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Jeremy was starting to have second thoughts about this.
Not because he didn’t want this, or ‘cause he doubted himself (obviously not), but because he wasn’t an especially big fan of the chainsaw sounds he heard comin’ from the other side of the door. Still, though. Jeremy was a goddamn grown man. He wasn’t scared of nothin’, least of all a stupid freakin’ chainsaw.
If he would be able to get his tits chopped off without even battin’ an eye, Jeremy decided, he’d be the manliest goddamn man in town. And he wouldn’t even hafta worry ‘bout putting any strain on his stupid ribs anymore!
He cleared his throat and knocked. Rap, rap, rap. The whirring gradually died down.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Was that Jeremy’s heart? Nah, it couldn’t be. Probably that freakin’ bird tryin’a get out. Not nerves – ‘cause Jeremy didn’t get nervous. No sirree.
The door swung open with a loud crash, revealing Medic, who was beaming from ear to ear.
“Scout!” he exclaimed, throwing his arms up in the air. “Gutn ovnt! You are well, ja?”
“Uh,” said Jeremy, “yeah, I’m alright, Doc.”
“Wunderbar! Ah, do come in. I just finished my preparations.”
The place was a frickin’ mess, as per usual. Shit was scattered across the floor, some of it clearly human remains and some of it things Jeremy couldn’t even recognize. In the middle of the room, an operating table was all set up, covered in dried (and fresh) blood and some other vaguely unidentifiable stains. A cot was shoved up against the wall and hidden behind a curtain, but Jeremy was pretty sure somebody was lying there.
“How long’s it gonna take me to heal, Doc?” he asked. “I wanna get back into battle and all, y’know.”
“Oh, don’t worry. Az got vill, maybe a few hours. My medicine is very high-quality, Scout, I assure you. Not much harm will come to you!” He paused to consider it. “Most likely!”
Jeremy had very little confidence in that, but he was smart enough (and wise enough, and cool enough, and handsome enough) to not mention it. Instead, he nodded.
“Okay,” he conceded. “When’re ya gonna give me the anesthesia?”
“Anesthesia?” Medic asked. “Oh…did you want some of that?”
“...I– I kinda expected it, yeah.”
“Scheiße…” Medic reached over his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Well, if you insist…I suppose I could go find some, ja? Or…something close to anesthesia, anyway.”
He hopped over a pile of ridiculously large syringes and dashed towards the back of the room.
“I will be back very soon, Scout — ergern nisht!” he called out, before slamming a very heavy metal door behind him.
Jeremy sighed. He walked over to the cot and plopped down on it, trudging his shoes against the ground.
“Mmphout!” said a voice next to him. He looked up — there was the person who’d been lying down earlier, now drinking water through a straw (probably hard to do it any other way when you don’t have lips). The entire lower half of her face was absolutely covered in wicked awful burns (though Jeremy was still pretty sure that was a lady’s face), and her black hair seemed to be slowly growing out of its buzzcut.
Wait. Hold on a goddamn second.
“Mumbles?” Jeremy said. “Holy fuck, you’re a chick?” And not a bad-looking one, at that, Jeremy thought, if you ignored the exposed teeth.
The Pyro made a so-so motion with her(?) (their?) gloved hand before pullin’ something out of thin air — a notepad. In big, swooping letters with a permanent marker, she wrote:
HI SCOUT !!! WHAT ARE YOU HERE FOR ? ? ?
Believe it or not, Jeremy did have self-preservation skills, and if this were anybody else he would’a hesitated to admit anything. But see — Pyro wasn’t about to tell anybody (except maybe Engineer, but Jeremy had suspicions about him being in the same boat, if you caught his drift), and besides, something about a woman (maybe?) being around made Jeremy wanna tell all his secrets. Ladies liked honest guys, right? Or did they like secretive guys? Fuck. It probably depended on the lady. And this lady, despite being a complete freakin’ weirdo who was honestly kind of scary, was still (probably) a lady. And Jeremy, obviously, had a duty to all women. What duty was that? He’d figure out the details someday.
Look. The point was that Jeremy turned to Pyro and said “Doc’s gonna chop my tits off, and it’ll be wicked fuckin’ awesome,” without any hesitation.
Pyro paused, and for the first time in his life, Jeremy almost wondered if he’d been too forward, but then they returned to the notepad.
I DIDN’ T THINK I’D EVER MEET ANYONE LIKE ME , it read. IM ALSO A TRANSSEXUAL : ) Pyro inclined their head and pointed towards her face, then towards her chest, before beginning to write again. GUESS HOW I GOT THIS STUFF !! ! MEDIC DID SOME SORT OF PROCEDURE. I HAD NO IDEA YOU COULD EVEN DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS.
Jeremy felt a grin creep up on his face — there was something kind of insane to him about how freely Pyro would admit somethin’ like that, especially in a place like this, but he admired the chutzpah. “Fuck,” he said, “neither did I. Science is a wonderful frickin’ thing, ain’t it?”
(He was a little unsure, though. Procedure with absolutely no details? Procedure that you healed from super fast? Medic probably just invented that shit.)
“Herr Scout!” The heavy metal door burst open. Out came the Medic runnin’ towards Jeremy with a vial full of unidentifiable green liquid clutched in his fist, nearly out of breath. “While I did not find any anesthesia, I did find the next best thing!”
He blinked. “Oh, Fräulein Pyro, you are awake! You have healed sufficiently from my marvelous medicinal procedure that I just recently invented and cannot disclose the details of, ja?”
Pyro nodded enthusiastically, giving a thumbs-up. Their mouth didn’t move, obviously, but their eyes crinkled up at the edges like a smile.
“Now! Onto business!” Medic carefully put some of the unidentifiable liquid into one of his smaller syringes (thank fuckin’ God) and gestured for Jeremy to get onto the operating table. There were two important things Jeremy noticed: one, Medic wasn’t even fucking wearin’ gloves (though that was to be expected), and two, Jeremy had absolutely no idea what was in that syringe.
“Uh,” Jeremy said, “what is that stuff, exactly?”
“We’ll have to find out! Don’t worry, Scout, you are part of some incredible medical advancements right now, mein guter Freund! Eat your heart out, Hirschfeld!”
The last thing Jeremy saw before he closed his eyes was Medic; Medic wavin’ with a big, stupid grin on his face, and then reaching down to pick up that goddamn chainsaw. “Here goes nothing!” he cried. “Shlof gezunterheit!”
Aw, hell, Jeremy thought as all his senses dimmed to nothing. He better not take my freakin’ brain.