The round had just finished, and Dell was happy to retire to his quarters. The BLUs had taken a lot out of him, and his arm was tired from swinging his wrench mercilessly at his buildings and spies alike. He really wanted to just sit down and relax, read over one of his eleven theses again perhaps. But he was verging on what could be an amazing upgrade to his teleportation device. Initially he had built it around complete atomic dispersion and reassembly, tearing the bodies of those who went through it apart into a quark-gluon plasma violently, and sending them through obstructions at near light speed, to be reassembled at the exit. Dell had streamlined this design as best he could, and realized it was about time to start thinking of new ways to go about teleportation.
He could send things over longer distances, and faster, he thought, if rather than moving the payload over land faster, he moved it over less land. A lot of research had already been done for him, he was of course referring to opening a "wormhole" and sending the traveler through that. This would also get rid of the frustrating philosophical question he was always asked "If one is destroyed, and a seamless copy created, is that not both murder and identity theft?" The answer was always the same, "If you're happy walking through hell just to get to your own death, then you are welcome to ponder those thoughts on the way." But the question was still asked a lot. Too much for Dell to not be irritated by it.
So with all this in mind, he immediately trudged over to his work desk upon entering his room. Pulled out some coffee stained notes and dusty blueprints, and began calculating. His mind had been set at work, and his thoughts were loud in comparison to the world around him. No heed was given at the sound of scout knocking at his door the first few times. Eventually the scout got frustrated, opened the door to Dell's room and shouted.
"Hey, hardhat!" Dell was roused by this call, and his surprise was noticeable. He jerked his pencil, and though he did not notice with his attention directed at scout, he had smeared lead over quite a few variables.
"The television's on the fritz again, can you fix it?" The scout asked impatiently. Dell replied with a muttered agreement, just as frustrated as scout was. He dragged himself into the recreational room, sent on a mission he had to complete every few days. Mann Co. was not only to cheap to buy a new television, but they were to cheap to even give engineer the right materials to do a good job of fixing it. The television was beginning to look more like a scrapyard than the machine it was meant to be every day.
By the time Dell had finished balling up duct tape and solder, the clock had hit 6:56. Dinner was taking place in just a few minutes, Dell had no time to go back to his room for anything significant. So he sat down, and stared blankly at the glowing contraption he had just finished patching up. When the time came he marched his way over to the mess hall to get some of the under-nourishing food which Mann Co. grudgingly offered their underpaid mercenaries.
He sat down at one of the tables which were all aligned either adjacent or parallel to each other. Medic and sniper were to either side of him, and heavy sat across the table from him. The food barely passed as said item, it was served in aluminum trays, and tasted as blander than the metal did. Just as every night, scout was the last to get his food. It was certainly not because he couldn't get to the cafeteria first, he had explained several times that he preferred the slightly burnt food at the bottom of the pot. "Just like mom used to make it." he would say. And just as every night he complained that there were no girls for him to eat with. Occasionally one of the other mercs would try to get him to shut up about it, but scout had always done a good job of not caring.
There was some talking among the other mercenaries, and limited speech on the overlapping fields of Dell's and the medic's sciences. But Dell was usually the least social of them all. So he finished his food and went back to his room, savouring the chance to work on his designs some more. Unfortunately for him, he was in for an infuriating surprise.
As he sat down back at his desk and looked at his notes he dropped his jaw in utter horror. At first he was overcome with denial, he rifled through the papers around him, looking for some other document that contained the same information. But to no avail.
"Nope." he repeated several times. Until he finally accepted that he wouldn't be getting back the knowledge he had smudged out with his pencil. He didn't make any note to recall it when it was fresh in his mind, and now he had no hope, except to try and figure out what he had already figured out again.
"What metal was it?" He asked himself "Tungsten? No, no. Too brittle, working it would be too much effort. Copper's too soft, iron isn't conductive enough. Damn it, what was it?"
He continued to verbally trouble himself for some time. Quite some time indeed, by the time he looked at the clock again, it was almost mid night. He went to sleep angrily, with the intention of using trial and error next chance he could. He was lost in his own thoughts, so lost he didn't notice the sound of quiet footsteps, and the scribbling of a pencil on paper, as well as a final swoosh of a cloak before an expeditious retreat.
The next morning in the BLU base was a happy one for the BLU engineer, Dale. His allied spy had retrieved the data of what his counterpart was researching, and Dale could use it to give his team the same edge.
"Hold on, spy. Are you sure the notes said to use silver? The conductivity seems... wrong."
"I wouldn't know, I copied ze notes exactly as zey were written. If my copy says silver, so does his." Some silence passed.
"Alrighty then." Dale said, accepting the silver wire plans cautiously.
Dale went back to his office quickly, and began sculpting the teleporter prototype according to his stolen schematics. He worried for some time before putting the silver wire capacitors in, but he decided in favour of it finally. If RED team was going to have it, BLU team had best be on par.
Dale brought the models and schematics down to the workshop, where he intended to get working on a functional design. Hopefully before RED team could muster one up. Sparks and bolts flew about, as he welded and riveted. Dale was determined to get the project done, and he knew his whole team would be grateful for it. Maybe even soldier would release his unwavering grimace for just a moment to thank Dale for his credit to team.
It was hours later that he decided to finally take a break. The build proved to be a project which would require many days to finish. Luckily after the battle tomorrow they'd have a whole week off. But for the engineers of each team that week would be as intense a competition as they'd ever faced, a race against an enemy you can't see is always as such. Because you never know if you're best is good enough, there's always hope but there's also always fear.
