I shouldn't have started writing this yet but here I am, publishing the first chapter of this Herculean project still without a beta reader.
Brave New Update is meant to be a separate and self-explanatory story, so you don't need to read the previous pieces of the Collection - Team Fortress Sentience to follow the events of this one. However, in my opinion, they are worth reading.
Also, just for the record, you will find that some of the characters of this story are no longer the canonical mercs. Some have evolved more than others but I promise that all of them have their own backstory that justifies their behavior. So if you want a long frenetic ride, please give them a chance.
Without any more delay, enjoy the first chapter.
CHAPTER 1 - Freedom
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.
It was a peaceful virtual day in Teufort.
Except it was actually dark and it wasn't peaceful at all, because the map was Teufort Invasion and although everything in this world was made by zeros and ones, war was still war.
The server was emptier than usual and quiet as many other European servers were. Most of the players had decided to randomly wander around, instead of focusing on capturing the enemy intelligence, so the match hadn't progressed much. Both teams had been behaving so idly that after almost two hours, the scoreboard was still 1-0, on BLU's favor, and there was the silent but general agreement that it should be kept like that for eternity.
Unfortunately or not, eternity was going to come faster than anyone wished for because an update was programmed to be executed in less than 2 minutes and in that precise moment, Valve servers were going to be reset therefore, forcing a sudden end to the match.
Most of the digital mercenaries had already resigned to that faith and one of them was the RED Sniper. However, that didn't mean that he had to quit his duel against his BLU doppelganger. The sharpshooter had to admit that both players were pretty average but he was still enjoying this mediocre competition.
Both snipers were at the balcony of their corresponding bases and were shooting each other almost exclusively. Watched from an external point of view it looked rather fruitless but it was entertaining enough for the four of them, the players and the snipers, specially for the snipers. Both mercenaries were taking the duel with a good mood, congratulating the other man across the map after respawning from a particular skillful kill or teasing each other in the meantime. It was relaxing and it helped create a nice working atmosphere until all of them were meant to be sent into the darkness again.
In the current moment, the RED Sniper was waiting for his rival to respawn. His player had recently adopted the strategy of moving him around the open area so every time his enemy poked his head over the protective metal plates, he would find him in a different position, generating a half second of advantage that they were using to shoot first. It was a simple but visibly effective tactic.
If Sniper wasn't mistaken, the next kill would give them a domination. Not that it would make a difference or matter at all but he wanted that domination nonetheless. Even if it became his octave bodyshot in a row.
"Nothin' to be ashamed of. 'Cause at the end of the day, bodyshots are still kills." He remembered with a fond smile.
He was so concentrated switching his scope from one side of the balcony to the other that he let out a silent cry when a message popped on in his visual field. It was basically to remind the players that due to the incoming update, the connection was going to be interrupted in about 30 seconds.
At the same time that Sniper was giving a quick read at the notification, he faintly heard his rival shout from behind cover:
"One more kill and ya'll dominate me, mate."
"Oi know and Oi'm waitin' for ya! Show me yer soon ta be dead body." He replied with a chuckle that he tried his best to make it resonate across the bridge.
"Oh, bugger ya! Ya'll never get it!" The other man exclaimed with a friendly attitude.
The RED Sniper smirked when he was moved to another side of the balcony and scoped again. The countdown from 10 seconds had already started and he was very determined to get that last successful shot. For some reason, he wanted it so badly.
He knew that craving feeling was childish. After this match was over, he wouldn't see again the other Sniper and even if he did, he wouldn't recognized him with a different loadout. Moreover, he wasn't actually the one who was aiming, his player was.
This Sniper, as any other mercenary in the server, was a sentient puppet of a virtual world inside an online videogame. Therefore, it was a mystery why he felt so immersed in this stupid competition. Maybe it was because he had been the one to start it, maybe because it was one of the few acts of free will he could exercise.
Dominating that anonymous polite rival was his today's whim.
The countdown was almost reaching its end when the other mercenary appeared just at the center of his scope. The RED Sniper's lips quirked up and he caressed the trigger of his rifle ready to take that beautiful headshot.
He could almost hear the sound of his weapon and its recoil against his shoulder when something unexpected happened. Another message startled him and almost at the same time, a strange invisible wave washed his body from head to toe. For a couple a seconds, Sniper awaited the shot that never came until, annoyed with his user, he decided to check out the notification.
It said that the servers had been finally shut down and it asked the players to disconnect from the game.
Sniper frowned at that new information.
If that was true, why he and the others were still here? He could still see the other Sniper at the end of his scope and hear a minigun spinning downstairs.
That announcement had to be a mistake, the darkness would have claimed them by now if the match was really over.
It was then, while trying to process what was going on, that Sniper felt Sir Hootsalot moving an inch to the left of his shoulder.
"Wait, wot?"
With eyes wide and without lowering his rifle, he partially turned his head to his animal companion just to find a living, breathing owl with his head under his wing, cleaning his feathers. The sharpshooter blinked completely stunned at that scene. Sir Hootsalot like any other cosmetic animal of the game was supposed to be a stuffed dead creature. It was supposed to be permanently stuck to his shoulder, immobile. It wasn't supposed to do bird-like things like a real owl did.
It wasn't supposed to be alive.
"It's-it's alive..." A shivery voice, astonished as Sniper felt in that moment, whispered behind him.
An instinct that the Australian didn't remember having instantly kicked in and without consciously processing it, Sniper dematerialized his rifled and threw himself to the ground summoning his kukri. If it hadn't been for his Scoped Spartan, that fabulous mud-stained cape, he would have expertly rolled to the side and stood up in a threatening pose. What it actually happened was that he stumbled and pathetically landed on the wooden floor with his melee weapon almost out of his grasp, his sunglasses crooked, one of his legs wrapped around the piece of clothing and his hat on his shoulder.
He groaned from the pain and went to rub his head with his free hand when he stopped dead on his tracks and acknowledged his current position.
He was on laying on the floor. HE WAS LAYING ON THE FLOOR!
He had never laid on the floor. He had ran, crouched, sat down or bumped into walls but the only moment when the game allowed him to lay on the floor like that, was when he was dead and he was very sure he wasn't dead.
"You moved. You... moved..." The voice spoke again with an irregular accent.
Completely befuddled, Sniper raised his gaze to meet a frozen BLU Spy standing with his arm raised and a Kunai ready to backstab an imaginary adversary. Sir Hootsalot was resting at the glassless window, in front of Frenchman, looking defiant at the rogue and outwardly annoyed for startling his owner.
"Oi moved..." The Australian muttered processing for the first time that he had instinctively commanded his body to jump to the side and against all programming, it had fully obeyed him.
Sir Hootsalot hooted almost sarcastically at the exchange of words. Apparently, the white owl was the only one in the room that was acting nonchalantly at the situation.
Both mercenaries stared at each other completely bewildered for a long couple of seconds until the Spy broke eye contact and took a look at his raised hand. With a perplexed facial expression that didn't belong to a suave man like him, the Frenchman opened his fist and dropped the knife.
The two of them watched the weapon fall down in an impossible low motion and clatter against the floor.
A subtle smile made his way to the Spy's lips.
With a contained excitement, the Frenchman slipped a finger under his right glove and his smile grew bigger. Still not believing what was happening, he got rid of his gloves with two swift moves, sending them carelessly next to his knife.
Following next, the Spy proceeded to examine his slightly trembling hands and Sniper could only but to remain immobile, admiring the scene that it was unfolding in front of him. He had never seen a Spy without gloves, not in the game, not in his implanted memories. For some stupid reason, some subconscious part of him had assumed that there was nothing under those leather accessories, that spies were born with gloves as part of their skin.
In contrast to his surreal misconception, this new reality was proving him wrong because the Spy had two very real and pale hands. Skinny and apparently fragile with long fingers that ended in almost feminine nails but surgeon-precise and very deadly as he had experienced in past battles.
Sniper would have gasped if he hadn't been paralyzed by the shock.
Once satisfied with what he was looking at, the Frenchman let out a shaky chuckled and without any consideration, he threw his Fancy Fedora against the wall and introduced his thumbs under the neck end of his balaclava.
This time though, Sniper could appreciate the hesitation in the Spy. The BLU took a deep breath and with a spark of dauntingness in his eyes, he did something that the Australian would have never conceived from the paranoid and secretive man.
He pulled out his mask.
Against all the crazy theories or unfounded rumors, the Spy wasn't bald or had reptile scales for hair. He didn't have demoniac hidden horns or a giant facial tattoo. He didn't have blue skin and neither was he a disturbing living skull.
In fact, he looked almost exactly as those unmasked Spy models that could be found through Google with the streaking difference that his hair wasn't raven black. It was closer to a much darker shade of Scout's brown hair.
Somehow, it felt completely appropriate and even more Mediterranean.
At that apocryphal scene, Sniper began considering if that bang against the ground could have corrupted his code in some way to produce this type of hallucination, because anything of what was happening, couldn't be happening for real.
In the meantime, the Frenchman played with this balaclava for a couple of seconds, rubbing his thumbs against the piece of clothing, almost as making sure that it was between his hands and not covering his head like it always did. After that, he let the mask slip through his fingers to the floor and softly cupped his cheeks. He chuckled silently and with a tiny bit of a long-hidden sorrow on his expression, he traced his fingers up to his hair which he started massaging it slowly, afraid that he might rip it off if he rushed too much. However, as he realized that his hair was stuck on his skull for good, the Spy increased the speed of his hands to the point that it could only be described as a frenetic disheveling.
And he maniacally laughed at doing so.
At first, it was a shocked huffed chuckling that turned into a hiccupped snorting and finally evolved into an boastful ecstatic laugh.
It was creepy, bizarre and heartbreaking at the same time. To be honest, it had more of "creepy" than the two other adjectives.
Without taking his eyes from the BLU, Sniper freed his leg and awkwardly maneuvered with his cape to sit down, not releasing his kukri. He pushed his sunglasses up his nose and put his hat back where it belong, then decided against his second action and folded his aviators, placing them in one of his vest's pockets. He blinked a couple of times after that. It was odd to appreciate the world without that distinct yellow shade.
Laying on the floor had been a new experience for him but it wasn't a comfortable pose to stay for a long period of time and with that Frenchman seemingly out of his mind just two steps from him, he didn't feel as the most appropriate to just lay forever in such a vulnerable position.
At the Australian's movement, the Spy remembered that he wasn't alone and partially regained his composure, painfully removing his fingers from his messed hair.
"Apologies, bushman. You don't know how much I've fantasized with the simple thought of brushin' my hair with my bare fingers. Or touchin' anythin' with my bare hands, ta be completely frank." The Frenchman explained with a gleeful grin, at the same time that he loosened his tie, removed it and proceeded to take off his dashing Assassin's Attire's jacket.
Sniper frowned at the man, not because of his confession or the apparent striptease that the other seemed so keen to perform but due to his unusual accent. Now that the Spy had elaborated a complete sentence and both of them were recovering from the initial shock, the RED realized that the digital man in front of him didn't have that common French accent that all spies possessed and neither was a softer version of it, that one the sharpshooter had heard once from an old talkative Spy.
This accent was extremely familiar to the Australian and at the same time, it didn't suit at all the rogue's sensual voice and his recently discovered face.
Concentrated on his war against clothes and oblivious to Sniper's new quandary, the Frenchman didn't give a sign of noticing or caring about his deviant accent because with the lack of dexterity only attributable to someone who had never stood in one single leg before, the Spy managed to get rid of his shoes and socks with a false collected control. He made one of his cheerful chuckles and after rubbing his feet against the rough floor and kinkily enjoying it, he took a confident step forward the sharpshooter, his former enemy, and offered him his ungloved hand.
"Dépêche-toi, let's go ta enjoy our freedom, mon ami."
At that precise instant and thanks to the contrast of the secret agent's impeccable pronunciation of French, realization hit Sniper.
At last, he successfully indentified what was so wrong with the other's English.
The Spy had an oddly natural standard Australian accent.
...
"Wait, wot?"
Any comments or constructive criticism are welcome. As a writer, your feedback keeps me motivated and helps me continue this story. ^^