. . .

Cyril was startled when he heard the voice, but recognized right away who it was. Whirling around, he asked, "Spy?"

At first, he thought it was his own teammate, but when he saw nobody there…

A second later, a figure materialized into the RED Spy.

Alarmed, Cyril immediately whipped out his SMG. "What are you doing here, snake?!"

The RED Spy seemed unaffected by the threat of his weapon, and instead coolly glanced down at the drawing.

"It looks like an Illuminati symbol," the guile man observed.

Cyril kept the gun trained on his enemy. "Don't ignore my question. You're trespassing on private property!"

RED Spy smiled sardonically. "Dis is a public road. Unincorporated county. Your base is 2,000 feet that way."

He indicated the hidden location among a small butte of rocks. "And dis shack house is nothing more than a set-up. It's not even recorded down in the county records with a legitimate address."

"How do you—" Cyril began, but he dreadfully realized it was too late. Spy knew exactly where BLU's headquarters were.

He had already infiltrated their old base in the Badlands, breaching security and slaying half the team. Cyril still remembered the nasty encounter in his nesting tower – and the humiliating defeat that followed. It was one he didn't wish to repeat. It was also the longest time he'd been in limbo between life and death, when Respawn had malfunctioned. Luckily, Engineer was resurrected right before it broke down and was able to fix it.

"It wasn't hard tracking your vehicles coming out of zat half-assed job of a 'boulder' disguise. Ze north end of the base is also open wide to the vast desert where anyone could easily see it."

The marksman wasn't in any mood for criticism of their sloppy work hiding a building. Maybe he shouldn't have erected the shack nearby BLU's quarters. Stupid, stupid!

"Anyhow, I was bored," Spy mockingly remarked. "And decided to pay one of my adversaries a visit."

Cyril wasn't buying it. "Bullshit! You came to spy on us."

"If I really wanted to, would I have made myself visible to you?"

"You're just trying to distract me. If you think you RED wankers are going to overrun our base, then you got another thing coming! Ceasefire or not!"

Despite his indignant threat, Cyril felt a twinge of fear. It was only him against the rest of RED team if they were ready to ambush. Even if he was slaughtered to a pulp and respawned, he at least hoped it would give him enough time to warn the others.

"My, such an overactive imagination," Spy replied, a tad amused. "I assure you, bushman, I'm quite alone." His eyes now focused on the drawing on the ground, he inquired, "What is zat?

Cyril risked a side glace at the symbol. "What's it to you?"

RED Spy sighed, walking around the marksmen to get another angle view. "Of course you won't' tell me. I'll still figure it out."

What an arrogant bastard.

Cyril felt the strong urge to pull the trigger. He certainly didn't feel like dealing with an irritating foe today. Still, Spy probably had his Dead Ringer on him. What use would it be killing him then? He could re-materialize and go invisible, easily slipping away.

The distinct, rumbling sounds of an engine caught Cyril's ears. It was the delivery truck from the farm. Great, just what he needed, for Jimmy to be caught in the middle of a RED/BLU squabble.

"I'm warning you, spook. Get out of here."

The RED Spy smirked. "Even if you kill me, zat won't stop me from finding out what you're up to." He eyes panned over to the symbol again.

"I'm not up to anything!" Cyril retorted, a strange frustration coming out of nowhere and not matching up with the usual antagonism he felt towards RED Spy. Before he could stop himself, he blurted out, "I don't know what the hell it means!"

At this, Spy's eyebrows raised slightly. The truck came closer, and Cyril steadily walked backwards, throwing a brief glance at the approaching vehicle.

"Jimmy!" he called. "Stay back!"

Taking one hand off the weapon, he frantically signaled for the young man to stay away. Jimmy complied, the truck slowing down on the road.

But when he glanced back, the RED Spy was nowhere to be seen. Shit, now he had to deal with playing an invisible game with that insufferable asshole. But then he thought of Bubo. The owl still needed to eat – he wasn't going to let an enemy sneak into the base. either He'd have to warn Heavy, Medic and his own Spy.

Too bad Pyro went off with the others to the concert. The arsonist would have made it easy just with their extraordinary spy-check ability.

Cyril hurriedly trotted over to the truck, as the young man poked his head out. "Hey, who was that masked guy? Was he trying to rob you?"

An awkward pause. "You could say that."

"He just went behind your home."

"I got a feeling he's not there no more…"

"I have a 12-gauge shotgun in the back," Jimmy offered. "We could take him down."

As much as Cyril would have loved the help, he didn't want the situation to get more complicated; especially if it involved a civilian. Wait, since when did he care? He wondered if he was going soft now.

"Nah, he's just an old nuisance that bothers me from time to time," the sharpshooter countered. "As long as he…stays behind there, I don't think he'll try anything stupid."

Jimmy was concerned. "Are you sure, Cyril?"

"Yeah, yeah, I've dealt with him before. Just keep a safe distance while you're handing me the package."

"Okay…" his acquaintance didn't look one hundred percent convinced. "Anyhow, these mice are fresh from yesterday's kill. You're gonna love the way they taste! You still make barbecue kabobs out of them?"

This time, Cyril didn't bother correcting Jimmy on the mice being for the owls. He would just forget again, as usual.

"Yeah, they're good with A1 sauce."

"Super, my man."

Jimmy then went to the truck's dry ice container, carefully taking out a large Styrofoam box. Cyril went back to the shack to retrieve the dolly he had brought along with him.

He didn't think RED Spy would try to harm the driver. Atleast, he hoped the Frenchman wasn't sadistic enough to do so. Or use him as a hostage to get Cyril to talk more about the symbol.

But everything went smoothly, and soon the marksman was left alone, carrying the shipment back to base.

He kept his senses up and gun ready just in case his devious rival got the drop on him. This time, he wouldn't hesitate to shoot. But RED Spy didn't show up. If he was invisible, he was being very silent about it. Cyril just wanted to get away from there as fast as he could.

From the shack, RED Spy watched him hastily slip through the disguise backdrop. He deactivated his invisible cloak and walked over to the drawing on the ground. His brows furrowed in thought as he studied it.

It wasn't the first time he'd seen it. At a pizza parlor in Tuefort, he walked in on some of the BLU Team leaving. Luckily, he'd been disguised as a dumpy, middle-aged man. BLU Scout had left a paper doodle on the table where they had eaten. Walking up to it, Spy had first seen the uncanny symbol with its triangular outline and twin flames.

A pattern involving that peculiar sign was forming.

"Just what does it entail?" he wondered aloud.

. . .

After storing most of the frozen mice in one of the large freezers, Cyril took a six-pack bag of them up to his quarters. He also notified the others that RED Spy was lurking around the base. Engineer already had his sentries guarding the building perimeter, though everyone knew they could easily be sapped by the culprit in question. So, he enlisted the help of two guard dogs to keep vigilance and guard them from any intruders. Their canine genome was also programmed into the respawn system, just in case RED Spy or another enemy team member tried to kill them.

BLU team had agreed not to keep any form of intelligence at the base. Such confidential information was now disclosed at an obscure location or normally hidden at one of Blutarch's territories.

Cyril arrived in his room, still a bit shaken up over his encounter with RED. The last thing BLU needed during their battle days off was dealing with a persistent adversary violating wartime rules.

Bubo had finished off the chicken pieces for his lunch; he was perched on the tree branch, checking out the dart board on the wall.

"I got you some mice," Cyril announced, "But we have to wait for them to thaw out. It'll go quickly if I submerge them in a bowl of warm water."

The little owl turned to him, eyes brimming with excitement. "Finally, some actual food!"

"True," Cyril agreed. "Normally, I'd say beggars can't be choosers. But in your case, you need the particular nutrients in the entire rodent body, not just any kind of raw meat."

"Thanks, Cyril."

Nodding, he inquired, "How's your wing been holding up?"

Bubo glanced down at his bandaged left side. "I don't need it any tighter, that's for sure."

He noticed that he could only sense what the owl said out loud; he couldn't read the actual thoughts, like a genuine telepath could do (at least like those depicted in film or TV shows). So, Bubo was still a 'black box' to him – deciphering only information that came out.

"What's that up there?"

Cyril followed the raptor's curious stare. "Oh? The target board?"

"Yeah, it looks like you killed it."

"No, no, it's a game. You throw these sharp weapons called 'darts' at it." He pulled a yellow one off the sisel fiber surface, and brought it over to show the owl.

"See? The goal is to throw the pointy end of this thing at various places on the board. The primary aim is the center of that red dot."

He pointed over to the board, designating the inner bull's eye.

"However, if you're playing a 301 or a 501 game, that's usually with another person. You're both given a score – for example, you and your opponent start out with 301 points. The objective is to eliminate those points by throwing the darts at various places on the board. You're given three darts each. If you hit the large, white or black slices—" again, he gestured towards the board, "You get a single score. If your dart lands on one of the rings, say that outer one there, it's considered a double score."

He got up, standing roughly ten feet away from the target and hurled the dart. It pierced an upper left section of the inner ring, specifically a red part.

"Now that there gives me 42 points, since the dart hit the inner ring straight above the base number 14. That's the triple score ring. Fourteen times three will give the total. So then, let's say you want to close your score first before your opponent—"

He paused, noticing Bubo's head tilted in utter confusion.

"Em, can you start over with the dart again?"

Cyril groaned inwardly. He wasn't a very good teacher when it came to this. He also failed to realize again that Bubo wasn't a human and so lacked the abstract intelligence in understanding the complexities of gaming rules.

Owls didn't even do arithmetic! So, what made him think his little friend was any different?

"I'm such a bloody idiot sometimes…." He muttered.

"Well, whatever you just said, that's sure a strange way of attacking a round...flat…thing and attacking parts of it over with another human. It's not like it's hurting you and you have to fight back…or it's food you need to catch."

"It's not a strategy for hunting. It's just a way to keep ourselves entertained."

Bubo blinked. "Is it like a form of play? Like what my kind do with tumbleweeds or the Pincher Tails?"

"You mean scorpions?"

"If…that's what you call them?"

"Yes, it's our own term for those nasty little buggers. But yeah, a dart game is considered playing. You can watch me, if you'd like."

"It's strange seeing you have grippers in place of wings."

"I'm a land animal. We evolved for surviving on the ground. You need really good feet and leg muscles just for that."

"Don't you feel funny?"

Sniper smiled, amused. "Why would I? It'd feel weirder if my feet were also my hands." He then readied the second dart, his far-sighted vision zeroing in on the inner ring. "Now, watch this."

Again, he threw the dart at the board. It hit the green portion of the ring precisely under the number 13. Bubo observed the actions, making note the key areas that hit would result in gaining more points. The owl may not have had stellar math skills, but he crudely understood the concepts of increase and decreasing of a certain object. It's how he kept track of the mice or bugs he ate each day.

. . .

Bubo was sound asleep, dreaming of flying through a bright morning sky. He felt the sun warm his body, a welcoming embrace from the biting, chilly air. His family happily called out to him, their wings spread out and gliding on a rising pocket of air. Then a distressed sound jolted him out of his comforting bliss.

His parents and siblings looked alarmed, not knowing where such an inalienable noise was coming from. And then Bubo harshly awoken from his dream by Cyril grunting and muttering protests. Turning his head, he saw the man resting on the side of the bed. Every couple of seconds, his body would involuntarily jerk.

"Goddamn it, hurry up…get me out of here…" Cyril murmured, panicked.

Bubo clambered out of the nest and, despite his healing ankle, and hobbled over to the side of the bed. He emitted a high-pitched call that ended in a whistle note to wake up the human. It worked, and the marksman snapped his eyes open.

Though he couldn't see the owl in the dark, he knew it was his friend. "Oh…what's a matter, Bubo?"

"You were talking in your sleep. Were you having a nightmare?"

Cyril rubbed his eyes, reaching over to his night stand to switch on a lamp. "Yeah, I was. Sorry if I woke you."

"It's alright. I have them sometimes too." Coming a bit closer to the bed, Bubo then inquired, "What was it about?"

He saw a blush of embarrassment creep over the human's face. "Ah, it's nothing. Go back to sleep. I'll try not to wake you up again."

Bubo tilted his head, eyes blinking. A moment later, and feeling a little disappointed, he turned to limp back towards the cage.

"Wait."

Pausing, he threw a glance back at his rescuer. Cyril sighed, before admitting, "The nightmare…it was a time when I was stuck in snow and couldn't get out."

Bubo puffed out his feathers, shivering in such a cute way. "Brrrr, I see how it would be distressing for you. I hate extreme cold too!"

"Don't most sane species? Anyhow, I was frozen solid too. I couldn't move anything, except my eyes." He felt the back of his head, rubbing it as if to ward off a headache. "It was horrible. It's like being trapped within your body."

"That's awful. Did someone find you?"

"Yeah, my teammates. What happened was the circuit breaker tripped and all our electricity went out. They're devices that give us light, like this—" he pointed to the table lamp.

"Oh yeah, mini suns! I've seen them all over the desert at night."

"Is that what you call'em? They're actually artificial. Not real sun, so to speak."

Now Bubo's brows furrowed. "Let me guess – your species created them. Just like the moving monster that attacked me."

"Cars, Bubo, they're called cars," Cyril corrected with a hint of mirth. "But yeah, we invented these lights. Just so it would be easier for us to see better at night. Anyhow, my team was stationed at a cargo rail yard up in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Everyone was asleep, except for me. It was past 2 AM. So, I went out with a flashlight to the substation house to reset the breaker. After fixing it, I was returning back to the warehouse when a sudden blizzard blew through."

"I fought against the whipping winds, but it was no use. I kept getting bombarded with more and more snow, until I couldn't move my legs. So, there I was, freezing my ass off and damn near hypothermia. I'm surprised I didn't die a slow freezing death in that god-awful cold."

"Did you call for help?"

"Sure, but no one heard me. The blizzard noise drowned out my hollering. They found me though, the next morning. I was an icicle at that point. One of my teammates, the Engineer, kept reassuring me that they would get me out. Except, he was in the middle of fixing another team member's torch gun. The plan was to use it to burn the snow around me. Another one named Soldier gave me some coffee though, so I was grateful for that. In the end, a big guy called Heavy helped dig me out. They then brought me to sit by the fireplace to thaw off."

"So glad you were out of that miserable predicament. I think I would have been wailing to die."

"Maybe. Or you would have been too frozen to think anymore."

Cyril hoped he wasn't confusing his little friend too much with the unfamiliar terms sprinkled throughout the conversation. But each time, Bubo didn't understand, he stopped him to ask for clarification. "Anyhow, what mattered was that I was okay. Until being buried again under warehouse rubble."

"What happened with that?"

Now Cyril felt a bitterness stirring. "Our enemies, the REDs, sent one of our bombs back to us on a train. It blew all of us up, except for Pyro, Scout and me. But, the ones it did kill just came back to life."

Bubo's eyes widened. "What?"

"Oh yeah, we can't really die. At least, not while linked to a special machine called Respawn. It basically recombines our molecules into one whole living organism again."

"You can actually come back to life? That's incredible!"

"That's what I thought the first time. That doesn't mean we still can't die a permanent death; especially if we're out of the Respawn's proximity."

"Are you…magical?"

Cyril smiled wanly. "Nah mate, not at all. It's the power of science. Real, hardcore science."

"What's that?"

"It's the study of all kinds of things in this world, and how they're formed and work – mostly from nature. Sometimes it's man-made. It can be something as small as a pebble to a large animal, such as a horse. There are many different branches of science."

"Why would you be interested in those things?"

Cyril shrugged. "Some of my kind just have that knack for wanting to know how things came to be…why they exist. What materials they're made of. It's pure, unbridled curiosity. And, if you gather all that information and the source of those materials, you can actually make practical and amazing things from them."

Bubo glanced around the room. "Like all these objects around here?"

"Yes."

"You guys are sure fascinating." He blinked a few times as if in thought, before perking up. "And creative!"

"Ah well, appreciate the compliment. Still, we're no angels, that's for sure. Your kind are wise to stay away from my own."

A moment passed, before Bubo asked, "You mentioned enemies. Is someone encroaching on your territory?"

"Oh right, I didn't properly introduce you. Welcome to BLU base, where we're in the middle of a war. The REDs are our enemies and we're paid to kill them to take back land for our benefactor."

Bubo stared at him, trying to take it all in. "It sounds like our fight with the Occis. They're another group of spotted owls that's been taking over our territories. Some have died on both sides."

Cyril reached out to scratch the owl's head. "You're not fighting a battle too, are you?"

"No, we leave that to the Strixs. They're a special flock that keeps the Occis's attacks at bay. My family stays out of it as much as possible."

"I suppose we're not so different in that department. However dismal it sounds."

"How long have you been in this war?"

"Over two years now. I spent three months prior to that training for it."

Bubo's eyes now softened. "Do you ever miss your family?"

Cyril flinched slightly at hearing that. He didn't feel like bringing up the harsh truth of how he didn't have one. Not even a mother or father. So, he just laid back down on the pillow.

"I'd rather not talk about it."

"I understand." Bubo knew well enough to leave it alone. He let out a wide yawn, which Cyril found simply endearing. "Well, I'm going back to bed. Have pleasant dreams this time, alright?"

Cyril managed to smile, despite being overcome with a sudden abject feeling of worthlessness. What was he without a true family? Even criminals and the forgotten rejects in society came from families at one time. But never clones. They were lab experiments and nothing more.

"Thanks, mate. I'll be fine. Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Cyril."

Bubo then went back to the cage and settled down in the nest. He thought of how when he healed, he'd be back with his own flock again. That was atleast one positive thing to look forward too.

. . .

NOTE:

* Cyril being stuck in snow is a reference to McVee's SFM video, "End of The Line."

. . .