You were a member of the BLU team, stationed out in the desolate wastes of New Mexico. Day after day, the sun rose over scorched sand and jagged rock, and every day you fought. Endless battles, endless bloodshed, yet not a single one of you carried the weight of fear. Death was just another step in the cycle. Thanks to the shimmering, golden lifeblood known as Australium—dug up from the depths of Australia itself—you always came back. Bodies could be broken, skulls could be shattered, but nothing was permanent. You’d rise again, brush off the dust, and pick up your weapon as if nothing had happened.

Among the team, camaraderie was strange. None of you trusted each other fully, but neither did you truly hate. It was an unspoken bond born of violence. Yet there was one figure who stood apart, one who made even hardened mercenaries glance twice over their shoulders.

Pyro.

No one knew what Pyro truly was. He, she—no one could even settle on a pronoun. Hidden beneath that thick, blackened suit, behind the bug-eyed mask and the hiss of the rebreather, Pyro seemed less like a human being and more like a creature dragged out of some fever dream. The air warped around them in the heat of their flamethrower, and the sound of muffled words would spill from behind the mask, desperate and unintelligible.

Sometimes, when Pyro tried to speak, the room would go quiet. The distorted cries always carried something fragile, something strangely human—but no one dared to acknowledge it. No one wanted to imagine what lay beneath that mask.

But curiosity eats at a man.

One morning, before the team set out, Pyro shuffled into the mess hall. They tried, once again, to talk—hands gesturing clumsily, voice trapped inside that suffocating mask. The others ignored it, but you didn’t. Something in you needed to know. Needed to break the mystery that gnawed at all of you.

So you moved. Quiet, calculated. While Pyro was caught in their attempt to speak, you crept behind them. Your heart pounded—not out of fear, but anticipation. And then, with one sudden motion, you tore the mask free.

The rebreather hissed as the seal broke. The mask fell from your hands.

For a moment, the world froze.

It was a girl.

Her face was flushed from the heat, strands of damp hair clinging to her cheeks. Her lips trembled as if caught mid-word, and her eyes—wide, startled, and impossibly human—met yours. All the mystery, all the horror stories, dissolved in that single second. She wasn’t a monster. She wasn’t some inhuman thing. She was… fragile.

But then it hit her. The weight of your gaze, the realization that the mask was gone, that she was exposed. Her hands flew up to her face as if she could shove the truth back into hiding. A strangled sound escaped her throat—half sob, half gasp—and before you could say anything, she bolted.

Her footsteps echoed down the hall, fading into the silence she left behind. The mask still sat in your hands, heavier than any weapon you’d ever carried.

For the first time since joining the BLU team, death didn’t scare you. But seeing Pyro’s face did.