Chapter Text
The teleporter room hummed with the smell of scorched metal and gun oil. Scout leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, chewing a piece of gum he'd stolen from Heavy's locker.
“So uh, yeah, how's the upgrade coming along for the teleporter?” he inquired, his tone bored.
"It's coming along just fine, Scout," the man in overalls and hard hat said, not looking up from the wiring he was fussing over. Engineer's goggles were glued to his face like always, and a thin trail of solder smoke curled past his nose.
Next to him, the man in the lab coat adjusted his spectacles. The dove on his shoulder — Archimedes — cooed softly and shifted its feet.
"Patience," Medic said, his German accent thick and unhurried. "Good things come to those who wait."
"Yeah, well, some of us don't got all day," Scout shot back. "Some of us got places to be. Fast places. Places that ain't here."
Before Medic could reply, the door to the warehouse burst open with a bang that rattled the corrugated tin walls. A barrel-chested man in a WWII-style helmet stormed in, boots stomping like he was marching into battle rather than a supply shed.
"MAGGOTS!" Soldier bellowed, apropos of nothing in particular. "Is the teleporter operational? Because America does NOT wait for eggheads and their tinkering!"
"Soldier, for the love of—" Engineer sighed, rubbing his temples. "It ain't a toaster. You can't just yell at it and expect it to work faster."
"I have yelled at LESSER machines into submission," Soldier said proudly, planting his hands on his hips.
From the shadows near the stacked ammo crates, a low chuckle rolled out. A massive figure emerged, cradling a chaingun affectionately like a favorite pet. "Little man is loud, but little man is right about one thing," Heavy rumbled. "Sasha and I are ready to shoot something. Waiting makes Heavy... impatient."
"Christ, everybody's in here today," came a lazy Australian drawl from atop a stack of crates near the rafters. Sniper tipped his hat back, a thermos of what was almost certainly not tea in one hand. "Didn't realize the shed had a bloody open house."
A quiet, wheezing giggle answered him — muffled, cheerful, and slightly unsettling — as Pyro wandered in dragging a fire axe behind them, leaving little scorch marks on the concrete. They waved enthusiastically at everyone, gas mask fogging with each breath.
"Mmph mmph!" Pyro said, which everyone had long since learned meant something like hello, friends!
Near the far wall, half-hidden behind a stack of whiskey crates that definitely weren't regulation equipment, a one-eyed Scotsman cracked open a bottle with his teeth. "If yer all done squawkin'," Demoman said, "some of us are tryin' tae get a wee bit o' drinkin' done before the boss shows up an' ruins the mood."
And right on cue, a thin curl of cigarette smoke drifted from the corner where, a moment ago, there had been nothing but an empty coat rack. A masked man in a sharp suit peeled himself out of the shadows as though he'd been standing there the entire time — which, knowing him, he probably had.
"You're all so predictable," Spy said smoothly, examining his cigarette with mild disdain. "Soldier shouts, Heavy grunts, the Scot drinks, and our good Sniper hides in the rafters like the coward he is."
"Oi, I heard that," Sniper called down.
"You were meant to."
Engineer just shook his head, screwdriver still in hand. "Every single time. Every single time I try to test somethin' in peace, the whole dang team shows up like moths to a bug zapper."
"Well, technically," Medic said, adjusting his spectacles with a small, knowing smile, "we are all rather curious men. Curiosity, Herr Engineer, is what makes progress possible." He glanced down at the teleporter pad, its core beginning to pulse faintly with a strange, unfamiliar blue-violet light — a shade none of them had seen it produce before.
"Uh, Doc," Engineer said slowly, crouching down beside the console, "that ain't the color it's supposed to be."
The hum from the machine deepened, resonating in their chests like a held breath.
"Huh," Scout said, leaning in. "That's new."
A puff of theatrical purple smoke erupted at the warehouse entrance, accompanied by the unmistakable smell of mothballs and ozone.
"QUAKE IN FEAR, MORTALS!" boomed a voice like a bad community theater production of a Shakespearean villain. "For it is I, MERASMUS! Here to seal your doom!"
The mercenaries turned as one, stared at the floating, robed, six-thousand-year-old wizard hovering just inside the doorway, and gave him a collective, deeply unimpressed look. Sniper didn't even bother lowering his thermos.
"Oh, it's this guy again," Scout muttered.
But Soldier's face lit up like it was Christmas morning. He marched over and threw an arm around Merasmus's shoulder in a crushing, wholly unwelcome side-hug.
"Merasmus! My old roommate!" Soldier boomed, grinning ear to ear. "No hard feelings about me stealing your heart medication, right? Or turning your castle into a raccoon sanctuary? Those raccoons needed a home, Merasmus. A home with turrets."
Merasmus shoved him off with a look of pure, ancient exasperation. "Yes. Still hard feelings. And what did I tell you about touching me?"
"That I should do it more often, to strengthen our eternal bond of brotherhood?"
"That I would turn your fingers into sausages."
"Right, right. Mixed signals, got it."
Spy stepped forward, cigarette dangling, entirely unbothered. "What do you want, Merasmus? It is not Halloween. You do not get to barge in here and monologue whenever you please."
Merasmus straightened, robes billowing dramatically for a half-second — and then, quite suddenly, his booming wizard-voice deflated into something far more tired and human.
"Look," he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose, "I’m going to be blunt with you. I owe a rather significant sum of money to the Armenian mob — long story, do not ask about the enchanted rug — and it turns out your dear Administrator's little gray friend has put a bounty on all your heads." He raised his staff with a resigned sigh. "So. Nothing personal, gentlemen. Strictly business."
"Wait, the Gray Mann put a hit out on us and you're doing it for RENT MONEY?" Scout said, incredulous. "That's just sad, man."
"He promised me ten figures," Merasmus snapped, and hurled a crackling bolt of green energy across the room.
Chaos erupted instantly. Heavy roared and opened fire with Sasha, Demoman lobbed a grenade that detonated harmlessly against one of Merasmus's shimmering shields, and Pyro cackled with delight while trying to set a floating wizard on fire, which, as always, mostly just seemed to annoy him.
"You COWARD!" Soldier bellowed, swinging his shovel. "Fight me honorably, like the roommate-turned-mortal-enemy you are!"
"I am ONE THOUSAND YEARS your senior, you absolute BARNACLE—" Merasmus shouted back, ducking a rocket, "—honor is for people who don't have collection agents kicking down their doors!"
In the scramble, a wild bolt of magic — meant for Engineer, who dove out of the way with a very undignified yelp — went wide and slammed directly into the teleporter core.
The blue-violet glow flared white-hot in an instant.
"THAT AIN'T GOOD—" Engineer started to shout.
The explosion swallowed the warehouse whole, a shockwave of light and sound that threw every merc off their feet, sent Merasmus spinning backward through the air cursing in a language older than the pyramids, and left nothing behind but ringing ears, drifting smoke, and a teleporter pad crackling with wrong-colored energy.
When the smoke cleared, the warehouse was gone.
The air in Bandle City smelled like sugar candy and fresh-cut grass, and it rang with the kind of laughter that only existed in places where the trees occasionally giggled back. Tristana sat cross-legged beside her beloved cannon, one goggle lens flipped up as she squinted at a loose bolt.
"C'mon, c'mon, just a little tighter," she muttered, wrench in hand.
Nearby, Lulu was in hot pursuit of a small, indignant fairy that had apparently insulted her hat. "You take that back, you glittery little snob!" she shouted, arms flailing as she chased it in a wobbling circle around a mushroom patch.
"You know it can't understand you, right?" Tristana called over without looking up.
"It understood the insult part just fine!" Lulu shouted back, nearly tripping over Pix, who let out an exasperated little chime.
Tristana snorted and went back to her bolt — and that was when the air in front of her split open with a sound like tearing silk and a bruised sky.
A portal, ragged and violet at the edges, yawned into existence right in the middle of the clearing. Tristana yelped and scrambled backward, cannon forgotten, as three shapes tumbled out of it in a tangled heap of limbs, cursing, and — was that the smell of whiskey?
The portal snapped shut behind them like it had never been there.
Lulu abandoned the fairy immediately. "Ooh! Presents!"
Tristana crept closer, cannon half-raised, eyes wide. The three figures groaned and untangled themselves. Two were, unmistakably, humans — towering, ridiculous, entirely too tall things. The third wore some kind of mask over its whole face, round-eyed and featureless, like a strange bug had decided to wear a person as a coat.
All three were dressed in red. Head to toe.
"Why're they all wearing the same color," Tristana muttered to herself. "Is that a... uniform? Are they soldiers?"
One of the humans had a hard hat shoved sideways on his head, overalls, and a pair of goggles stuck over his eyes. The other had dark skin, an eyepatch, and reeked so strongly of whiskey that Tristana clapped a hand over her nose and hopped back a full pace.
"Ugh — what IS that smell—"
Then the masked one sat bolt upright, fast enough that Tristana nearly toppled over backward in surprise. It swiveled its head around, taking in the mushrooms, the candy-colored houses, the giggling trees — and then it turned its full, blank attention directly onto her.
"Mmph hmm!" it said cheerfully, and gave her a friendly little wave.
Tristana froze, cannon halfway up. "Um. Hello?" she said carefully. "Are... you alright?"
It was rare enough for a human to stumble into the Yordle realm. Three at once, tumbling out of a portal reeking of magic and whiskey, was downright unheard of.
The masked stranger mumbled something else at her, muffled and entirely unintelligible, and tilted its head like that should have cleared things right up.
"I... can't understand you," Tristana said slowly, as if speaking to a very large, very strange child. "Can you speak?"
More muffled noise. Enthusiastic muffled noise, at that, punctuated with vague hand gestures that didn't clarify anything.
"That doesn't answer my question," Tristana sighed, lowering her cannon just slightly, though she kept one finger near the trigger. Beside her, Lulu had already crouched down eye-level with the masked figure, delighted.
"I like him," Lulu announced. "He talks like Pix."
Pix, offended, chimed something sharp in her ear.
"Rude! He does NOT sound like a dying kettle!"
Engineer cracked his back with a series of pops that made even Demoman wince, then turned his full attention to the muffled ramblings coming from Pyro. His brow furrowed as he tried to parse whatever nonsense his masked friend was saying — and then he looked up, and locked eyes with Tristana.
His expression went from confused to utterly, thoroughly bewildered.
"Where... the hell... are we?" he asked, slow and deliberate, like maybe saying it out loud would make the mushrooms and giggling trees make more sense. They did not.
Demoman swiveled his head back and forth, taking in the candy-colored houses, the fairy lights, the two very small, very pointy-eared women staring at them. He shrugged with the easy unconcern of a man who had woken up in stranger places.
"Beats me," he said, and produced a bottle of something dark and suspicious from behind his back, taking a long pull from it.
Lulu pranced right up to Tristana's side, hopping onto her tiptoes to get a better look at the newcomers. "You're in Bandle City!" she announced brightly. Then, wrinkling her nose: "And why does your friend smell so weird?"
"Hey!" Demoman said, pressing a hand to his chest like he'd been mortally wounded. "I resent that, lass." He took another swig, as if to prove a point, though nobody was quite sure what the point was.
"Who are you guys?" Tristana asked, hoping to steer things toward something resembling useful information before this got any stranger.
Engineer wiped his forehead with the back of his glove, leaving a faint streak of grease behind. "Can't rightly tell you our names," he said, in a tone that suggested this was a very normal and reasonable thing to say. "But you can call me Engineer. Engie, for short." He jerked a thumb at the man drinking beside him. "That there's Demoman. Demo, for short." Then he gestured to the masked figure, who had by now completely lost interest in the conversation and was instead flicking a lighter on and off, utterly transfixed by the tiny dancing flame. "And this fella here is Pyro."
Pyro didn't look up. Click. Flame. Click. No flame. Click. Flame. A muffled, delighted giggle escaped the mask each time the fire appeared, like it was the single greatest magic trick in the world.
"He likes fire," Engineer added, with the weary fondness of a man who had long since stopped questioning it.
Both yordles took an involuntary half-step back, watching the little flame flicker with something between fascination and deep, instinctive alarm. In a city built largely of wood, thatch, and extremely flammable candy decorations, this did not strike either of them as a comforting piece of information.
"...Right," Tristana said slowly, cannon drifting just a little closer to her side. "Let's maybe not do that here."
"Wait," Lulu blurted out, hands on her hips, "why can't you tell us your names?"
Demo let out a burp that seemed to rattle the mushrooms nearby. "Thass classified," he slurred, taking another swig for good measure.
Lulu's eyes lit up with pure, unfiltered delight. "Ooo, are you guys like secret agents?"
Engineer rubbed the back of his neck, weighing his options. He wasn't exactly eager to explain to two chipper little forest creatures that he and his friends were, in fact, professional hired killers on the payroll of a woman who communicated primarily through screaming and mild radiation poisoning.
"No," he said carefully. "We're... contract workers. For a very influential person who's told us we're not to disclose our names. Under threat of termination." And by termination, he added silently, I mean death.
"Ooo, I bet you guys do all sorts of exciting things!" Lulu beamed, practically vibrating with curiosity.
"Wouldn't call it exciting," Demo muttered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "But it puts liquor on the table, and that's good enough for me." He paused, considering. "Blowin' things up is just a bonus."
That got Tristana's attention immediately, her ears perking straight up. "You handle explosives?"
Demo gave her a look like she'd just asked if water was wet. "Last I checked I was the Demoman, so... aye. Yes. I handle explosives." He reached behind himself and produced his trusty grenade launcher, holding it up with the casual pride of a man showing off a prized fishing catch. "And I do it all with this beauty right here."
"Wow," Tristana breathed, leaning in so close her nose nearly touched the barrel, eyes wide with the unmistakable, dangerous glimmer of an artillery-obsessed yordle who had just found a kindred spirit. Her own cannon seemed to creak jealously beside her. "The sticky bombs — are those magnetic-triggered, or do you use a manual detonator? What's the blast radius on that thing? Can I—"
"Whoa, whoa, easy there, lass," Demo said, pulling the launcher back half a step, though he looked more amused than alarmed. "It's not a toy."
"Neither is mine," Tristana said proudly, patting her own cannon, "and I've named her Boomer."
Demo blinked, then broke into the first genuine grin anyone had seen from him since they'd tumbled out of the portal. "Now that," he said, raising his bottle toward her in a small toast, "is a woman after me own heart."
“But…” he continued, undeterred, and pulled out another weapon with the flourish of a man who lived for this exact reaction. "...can it compete with this little number?"
He held up the Iron Bomber — a quad-barreled grenade launcher with a longer set of barrels, a polished wooden foregrip and stock, and a large, circular, flip-up front sight that gleamed even in Bandle City's soft, dappled light.
Tristana's jaw actually dropped. "That's so awesome," she breathed, circling him slowly like she was inspecting a prize-winning livestock entry. "What other weapons you got?"
Before Demo could launch into what was clearly shaping up to be a very long and very proud inventory, Engineer cut in, holding up both hands.
"Ladies, as much as I would love to showcase our equipment," he said, "my friends and I are in a precarious situation. We need to find our other friends and figure out a way back home."
Lulu tilted her head, one eyebrow raised. "There are others that came with you?"
"Yes," Engineer said. "Six others. Clearly they didn't land here with us, so they must've gotten teleported somewhere else."
"Wait, wait, wait," Tristana said, holding up a hand of her own, finally tearing her eyes off the Iron Bomber. "Where are you guys from?"
"America," Engineer said. "New Mexico."
Tristana looked at Lulu. Lulu looked at Tristana. Neither name meant anything to either of them.
"And you said you were teleported here?" Tristana pressed.
"Aye," Demo said, taking another pull of his scrumpy without much concern for the growing tension in the conversation.
"You must be very far from home," Lulu said thoughtfully, tapping her chin. "There is no 'America' or 'New Mexico' on Runeterra."
Engineer's eyes went wide enough to nearly pop through his goggles. "Rune-what now?"
"Runeterra," Lulu repeated, patient as ever, like she was explaining something to a particularly slow child. "It's the name of the world. The one we yordles travel to and from, sometimes. You're in Bandle City, remember? That's here."
Engineer turned slowly toward his friends, the color draining from his face, worry etched into every line of it.
"Guys," he said. "I think that wacko wizard sent us to another world."