Chapter Text
The RED Sniper respawned, groaning slightly at the nausea. Some respawns were smoother than others, and that had been a bad one. Settling his akubra firmly on his head, he ignored the churning in his guts and loped back toward the battlements.
The day ended in a disappointing stalemate, with RED in possession of only one control point. Grumbling his disappointment, the Sniper headed off to the mess to get dinner. That was when he noticed something... off. He prided himself on his ability to ignore anything that wasn't actively stabbing him in the back during battle. Now, though, his pants weren't fitting right. He ducked discreetly behind a shed to adjust himself.
In the middle of sliding his hand down his pants, the Sniper froze. Panic clutched at his guts. His fingertips had encountered the smooth skin of his belly,then his pubic hair, then... nothing. Clutching desperately at his groin, he still didn't encounter the familiar contours of his wedding tackle. Nothing! His hand clenched convulsively, and hit a sensitive spot that proved that there was Something there.
Looking around furtively to ensure that all of his teammates were elsewhere, the Sniper hiked down his pants to have a better look. There was his belly, as he'd remembered it, his pubes were all present and correct... no sign of his dick or balls. He pushed aside the pubic hair, as if they might have hidden, and discovered a tender nub. Shoving his fingers further underneath, he encountered a delicate area of hairless skin that stuck painfully to his dry fingertips, as if he'd suddenly jerked down his foreskin. He pulled his hand away quickly, then forced himself to smell his fingertips.
It was the smell that made it real. He'd seen mirages shimmering in the desert before now, but the lack of water smell had proven that they were just the sun frying the very air. This, though... his fingertips smelled like the sea. They smelled like him, like his crotch always did, but with an added tang of salt humidity. Fighting down the shock, he ran back to the base.
By the time he got to the mess hall, everyone else was already tucking in. It had been the Soldier's turn to cook, which invariably meant tinned soup and crackers. Sniper was not hungry.
"Medic," he hissed, seizing a handful of the German's coat. "Medic, I need yer help."
"Can it not wait until after dinner?" the Medic fastidiously set down his spoon so that the Australian's grabbing wouldn't splash soup on his coat.
"No. Now!" The Sniper's eyes were crazed behind his yellow aviators. the Medic sighed and followed him to the infirmary.
"So, what seems to be the problem?"
"I. My." The Sniper choked on the words. "Doc, me john thomas 'as done a bunk. I think it was that bloody Respawn."
"Herr Sniper, you must speak Englisch."
Hyperventilating slightly, the Sniper tried again. "My penis didn't come through Respawn with me."
The Medic took a moment to absorb this, then frowned. "Interesting. Take off your clothing und let me see."
It said something about the Sniper's state of mind that he immediately obeyed the order to strip naked in front of the terrifying Medic. He kicked off his boots and pants and stood square in front of the Medic, revealing his groin.
"Großer Gott." The Medic stared. "Sit on the exam table." The Sniper did as he was told, reluctantly parting his knees.
The Medic stared. "It seems you have been transformed into a woman."
"Bloody Hell, no."
"But that is a... vagina."
"Yes, but I ain't a woman! Look, just... fix it, right?" Sticking with what he knew, the Medic readied his Medigun and aimed the beam between the Sniper's legs. The Sniper swallowed a gasp at the warm caress of the healing ray. He'd never felt it square on his groin before, and it was good. Embarrassingly good, with the Medic's icy stare boring into him. The Sniper felt his tender flesh pulse, felt a slide of wetness. Going red, he slammed his legs shut and looked away. "Stop that. It's not growin' me penis back."
"Curious," the Medic said. "It is not behaving as a wound; it is a perfectly healthy vagina. Perhaps it is an error with your Respawn template. Lie back on the table, I wish to make a pelvic examination." He wiggled his fingers inside his long rubber gloves.
"Like Hell you say!" The Sniper leapt off the table and scrabbled for his pants. "If it's a Respawn error, maybe Truckie'll know what to do." He jammed on his clothing and fled the infirmary with the Medic trailing in his wake.
"'Ey, Truckie..." they caught the Texan doing the washing-up. "I had a... a problem during Respawn today."
"How do you mean?" The Engineer scrubbed a plate.
"I, uh. Not all of me came through."
The Engineer dropped the plate with a clatter, and stared at the Sniper in horror. It was obvious that he was counting the Australian's limbs. "What- what's missin'?"
"I'd rather not say out 'ere, Truckie, an' that's a fact."
The Engineer dried his hands, and together they trouped to the Respawn room. The Engineer opened the panel that covered the system interface, and brought up the Sniper's data before he dared to ask. "So, ah... what... "
"Me willy," the Sniper said shortly.
The Engineer's mouth compressed into a grim line. "Well, I hate to say this, but we already knew your respawn template was corrupted."
"Since WHEN?!" This was news to the Sniper.
"That scar," the Engineer pointed. The Australian touched his cheek. The long, thin scar had shown up, unexplained, after Respawn one day.
"Mate, there is a world of difference between a little nick like this and... and what happened to me now!"
"Not really," the Engineer said calmly, reviewing the lines of code that represented everything that the Sniper ever was, or did, or knew. "Every time you respawn, the teleporter technology downloads this code an' translates it into an exact duplicate of your genotype an' phenotype at the moment you signed on with RED. But you code has been corrupted. It's..." he turned toward the Sniper and took off his helmet. "I'm sorry to say, it's like a cancer. That line across your face: maybe it's not a scar, maybe it was just the first matrix vector of your code to corrupt. You might be... losing data points. When they go, in theory they could take body parts with them." He hesitated. "So where did... is it like a scar, or what?"
The Sniper felt sick. The idea of his body unravelling in slow motion, dissolving as the Respawn failed, was the sort of thing he'd had to work hard not to think about when he'd first signed on with RED. Bits of him falling away like some high-tech leper- his stomach lurched. But, and he realised that he was grasping at a desperate hope, his genitals weren't totally missing, just... replaced. "No," he told the Engineer. "No, it's- different."
"Different how?" asked the Engineer, his sunburnt face pale as paper. "I mean," he punched rapidly at the keyboard, "If I restore your template, like so, and you Respawn again, you should come out back to normal, but I-"
The words 'Respawn again' and 'back to normal' were all the Sniper needed to hear. He grabbed the Engineer's pistol, put it in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. The Sniper hung for a subjective eternity in the timeless nothingness of Respawn, then landed, nauseated, back in the Resupply. As soon as he had hands again, he stuck one down his pants.
"It's no bloody USE!" he cried. "I still have a fucking VAGINA!"
Only then did he realise that basically the entire team was now standing around, staring at him.
"They came runnin' when they heard the pistol," the Engineer explained.
"We only told them that you had a Respawn accident. We did not mention that you are now a woman."
"I ain't a woman!"
"Females have no place on the battlefield!" the Soldier barked. "You will be discharged!"
"I'm not a woman, and since when am I cloggin' around the field with you yobs?"
"Leetle woman can still be credit to team," the Heavy opined.
"I'm still taller than yer! An' I'm NOT a woman!"
"Can we see it?" the Scout piped up, and the room fell silent. A total of eleven eyes and four black glass lenses focused on the Sniper's lanky frame. The Spy's hand twitched, the Demoman licked his lips, and the Scout had an obvious boner.
"Sod off, the lot of you!" The Sniper brandished his kukri to define an expanded personal space. "Any of you wankers so much as touches me, I'll carve yer a hole of yer own!" The tendons stood out in his neck.
"Huddah," said the Pyro, holding up his (?) hands. "Hrm huddah hud hud. Hmphawa." Herding his (for the sake of argument) colleagues away from the Sniper, he gently ushered them out of the room. As he left, he threw the Sniper a thumbs-up.