*Past me* Why there are now 6 expected chapters in the description? You said this was going to be the last chapter in Banana Bay.
*Present me* Well... I started writing and it ended up longer than I thought so I had to divide it in two chapters. The one I'm just publishing is the longest until now.
*Past me* But, but, but...
*Future me* Shut up, you two! I also added a surprise in the End Notes so you better check it out later.
Ch4 - Standards: plr_banana_bay
Those dark orange eyes were piercing through Sniper's soul, judging each one of the sins he had ever committed and planning the worst imaginable tortures in retaliation. Those eyes were dead, hollow, hunted. They were the eyes of a deadly hunter, a nocturnal predator, a winged beast.
"Having a gander at this little beauty?" His new snipping partner asked him, snapping our protagonist Sniper from his trance.
"You could say that..." The sharpshooter replied to the other Australian and forced himself to stop staring at the Sir Hootsalot that rested on top of the other's shoulder. Not that he actually needed the concentration to shoot his targets, the sheila was doing all the job, it was just he couldn't properly focus on what his hands were doing with the eyes of that dead animal observing him from the side.
Dead, yes. You read it right, dead. Sir Hootsalot was really, truly, verily and really truly verily dead. All cosmetics animals employed in the game were dead. They were stuff virtual animals.
That was one of the dark truths our digital mercenaries had to live with every day and it was probably for the best.
Dying in a daily basis was hard enough that Sniper couldn't imagine how it would be if he had a living animal permanently attached to his shoulder, suffering each shot and explosion as he did. He knew that more than one Soldier wouldn't complain about having a rabid raccoon hanging from his belt but personally, he preferred the morbid reality even though those piercing eyes unsettled him beyond his comprehension.
Maybe they, the mercenaries, were all supposed to be like those stuff animals, just empty shells and virtual mindless puppets. Maybe their sentience had been a mistake on the programme in the attempt of making them more realistic. Maybe they…
"Mate, you are blocking my view." The other Sniper complained.
"Not my fault, sorry." Our protagonist apologized and he received a unintelligible grumble in response. "Now, you are blocking my view, mate."
"Not my fault, mate." His not so nice partner retorted.
Had this guy just tried to mock him exaggerating their shared accentuated Australian accent? Didn't he realised that they looked identically the same and had the same voice and verbal mannerisms?
Sniper wanted to believe that he, himself, wasn't such a mongrel. Those incidents with the aimbots had given him perspective and maturity, hadn't they? He fought his instincts and didn't bark back. Instead, he prayed to Lord Gabe.
"Please, switch this sorry excuse of a professional to the other team so Oi can bodyshot him."
However, what it really happened was that his player made him unscoped and moved him to the other opening of the balcony. It felt like some kind of defeat being him the one to leave the other alone on the preferred snipping spot. Not that Sniper was being very fruitful without any potential victims to shoot but it stunk nonetheless.
Just when his rifle was full charged again, an enemy Pyro made act of presence.
Boom. Bodyshot.
He didn't kill the Pyro. The firelover had survived his bodyshot with 3hp.
"Oh, come on!" Hadn't anybody scratched this guy before?
Sniper switched to his melee weapon, ready to jump from the balcony and finish what he had started when a Demoknight, charging at the speed of light, appeared from the same corner the Pyro had come and decapitated the enemy with a clean swing.
"Team job!" Mister Derp exclaimed in the chat but the sheila didn't rejoice with him.
"That Pyro was a walking corpse. He was our walking corpse." He internally reproached him.
Sniper mentally stopped on his tracks.
Bloody hell! Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was as grumpy as the other Sniper. He shook his head. No. He had standards. He had his standards, hadn't he?
The Australian couldn't help but to observe the Scottish explosions expert. That guy was having the time of his life. He could heard his laugh even from the balcony. So much raw emotion. For a second, he envied him.
Then, he repeated to himself that he had his standards.
"Oh, god! How many heads do you already have, Derp? You move faster than a Scout." The sheila asked him somewhat impressed.
"Eight, soon to be nine and then ten and so on." The young man replied even more confident than last time he had spoken.
"You know it's highly probable that you will get killed before that, don't you? 20 kills in one life are a lot of kills." She explained trying to put some common sense into him.
"I've done this before." Sniper watched the Demoknight take the medkit and leave through the wood divider from on top of the hill. "Don't worry, I have everything under... " Derp let out a scream like if he had been backstabbed in real life and yelped afterwards. "Nope! I'm leaving. Bye-bye Heavy and Medic!"
A second later, the sharpshooter saw the Scottish reappearing from behind the rocks of the ocean, running over water again. He didn't seem as exhilarated as before.
Sniper's lips quirked up at that scene.
"Why did you speak? You almost jinx it!" The Demonknight's player accused her.
"No, I didn't. On the contrary, I use my superpower to help you." He replied not caring at the least.
"It doesn't seem so from my point of view. Also, you already used your power today. Doesn't it have a limitation or something?"
"I don't know. We'll have to test it." Then, she casually added. "There's a Scout coming after you."
"Where?" Derp inquired and just afterwards he received a scattergun shot from a swimming little gremlin. The boy let out another scream and the Demoknight turned around frantically, trying to find the source of the attack. He never got to spot the enemy because Sniper shot him first.
Boom. Bodyshot. –Scout down-
"Never mind, he's dead." The Sheila informed her even more idly than more. However, the sharpshooter would have bet that there was a half-smile on her lips.
Why Sniper had the impression that his player had waited until the Scout had started attacking before putting a bullet in his chest? Maybe because she did. His rifle had been full charged all the time and ready to take the shot.
"You're crazy and evil." He thought to himself like if she could hear him and it surprised him that the supposed reproach sounded in his head more supportive than condemnatory.
He shrugged. His standards didn't say anything against giving humility lessons in the most painful ways, didn't they?
"Don't do that to me again!" Derp demanded her with an odd mix of desperation and genuinely annoyance.
"I can't promise anything." She replied at the same time that Sniper unscoped and examined that side of the map in search of more potential victims.
Immediately after, the rest of the Pineapple team gave their opinion about the topic.
"You know that she will." Edge, the Demoman who had saved him from the Spy with crits, expressed with a funny accent the sharpshooter didn't recognize.
"She surely will." Ragox, the Heavy in real life, corroborated.
"Yep." Martin simply affirmed.
Even a non-related guy stopped to type in the chat.
"she will without a doubt"
That was maybe too much. Sniper was starting to feel sorry for the general mocking the young man was suffering.
Ha, ha, ha.
Who was he kidding? He actually didn't.
"Oh, shut up everyone!" Derp moaned and the Demoknight disappeared from Sniper's sight, probably full of resentment and craving for more heads as his player did. The Australian honestly wished him a prosperous hunt. That Scottish might be a bit cocky too but Sniper didn't profess him as much ill will as he did forwards his player.
Surprisingly the chat fell silence, the Pineapple team apparently knew when to stop teasing each other, which frankly amazed the sharpshooter. Respect was the basis of any team and they seemed to take that into account.
And talking about respect...
"You're back." The other Australian spat him with disdain when he returned to the previous snipping spot.
In response, Sniper kept his face blank and didn't acknowledge his attitude which it seemingly enraged the other because he let out a curse under his breath.
"How did both of us come from the same digital code?" He wondered scrutinizing his nest partner in hopes of finding a physical difference that may indicate an error in his programming.
He didn't find any tough.
Boom. Bodyshot.
Sniper shot a RED Solider while he was leaving the opposite Spawn but at full health as the enemy was, he didn't successfully kill him.
Boom. Headshot. -Soldier down-
The other sharpshooter finished the job when the RED's head showed up shortly after.
Impressed, our Australian threw a peek to his undesirable partner and he found him mortally serious. After a great shot like that, he still looked like he hated everyone in the server. That wasn't a mood to have while performing the profession you love.
"Fine shot, mate!" Sniper's vocal cords spontaneously blurted out. The sheila had pressed the default key: C → 7 (Nice shot) and it took him totally by surprise. He kept observing the other Australian. Another player praising him surely had to evocate some positive effect on his attitude, hadn't it?
Instead, the irritable Sniper frowned. Profusely.
Suddenly, an unwillingly "Appreciate it, mate!" came out from him with a uncharacteristic positivity that didn't match his deadly somber face. His user had thanked the sheila pressing the default key: Z → 2 and it ignited the already spoiled mood of the other sharpshooter.
"It was a really nice shot." Our protagonist sincerely admitted it to the grumpy one. It was an honest confession from Sniper to Sniper, from professional to professional. They were both supposed to have standards.
"Be polite."
However, the other Australian opted for plainly ignore him. For a second, it even gave the impression that he was going to spit on him but he just kept looking through his scope while his body trembled with anger.
"Oi don't know what it's wrong with you, mate but you ain't right on the head." Sniper dismissed him.
After all he had gone through himself, after all those hackers, after being thrown around like a mindless puppet, after all those painful deaths and desperate moments, Sniper had always been loyal to his personal mantras. That was the only thing for sure he possessed through time and place and he couldn't understand what could have happened to the other guy, who was supposed to be a copy of him, to become so different.
It infuriated him. That Sniper was a disgrace to the class. He had turned his back to the basis of what they were.
Boom. Bodyshot. - Engineer down -
Boom. -Sentry down -
The two sharpshooter fired simultaneous taking down the enemy Engineer who had dared to attempt to build something in his own balcony. Their reflexes and coordination had been flawless.
"Be efficient."
After the shot, Sniper unscoped. He had gotten to know that the sheila was a paranoid. She had a tendency to hear spies that weren't there but this time, she wasn't that out of track. A RED Pyro was preparing his Thermal Thruster over the railways with the intention of flying into the balcony.
"Other Sniper, RUN!" The sheila warned his snipping partner but the other player didn't react.
The wisest course of action would have been to follow her own advice and take shelter into the Spawn room but of course Sniper's player wasn't going to stand back from a face to face encounter.
He switched to his melee weapon and took some steps back.
Bloody heck, she had made him melee a Heavy to death, A HEAVY. A Pyro was probably just a literal firebug on the eyes of that reckless woman.
The Australian slightly crouched, adopting a battling pose. There was nothing he could do aside from preparing himself against the fire monster. He didn't have a word on the matter so better be ready to fight for his life.
He eyed the pyromaniac and just when he was going to took flight in their direction, the grouchy Sniper partly turned his head to our sharpshooter and muttered:
"For the record, Oi would have never chosen the Razorback."
Sniper's eyes went wide.
He hadn't sounded angry or frustrated. On the contrary, he had sounded sad, depressed, utterly broken. He had sounded like a man who had given up on everything and in return, everyone had given up on him. It was terrifying, in particular because it had come from a man with exactly the same voice as him. He didn't know he could sound so extremely despairing.
The mumbling abomination landed on the balcony and, as soon as he deployed his flamethrower, he focused on the immobile enemy who's player hadn't noticed his presence yet. The smartest strategy would have consisted on targeting the BLU who was actually attacking him but this game was Team Fortress 2 and decent strategies were non-existent.
While the Pyro was busy burning the other Australian, Sniper hit him twice with his scimitar although much time didn't pass until the demon in a fire suit ended the life of his first victim.
The other sharpshooter never got the chance to defend himself.
Afterwards, the monster turned his attention to the remaining enemy.
Both mercenaries circled around each other. Fire consuming Sniper's health points despite the protection of his Darwin's Danger Shield. He could guess that the other had been full health when he had come after them.
If that was true, Sniper might not make it out of this fight alive.
*CRITICAL HIT*
The lifeless body of the RED monster fell to the floor and the inexplicable properties of his secondary weapon extinguished any trace of fire from Sniper.
"Suddenly..."
"Pineapples!" The Pineapple team roared at unison. He noticed that Mr. Derp seemed to be in a especially great mood again.
Sniper should have celebrated with them, but yet he didn't. Instead, he looked down and examined the two laying corpses. The RED firelover and the alternative version of himself.
"Have a plan to kill everyone ya meet." It resonated in his mind.
Frankly? He didn't know how to feel about it.
"Feelins'? Look mate, you know who has a lot of feelings?" His own words were replayed in his head.
It took a lot of mental effort but in the end, Sniper managed to confess out loud:
"Me."
I'm probably going to regret this in a couple of months, so if the video is no longer available you know why:
Youtube - Meet the Zion (Parody of Meet the Sniper)
