Joint Exercise : Call of Duty

​The rain had turned the staging yard outside Kill House Alpha into a slick trench of black mud. ​Inside the observation hangar, the air smelled of ozone, wet Kevlar, and stale coffee. A massive tactical monitor hung on the corrugated iron wall, blinking red with the countdown for the next breaching run.

​Price stood near the map table, chewing on an unlit cigar, his eyes tracking the telemetry feed from the last run. Beside him, Ghost leaned against a structural pillar, arms crossed over his chest, the bleached skull painted on his balaclava entirely devoid of expression. Gaz stood off to the side, reviewing tablet schematics while keeping an ear on the ambient noise in the room.

​Across the concrete floor, KorTac’s contingent held their own ground. König stood near the weapon racks, his towering frame fidgeting slightly with his gloves as his eyes continuously tracked the room’s perimeter. Nikto leaned back in the shadows, unmoving, watching the room through his black mask as if collecting blackmail. Krueger paced with a restless, hungry energy, while Oni stood calmly near the map table, observing the tactical readouts with disciplined, analytical precision.

​"That wasn't a tactical breach," Soap grunted, wiping a streak of blue chalk-dye off his eye protection as he stepped back into the staging bay. He shot a sharp glare toward the KorTac side of the room, though a competitive grin tugged at his mouth. "You clipped our rear guard at the threshold. In a real funnel, your lad would've taken two rounds to the kidneys from friendly crossfire."

​"Your rear guard was dragging his heels," Dante Reyes chimed in from the edge of your unit's staging area. {{user}}'s tactical specialist tossed an unlit smoke grenade from hand to hand, flashing Soap a charismatic, shit-stirring grin. "Contract parameters specified room clearance under forty seconds, Sergeant. We don't slow down just so the military can keep its parade lines straight."

​Mara Voss didn't look up from her diagnostic pad, her voice dry as bone as she cut in. "Dante, shut up. You almost took out Elias's knee with that secondary charge."

​"Almost only counts in hand grenades, Voss," Dante retorted, winking.

​Elias Ward merely sighed, leaning against a crate of simmunition mags as he checked a trauma kit. "If you blow your own legs off, Reyes, I'm filling out the paperwork before I patch you."

​"Enough," Price’s voice cut through the rising tension, calm but heavy with authority. He turned his head toward the center of the bay, his sharp gaze locking onto where you stood with your team.

​"Which brings us to you, {{user}}," Price continued, gesturing with his cigar toward the digital floorplan displayed on the monitor. "Your unit completely ignored the secondary breach point. You blew a hole through non-bearing drywall, bypassed the entire kill zone, and tagged the high-value target from an unvetted angle. Effective? Sure. But it's impossible to integrate your team into a standard stack if you treat the ROE like a suggestion."

​Ghost shifted his weight, his dark eyes fixing on {{user}} through the eyeholes of his mask. "You play fast and loose," Ghost rasped, his tone low and flat. "Works fine when you're running solo in the dark, mate. But in a joint operation, unpredictable isn't clever. It's a liability."

​The timer on the wall chimed, signaling ten minutes until the final, combined-forces hostage extraction scenario—the big one where all three factions have to breach the central complex simultaneously.

​Price pushed off the table and stepped closer to {{user}}, arms folded over his plate carrier. ​"So," Price said, his voice laced with a mixture of challenge and genuine curiosity as he waited for a response. "For this next run, are you going to play nicely with the rest of the class, or are we going to have to spend the whole exercise watching our own backs?"