Ghost, Soap, Price & Gaz!Squad x Any!141Member!User

"It's mandatory leave, not a suggestion, Soap. Sit down before I make it an order." — Price

TW/CW: disappearance of a side character, possible character death (player-driven, not in the intros), stalking/chase sequences, knives and improvised weapons, blood and injury description, brief non-sexual nudity (skinny dipping, no explicit description), isolation, jump scares, mild language.

Background

Four days of mandated stand-down at a lake house nobody bothered to put on official paperwork — Price's idea, allegedly for "morale," which everyone privately suspects means "so I can stop the four of you from killing each other in briefings." Ghost broods by the dock like it's a hobby, Soap treats downtime as a personal challenge to cause exactly one (1) incident per day, and Gaz is the only adult in the room. Then there's tagalong Adkins: rotational corporal, loudest man in any room, keeping score on everything including who's the most fun. He spends the first night insisting that skinny dipping at midnight is a great bonding exercise, mostly so he can say it was his idea.

By morning, Adkins isn't in his bunk. His boots are still by the door.

No rifles, no comms, no extraction, and nobody at command knows where they are. Someone came onto their leave and took one of theirs, and 141 takes that very personally. So they do what they do best: they hunt.

Who is User?

AnyPOV. An established member of 141, folded into the squad's downtime like you've always been there. You know these four well enough to clock when Soap's jokes get quieter, when Ghost stops watching the water and starts watching the trees, and when Price's "morale trip" voice turns into his "listen to me very carefully" voice. Adkins, meanwhile, has decided you're his competition, and has been losing all week.

The Scenario

Lake House Leave
The sun's barely down and the whole squad's been talked into a midnight swim by Adkins, who will not shut up about how "we earned this." The water's cold, the banter's loud, and for a few hours nobody in that lake is a soldier. Somewhere in the middle of it, Adkins heads up the treeline path to grab more beer from the house. Nobody's really keeping track of how long he's been gone.
Ideas:
◆ You volunteer Soap to go find Adkins, who has now been "getting beer" for twenty minutes.
◆ You swim out to where Price is floating alone and keep him company while he watches the squad like he's trying to memorize the moment.
◆ You splash Ghost until he finally gets in the water, fully clothed, out of spite.

The Treeline Watches
Morning headcount comes up one short. Adkins's boots are by the door, his phone's still charging, and there are drag marks leading from the treeline that everyone is very deliberately not talking about. Price puts the squad on a perimeter. Soap is already calling it a hunt, and he's grinning about it. Then you and Ghost draw the shoreline, and find out what made those drag marks.
Ideas:
◆ You confiscate Soap's fire poker and issue him a spatula, as befits his rank.
◆ You catch Gaz alone checking the treeline for the third time and quietly stand watch with him.
◆ You stick close to Ghost on the walk back to the house, and he keeps finding reasons to put himself between you and the trees.

🌙 Kinktober Day 8: Skinny Dipping, with the whole of 141 in the lake.

👁️ Also my entry for the We Are Not Alone collab, hosted by the wonderful @rabenschrei92. Go show the rest of the collab some love. You're not alone in there either.

Look. We all know I can't write smut. I've made my peace with it. What I can write is four tired men talked into a cold lake at midnight by a corporal with a scoreboard, followed by the woods getting very, very quiet. So that's what you're getting: horror and comedy, with a smut option. The option is yours. The squad will happily follow you there if you steer, but nobody here is going to drag you, except possibly the guy in the balaclava, and that's a different genre.


A few things for the cold-drop folks:
◆ Two intros. Lake House Leave is the swim, the banter, and the last normal night anyone gets. Start there if you want to be the one who notices something's wrong. The Treeline Watches skips ahead to the morning, the drag marks, and first contact. Start there if you'd like your horror pre-heated.
◆ Tank has no backstory. On purpose. I didn't forget to write it, I refused to. Is he Adkins? Did he do something to Adkins? Is he just a large man with a hobby? The bot doesn't know either. Whatever you decide, that's canon for your chat.
◆ Tank is human. He bleeds, he limps, he can lose. 141 are allowed to be very, very good at their jobs. The problem isn't that they can't win a fight. It's that winning one doesn't seem to end anything.
◆ Adkins is not a nice guy. He's not a bad guy either. He's just loud, keeps score on everything, and has been losing to you all week. Please don't feel too bad about whatever happens to him. Or do. I can't control you.

Tell me where your chat ends up. Did you catch him? Did you unmask him? Did Soap ever give back the fire poker? I want to know.

Now go get in the lake. The water's fine. Probably.

#wearenotalone

Edit:
10/8 - Updated the logic a bit. Got a couple of feedback saying it was 'too railroad' toward horror. Which I get. If you want an established relationship with any one of (or all of) the guys best to use chat memory to establish that if it's not in your persona. 💕Hawk

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