eventually relax, and being less worried about their safety lets him be softer with them.

It takes plenty of time and conversations with Zhanna and Medic, but it eventually gets through to him that Heavy really wants to know him, to care for him.

Heavy and Zhanna take to calling him “Pasha” – he’s not a fan at first (he thinks it sounds girly), but it grows on him as they do.

One person who doesn’t grow on him is Soldier, no matter how much his “uncle” tries.

Once OHM is defeated, as the kids prepare to leave, Heavy makes a few calls. A week later, Patrick has a new foster placement with his babushka Grusha in Brighton Beach (it doesn’t take him long to start picking up Russian).

Heavy and his sisters call frequently and visit whenever they can – Patrick begrudgingly lets them drag him through all the Big Apple tourist spots before showing them the city’s real treasures.

After high school, Patrick joins the fire department while attending community college on the side (Pauling has to talk Pyro out of jump-starting his career with “a few light arsons.”) Every year he sends each of his aunts a copy of the firemen’s calendar (to ogle his coworkers) and a marker (to draw a shirt on him).

Come the new millenium, it takes a fair bit of convincing to get Patrick out of his quiet (ish) life, but he’s not letting his friends take on the world without backup (or missing out on the action) and joins Team Fortress International as the Shield.

Next up – Kevin McCallister if he slayed…

(1975 – 25/2000 – 50)

Escaping the chaos of post-WW2 Germany, Dr. Ludwig Hesse emigrated to America, briefly living and practicing medicine in a German immigrant community, and even more briefly being married to fellow migrant Ursula Osterberg.

Their marriage was one of momentary convenience and desperation – when Ludwig skipped town after the Skeleton Incident, Ursula was almost happy to see him go, until she discovered she was stuck with a rather permanent reminder.

Practically from birth, Christoph was a stubborn, sarcastic little shit who drove his mother up the wall with his endless questions, bottomless well of back-talk, and insistence that her “little girl” was Very Much Not That.

It certainly doesn’t help matters that he’s transitioning into mini-Medic – picture Herbert West from Re-Animator (with a sprinkle of Dr. House’s personality) and you’re most of the way there.

While hiding in the basement one day, 11-year-old Christoph found a bunch of old medical textbooks and pulled a volume on the brain, beginning a fascination with the mind’s many mysteries and points of failure.

Christoph considers college the point at which he “traded up” in life – Zephaniah Mann University is where he cut contact with his mother and stepfamily, and where he met his best friend, Hedy.

Christoph and Hedy rapidly partnered up – she helps him formulate new drugs, he helps her assess her designs’ safety, and in ’73 they got married for tax benefits (and other reasons, none of them romantic).

Christoph had long since forged every single piece of legal identification to correct his gender, so their courthouse wedding went off without a hitch – hardly the most hazardous thing he’s done, considering he also brews his own hormones and performed his own top surgery.

He submitted a paper on the self-surgery experience to several medical journals but none of them believed him.

Despite his many wild and widely-known theories on abnormal and para-psychology, Christoph received his Bachelor’s with flying colors and has continued on to ZMU’s medical program with a focus on psychiatry and neurology.

His personal biochemistry studies sparked an interest in the potential medical uses of Australium, leading him to drunkenly dare Hedy to get him enough for proper experimentation – a dare that would lead her to revolutionize nuclear physics and get them and several others kidnapped.

Medic was initially quite skeptical of Christoph, and vice-versa, but once their many mutual interests and disdain for their ex-family were established, they quickly bonded as Queer Men of Mad Medicine.

Medic’s doves love him. He tolerates them (he loves them).

Between new dad Medic, new father-in-law Engineer, new basically-stepdad Heavy, new basically-aunt Zhanna, and new basically-stepbrother Patrick, Christoph somehow manages to take the sudden influx of relatives in stride.

His favorite pastime on base is psychoanalyzing the mercs – oh, the case studies he could write. He also regularly volunteers to babysit the twins to run twin-telepathy studies on them.

After the OHM incident wraps up, Christoph completes med school and residency to become a certified psychiatrist – though finding places that will hire him is a challenge. (At one point some MKUltra holdouts attempt to recruit him, but he turns them down – their methods are far too primitive).

Medic, Heavy, and the rest gladly fill his stepfamily’s spot in Christoph’s life – he’ll rarely admit it, but he didn’t realize how much he missed that kind of support.

On his 50th birthday, Hedy (still his wife of 27 years) invites him to join her at Team Fortress International, where he can practice freely and they can work together again. He accepts, signing on as the Shrink.

Next up – a Brooklynite brawler and angsty adolescent…

A place for me to put assorted character interactions ~

(In reference to the baby-holding rule) Demo: Hey, lad - need any help with the bairns? Scout: That depends, what did you do? Distant Spy Screaming: MON DIEU, QUE S'EST-IL PASSÉ ICI- Scout: Pfff... Here, Cliff needs attention.