Hello out there! Just throwing something out before going on yet another trip... a quick oneshot involving... well, just read on.

What a lovely day... Dell Conagher leaned back in his beach chair and casually plinked the cap of his beer bottle, sighing to himself as he overlooked the sea, and the setting sun, which made a gorgeous picture. Vacation is always incredible, especially when your job pays out by the millions. Sure, it was difficult to find a good life insurance policy when the line of work you were in had such a loose view of 'death,' but who cared? He didn't plan to die.

"And I won't," the gentle Engineer confirmed, taking an appreciable swig of stout, "'cept, of course, not 'till I'm retired... and long done with this job. LONG done. Which, frankly, I don't see happ'nin for a while."

A gentle breeze blew across the beach. Silently, Conagher took in the moment... it was so calm, so peaceful, so serene compared to his job, which had taken a good deal of getting used to. He hadn't been informed initially that he was building for a team of insane mercenaries to fight an equally insane, and strangely familiar, other team of mercenaries, and definitely hadn't been told he had to protect his precious guns from cowardly Frenchman. In fact, he had expected that his sentries would be put to use keeping heavily-armed cattle rustlers at bay. However, the exact nature of the job turned out to be far more rewarding, despite the added difficulty.

It was only natural for him to improve upon his designs, as any good Engineer should. Dell's original sentry gun turned out to lack the firepower to kill larger men and the traverse agility to track smaller ones, so he addressed both issues by progressively increasing the firepower in the style of 'use more gun.' The level-1 sentry, which looked like a camera with a gun barrel, moved on to bigger and better things, sprouting two miniguns and, later on, a missile launcher.

Part of it, though, wasn't just the need to improve. It was love, the joy in tinkering with an item until it reached perfection. Even though assembly had to be conducted hastily on the battlefield, it was Conagher's attention and care to detail that made the job rewarding. His friends and comrades could always count on a high-quality item supporting them in battle, no matter what.

As it was, though, vacation had to come around sometime. As always, he spent an hour working on his Guardian Sentry, to keep an eye on his house while he went off to the beach for a week. It was an unforgettable construction, to say the least, but it was always his most valued.

With his fears absolved, he felt himself drifting into a nice, cozy nap under the sunset...

. . .

Suddenly, he sat bolt upright.

"SPY SAPPIN' MY SENTRY!" He screamed.