After four years of being shot at, burned alive, and having his skull crushed in, a sudden realization came to Spy as he felt himself slip into the temporary unconsciousness between deaths. Recovering from his fifth respawn of the day he registered that he was utterly and completely fed up with the bloodshed and fighting of mann. co. Every morning,he woke up just to fight another man's war, it was degrading, humiliating, and above all pointless! The majority of the men he fought were only but a step above complete mongrels, with his own team faring little if no better, and to be frank he was pretty sure four of them couldn't even read.
The spy sighed mourning the loss of yet more of his quickly endangering brain cells. Perhaps a couple hundred more respawns and he and the soldier might finally have something to talk about. Dusting his suit off, he calmly walked over to the exit of respawn and watched as the metal door slid up revealing the dusty Arizona desert floor. At this point fighting had become as dry and drab as where he now stood. He remembers when he would revel in the feel of his knife sinking deep into an enemy's back, now it was as monotonous as brushing his teeth in the morning, perhaps more so considering nowadays he killed people more than he did anything else. It was like playing a game that never changed, these people were not dead for long anyways, death was no longer a threat when you had respawn. The invulnerability that came with job took all the danger and excitement out of murder. Every day he would rack up kills in the dozens but for what? It was not as if anyone was ever going to "Win" one of these petty wars.
Perhaps some days the red team would defend against the blue team, others the blue team might push the payload all the way to the reds base, but what did it matter? The next day everything would be back to square one. The intelligence would be returned, and the admisitrator would be neither pleased nor angry. He stood there for another moment silently brooding in his thoughts before there was the familiar sound of an electrically charged zap, indicating a person was materializing out of thin air, something that was still a strange concept to the no nonsense spy.
"Hey hurry it up slowpoke! That point ain't gonna cap itself!"
The scout bumped shoulders with the spy as he rushed past him out of the blue base. The spy cursed him as he watched his retreating form. How could he find any enjoyment or excitement out of the bastardization of the gifts of life and death, perhaps the boy was too young to see or care about the humanity of things. This particular thought reminded the spy of how
much he sounded like a bitter old man. However, he figured the scout was right and that standing there was definitely not improving their team's chances of one of their small victories, ephemeral as they may have been.
He stepped out into the hot desert air and began his trek across the battlefield. He slipped past the enemy team's front lines using the side routes and crates as his cover, and while he was able to cloak with the Invisiwatch he knew that not all of his stealth was dependent on his gadgets.
After maneuvering through the battlefield, narrowly avoiding stampeding teammates and soaring projectiles, the spy finally reached the RED base. As he walked into the red base he stopped and waited for an unlucky enemy to walk around the corner, ready to sink his knife in his unsuspecting target. When he saw the red demoman charging out of respawn he seized the opportunity at an oblivious kill. As the demoman whirled past him he raised his arm and went in for the kill. In one fatal swoop the spy landed a fatal blow and the red adversary crumpled to the ground.
Next the spy figured now that he was behind the action he could use his position along with some sort of height advantage to catch a few more unwitting REDs with their pants down Next to him stood an old wooden building so he stepped inside hoping to gain access to the roof leading to a patchwork of other buildings. The building was dusty inside and while he climbed the stairs a thick layer of dust collected on his gloves as he utilized the stair rail. At the top of the stairs was a large room with three large windows on the far side and he stepped through one of the windows onto the roof of one of the other adjacent buildings. The wood of the roof groaned and creaked as he walked along it's spine. They had only recently been assigned to this particular map, and the buildings structures were old and feeble at this point, most likely from the many years of disuse.
From this vantage point the spy could see a Pyro being healed by a Medic and decided to take action. However he was not able to follow through with this plan because as soon as he took a step off of the ridge line of the building, the roof started caving in. Cursing softly he screwed his eyes shut and felt himself fall through the quickly crumbling ceiling. He waited for the inevitable crack of his neck snapping and to wake up in respawn, when he fell on his back amongst the debris of the roof with loud thud. However when he opened his eyes he was still alive, definitely suffering from a few broken bones, but alive. He felt something beneath him move but before he was able to inquire what it was he heard a shout.
"Bloody FUCK!"
The spy jumped when he heard the yelp and whipped his head to look down beneath him when he saw the face of the enemy sniper. The snipers eyebrows were furrowed in no doubt pain considering the ceiling and a Frenchman had just come toppling in on him.
"Get offa me, Spook!"
The spy just nodded dumbly and attempted to crawl off of the pile of rubble and
assassin. Both of his legs were broken and bleeding profusely which made the process all the more excruciating. The spy leaned up against one of the walls and faced the sniper waiting for whatever happened next, he already felt like this "life" had gone to hell in a handbasket so he'd just go with whatever happened, not like he gave a shit either way, whatever got him through the week.
"Gave me a bloody heart attack!"
The sniper was breathing heavily and trying in vain to calm his hyperventilating. The spy just chuckled and reached into his suit feeling around for his cigarette case. God did he need a cigarette.
"Don't I always?" The sniper just scoffed.
"Yeah but those are subtle, this felt more like an earthquake than a spy. What were you doing on the roof anyways?"
"Oh you know, just checking the planning, seeing if there were any structural instabilities and well, I think i found one."
The sniper laughed as the spy rolled his eyes dramatically, however he stopped promptly and started coughing, most likely due to a few broken ribs puncturing his lungs. The spy decided to cut to the chase before he was labelled a traitor for having a semi-civil conversation with the enemy.
"Are you capable of walking? Or should I crawl over and kill you and end it now?"
The sniper only blinked and looked down in thought. Although the snipers next words were spoken with an air of nonchalance, they weighed heavy on the spies mind.
"Don't see no difference who kills who. Both gonna be walkin and killing each other in a second."
The statement was eerily similar to what spy had been mulling over only minutes previously, and it seemed he was not alone in doing so.
"I suppose you are right there, what do you prefer, the knife or a bullet to the head?"
The sniper looked down once more in thought, his gaze becoming unfocused. He gritted his teeth gasping before answering curtly. "Gun..." His breath was becoming shallow, he must have been bleeding internally since the fall, slowly drowning in his own blood. The spy nodded and pulled out his ambassador and held it up without a word, hoping his aim was true, despite the shaking in his hands. He pulled the trigger and watched as the sniper sunk to the floor dead.
After exhaling a shaky breath, the spy finally retrieved his cigarette case and pulled one out. He lit the thing in an attempt to alleviate the intense pain he was feeling in his legs. He had smoked half of his cigarette when the red Pyro came trotting in and spotted him slumped against the wall.
Spy just sighed and took one last long breath of cigarette smoke, he'd always hated being burnt alive. Most painful way to die, anyone on the battlefield could've told you that, felt like every blood vessel was exploding which it essentially was. God, this day was going from bad to worse.
Waking up in respawn he could still feel his skin crawling however more so than that he was caught in a very unfamiliar train of thought. He had always seen the enemy sniper as a barbarian which is why he was so confused by what he had just witnessed. The sniper that he had just spoken with was as polite as can be, he was reasonable and had a sense of humor to boot. The most interesting thing about him that the spy now knew of however was that he too, at least to some extent, found the fighting trivial as well. To what extent the spy didn't know, but the subconscious feeling was definitely there.
Perhaps a civilised conversation was not too far from the spies reach. Oh, but who was he kidding, he and the sniper were at war (literally) and the sniper absolutely hated him, his own feelings for the dirty Australian not from mutual. For one thing, he kept his own urine in jars and chucked them at anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path, and on the other hand the spy had been a complete ass to the Australian since the day they first fought. The conversation was just a fluke. It wouldn't be smart of to completely reevaluate his character based on a conversation that went against everything he had previously seen and heard concerning the Australian. He resolved to just go out there and fight like nothing had ever happened. Sun shines, birds fly, grass grows and snipers hate spies.
The rest of the day went by in a blur, kill some people , get killed yourself, not much had changed there. But the constant feeling of futility was harping on the spy relentlessly and as his team returned to their base after another day of fighting, the spy decided to stay outside for a little while longer to take a cigarette break and mull over his, what must have been poor, life decisions. The sky was always radiant with billions of twinkling stars situated light years away, but after four years of looking at the same sky, the spy found it to be less than breathtaking.
Now, to set the record straight, the spy never considered himself a ray of sunshine, but the attitude he had taken on recently was, even to him, depressing and beyond his usual brooding.
Maybe the others could put up with this war, some of them most likely enjoying it, but the spy knew that it was slowly killing him. Not physically of course, the Medic made sure of that, in fact he was probably the healthiest he'd ever been in his entire life.
The part of him that was dying was the part that gave him reason to be healthy, to go on. There was no such thing as progression, always running the same show, endlessly walking with no destination. It made him sick thinking about it.
The spy stubbed out his cigarette and walked back into theBLU base and headed directly for his quarters. He truly felt alone in his plight as he walked through the base filled with booming voices and congratulatory shouts celebrating the day's win. At least he was the only one not having any fun.
"Spy!"
Behind him he could hear the approaching footsteps of a certain Bostonian. The spy heaved an
irritated sigh before turning to address his aggressor.
"What do you want, Scout?"
Usually the spy, for the sake of his gentlemanly reputation put on an air of politeness, usually. This was however not one of those instances. His tone was curt and made his current aggravation quite obvious.
"Oh, uhh I was jus' wonderin'..."
The scout took a small pause and rubbed the back of his neck, obviously contemplating whether or not he should finish that question.
"Well, ya seemed a little down today and uhh..."
The boy was having trouble formulating words so spy decided to cut to the chase, and while he appreciated the scouts attempt at some form of amity, he really did not wish to speak to anyone at the moment.
"No thank you scout. I do not wish to attend in the festivities however amazing they may be."
Spy turned away before scout could say another word and walked briskly down the hall and into his room.