FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Alrighty, been quite a long time since I posted some of this series. But then, this one has always been sort of a side project. In any case, this is the first of three new chapters, so I hope you will enjoy them.

As always, comments are appreciated and requested.

Oh yes, and the character of Alex is used by permission of Talon-21, to whom he belongs.

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Continued from the masks we wear, part three...

It took a good minute or so for the Irish jig I used as my cell phone's alarm to penetrate the pleasant fog of my dreams, and even when I heard it, I didn't want to acknowledge that I had, snuggling closer to the fuzzy warmth tucked close against the silver-grey fur of my chest instead. Keeping my eyes closed, I smiled when I sensed the ongoing music rouse my mate, making her ears twitch within her blonde hair, though she kept her gorgeous, blue flecked green eyes closed. When I didn't react to the alarm, she shifted a little, releasing one of my arms from her grasp. When I still didn't move, she spoke, her pretty voice quiet.

"Are you going to get that?" She asked sleepily and my grin widened.

"No." I replied, nuzzling into her hair and spooning closer to her in refusal. I sensed her grin in the darkness and the pretty vixen reached back and stroked my neck with her fingertips.

"As much as I enjoy Irish music, it's way too early for a jig." She said, pressing back against me, and rubbing her head against mine. "At least hit the snooze, would you?"

"Alright, alright," I relented, yawning and reaching over to the bedside table with one hand, feeling for the phone. Once my fingers had blindly fumbled their way into hitting the right combination of buttons to make the alarm shut up, I returned to my original position, spooning my vixen closely, my mate pulling my arms close about her once again. I grinned, tucking my arms closer around her so I was like another blanket, delicately nibbling her shoulder and neck with my sharp front teeth.

"Why did you set your alarm so early on a Saturday anyway?" Sarah questioned, drawing in a sharp, pleased breath at the touch of my teeth, arching her back against me.

"Seemed like a good idea at the time." I replied, yawning once again and finally opening my eyes. The bedroom was still very dark, the sky outside the window barely beginning to lighten with the dawn. For a few minutes, I couldn't even remember why I wanted to get up early this morning. And then, gradually, as my mate and I resumed our intimate snuggling in the warm pocket beneath the blanket of our bed, the reason gradually returned to my still mostly asleep brain, returning out of the ether of the dream world where it had vanished the night before. Reluctantly, I turned my attention from snuggling the woman who had captured my heart to look across the room once more. Over by the door, the duffle bag I had packed last night was barely visible in the pale light of the predawn, along with the folded digital camo fatigues I had left on top. "The Ironman tournament starts today. Which reminds me, Alex and Kendle should be coming over in an hour or so."

"Oh yeah, now I remember." Sarah said with a sigh, reluctantly beginning the process of untangling our furry limbs, a process neither of us desired to start. For a while, when she would disentangle herself from one of my limbs, I would replace it in a different spot, making her giggle as she worked to pin my arms. It was a game we played from time to time, one that was surprisingly satisfying even when we were in a hurry, especially in the early morning. When she finally succeeded in trapping my arms, a good five minutes later, Sarah slid over to the edge of the bed and stood up, bringing a wave of chilly air beneath the covers.

I had never been particularly good at getting up early, so I only managed to halfway sit up in the bed, my brain still fuzzy and slow, while she began stretching, gracefully showing off her naked physique as the dim red light began to filter in through the window, making her red-orange fur glow. She was fit and shapely, the very picture of desire to my eyes, and, in the dawn's dim light, she looked even more beautiful and seductive than usual. Watching her gracefully go through her morning stretching routine, her soft curves seeming to flow almost sinuously through the positions, I felt a familiar stirring in my loins, all sorts of thoughts that had absolutely nothing to do with what I had planned for the day coming to my mind. Apparently, the primitive parts of my brain were very much awake this early, even if I couldn't think clearly.

Seeing the hungry look in my eyes as I watched her, Sarah grinned coyly, flicking her long bushy fox tail so it curled along my neck and under my chin as she walked by the bed, bringing her delightful scent to my nose once more, filling every breath with it; a wonderful, warm aroma that only served to excite me more. When I reached out to grab her tail, intending to pull her back into the bed for a more enthusiastic wake-up call than a jig, she playfully flicked it back out of reach, strolling out of the room in the direction of the bathroom with a broad grin on her vulpine lips, the sunlight finally bright enough to illuminate the blonde tracery that curled through her red fur, the Gaelic patterns nearly matching the white patterns in my own fur, though hers had flowers like roses and lilies among the leaves, their petals still made all of knotwork.

Grinning at her back, I finally crawled out of bed, rubbing one of my eyes with the furless pad of my paw and letting out a long yawn. Getting to my feet, I stumbled my way down the hall after Sarah, bumping into the wall a couple of times before making it to the bathroom, my brain still obstinately refusing to join me in the waking world. When I finally got into the room, I found that Sarah had turned the lights on and, with the help of the bright lights, the thinking part of my brain finally shifted out of neutral and into gear. Sarah was standing before the sink, splashing her face with water, clearing the sleep from her eyes. Grinning broadly to myself, I walked up behind her as she straightened back up, sliding my hands around her hips from behind, caressing her ribs with my claws and giving her neck an affectionate lick, making her grin.

"You better stop that or you won't be ready when Alex gets here." She said, lacing her fingers through mine and pulling me closer to her. "Tempting as it is."

"I know," I replied, letting out a satisfied sigh as she settled back against me, looking at our reflections in the mirror. We were both taller than we normally were, and though I was heavily muscled and broader in stature in this form, she didn't look out of place in my arms. Smiling at the reflection in the mirror once more, I reluctantly released her from my grasp, and she turned around to give me a kiss, hugging me close for a few moments. "Are you ready?"

Sarah sighed and nodded. With a gentle touch, we each traced the trinity that stood out on each other's forehead with a fingertip in unison. The familiar shiver washed down our spines as the design was completed and we hugged each other closer, holding each other tight as our fur retracted back into our skin, the room losing its warmth as we lost our furry pelts. After a few moments, our legs became plantigrade again and our tails sucked back into our lower backs, vanishing like spaghetti, the masks we wore becoming smooth wood once again, slowly falling off of us and into our hands as if as reluctant to be parted from us as we were to be human again. Heaving a sigh of my own, I parted from my love, setting the mask onto the counter and stepping into the shower, the expression on the smooth mask one almost of regret. Once Sarah had set her own mask on the counter beside mine, she stepped into the shower with me and we began our usual morning ritual, albeit abbreviated this time.

With the water hot enough to fog the mirror, we held each other close beneath its stream, washing off the last vestiges of sleep and the sticky residues from our intimate nighttime activities. In the months since we had first met Orlan, the weekends had become something we looked forward to all week, even though we both wore the masks from the moment we got home everyday to just before we went to work the next morning. In fact, we wore them so much now that our human selves felt more and more like disguises to us, as if they were becoming the masks instead. But on the weekends, well, every time we didn't have plans with our friends or family anyway, we wouldn't take them off again until Monday morning. And every one of those weekends had held just as much passion as that first one in early summer, when we had first gotten our masks. The weekends and whatever days off we got had become nothing short of any furry's definition of paradise. We didn't even bother with clothes most of the time, our fur enough to keep us warm. We knew that most of friends and family thought we were becoming shut-ins, but we honestly didn't care one bit. Of course, today we couldn't spend a long time in the shower like we usually did, snuggling close until we ran out of hot water. Instead, we turned off the water as soon as we were clean and stepped out to dry off.

While Sarah was brushing her hair, I went back to the bedroom and started dressing in my camo gear. By the time we were sitting down to breakfast and steaming mugs of tea, I looked like I was going off to be a soldier, dressed as I was in full Marine Corps forest fatigues and combat boots and that wasn't actually far off. Today, my friends and I were all participating in an airsoft tournament up in the mountains, nicknamed the Ironman competition. It was called that mostly because the tournament took place over three weekends, way up in a high mountain valley near treeline, and the matches tended to last all day. Which of course meant that it took a great deal of mental and physical conditioning to compete, hence the competition's nickname. It was an event that was only open to teams and since it required a minimum membership of sixty to compete, it was a huge event, usually drawing as many as twenty teams from all over the rocky mountain region. My friends and I all belonged to one of the larger teams, The Colorado Highlanders, with almost two hundred members.

I had just finished with my tea when there was a knock at the door and I went to open it, knowing who it would be. When it was open, letting in a cold draft, I found a man in his early twenties, clad in much the same uniform as mine, and a woman about his age and height as well. This, of course, was Alex and his girlfriend Kendle, some of our best friends. Both of them were furs as well; well, technically, they were scalies, dragons in fact. Alex was about seven years younger than I was, and a fellow writer, which is how we had gotten in touch in the first place. He had once asked me for advice on one of his stories and we had started talking regularly. We had become good friends pretty quickly, despite the difference in our ages. And when we had started dating Sarah and Kendle, they too had found they had a lot in common, becoming friends about as fast as we had. While we were off in the tournament, the two girls had plans for a girl's day out.

"Hey guys, glad you could make it." I said, waving them inside. "Come on in."

"You check the weather report for today?" Alex asked when they had come in.

"Yeah, looks good, if cold." I replied, shutting the door. "You hear who we are facing?"

"Who else?" he asked, "The Lancers, again."

"Not surprising I guess. Who else has the numbers?" I said, guiding him to the dining room. "With all the extra training we have been doing lately, we should be able to take them."

"Yeah, unless they have been training too," He replied dryly, dropping into a seat across the table from where I had been sitting, thanking Sarah as she put a plate of eggs and bacon in front of him.

"Now, now boys," She said, shaking a finger at him admonishingly. "No shop talk at breakfast." Grinning, we both dug in, devouring our food a bit more quickly than we usually did. We had a long way to go today, and we had to be starting off soon, since our team leader wanted to go over a few things before the tournament started. When we had finished, we got up and I grabbed my duffel bag containing my equipment on the way to the door. As we were leaving, Sarah came up and kissed me goodbye, giving me a lingering hug. "Have fun today hun."

"You too." I replied, heading out the door. As we were leaving, I happened to notice that Alex and Kendle's goodbye hug, though it was as close as ours was, seemed sort of tense. That was very uncharacteristic of them, since, in my considered opinion, they were meant for one another, and they had always seemed happy. Shrugging off that thought, I headed for Alex's car, since we would be carpooling up to the tournament.

This was the third year in a row that we would be competing in Ironman and every year, we faced the same team. Our team had originally been named the Highlanders because it was founded by a small group whose ancestors hailed from the Scottish highlands, but since we trained at high altitude most of the time, it was an apt description of its members and we had a fierce rivalry with The Silver Lance, the only other team that had the membership to compete at our level. The first year, we had barely scraped through with a win, and last year, they had absolutely stomped on us, ending up with a kill/loss ratio of almost 2 to 1. Needless to say, such an embarrassing performance had made us very driven to win this year. Of course, this year I was doing something different than I had the years before. The last two years, I had been a member of the assault squads of our team, the mainline groups that did most of the fighting. But, since I had first worn my mask, things had changed. This year, I was one of my team's snipers, the gifts that lingered in me because of the mask making me well suited to that solitary role.

We were about halfway through our trip when we fell silent, listening to a song on the radio and I suddenly remembered the odd tenseness I had noticed with my friend and his girl and I glanced over at him. Though he was silent and wearing his usual smile, beneath his sunglasses I could see a slight tightness around his eyes, a look that meant my friend was dealing with something troubling. It was a look I recognized from earlier in our history and it never foreboded anything good. The last time I had seen it, he had been dealing with his parent's latest attempt to make him stop being a furry. In the past they had taken some pretty extreme measures to try and make him otherwise. Back then, I had always helped him as much as I could, so I figured I shouldn't do any less now.

"You alright Talon?" I asked, using his online alias. The use of that name caught his attention and he glanced over at me, the look on his face making it clear he knew that I had caught the troubled look and more, that I had guessed something about why he was wearing it.

"Yeah." He replied, returning his gaze to the road. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, I couldn't help but notice that weird energy that was going between you and Kendle this morning." I replied. "Anything wrong between you two?"

"Well, truth is, I don't know really." He replied. "I mean, things have been great between us. But lately...it's like she is changing or something. Or maybe I am, I don't know."

"Changing how?" I asked, knowing I was pushing, but I hated seeing my friends having trouble.

"Nothing specific or anything." He said, absently biting his lip. "She just seems a little distant lately, that's all. And when I asked her what was wrong, she said that she was fine. I just know there is something she isn't telling me."

"You don't think she's, you know..." I asked, and he gave me a 'be serious' look.

"No, we are very careful about that." He replied, glaring at me. I put up my hands in surrender, grinning.

"Sorry I asked." I replied and he grinned as well. "I am just trying to help."

"I know man, and I appreciate it." He said. "And if I knew anything, believe me I would tell you."

"Alright." I replied, looking at out the window. "Forget I said anything. Better to keep our minds on the game I guess."

***

Alex knelt quickly behind the thick tree trunk, bringing his M4A1 rifle into firing position on his shoulder, sighting on the target moving through the trees ahead. Carefully lining up his shot, he counted to three, then squeezed the trigger, sending a stream of small paintballs downrange, making the man stagger in surprise, marking up his old style 'tiger' fatigues with small red dots in Alex's ACOG scope. Grinning, the young man lowered his weapon, adding another enemy to his tally of 'kills' today, watching as the enemy raised his hands in surrender and walked off towards the edge of the tournament grounds. That made fifteen he had taken down today, though his entire squad had been knocked off one by one as the hours had crawled by. He had been alone for the last hour, he was hungry, tired and the cold autumn air made his fingers ache, but by his reckoning, the Highlanders were ahead, and the game couldn't last much longer. He was running low on ammo, and since he had taken care to carry as much as was allowed, and had scavenged more from his downed squad mates, he was sure that both teams had to be in a similar condition by now. Looking up at the sun, he realized that sunset was only about an hour away, and got up to head towards the rendezvous point his platoon had agreed upon. The tournament rules mandated that if a match was unresolved before the end of the day, it would be considered a draw, and since the winning team of each level of the competition got a sizeable cash prize, not to mention major bragging rights, it was an outcome nobody wanted.

Just as he started off down the slope of the ridge, he heard a sound he really didn't want to hear right then. It was a mechanical whirring sound that was as distinctive as it was frightening. It was the sound of a minigun's barrels spinning up. Throwing himself down behind a big pine tree, Alex narrowly avoided the stream of paintballs as they whipped all around him, kicking up dust and chipping off bits of bark. Swearing to himself, he looked back over his shoulder, peering around the tree. The guy with the minigun was up the slope of the ridge from him, and flanking him were two others with Ak-47s. Looking around quickly, Alex tried to see things from his enemy's point of view, trying to spy a way out of their line of sight so he could flank them and take them out.

And then, just as he spotted a possible route off to the left that he might be able to use, he caught movement in that direction, within a stand of pines that were growing so close together there was barely room to move between them. Holding perfectly still for a moment, he peered in that direction, ignoring the threat of the mini gunner for the moment. And there, moving in a crouch to stay hidden were the stripped shapes of at least two more Lancers. Cursing to himself once again, he slung his rifle across his chest once more, getting ready for the sprint he would have to make soon. He knew he was in trouble now; he had fallen for an old trick. The one Lancer he had shot had been bait, a decoy to draw fire and like a fool, he had taken it.

Not waiting to see if the route ahead was safe or not, he took off, sprinting as fast as his legs could move, down slope, not looking in any direction except forward. Alex could hear the paintballs whizzing past his ears as he ran, praying not to get hit while he was running. Three steps later, he dodged around a boulder, which took him out of the line of sight of the minigunner and his two friends, but he kept running, his heart hammering as he sprinted down the hill. It was a little silly, but despite the fact that he wasn't in any real danger, he felt a brief flash of panic set in at being pursued by armed enemies, a panic that made him keep running recklessly fast downhill. And then, just when he was getting control of himself, starting to slow down and take cover to lay an ambush of his own, he chanced to catch a glint of light ahead of him, behind the thick bole of a fallen tree. It was the sort of glint that only came from sunlight on a weapon sight and he immediately tried to stop, his boots skidding on a patch of ice left over from one of the first snow falls of the year. And, as he was carried on unwillingly towards the glint by his own momentum, trying everything he could to stop, he knew it would be a miracle if he wasn't taken out this time. He had nearly been surrounded already, but he had moved only just in time, when most of the Lancer squad were out of position.

And then, in one of those happy accidents he couldn't have duplicated if he tried, Alex's foot caught against a stone sticking out of the ice slick, stopping his slide in an instant, but not his momentum and he was suddenly flying forward through the air, his hand clenching on the trigger of his rifle on instinct. And just as he was sent flying forward, the trio of Lancers who had been waiting for him popped up from behind the fallen tree, clearly hoping to claim an easy kill by taking him out of the match, only to find their quarry flying towards them, gun in hand. Squeezing his eyes shut in anticipation of the landing, the Highlander tucked himself into a ball and rolled on his shoulder, bruising himself on the hard ground but saving himself from serious injury. When he finally slid to a stop with his feet against the fallen log, he held still for a moment, sure he was going to feel paintballs any second. When he didn't, he cautiously opened one eye, finding himself looking up at the sky through the visor of his face mask, a funny sort of clicking sound in his ears. Then, a trio of exclamations of surprise sounded above him and he tilted his head up to find three Lancers standing at his feet. But they weren't aiming weapons at him as he had expected. Instead, all three were staring at him in amazement, a line of red dots across their face masks and he finally realized what that clicking sound was.

Releasing the trigger of his rifle so it would stop trying to cycle more paintballs from the empty magazine, the young Highlander slowly sat up and groaned, checking to see if he had hurt something in the fall. The three Lancers were all still staring at him and finally, one of them spoke, his tone one of shock.

"Are you insane?!" he exclaimed, taking off his helmet and wiping paint off of the lens of the camera attached to the side. Every competitor was required to wear the small devices, since they allowed the judges to settle disputes and figure out who was deserving of the individual bonus awards that were given out at the end of the tournament. "What kind of move was that? That was..."

"Awesome is the word I would use." One of his two companions said, tugging the helmet-less Lancer in the direction of the game's borders, before offering Alex his hand. As he hauled him back to his feet, the Lancer shook his head in amazement. "That was some real James Bond shit dude. Definitely one for the highlights reel. Come on guys, we're done."

When the Lancers were gone, Alex leaned against a nearby tree, taking a moment to puzzle out what had happened. As best he could figure, he must have accidently swept his rifle across the Lancers while he was in the air, and since his hand had been rigidly clenched on the trigger, he must have hit them all. True, it had been pure luck, and had allowed him to claim three more kills, but he had used the rest of his rifle ammo in the process, wasting most of it in the fall. And then, he heard footsteps coming from the direction he had just come from and he swore once again, slinging his rifle across his back and starting off down the trail again, his legs a little too shaky to run just yet. As he headed further down the slope, he drew his sidearm from its leg holster and wondered if he was good enough with it, and flat out lucky enough to take out his pursuers. Judging how lucky he had just gotten, he wouldn't have bet on it.

But now, he could hear the Lancers behind him running after him, clearly angered that he had escaped their trap and he felt the panic starting to come back into him. What he needed was cover; a bunch of boulders would have been nice, or at least a fallen log, but all he could see ahead of him was a meadow, a flat space without so much as a bush to hide behind. Grimacing, Alex tried to pick up the pace to at least get across the clearing, which would have given him a chance of drawing his pursuers into the open, but he stumbled on a stone hidden by the pine needles before he had gone more than a few paces and almost fell. The slide on the ice and his spectacular flight had unsettled him enough to make it difficult to move quickly. Still, he was determined not to get trapped again. He was about halfway across the clearing when he heard the Lancers clearly and he turned around, setting in a classic shooter's stance, steeling himself to fight like a cornered dragon, ready to go out in a blaze of glory. He could almost see them pushing their way through the brush on the edge of the clearing and he tried to guess where they would come from first, wishing that he hadn't used all his grenades earlier in the match. And then, the ear wig that had miraculously stayed in his ear through the whole of his accidental acrobatics crackled to life.

"Talon, spiderhole, on your left." He heard a familiar voice whisper and he glanced in that direction, spying the edge of a camo net covered with pine needles and underbrush. Hurrying over, Alex just barely had the time to lift the edge and roll under it, letting it fall back over him before his pursuers came into sight. Even under the netting, they would still see him if they looked hard enough and he readied his pistol once more, still ready for his last stand. There were six of them now, three with assault rifles, one with a shot gun, another with a sniper rifle and of course, the minigunner. Taking a deep breath, he waited, taking aim on the leader of the group. From under cover he could actually have a chance of taking them all out, though he would be well and truly out of ammo by then. And then, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder why someone would go through the trouble to prep a spider hole here in the middle of a clearing, where there was no other cover, no way to slip away from under the netting.

Right about at the moment when the six Lancers were closest together, the trees forcing them to cluster at the edge of the clearing, he realized exactly why, a feral grin coming to his lips as the idea crystallized in his mind. A half second later, the Lancers realized it too when they were suddenly sprayed by several hundred mini paintballs that sprouted from a pair of claymore mines planted on opposite sides of the clearing, almost painting them and their equipment red.

Swearing like sailors, the Lancers put their hands up and trudged off towards the boundaries, angrily wiping the paint off their visors. Letting out the breath he had been holding, Alex pushed the camo netting back and sat up, resting his sidearm on the ground beside him. Taking off his helmet and mask, he shook his head, running a hand through his close cut blonde hair. It didn't come much closer than that. And then, suddenly, he looked up to see a figure rising from the grass at the edge of the clearing, dressed in a full ghillie suit and tucking a claymore remote back into a pocket. The camouflaged Highlander swept the head piece of his suit back, revealing the familiar features of his friend. The sniper paused to retrieve his rifle from where he had been lying before moving to recover the discharged mines. Devin's face was covered in camo grease paint, but it was impossible to miss the grin on his face as he policed up his tools.

"Where the hell have you been?" Alex questioned, glaring accusingly at his friend. "I almost got ambushed twice in the last ten minutes."

"I have been on top of the north ridge," His friend replied, pointing over his shoulder before coming over and sitting down beside him. "Heading off a platoon of Lancers making a back end run for our base." The sniper gently punched his friend on the shoulder before continuing. "You're one to talk. I was all set to ambush these guys when you blundered into the middle of my kill zone. Where's the rest of your squad?"

"Down and out." Alex replied, re-holstering his side arm and taking a deep breath, his heart finally calming down. "Any idea how the match is going?"

"Pretty well I should think, if the rest of the team is having as much luck as we are." The sniper replied. And just as he said that, the pair's ear wigs crackled to life.

"Ace leader to Lone Wolf, come in Lone Wolf." The voice of the team's commander said, sounding winded.

"This is Lone Wolf, go ahead." Devin replied, activating the throat mike he wore.

"Manticore is underway." The commander said and the two looked at each other in amazement. It was the code phrase their team came up with for the final assault on the enemy base, the final phase of the game. "We are pinned down by heavy resistance on approach to the objective. All teams are committed. Can you assist?"

"Lone Wolf copies. On route." Devin said, getting to his feet and offering Alex his hand. "What you got left?"

"Two mags for my sidearm is all." He replied, allowing the sniper to haul him to his feet, dusting himself off. "You?"

"Half mag of sniper ammo, one full mag for my secondary, plus my sidearm." His friend replied, unslinging an MP5 from under his ghillie suit and offering it to Alex. "Here, take it. Can't make an assault with you only packing a pistol."

With that, the sniper led the way westward at a run, heading for the spot where the Lancer base had been set up. The bases were areas set up for easy defense on the east and west ends of the battlefield, and storming the base was actually the point of the huge team matches. If the Highlanders were making an assault against the Lancer base, then their team was either very close to winning and ready to take the objective, or very close to losing and it was a last gasp. Either way, it wasn't something they could ignore.

It took the pair two minutes at a full on sprint to get close, and judging from all the shouting, the assault wasn't going well. When the pair finally paused at the base of a twenty foot tall cliff, Alex drew in as deep a breath as he could manage, a stitch in his side making it hard to breathe. To his surprise, his friend didn't even seem to be winded. Instead he had lifted his head back, drawing in slow, deep breaths as if trying to catch an elusive scent. After a moment, he looked up the side of the cliff, as if gauging its height.

"If we could just get up there, we could take their defenses from the back." he finally said. "There are only six Lancers near us, but they are probably looking towards the rest of our team."

"How on earth do you know that?" Alex asked, looking at his friend in surprise. When he didn't answer, he too looked at the cliff and shook his head. "Moot point anyway. There is no way we can climb that. It's too smooth. We are going to have to go around." But Devin didn't seem to be listening. While Alex had been talking, the sniper had walked to where a large fallen tree rested, pacing around it as if sizing it up. It had a lot of broken branches that would make it a perfect makeshift ladder but there was one problem, and it was a big one. "Hey, what are you thinking? That thing weighs a few hundred pounds at least. Even working together we can't lift that, much less carry it." Instead of replying, the sniper knelt next to the log, digging his hands under it and then, closing his eyes, he strained for a moment, the muscles in his neck going rigid. Then, to Alex's surprise, he seemed simply to stand up, lifting the entire tree off the ground in his arms, letting out a grunt of effort. "Or maybe I will just be quiet then." His friend managed a grin despite the strain on his face as he slowly carried the log to the edge of the cliff and leaned it up against it, stomping on the end to secure it. When it was in place, the sniper leaned against it, letting out a long, slow breath.

"After you Talon." He said, sweeping a hand towards the top of the tree, giving a half bow.

"Remind me to ask how you managed that sometime." Alex said, slinging the submachine gun onto his shoulder and starting to climb. Grinning, the sniper started climbing right after him, the pair cresting the top a few moments later...

***

Alex sat beside his friend in the tournament's rest area, grinning at the rest of the team as they toasted their victory. He and Devin had come up right behind the bunkers of the enemy's last line of defense with barely twenty minutes left before sunset. Before the Lancers had realized what had happened, more than half of their remaining members were down. And when they finally realized that the fire was coming from behind their positions, they made the mistake of trying to take down the two infiltrators with their entire team, which allowed the rest of the Highlanders to charge, quickly annihilating the Lancer team. When they had all trooped back to the starting grounds at the entrance to the valley, Alex had been more than a little embarrassed to find a still shot, probably from one of his victim's helmet cams judging from the angle, of him diving through the air like an action hero, his rifle spewing paintballs with the legend "Highlanders win!!" scrawled across it on the big screen TV set up over the tournament ground. Alex looked up as the leader of the Highlanders stood up, drawing the attention of the team. Lifting his glass in a toast, he looked at Alex and Devin.

"Alright settle down." He said, silencing the chatter. "Before we really start partying I think we should recognize the achievements of a few of our members. Raise your glasses to James Bond and the Lone Wolf," At this, Alex felt his face go red; those were nicknames that were probably going to stick to them for the rest of their tenure as Highlanders. "Without whose heroics, our base would probably have been taken early in the day and we would have been beaten before we could take out the Lancers." The team all cheered and toasted them before going back to their talking and laughing. Alex looked over at his friend and shared a wry smile.

"I have to say, that was a very impressive move, Talon." Devin said, looking up at the moon as it rose behind the mountains. The whole team would be heading home soon, even though the tournament was slated to last another few weekends. They had won their match and since there wasn't any other team large enough to make any further match up fair, they were done until the final ceremony, where their prize for victory would be awarded.

"For the last time, it was an accident." Alex replied, glaring at those nearby who were grinning at his statement. They just grinned more and raised their glasses in his direction again and he rolled his eyes.

"Still." His friend said, grinning wolfishly at him. When the other Highlanders were finally looking away, Alex spoke to his friend in a whisper.

"So how did you do it?" He asked and his friend raised an eyebrow at him. "Lift that log I mean. I could swear it would have taken four or five guys your size to do it."

"Oh that." The sniper replied, waving a hand through the air dismissively. "What can I say? I am stronger than I look."

"That doesn't even come close to covering it." Alex persisted. "And how did you know how many Lancers there were at the top? I still can't figure that one out."

"Well..." He replied, looking contemplative, "Just a lucky guess I suppose."

"Uh huh, sure." Alex replied, shaking his head. "For a guess, you seemed awfully confident in it."

"Well, don't you ever just get weird feelings that you trust?" His friend asked and Alex rolled his eyes again. "Seriously, it was just a guess."

Alex shook his head and looked away. He knew a dodge when he heard one. Oh well, he thought, if his friend wanted to keep secrets then he was probably entitled. Still, he was going to keep his eyes open in the future...