Chapter 23 - Tragedy of the Grizzly Lords (1/2)

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

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