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It was a normal day: bombs here, bullets there… the right amount of destruction everywhere. What made this a better than normal day was the weather. It sunny out, but not too sunny where the sun gets in your eyes and the heat is exhausting to fight in. There were little to no clouds, the wind was perfect. No need for sweating unless there was a lot of physical labor, which most of the mercs did. Except for one.
Up in one of the buildings was the red teams Sniper. He stood, looking out the window, as he aimed for the enemy’s Medic, knowing that if he got rid of him, the Heavy would be much easier to take down for either himself or his teammates. So far, he was only sent to respawn a handful of times. By both the Blu Sniper and the Blu Spy. Though few times, it was still getting on his nerves. It seemed like every time he lined up for a headshot, he would either get backstabbed or the Blu Sniper would headshot him instead.
Just as he was about to pull the trigger, he noticed something on the top of his rifle. It was a little bug. He identified it as a sort of stick insect. He hasn’t seen one of these in a while. He would need to grab his book in his camper later on to really identify what kind of stick insect it was. For now, though, he opted to gently scoop up the insect into his hands, ignoring the glowing blue dot on his head. He sat down on the ground of his little sniping nest and smiled at the little guy, narrowly missing the bullet aimed for his head.
The battle was no longer in the forefront of his mind; he had to show people his new little buddy. He slung his gun onto his back and he made his way down the ladder. He barely missed arrows and bullets and bombs (oh my) coming for him. When he found where Engineer was camped, he immediately made his way over.
“Truckie! Lookit wot oi found!”
Sniper got close enough to where Engineer could sort of safely look at him. He opened his hands to reveal the little stick insect. Engineer was shocked into silence, looking up at Sniper’s face and then back down at the little insect that seemed to be rather content in the palm of the marksman’s hand.
“Well, woulda lookit that slim… where’d you find him?”
“On me sniping rifle! He was just relaxin’ like the cute little bugger he is when I spotted him! Ain’t he cute?”
“He sure is, Sniper.”
Engineer really didn’t want to break it to the marksman that looking at bugs wasn’t really his ideal way to spend time that should be for battle. Sniper rarely went out of his way to talk to people, let alone excitedly do so. Despite it not being the best time for any of this, he knew better than to turn him away. Sniper needed to talk to people more as it was.
“Alroight! I’m gonna go show the others!”
Before Engineer could stop him, Sniper was grinning down at the little bug in his hands once more, walking to the center of the battle. Just before he was going to go up to Demoman, a sickening crack echoed through his skull, and he dropped dead.
When in respawn, Sniper immediately felt millions of emotions wash over him. The primary one was grief. His little buddy is now lost forever.