Tragedy of the Grizzly Lords

For Team Capture the Flag, everyone had the same mech and the same weapon. While this may seem boring to some, it really did mean that the pilot's skills and tactics mattered most. Gray was waiting for the enemy to appear on their sensors, but no enemy came while Gray and the rest kept themselves fortified near their flag.

"Uhh, Gray, what if they have the same idea as us to play defensively?" asked Geoff.

Gray thought for a moment then replied "Did anyone read if the sensors even worked with this mode when you don't have the flag?"

After a few moments of silence from the rest of the team Caleb finally spoke up "It is a safe assumption we don't know due to lack of response."

"Crap, guess we'll find out soon enough."

The layout of the map was very simple for CTF. It took the shape of a giant capsule pill with each team on one end and their flag in the middle. In the middle of the arena were rock formations, hills, and a few scattered trees that were mirrored for both team's sides to keep the map balanced. Each base was lined with shipping crates and only had 3 entrances, one on each side and one in the middle. The middle entrance to the base was wide enough to fit 4 mechs across, but it also was in direct line of sight from the other two entrances.

Gray and Yurika watched the front entrance, Caleb and Stacia watched the Left entrance, and Geoff watched the right. Normally buildings and terrain obstacles could be blown apart but since they were using the Capture the Flag painter guns, they were unable to destroy any terrain or obstacles with them.

Five minutes passed on the timer for the 30 minute match and nothing appeared on their sensors nor did they see anything.

"This is getting us nowhere. Let's go to them then." Gray said.

Gray peeked his head out from around the barricade and out of nervousness immediately pulled it back in as he was expecting to get shot at, instead he ended up looking odd to the rest of his teammates.

"There has got to be a better way to do this." thought Gray.

"Gray, use your peepers..." said Caleb

"I am, I just don't want to get shot that's why I keep pulling back!"

"No, your peepers on the arms of most military mechs, use the icon that looks like old side-view mirrors in your HUD." said Geoff

Gray looked at his HUD and saw an icon that looked like a small rectangle with an arrow in it and activated it. A small door slid open in a narrow groove on his mech's arm and a stick popped out with a tapered end. In his HUD the rectangle with an arrow in it was replaced with a new live video feed that appeared to coming from this stick. Gray put his back against the barricade and held out his arm slightly so the peeper could look around the barricade for him without exposing himself.

"Huh, at this point I'm not even going to bring it up that I should read up more on these mechs, I just need to face it that it will save me a lot of pain in the long run if I just give in and study up." thought Gray.

Gray saw that nobody was coming or going in the immediate area around their base so Gray said for everyone to file out and take cover behind the first barricades in front of their base. The map was a little more than 1 kilometer wide so it was a very narrow map thus didn't leave much room for hiding. For length though, the map was around 8 kilometers. What this did was keep teams from being able to bunch up and move as a pack since mechs would be stepping on each other trying to get around the obstacles without sufficient space between them. Of course you could still move as a pack, you just had to do it in more of a column instead of a row.

After repositioning behind the last artificial barricades outside of their base, Gray looked around again and still saw nothing. Everyone was starting to get anxious because it had already been 8 minutes into the 30 minute match and they had yet to see the other team.

"Advance carefully and stop at the first artificial barricades, assuming their layout is the same as ours, I want Stacia and Geoff on my right and Yurika and Caleb on my left, I'll watch center." ordered Gray.

Since only three routes existed on this map to reach the flag, it was fairly easy to watch all of them at once. Gray didn't exactly like this as it didn't give him much room to be creative, but at least the same went for the enemy.

As everyone got into position, they were each peeping into the enemy base from different sides and even though they couldn't see everything they were shocked at what they saw.

"This... this isn't right! What happened?!?" cried Stacia

__________

At the start of the match on the other side of the map, the other team was also going over their own strategy.

"So it looks like we're going up against the 'Steel Wolves'" said a young man in his early 20s. "Sounds like a bad ass name, but against us 'Grizzly Lords' they will be nothing but wolf pups!"

"Sheesh Mark, why do you always boast like that, you've been the dead weight in every match so far!" said another member of the 'Grizzly Lords'.

"Shut it, I merely have been biding my time so you all may witness my true power!" said Mark, the same man earlier while trying to give his best tough look.

"Guys, shut up and get ready, let's play defensively at first. No need to rush it." said a woman in her early 30s.

"Don't worry Moira, I like to take my time, if you know what I mean." said another pilot behind Moira.

"I don't know what you mean Jeremy, you've always been the first one to finish since you come out so quickly and end up getting taken out first" replied Moira.

Moira had it tough being the leader of a squad with nothing but guys, she wouldn't have stayed in it but her little brother was part of it and she didn't want him to get bullied. She was kinda used to it at this point, getting hit on every match by her own team, male gamers were usually like this. Fortunately that's all it usually was, until today for some reason...

After 5 minutes the 'Steel Wolves' never came so they started to file out and make their way to the first barricades, Moira took point on the right side with Mark following behind her, Jeremy and Moira's little brother took the left, the fifth guy stayed behind to maintain lookout.

"It's okay baby cakes, I got your back this time" said Mark proudly as he got in position behind Moira and reached down and padded what would be the buttocks of her mech.

"NO TOUCHING!" Moira roared then without thinking aimed her gun at Mark's head and started firing the marker gun at him. Due to the gun not actually damaging the mech no explosion or damage actually accrued on Mark's mech and instead he got pissed and started firing at Moira. Jeremy opened fire on Moira hoping to take her out so she could cool off then, but Moira's little brother wanted to defend his big sister so he started firing at Jeremy as well. The last guy just stood there and sighed as 3 of the 4 drained each other's hit points. Moira, her little brother, and Mark were all dead and Jeremy only had 2 hit points left. The fifth guy finished off Jeremy just for the amusement of it. When they all died except for the fifth guy a timer began for 30 seconds to indicate the amount of time for them to respawn.

At this point the fifth guy saw the 'Steel Wolves' finally make their way to their base and sighed again as he saw the entire front of their base covered in bright paint from the chaos earlier. Instead of taking the 5 of them on alone, he held his hands up and thought to himself that he needs to find a new team.

__________

The enemy base looked like it had been giving a fresh coat of paint on most of the front as paint was everywhere from the infighting of the 'Grizzly Lords'. Gray and the others saw the one enemy mech with his hands up and weapon on the ground and weren't exactly sure what happened. The enemy mech opened up his loudspeaker and said "They respawn in 20 seconds, hurry up!"

Gray was concerned that this may be a trap but given the fact that they saw no other mechs around and 4 other guns were on the ground, this made it a little believable that they all had been killed.

"Did that guy team kill his 4 other teammates?" Gray thought to himself "If so, he's a monster then!"

Yurika quickly ran in and touched the flag, a virtual flag was attached to the back of her mech and a golden halo was above her mech indicating that she had the flag and suddenly her mech was visible on sensors. Gray noted that the enemy mech 30 meters from him didn't appear on his sensors so it looks like only flag carriers were visible. Yurika also noted that her mech slowed down a little when she had the flag, this was probably to try and keep it more interesting.

Yurika had just exited the base with the flag when the enemy mechs respawned. Instead of giving chase though, the 5th guy stood in their path.

"Out of the way Julius!" Moira screamed

"No, we lost this match as soon as it started, we are forfeiting and disbanding, or at the very least I am leaving." said Julius, the only one that wasn't killed on their team.

"But..." Moira started to say before Julius cut her off

"No, we are not here to play around, now accept the forfeit and let's log off for the day until we all cool off."