DEATH BY UNUSUALS
It was a dull day outside – the sun was absent, replaced by a portending algor. A boring grey lingered on the crusted roofs of the Teufort buildings, providing a sense of weighty dread and despair in the desolate location. Inside the BLU base, the Spy had just gotten himself a Cloak n' Dagger from his teammates, who anxiously wanted to surprise the mysterious man in the mask. After saving up their precious items, they managed to craft it, with soul and passion. It was a cheerful atmosphere, unlike the one that stood outside.
The Spy was indeed happy. What was there sad to be about? His teammates thought well of him, but there was an itch – a lingering desire to put his new equipment to the test. After thanking everyone graciously, the exited the crowded spawn room, passing the sea of convivial faces and put on his new watch. The time had come, quite literally.
Infiltrating the enemy base was not difficult by any means. He had done the standard procedure countless times; stay quiet, stay invisible and stay out of the way. The Spy was not expecting today to be any different than his usual successful espionage gig. He couldn't have been more wrong about his confidence.
It happened in a matter of seconds. Entering the tiny setup outside of the RED spawn room, he was greeted by a myriad of beeping and buzzing contraptions, the Engineer standing in the midst of them and concentrating on his PDA. Distracted by the threatening red machines, the Spy attempted to pass by unnoticed, but smacked into the Engineer, who suddenly spun towards him, also unaware of his presence.
Now on the ground, the situation was heating up. The Cloak n' Dagger flickered, revealing the Spy for a mere second. Just enough for the Engineer to understand what happened. The Texan jumped to his feet with his Shotgun in hands, aimed directly at the fallen Spy. The scared-witless Spy bit his lip in fear, causing blood to casually flow unto his stubble. He revealed himself, shamed and defeated by his abecedarian blunder.
The Engineer scoffed, clearly pleased at the sight of his opponent aghast at the sight of him. He motioned with his head for the Spy to get up and start walking to the metal door of the RED spawn. The Spy, fearing for his life, complied. Standing up, he slowly shifted to the stale gate, a shotgun pointed at his dirtied suit and soiled soul.
It was somber in the RED spawn room, unlike the BLU one. The lights were mostly off, the mercenaries were off to the sides, scowling at each other. The dark dominated the room, laying it's shadow across them. A large wooden table stood to the left of the room with a massive, poorly-nailed crate on top of it. The Spy was lead to beside the table, and the Engineer on the other side. The Engineer sat down in a chair, and began talking to the Spy.
The Spy gulped, expecting his imminent death. He could not run away, as he would be shot down, so he tried to remain calm and talk with the RED Engineer, hoping he might actually get out alive. As he opened his mouth to begin negotiating for his life, but the Engineer grinned sarcastically and lifted a gloved finger to his lips. The Spy went mute.
The Engineer was as laid-back as ever. He easily invited the Spy towards the dusty table. As the two men got there, the Engineer lowered his shotgun and pushed the crate aside, revealing a stained yellow file marked with "CONFIDENTIAL" on it. Disregarding that, the Engineer whipped out the photos and tossed them towards the Spy. They were pictures of the BLU team.
The Spy slowly pieced everything together. The Engineer didn't want to kill him, but he wanted to use him – to kill the BLU team.
Just as he was about to disagree, the Engineer's goggles twinkled in the murk. He reached inside the crate and pulled out, one by one, unusuals. Flashing fedoras, magical mullets, and more. The Spy's mind was captivated by the sheer magnificence of those hats. They must be worth thousands of dollars – more than he will ever get in his life time!
Clearly premeditated, a genuine grin stretched on the engineer's face. They made eye-contact, and for a split second, the lightness drained from the Engineer's relaxed face, replaced instead with a cold-blooded contortion. He slipped a finger across his neck.
A droplet of sweat developed on the Spy's forehead as he pondered his dilemma. His friends crossed his mind, but so did the unusuals, which were resting on the table beside him - so easily obtainable, but yet so hard. Losing his last thread of humanity, he nodded.
The Engineer let out a hearty laugh as he shook the Spy's hand. The Spy, however, wasn't in such a bright mood. A larger-than-life task stood in front of him, and he didn't know whether he could go through it all. To keep his image, however, he smiled, and shook the engineers hand confidently. A phony smile appeared on his face.
The environment had cooled down when the Spy finally returned backt to his base. The BLU engineer was playing his guitar in the background, the Scout, Heavy and Demoman were talking to each other, the Medic was tending to his bird, the pyro was reading an Edgar Allen Poe novel, and the sniper was refilling his jarate behind the supply cabinet. All in all, the place wasn't particularly out of the ordinary, or so it seemed. The Spy sighed as he examined the room once again. These men would be dead in less than 24 hours. The whole lot of them.
Hours flew by like bullets out of his gun, whizzing past and in rapid successions. Soon, the sun was starting to set, and the BLU team went out of the spawn room to go about their business. The last person out of the room was the Spy. He pulled back the hammer to his gun in the shadowed room of the Teufort base, and quickly turned left, coming out on to the balcony, where the Sniper stood, scoped in on the enemy's balcony. When the Spy approached him, he lowered his weapon and gave the Spy a friendly smile, possibly to give him some encouragement. He had noticed back in the Spawn room that he seemed very letdown. The Spy returned the favor by also giving him a friendly smile. The Sniper nodded, and returned back into his scoped position. The Spy turned around 180-degrees, his back now towards the Sniper and his favorite revolver prepared for action. He quickly spun around and lifted his gun up at his head. The Sniper turned his head slightly and managed to murmur 'eh?' with a face of confusion and fear before a shot rang out throughout Teufort. The Sniper dropped his sniper rifle and fell down.
The Spy was surprised on how easily he took away the Sniper's life. No lingering hesitation, no uncomfortableness - just an easy pull on the trigger.
He lowered his revolver and shuffled back the way he came from, into the poorly-lighted room. Just past that stood a slightly tipsy Demoman, with his Sticky Launcher in hand. He looked at the Spy happily and went back to looking over the small courtyard. He must've mistaken the revolver's shot for the Sniper's, hence not causing any suspicion. The Spy approached him and patted him on the shoulder. Examining the Demoman's work, he saw a deadly sticky trap placed below, easily capable of blowing up a person into bloody smithereens. This brought an idea to the Spy.
Continuing to pat his shoulder, now slightly awkwardly, the Spy slapped the Demoman on his soft back hard enough to send him flying down into the courtyard. Due to his clumsiness whilst being drunk, he was unable to shield himself from the fall, landing on his face. He was barely moving, but he was still alive. The Ambassador was pointed at one of the stick bombs and fired. The Domino Effect took place; the exploding bomb caused another bomb to explode, which caused another one, and then another one, and so on so forth. After all 8 bombs were blown up, the Spy grinned from his success. There, in the corner of the stair case, lay nearly two parts of a Demoman. He was surely dead.
While the Spy approached the entrance to the stairs which lead down into the intelligence room, the image of the RED Engineer pulling out unusuals out of a crate reappeared in his mind. A sudden feeling of uncertainty came upon the Spy as he approached the entrance. Was it truly worth it?
Entering the seemingly small shack, the Spy saw that the scout was ascending up the stairs, with his ice-cold Crit-a-cola soda in his hand.
"Hey there, Spy." He mumbled as he took a sip of the cola. The Spy reached back to his revolver and pulled it out in a split second, pointing it directly at the Scout's face. The Scout began to spit his cola in surprise, but ended up spitting out mostly blood as he flew down the staircase, dead just like the Sniper and the Demoman were.
"Three out of the eight…" Thought the Spy to himself as he quickly descended the staircase and glided past the corpse of the Scout. Stepping into the sticky concoction of blood and soda, the spy grunted, but quickly regretted doing that. Not a moment passed as he heard the familiar footsteps of the Soldier in his boots and the Pyro.
Panic ran through the Spy, as the pair approached the corner where they could see the Scout. He threw his revolver aside and flipped out his balisong. The Soldier glanced around the corner and started to yell but was immediately cut off by a blade which cut through his back. He made a strange noise and fell into the Scout's cola, murdered in cold blood. The Pyro followed in his footsteps promptly.
A sense of relief flushed over the Spy, and he returned to pick up his Ambassador. As he reached for it, he heard something in the distance. Familiar distant beeping and mechanical whirls. It was the Engineer with equipment set up in the Intelligence room. A perfect place to carry out a murder.
He entered the room and saw the Engineer resting on his dispenser with a guitar in his hands as he tinkering with chords. He was so into his music that he didn't even notice how the Spy entered the room. This only made the job easier for Spy, of course. The Spy approached him and tapped him on the shoulder, slightly surprising him. He pointed at the teleporter behind the dispenser.
The Engineer, confused at what the problem was, placed him guitar down and looked behind himself. The teleporter appeared to be in perfect condition, quietly spinning in a light shade of blue.
Not a single second was wasted by the sly Spy. He quickly acted by pulling out his revolver and shooting his fourth bullet into the area where the helmet wasn't cover his head. Without a word, the Engineer fell into that small pit and an uncomfortable crunching noise was heard. Even the Spy grimaced at the sound of it. He concluded that he must have broken his neck with the weight of his body and equipment on him.
Now that six of his teammates were killed, he felt a little shameful of what he had done, but he reassured himself, imagining the glory of the unusuals that were patiently waiting for him. The Engineer's comfortable smile echoed in his mind, mixing in and dulling his remorse.
Even though it made perfect sense back then, now it seemed to be a little flawed. How was it worth it? He attempted to shrug the question off as he went up the ramp, but it wouldn't leave him no matter how hard he tried. Eventually, he just gave up on his futile attempts and focused on the task that rested on his shoulders. He turned right and jumped down a floor, landing beside the Heavy, who was caressing his Sasha in his lap while sitting some small, broken crates.
He gleamed at the Spy, happy at finally seeing another human in the room. His gun was good, but even with his minimal intelligence, he could realize that his guns was nothing compared to his human companions. It was no or never; he had to get the Heavy now. The Spy shuffled slowly towardsthe Heavy, hands in his pockets. A sense of unease ran through the Heavy, but the Heavy did not shudder. When the two men were face-to-face with each other, the bloodied butterfly knife sliced the Russian throat. He dropped his gun and threw his hands towards his throat. He peered at the Spy, taken by surprise that his own teammate and friend was going to kill him. He dimly stared into the Spy's cold expression, before collapsing dead on to the ground. The Heavy's life was over.
Now the only person left was the Medic, and the only reasonable place he could be was by his bird down in the sub-level. The Spy went down the staircase thinking only about the unusuals awaiting him after the final murder. The glory that would the unusuals - the status of having the unusuals. Unusuals.
His shoes were soaked and his pants dampened with the water, but it didn't matter, not at this point. He gazed into the distance to see a familiar figure sitting against a wall with a white bird. It was the Medic with perhaps his only true friend, Archimedes. He gently patted his dove's head, before realizing the Spy was standing nearby, visibly stressed out with a bloodied suit and bewildered eyes.
He rushed up, wanting to help out a fellow teammate as the doctor. He grabbed the trusty medigun which was lying right beside him and pointed at the Spy. The beam instantly connected with Spy, but did very little to change the expression on the Spy's face, and literally nothing to his bloodied suit. The Medic was surprised. If this blood wasn't disappearing, then it wasn't his own-
The Spy raised his Ambassador for the fifth time and aimed at the Medic's head. The Medic's jaw dropped along with his medigun, and the fifth shot sounded through Teufort. The medic collapsed back into his prior position, and Archimedes landed on his shoulder just as he was sitting on it when the Medic was alive. However, when Archimedes heard nothing from the Medic, he let a soft cooing noise, trying to get the Medic's attention. No reply, but the soft cooing nosies continued. All that the Spy could do was watch.
He looked at his revolver and back at the medic. He dropped his revolver and began to cry. Not a soft cry, but a genuine stifling cry. What had he just done? What on Earth had he just done? He had just murdered all his friends mercilessly, and for what? A couple of hats? The pain was almost unbearable for him. He walked towards the lifeless body of the medic and pulled it with him, and went back into the spawn room. He then gathered everyone else the same way, and placed them in the spawn room.
Once all his teammates were in the room, he looked at them, left to right. There was the Scout, who had a bullet in his head. Then there was the soldier, who was quickly stabbed in the back, alongside with the Pyro who died the same way. Next was the demo, in two grisly chunks. Adjacent to him was the Heavy, neck slashed open after he greeted a friend. After the Heavy was the Engineer, who had his neck was snapped and a bullet in the back of his neck. The Medic with his paranoid eyes was next in the group. He was slugged trying to heal the Spy. Lastly, of course, was the first victim of this massacre; the friendly Sniper who only gave the Spy a smile and received a bullet in return. It was a terrible sight.
A knock interrupted the Spy's towering sorrow. He opened the gate, wiping the last of his bitter tears only to find himself face to face with eight unusuals. He grabbed the unusuals and brought them inside. These were now useless to him. They couldn't be shown off now to anyone, they couldn't be sold to anyone, so the Spy carefully placed a hat on each one of his teammates, precisely eight hats on his eight fallen teammates.
He realized that with all of this, he still had one bullet left in his Ambassador. He looked at his revolver, then at his lifeless friends, and then back to his gun. He couldn't take it anymore. If there was anything to do, it was to kill the murderer who had done such an unspeakable crime. Slowly, but surely, he raised the revolver to his head. He closed eyes and breathed out deeply. The last and final shot was heard across Teufort.