Team building exercise

When Six announced a new set of training exercises, to improve survival skills and build up teamwork, it was received with a series of despondent sighs and groans. However, Ryad was one of the few operatives who thought it was a good idea. And no matter how much he tried to convince Gustave it wouldn't be that different from a camping trip, the Frenchman stubbornly kept listing off all the ways things could go abysmally wrong: the dangers of eating meat of wild animals without testing them first, eating toxic plants, ways you could get a parasitic infection or something like malaria, horrific injuries, etc. Ryad had to admit that list was incredibly detailed, but Gustave didn't appreciate being called a hypochondriac, and Ryad found himself sleeping alone that night.

A week later they were all shipped to an undisclosed location somewhere in the States, presumably because it was easier for Six to monitor them all there than say, in the Amazon Forest. The groups were randomly picked up, and Ryad was confident no matter who he ended up with, he'd be able to make it work. Fast forward three days later, and Ryad was regretting his stupid optimism.

Dokkaebi stated from the beginning she wasn't interested at all in this nature business, and spent half the time cursing the lack of network coverage, and the other half she spent hacking into the surveillance net to keep track of what was going on with the other teams. Although she vehemently denied she was doing it to keep tabs on Vigil, never mind most of the news she had where from his team.

Blitz was always a bit too cheerful for Ryad's liking, but at least he tried to cooperate. He even asked Ryad to teach him the basics of tracking, so he could help him with the hunting. The lad was enthusiastic, but abysmal at it. Once he almost fell down a cliff while following the supposed tracks of a deer. From then on Ryad got anxiety every time he lost sight of Blitz when they were hunting, his mind already conjuring visions of the German falling into a ditch or unwittingly going into a bear cave, or something equally horrific. And that's why he decided to put him with Rook on fruit gathering duty. Which also turned out to be a mistake.

Rook was one of youngest ops in Rainbow, so his bubbly and excitable nature was normal, he supposed. The Frenchman spent the first day running up and down, and climbing trees, and generally being overjoyed at how fast and light he felt in trekking gear instead of his usual heavy plated armour. Then he declared he used to pick wild berries on his grandma's garden and gave himself the position of fruit gatherer. To his credit, he only picked the wrong kind of berries once, and it was because he'd been too distracted by Blitz to pay attention to what he was doing. However, nobody in the group appreciated the stomach cramps and vomiting they experienced that night. From then on, Dokkaebi started the trend of letting Rook taste everything first and see how he reacted to it before she accepted to eat anything he'd picked up.

Ryad had never before interacted much with Ying, so he was pleasantly surprised to discover they got along great. She was nice and easy-going, and incredibly witty when you got her talking long enough. And most importantly, she shared Ryad's passion for sports cars and racing. Ying was a true team person, and she was one of the first persons, alongside Blitz, to reassure Rook after the misshap with the berries. She also tried to bring Dokkaebi into doing something with the rest of the team. However, Ying was downright hostile with the other member of their group, berating him often for things she would have never bothered with if it was someone else. Fuze just took it all with a stony face and unsettling silence.

The quiet Spetsnaz was difficult to read. Ryad had no idea if Fuze just had a hard time talking with people, if it was he barely knew English, or if he was secretly planning their demise like Ying seemed to think. But after the tracking debacle with Blitz, he volunteered to accompany Jackal on hunting. Ryad dared to hope the Uzbek would be reasonably good at it. He looked like the competent sort, and he was friends with Kapkan. Those were all promising signs. The only problem was Fuze hunted like he killed terrorists: with extreme prejudice and total disregard for collateral damage.

They all had been issued fire weapons to hunt, and defend themselves from wild animals if necessary. However Fuze, the absolute madman, had managed to sneak into his backpack a few grenades. The deer saw the grenade coming in its direction and fled, although it was caught in the blast. The detonation spooked every living being in a five kilometre radius, and it did start a small fire that fortunately soon died out. But the deer was certainly dead. They returned to the camp with their slightly charred catch, only to find the rest of the group nervously speculating about the nature of the explosion they heard. When they learnt exactly what happened, it took both Blitz and Ryad's joint efforts to keep Ying from jumping Fuze while she screamed bloody murder.

"You are a reckless monster!" She screamed as Blitz tried his best to act as a shield between her and Fuze, while Ryad held her back. "You don't care about anything except your obsession for explosions! You could have injured someone, or started a forest fire! And all for what, catching a deer?"

Fuze looked at her with a perfectly neutral expression, except for a small twitch in the corner of his lips. "You're not hungry then?"

His answer made Ying's angry screeching reach a new high, and she almost punched Blitz in her attempts to escape and strangle the Uzbek operator. Ryad was pretty sure Dokkaebi was recording everything and he felt a migraine building up. Why had he ever thought this would be a fun experience? He definitely was getting to know the team better, though. He now knew he couldn't wait to lose sight of them all.

Two days later, Ryad's team was at the accorded rendezvous spot, waiting in sullen silence for the helicopter to come. Another group emerged from the woods, Kapkan at the front of a line of sour faced operators. Ryad shared a look with the Russian hunter in a moment of silent understanding. The other team looked as miserable as Ryad's. Jäger was sporting a nasty looking rash in one of his arms, Ash was chewing gum loudly and glaring at everyone else, Thatcher and Montagne kept apart from the rest, and Mira was quietly talking to a very disgruntled and sunburnt Ela. When Elena saw him, she apologized to Ela and came to Ryad's side.

"Pero qué te ha pasado? (What happened to you?)" She asked, pointing at the stings on his arms.

"No quiero hablar de ello (I don't wanna talk about it)." Ryad refused to talk about the hornet incident.

Mira picked up on his dark mood and decided to talk about something else. "Did you guys hear an explosion about two days ago?"

It was a perfectly normal question, but it did open Pandora's box, since everyone from Ryad's team started to talk at the same time, and the whole thing soon devolved into another shouting match.

Once they reached the base, Ryad was going to lock himself in his room and shun human interaction for at least a whole day.