It's funny when you plan the second chapter in your head but it ends up so long that you have to divided in 3 chapters.
CHAPTER 2 - From France to Australia
"I am I, and I wish I weren't."
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.
The Spy had an oddly natural standard Australian accent and it wasn't a parody of Sniper's one. It wasn't an imitation of his thick rural pronunciation. It sounded more like a perfect neutral accent, that type that could have belong to a news reader from a national TV channel.
Was this real?
Was, against what the code stipulated, a Spy standing just in front of him with a genuine Australian accent?
...
Spy.
Australian.
Accent.
...
Sniper blinked completely stunned, trying to associate those simple three words together inside his mind and as a result, he triggered an overload of his mental processing capacity.
This new fact about the Frenchman was even more disconcerting than discovering how his face looked like for the first time. Crikey, blimey! He had seen his face! And his hands! And his feet! Moreover, Sir Hootsalot was now a real owl too! And how to forget that both of them had moved freely!
Wait! And what had happened to his beloved rifle? Where had he sent it?
...
"Oi think Oi forgot to breath in the last 30 seconds."
Sniper spasmodically breath a single time and after that, he went back into statue mode again.
His thoughts began racing like if they had never stopped.
Why this BLU Spy was doing this to him!? How could the rogue throw so many social bombs one after the other and expect from him to react with total normalcy?!
"Ey!" The Frenchman snapped his nude fingers, went completely blank for a second, looked at his hand, snapped his fingers again, softly chuckled and miraculously remembered what was the intention of that action in the first place. It was supposed to help get the RED out of his trance, not get himself in one for his own. "You wouldn't have forgotten how ta grab a hand, would ya?"
Sniper could do that, couldn't he? He could focus on that elementary gesture and ignore everything else for the moment. He could ignore the other's Australian accent and his maskless face.
With the conviction that he should had employed to fight his mental confusion, Sniper firmly clutched the offered hand and a fraction of a second later, new insecurities merciless assaulted him. He was accepting an enemy Spy's gloveless hand for no reason! Why? He could stand up by himself!
However, before he could change his mind, the BLU already secured their grasp and pulled the sharpshooter up with visibly more force that it was necessary.
Therefore, they crashed into each other.
Sniper reeled backwards trying to regain his balance and, with his hat partially covering his vision again because of the collision, he almost stabbed the Frenchman with his kukri as a reflex when the man set a hand over his shoulder to help him stabilize.
"There you go!" The Spy released their handshake and patted the Australian's chest in a patronizing manner. "Do you remember how ta walk or shall I teach you an introductory lesson?"
"Maybe Oi should have accidentally stabbed him." Sniper bitterly thought at the other's visible mockery while he was fixing his fedora for the second time. It was so annoying now that it no longer remained perfectly stick to his head.
Once he put it back to his rightful place, he found himself face to face with the rogue, who was fixing his previous messed hair with the use of some very familiar aviators as a mirror.
It took Sniper a second to recognize that they were HIS aviators. The Spy had used the crash as a distraction to steal them.
"Oi should have friggin' stabbed this snake." He threw him a piercing glare that undeniably spoke up his indignation.
On the other hand, an amused smile was drawn in Spy's lips at spotting from the corner of his eyes the Sniper's pissed expression. At last, he had realized the true reason of why the Frenchman had helped him get up to his feet.
"Give me my sunnies back, ya bloody Spook!" The Australian managed to spat back, anger masking his self-annoyance for letting himself be tricked so easily. The phony scoundrel could have politely asked for them! But no! He had to show off how he had successfully pickpocketed him!
"Fair go, bushman." Spy nonchalantly dismissed him without entering into his provocation. His lopsided smile still lingering from his lips. "Let us both enjoy my handsome face for a little longer. I hardly remembered how I looked like." He openly admitted like it wasn't a big deal.
Why Spy was spilling one personal confession after the other was a mystery even for the Frenchman too. Maybe he was so thrilled with their recently gained freedom of movement that he didn't care anymore about upholding his aloof reputation. Maybe his implanted memories were making him experience this bickering as a more friendly conversation than it should have been. After all, neither of them were the canon mercenaries from the comics and the videos. Regardless of this Sniper's age, they both had diverged, even if was only in the slightest, from the standard personality they were created with.
Deep down, Spy knew they were total strangers to each other despite not wanting to act like that. He had to admit that there wasn't any logical reason for that behavior. Maybe, just maybe he was repressing this knowledge from his actions because having the chance to enjoy a friendship for the first time in his virtual life was unusually alluring.
However, one thing was sure. This Frenchman planned to enjoy their temporal freedom as much as possible without taking into consideration what the others might think about him. Right now, he was fighting back his personal demons, in particular that strident paranoid part of his mind that was pleading for his complete uniform back but he wasn't going to relinquish. He wasn't the canon Spy anymore and given this holy chance, he wanted to defy his programming and just be himself, whoever he really was, and not what the code wanted him to be.
"Sure." Sniper sarcastically replied. "And while ya're on it, ya can also try ta remember where did ya leave yer French accent. Ya sound like a bloody weatherman from an Aussie TV channel."
At the remark, Spy froze like a deer in headlights.
Maybe he shouldn't be totally himself.
"Merde, merde, merde!"
How had he forgotten about that!? How he had forgotten what those Bruce gamers had done to him!? How had he kept speaking without being aware of his bloody accent!?
Putain, he was even thinking in Aussie! This was worse than he previously assessed.
"Switch to French now! Tout de suite!"
Nobody could know! This wasn't a Spy's canon secret! This was HIS embarrassing secret and he had no idea of how to deal with it!
Spy froze like a deer in headlights and for a fraction of a second, Sniper saw the man's jaw clenching and his eyebrows going slightly upwards on the depiction of a strongly restrained panic attack face. If the BLU hadn't been maskless, he would have probably missed his reaction as faint and instantaneous as it had been. Well, if that had been a real reaction at all and not a product of his own imagination because before he could blink, the Frenchman started guffawing in an exaggerated and contemptuous manner.
As the scorn laughter went on, Sniper switched from his previous indignation to confusion and after, to proper anger. This backstabbing fraud was laughing at him!
"What's so funny with ya, filthy Spook?" He asked with his kukri ready to impale it through the other's ribcage if he didn't like the answer.
"You-you..." The BLU finally controlled his boisterous snorting and after cleaning a fake tear, he replied to him with his apparently recovered French accent. "Oh mon dieu... We will 'ave to find you a medkit, bushman. Dzat bang against dze floor made you more moronic dzat I thought possible if you really 'allucinated dzat I was talking with your accent."
After that response, Sniper stared at the Frenchman in deep thought with his eyebrows furrowed. Why did his French accent suddenly feel so forced? It sounded exactly the same as how a Spy should sound like and regardless of that, there was a ticklish sensation on a deeper level of his consciousness that was warning him not to trust this display. There was something very wrong with this Spy's English and the sharpshooter wasn't planning to fall for his tricks. At least, not again.
Sniper was going to spat another irascible comment when he heard the sound of two rockets being launched and a very characteristic war cry coming from outside the window, over the bridge's direction. With his mouth open and the first syllable of his words at the tip of his tongue, he turned his head to the noise as a primitive reaction and just when he saw what was heading for them, he felt his body falling to the ground with an unusual weight on top of it.
A series of consecutive explosions followed and a feather landed on Sniper's cheek.
