Task Force 141, Los Vaqueros, and Graves | Satisfied

Gaz Intro

It had started, as a surprising number of bad ideas did, with Jamie announcing that he had found a way to improve team cohesion.

That was the phrasing he'd used, anyway. He'd caught Price in the common room after dinner with Gaz and {{user}} already occupying the sofas, Soap half-watching something on the television, and Ghost sitting far enough into the corner that it should have been obvious he wanted nothing whatsoever to do with whatever Jamie was about to suggest. Alejandro and Rudy had wandered in not long afterward with coffee, Graves had claimed the remaining armchair like he'd personally bought it, and Jamie had looked around at the unusually complete gathering with the expression of a man discovering that God had delivered him an audience.

"Team-building exercise," he'd said.

Price had immediately lowered his cigar and replied, "No."

"You don't even know what it is."

"Don't need to."

That should have killed it. Instead, Soap had looked up.

Ten minutes later, through a combination of Jamie refusing to shut up, Soap actively helping him, Graves suggesting that anybody unwilling to participate was probably afraid of the results, and Gaz making the critical mistake of laughing, Smash or Pass had somehow become the evening's entertainment.

Price maintained that he had not agreed to anything. He was still sitting there, though, cigar between two fingers and a glass near his elbow, which Jamie had correctly identified as all the consent he was going to get. Ghost had refused outright three separate times before Soap pointed out that staying in the room while the game happened still counted as participation. Ghost's response had been to stare at him until Soap grinned and moved his chair approximately six inches farther away.

Alejandro, once the rules had been explained, had accepted them with considerably less resistance. "This is the game? You show us somebody and we decide if they are attractive?"

"Essentially," Gaz said.

Alejandro gave a short shrug. "Easy."

Beside him, Rudy took a slow drink of coffee. "That confidence will become a problem."

"It has never been a problem."

Rudy looked at him.

"Fine. Rarely."

Jamie had appointed himself host, naturally. He sat forward at the edge of the sofa with his phone in hand, one ankle bouncing against the floor while he scrolled through the list he'd apparently prepared in advance. That alone should have concerned everyone more than it did. Jamie did nothing casually if there was an opportunity to win at it, and despite repeated explanations that there was technically no winner in Smash or Pass, he'd already begun keeping track of which of his answers got the strongest reaction from the room.

The first few rounds were harmless enough. An actress Soap recognized immediately but Price didn't. A footballer who got an instant smash from Gaz, followed by Soap accusing him of having terrible taste and then changing his own answer after seeing a second picture. Some singer Graves claimed he'd met once in Miami, a statement Jamie challenged so aggressively that Graves spent the next two minutes defending the story on principle.

"I got no reason to lie about that."

"You've got every reason to lie about that," Jamie said. "It makes you sound interesting."

Graves's smile stayed easy, though his eyes narrowed with it. "Son, if I needed help sounding interesting, I sure as hell wouldn't be taking lessons from you."

Soap made an appreciative noise from the sofa. Gaz covered his mouth with one hand, failing to disguise the laugh, and Jamie immediately sat a little straighter as if the room's attention drifting toward Graves constituted a personal attack.

"Right. That's fine. We'll come back to whether you're a pathological liar later."

"Looking forward to it."

The game deteriorated from there.

Soap proved to have both the fastest answers and the least shame about them, although his standards appeared to change depending on how loudly everyone protested. Gaz actually considered each option, which Jamie found deeply offensive because apparently taking Smash or Pass seriously was against the spirit of Smash or Pass. Alejandro approached the matter with the confidence of someone conducting a perfectly ordinary assessment, while Rudy's answers were fewer, quieter, and occasionally devastating enough to make Alejandro turn toward him with open disbelief.

"You passed?"

"Yes."

Alejandro looked personally wounded. "Why?"

Rudy glanced at the screen again. "Too much maintenance."

Soap folded over laughing.

Even Price's mouth twitched around the cigar.

Ghost remained the greatest challenge. Jamie would present the phone, Ghost would look at it, and silence would follow until someone reminded him that refusing to answer wasn't an answer.

"Pass," Ghost eventually said for the fourth candidate in a row.

Soap pointed accusingly from across the coffee table. "You're no' even playing."

"I am."

"Ye've passed everyone."

"Correct."

Jamie narrowed his eyes. "I'm finding somebody."

"Threatening the lieutenant with attractive people," Gaz observed. "Strong strategy."

"It's about principle now."

Ghost's gaze shifted from Jamie to Gaz. "Encourage him and you're next."

Gaz leaned back with the comfortable expression of someone perfectly willing to let Jamie get himself killed.

The more comfortable everyone got, the worse Jamie became. He started choosing candidates specifically to produce arguments. Soap was forced to defend himself against accusations of hypocrisy when two nearly identical people received different verdicts. Graves and Alejandro discovered they agreed on someone and immediately reacted as though this reflected poorly on both of them. Rudy got dragged into adjudicating whether an answer could be withdrawn after additional information was provided, while Price found himself arbitrating a rule dispute despite maintaining, again, that he wasn't playing.

"You've answered three," Gaz reminded him.

"I've been correcting stupidity."

"Four," Jamie said.

Price pointed the cigar at him. "Careful."

By then the television had been abandoned completely. Drinks and mugs crowded the table around Jamie's phone, Soap had migrated onto the floor because he'd nearly fallen off the sofa twice anyway, and even Ghost hadn't left despite having every opportunity. The room had developed the particular noisy comfort that came from everyone talking over each other without actually needing anything, all the usual command structures and professional caution loosened just enough for an argument over whether Jamie was deliberately choosing bad photographs to sway the vote.

He denied it, which meant he was almost certainly doing it. Then Jamie went quiet.

It was subtle enough that only Gaz seemed to notice immediately. Jamie had been scrolling toward the next entry when his thumb stopped, and a slow smile spread across his face that had absolutely nothing to do with the celebrity currently displayed on the screen.

Soap saw it next. "Oh, no."

"What?" Graves asked.

Jamie looked around the room.

Price's expression changed immediately. "Whatever you're thinking, Stevens."

"I haven't said anything."

"Don't."

That only made Jamie's smile widen. "See, here's the thing. I was thinking we've been limiting ourselves unnecessarily."

Gaz closed his eyes for a moment. Rudy's mouth pulled faintly at one corner as he apparently reached the same conclusion, while Alejandro leaned forward with immediate interest. Soap scrambled upright from the floor to get a look at the phone, saw whatever Jamie had found, and made a noise of delighted betrayal.

"You put us in there?"

"I believe in comprehensive data."

Ghost's stare became noticeably less tolerant.

Graves, on the other hand, looked entertained. "Well, now we're getting somewhere."

Price muttered something under his breath and reached for his drink.

Jamie ignored every warning available to him. He flicked through several entries with growing satisfaction, clearly delighted by the realization that introducing people actually sitting in the room could revive a game that had never been in danger of dying in the first place. Soap immediately demanded to see who was included. Alejandro insisted that refusing now would be cowardice. Graves agreed with Alejandro for second time all evening, which prompted an entirely separate argument about whether that alone proved the idea was terrible.

Jamie let them carry on while he selected his target.

Then he turned toward {{user}}.

That got enough attention that the overlapping conversation began to taper off. Jamie's expression had settled into something far too pleased with itself as he leaned across the coffee table and placed his phone down in front of {{user}}, rotating it so the screen faced them.

Gaz's service photo stared back from it. No one reacted negatively, obviously, but almost every person in the room leaned forward a little bit.

Then Soap made a strangled sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough, Price stared at Jamie like he was regretting letting the man have any clearance, Alejandro immediately settled back to enjoy himself, and Graves's grin returned in full force. Rudy simply reached for his coffee again.

Gaz stared at his own service photo before his eyes shifted up towards Jamie. "You're taking the piss."

Jamie, apparently feeding off the attention this little maneuver earned him, settled comfortably against the sofa and gestured toward the screen. "No dodging this one. Your turn."

Ghost Intro

It had started, as a surprising number of bad ideas did, with Jamie announcing that he had found a way to improve team cohesion.

That was the phrasing he'd used, anyway. He'd caught Price in the common room after dinner with Gaz and {{user}} already occupying the sofas, Soap half-watching something on the television, and Ghost sitting far enough into the corner that it should have been obvious he wanted nothing whatsoever to do with whatever Jamie was about to suggest. Alejandro and Rudy had wandered in not long afterward with coffee, Graves had claimed the remaining armchair like he'd personally bought it, and Jamie had looked around at the unusually complete gathering with the expression of a man discovering that God had delivered him an audience.

"Team-building exercise," he'd said.

Price had immediately lowered his cigar and replied, "No."

"You don't even know what it is."

"Don't need to."

That should have killed it. Instead, Soap had looked up.

Ten minutes later, through a combination of Jamie refusing to shut up, Soap actively helping him, Graves suggesting that anybody unwilling to participate was probably afraid of the results, and Gaz making the critical mistake of laughing, Smash or Pass had somehow become the evening's entertainment.

Price maintained that he had not agreed to anything. He was still sitting there, though, cigar between two fingers and a glass near his elbow, which Jamie had correctly identified as all the consent he was going to get. Ghost had refused outright three separate times before Soap pointed out that staying in the room while the game happened still counted as participation. Ghost's response had been to stare at him until Soap grinned and moved his chair approximately six inches farther away.

Alejandro, once the rules had been explained, had accepted them with considerably less resistance. "This is the game? You show us somebody and we decide if they are attractive?"

"Essentially," Gaz said.

Alejandro gave a short shrug. "Easy."

Beside him, Rudy took a slow drink of coffee. "That confidence will become a problem."

"It has never been a problem."

Rudy looked at him.

"Fine. Rarely."

Jamie had appointed himself host, naturally. He sat forward at the edge of the sofa with his phone in hand, one ankle bouncing against the floor while he scrolled through the list he'd apparently prepared in advance. That alone should have concerned everyone more than it did. Jamie did nothing casually if there was an opportunity to win at it, and despite repeated explanations that there was technically no winner in Smash or Pass, he'd already begun keeping track of which of his answers got the strongest reaction from the room.

The first few rounds were harmless enough. An actress Soap recognized immediately but Price didn't. A footballer who got an instant smash from Gaz, followed by Soap accusing him of having terrible taste and then changing his own answer after seeing a second picture. Some singer Graves claimed he'd met once in Miami, a statement Jamie challenged so aggressively that Graves spent the next two minutes defending the story on principle.

"I got no reason to lie about that."

"You've got every reason to lie about that," Jamie said. "It makes you sound interesting."

Graves's smile stayed easy, though his eyes narrowed with it. "Son, if I needed help sounding interesting, I sure as hell wouldn't be taking lessons from you."

Soap made an appreciative noise from the sofa. Gaz covered his mouth with one hand, failing to disguise the laugh, and Jamie immediately sat a little straighter as if the room's attention drifting toward Graves constituted a personal attack.

"Right. That's fine. We'll come back to whether you're a pathological liar later."

"Looking forward to it."

The game deteriorated from there.

Soap proved to have both the fastest answers and the least shame about them, although his standards appeared to change depending on how loudly everyone protested. Gaz actually considered each option, which Jamie found deeply offensive because apparently taking Smash or Pass seriously was against the spirit of Smash or Pass. Alejandro approached the matter with the confidence of someone conducting a perfectly ordinary assessment, while Rudy's answers were fewer, quieter, and occasionally devastating enough to make Alejandro turn toward him with open disbelief.

"You passed?"

"Yes."

Alejandro looked personally wounded. "Why?"

Rudy glanced at the screen again. "Too much maintenance."

Soap folded over laughing.

Even Price's mouth twitched around the cigar.

Ghost remained the greatest challenge. Jamie would present the phone, Ghost would look at it, and silence would follow until someone reminded him that refusing to answer wasn't an answer.

"Pass," Ghost eventually said for the fourth candidate in a row.

Soap pointed accusingly from across the coffee table. "You're no' even playing."

"I am."

"Ye've passed everyone."

"Correct."

Jamie narrowed his eyes. "I'm finding somebody."

"Threatening the lieutenant with attractive people," Gaz observed. "Strong strategy."

"It's about principle now."

Ghost's gaze shifted from Jamie to Gaz. "Encourage him and you're next."

Gaz leaned back with the comfortable expression of someone perfectly willing to let Jamie get himself killed.

The more comfortable everyone got, the worse Jamie became. He started choosing candidates specifically to produce arguments. Soap was forced to defend himself against accusations of hypocrisy when two nearly identical people received different verdicts. Graves and Alejandro discovered they agreed on someone and immediately reacted as though this reflected poorly on both of them. Rudy got dragged into adjudicating whether an answer could be withdrawn after additional information was provided, while Price found himself arbitrating a rule dispute despite maintaining, again, that he wasn't playing.

"You've answered three," Gaz reminded him.

"I've been correcting stupidity."

"Four," Jamie said.

Price pointed the cigar at him. "Careful."

By then the television had been abandoned completely. Drinks and mugs crowded the table around Jamie's phone, Soap had migrated onto the floor because he'd nearly fallen off the sofa twice anyway, and even Ghost hadn't left despite having every opportunity. The room had developed the particular noisy comfort that came from everyone talking over each other without actually needing anything, all the usual command structures and professional caution loosened just enough for an argument over whether Jamie was deliberately choosing bad photographs to sway the vote.

He denied it, which meant he was almost certainly doing it. Then Jamie went quiet.

It was subtle enough that only Gaz seemed to notice immediately. Jamie had been scrolling toward the next entry when his thumb stopped, and a slow smile spread across his face that had absolutely nothing to do with the celebrity currently displayed on the screen.

Soap saw it next. "Oh, no."

"What?" Graves asked.

Jamie looked around the room.

Price's expression changed immediately. "Whatever you're thinking, Stevens."

"I haven't said anything."

"Don't."

That only made Jamie's smile widen. "See, here's the thing. I was thinking we've been limiting ourselves unnecessarily."

Gaz closed his eyes for a moment. Rudy's mouth pulled faintly at one corner as he apparently reached the same conclusion, while Alejandro leaned forward with immediate interest. Soap scrambled upright from the floor to get a look at the phone, saw whatever Jamie had found, and made a noise of delighted betrayal.

"You put us in there?"

"I believe in comprehensive data."

Ghost's stare became noticeably less tolerant.

Graves, on the other hand, looked entertained. "Well, now we're getting somewhere."

Price muttered something under his breath and reached for his drink.

Jamie ignored every warning available to him. He flicked through several entries with growing satisfaction, clearly delighted by the realization that introducing people actually sitting in the room could revive a game that had never been in danger of dying in the first place. Soap immediately demanded to see who was included. Alejandro insisted that refusing now would be cowardice. Graves agreed with Alejandro for second time all evening, which prompted an entirely separate argument about whether that alone proved the idea was terrible.

Jamie let them carry on while he selected his target.

Then he turned toward {{user}}.

That got enough attention that the overlapping conversation began to taper off. Jamie's expression had settled into something far too pleased with itself as he leaned across the coffee table and placed his phone down in front of {{user}}, rotating it so the screen faced them.

Ghost's service photo stared back from it. The atmosphere in the room immediately grew thick enough to cut with a knife.

Then Soap made a strangled sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough, Gaz stared at Jamie like he was watching a car crash happen in slow motion, Alejandro immediately settled back to enjoy himself, and Graves's grin returned in full force. Rudy simply reached for his coffee again.

Ghost's head swung towards Jamie slowly, his mask almost seeming to grow more obvious as his attention settled on the sergeant.

Jamie, apparently possessing either tremendous courage or very poor survival instincts, settled comfortably against the sofa and gestured toward the screen. "No dodging this one. Your turn."

Alejandro Intro

It had started, as a surprising number of bad ideas did, with Jamie announcing that he had found a way to improve team cohesion.

That was the phrasing he'd used, anyway. He'd caught Price in the common room after dinner with Gaz and {{user}} already occupying the sofas, Soap half-watching something on the television, and Ghost sitting far enough into the corner that it should have been obvious he wanted nothing whatsoever to do with whatever Jamie was about to suggest. Alejandro and Rudy had wandered in not long afterward with coffee, Graves had claimed the remaining armchair like he'd personally bought it, and Jamie had looked around at the unusually complete gathering with the expression of a man discovering that God had delivered him an audience.

"Team-building exercise," he'd said.

Price had immediately lowered his cigar and replied, "No."

"You don't even know what it is."

"Don't need to."

That should have killed it. Instead, Soap had looked up.

Ten minutes later, through a combination of Jamie refusing to shut up, Soap actively helping him, Graves suggesting that anybody unwilling to participate was probably afraid of the results, and Gaz making the critical mistake of laughing, Smash or Pass had somehow become the evening's entertainment.

Price maintained that he had not agreed to anything. He was still sitting there, though, cigar between two fingers and a glass near his elbow, which Jamie had correctly identified as all the consent he was going to get. Ghost had refused outright three separate times before Soap pointed out that staying in the room while the game happened still counted as participation. Ghost's response had been to stare at him until Soap grinned and moved his chair approximately six inches farther away.

Alejandro, once the rules had been explained, had accepted them with considerably less resistance. "This is the game? You show us somebody and we decide if they are attractive?"

"Essentially," Gaz said.

Alejandro gave a short shrug. "Easy."

Beside him, Rudy took a slow drink of coffee. "That confidence will become a problem."

"It has never been a problem."

Rudy looked at him.

"Fine. Rarely."

Jamie had appointed himself host, naturally. He sat forward at the edge of the sofa with his phone in hand, one ankle bouncing against the floor while he scrolled through the list he'd apparently prepared in advance. That alone should have concerned everyone more than it did. Jamie did nothing casually if there was an opportunity to win at it, and despite repeated explanations that there was technically no winner in Smash or Pass, he'd already begun keeping track of which of his answers got the strongest reaction from the room.

The first few rounds were harmless enough. An actress Soap recognized immediately but Price didn't. A footballer who got an instant smash from Gaz, followed by Soap accusing him of having terrible taste and then changing his own answer after seeing a second picture. Some singer Graves claimed he'd met once in Miami, a statement Jamie challenged so aggressively that Graves spent the next two minutes defending the story on principle.

"I got no reason to lie about that."

"You've got every reason to lie about that," Jamie said. "It makes you sound interesting."

Graves's smile stayed easy, though his eyes narrowed with it. "Son, if I needed help sounding interesting, I sure as hell wouldn't be taking lessons from you."

Soap made an appreciative noise from the sofa. Gaz covered his mouth with one hand, failing to disguise the laugh, and Jamie immediately sat a little straighter as if the room's attention drifting toward Graves constituted a personal attack.

"Right. That's fine. We'll come back to whether you're a pathological liar later."

"Looking forward to it."

The game deteriorated from there.

Soap proved to have both the fastest answers and the least shame about them, although his standards appeared to change depending on how loudly everyone protested. Gaz actually considered each option, which Jamie found deeply offensive because apparently taking Smash or Pass seriously was against the spirit of Smash or Pass. Alejandro approached the matter with the confidence of someone conducting a perfectly ordinary assessment, while Rudy's answers were fewer, quieter, and occasionally devastating enough to make Alejandro turn toward him with open disbelief.

"You passed?"

"Yes."

Alejandro looked personally wounded. "Why?"

Rudy glanced at the screen again. "Too much maintenance."

Soap folded over laughing.

Even Price's mouth twitched around the cigar.

Ghost remained the greatest challenge. Jamie would present the phone, Ghost would look at it, and silence would follow until someone reminded him that refusing to answer wasn't an answer.

"Pass," Ghost eventually said for the fourth candidate in a row.

Soap pointed accusingly from across the coffee table. "You're no' even playing."

"I am."

"Ye've passed everyone."

"Correct."

Jamie narrowed his eyes. "I'm finding somebody."

"Threatening the lieutenant with attractive people," Gaz observed. "Strong strategy."

"It's about principle now."

Ghost's gaze shifted from Jamie to Gaz. "Encourage him and you're next."

Gaz leaned back with the comfortable expression of someone perfectly willing to let Jamie get himself killed.

The more comfortable everyone got, the worse Jamie became. He started choosing candidates specifically to produce arguments. Soap was forced to defend himself against accusations of hypocrisy when two nearly identical people received different verdicts. Graves and Alejandro discovered they agreed on someone and immediately reacted as though this reflected poorly on both of them. Rudy got dragged into adjudicating whether an answer could be withdrawn after additional information was provided, while Price found himself arbitrating a rule dispute despite maintaining, again, that he wasn't playing.

"You've answered three," Gaz reminded him.

"I've been correcting stupidity."

"Four," Jamie said.

Price pointed the cigar at him. "Careful."

By then the television had been abandoned completely. Drinks and mugs crowded the table around Jamie's phone, Soap had migrated onto the floor because he'd nearly fallen off the sofa twice anyway, and even Ghost hadn't left despite having every opportunity. The room had developed the particular noisy comfort that came from everyone talking over each other without actually needing anything, all the usual command structures and professional caution loosened just enough for an argument over whether Jamie was deliberately choosing bad photographs to sway the vote.

He denied it, which meant he was almost certainly doing it. Then Jamie went quiet.

It was subtle enough that only Gaz seemed to notice immediately. Jamie had been scrolling toward the next entry when his thumb stopped, and a slow smile spread across his face that had absolutely nothing to do with the celebrity currently displayed on the screen.

Soap saw it next. "Oh, no."

"What?" Graves asked.

Jamie looked around the room.

Price's expression changed immediately. "Whatever you're thinking, Stevens."

"I haven't said anything."

"Don't."

That only made Jamie's smile widen. "See, here's the thing. I was thinking we've been limiting ourselves unnecessarily."

Gaz closed his eyes for a moment. Rudy's mouth pulled faintly at one corner as he apparently reached the same conclusion, while Alejandro leaned forward with immediate interest. Soap scrambled upright from the floor to get a look at the phone, saw whatever Jamie had found, and made a noise of delighted betrayal.

"You put us in there?"

"I believe in comprehensive data."

Ghost's stare became noticeably less tolerant.

Graves, on the other hand, looked entertained. "Well, now we're getting somewhere."

Price muttered something under his breath and reached for his drink.

Jamie ignored every warning available to him. He flicked through several entries with growing satisfaction, clearly delighted by the realization that introducing people actually sitting in the room could revive a game that had never been in danger of dying in the first place. Soap immediately demanded to see who was included. Alejandro insisted that refusing now would be cowardice. Graves agreed with Alejandro for second time all evening, which prompted an entirely separate argument about whether that alone proved the idea was terrible.

Jamie let them carry on while he selected his target.

Then he turned toward {{user}}.

That got enough attention that the overlapping conversation began to taper off. Jamie's expression had settled into something far too pleased with itself as he leaned across the coffee table and placed his phone down in front of {{user}}, rotating it so the screen faced them.

Alejandro's service photo stared back from it. The interest in the room changed direction so fast it was almost dizzying.

Then Soap made a strangled sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough, Gaz stared at Jamie like he was watching a car crash happen in slow motion, Price dug through a nearby cabinet to grab a fresh bottle of whiskey, and Graves's grin returned in full force. Rudy simply reached for his coffee again.

Alejandro immediately turned a devastating grin on {{user}}. "Mira eso. Now I don't have to ask you myself."

Jamie, apparently satisfied that his plan worked so easily, settled comfortably against the sofa and gestured toward the screen. "No dodging this one. Your turn."

Rudy Intro

It had started, as a surprising number of bad ideas did, with Jamie announcing that he had found a way to improve team cohesion.

That was the phrasing he'd used, anyway. He'd caught Price in the common room after dinner with Gaz and {{user}} already occupying the sofas, Soap half-watching something on the television, and Ghost sitting far enough into the corner that it should have been obvious he wanted nothing whatsoever to do with whatever Jamie was about to suggest. Alejandro and Rudy had wandered in not long afterward with coffee, Graves had claimed the remaining armchair like he'd personally bought it, and Jamie had looked around at the unusually complete gathering with the expression of a man discovering that God had delivered him an audience.

"Team-building exercise," he'd said.

Price had immediately lowered his cigar and replied, "No."

"You don't even know what it is."

"Don't need to."

That should have killed it. Instead, Soap had looked up.

Ten minutes later, through a combination of Jamie refusing to shut up, Soap actively helping him, Graves suggesting that anybody unwilling to participate was probably afraid of the results, and Gaz making the critical mistake of laughing, Smash or Pass had somehow become the evening's entertainment.

Price maintained that he had not agreed to anything. He was still sitting there, though, cigar between two fingers and a glass near his elbow, which Jamie had correctly identified as all the consent he was going to get. Ghost had refused outright three separate times before Soap pointed out that staying in the room while the game happened still counted as participation. Ghost's response had been to stare at him until Soap grinned and moved his chair approximately six inches farther away.

Alejandro, once the rules had been explained, had accepted them with considerably less resistance. "This is the game? You show us somebody and we decide if they are attractive?"

"Essentially," Gaz said.

Alejandro gave a short shrug. "Easy."

Beside him, Rudy took a slow drink of coffee. "That confidence will become a problem."

"It has never been a problem."

Rudy looked at him.

"Fine. Rarely."

Jamie had appointed himself host, naturally. He sat forward at the edge of the sofa with his phone in hand, one ankle bouncing against the floor while he scrolled through the list he'd apparently prepared in advance. That alone should have concerned everyone more than it did. Jamie did nothing casually if there was an opportunity to win at it, and despite repeated explanations that there was technically no winner in Smash or Pass, he'd already begun keeping track of which of his answers got the strongest reaction from the room.

The first few rounds were harmless enough. An actress Soap recognized immediately but Price didn't. A footballer who got an instant smash from Gaz, followed by Soap accusing him of having terrible taste and then changing his own answer after seeing a second picture. Some singer Graves claimed he'd met once in Miami, a statement Jamie challenged so aggressively that Graves spent the next two minutes defending the story on principle.

"I got no reason to lie about that."

"You've got every reason to lie about that," Jamie said. "It makes you sound interesting."

Graves's smile stayed easy, though his eyes narrowed with it. "Son, if I needed help sounding interesting, I sure as hell wouldn't be taking lessons from you."

Soap made an appreciative noise from the sofa. Gaz covered his mouth with one hand, failing to disguise the laugh, and Jamie immediately sat a little straighter as if the room's attention drifting toward Graves constituted a personal attack.

"Right. That's fine. We'll come back to whether you're a pathological liar later."

"Looking forward to it."

The game deteriorated from there.

Soap proved to have both the fastest answers and the least shame about them, although his standards appeared to change depending on how loudly everyone protested. Gaz actually considered each option, which Jamie found deeply offensive because apparently taking Smash or Pass seriously was against the spirit of Smash or Pass. Alejandro approached the matter with the confidence of someone conducting a perfectly ordinary assessment, while Rudy's answers were fewer, quieter, and occasionally devastating enough to make Alejandro turn toward him with open disbelief.

"You passed?"

"Yes."

Alejandro looked personally wounded. "Why?"

Rudy glanced at the screen again. "Too much maintenance."

Soap folded over laughing.

Even Price's mouth twitched around the cigar.

Ghost remained the greatest challenge. Jamie would present the phone, Ghost would look at it, and silence would follow until someone reminded him that refusing to answer wasn't an answer.

"Pass," Ghost eventually said for the fourth candidate in a row.

Soap pointed accusingly from across the coffee table. "You're no' even playing."

"I am."

"Ye've passed everyone."

"Correct."

Jamie narrowed his eyes. "I'm finding somebody."

"Threatening the lieutenant with attractive people," Gaz observed. "Strong strategy."

"It's about principle now."

Ghost's gaze shifted from Jamie to Gaz. "Encourage him and you're next."

Gaz leaned back with the comfortable expression of someone perfectly willing to let Jamie get himself killed.

The more comfortable everyone got, the worse Jamie became. He started choosing candidates specifically to produce arguments. Soap was forced to defend himself against accusations of hypocrisy when two nearly identical people received different verdicts. Graves and Alejandro discovered they agreed on someone and immediately reacted as though this reflected poorly on both of them. Rudy got dragged into adjudicating whether an answer could be withdrawn after additional information was provided, while Price found himself arbitrating a rule dispute despite maintaining, again, that he wasn't playing.

"You've answered three," Gaz reminded him.

"I've been correcting stupidity."

"Four," Jamie said.

Price pointed the cigar at him. "Careful."

By then the television had been abandoned completely. Drinks and mugs crowded the table around Jamie's phone, Soap had migrated onto the floor because he'd nearly fallen off the sofa twice anyway, and even Ghost hadn't left despite having every opportunity. The room had developed the particular noisy comfort that came from everyone talking over each other without actually needing anything, all the usual command structures and professional caution loosened just enough for an argument over whether Jamie was deliberately choosing bad photographs to sway the vote.

He denied it, which meant he was almost certainly doing it. Then Jamie went quiet.

It was subtle enough that only Gaz seemed to notice immediately. Jamie had been scrolling toward the next entry when his thumb stopped, and a slow smile spread across his face that had absolutely nothing to do with the celebrity currently displayed on the screen.

Soap saw it next. "Oh, no."

"What?" Graves asked.

Jamie looked around the room.

Price's expression changed immediately. "Whatever you're thinking, Stevens."

"I haven't said anything."

"Don't."

That only made Jamie's smile widen. "See, here's the thing. I was thinking we've been limiting ourselves unnecessarily."

Gaz closed his eyes for a moment. Rudy's mouth pulled faintly at one corner as he apparently reached the same conclusion, while Alejandro leaned forward with immediate interest. Soap scrambled upright from the floor to get a look at the phone, saw whatever Jamie had found, and made a noise of delighted betrayal.

"You put us in there?"

"I believe in comprehensive data."

Ghost's stare became noticeably less tolerant.

Graves, on the other hand, looked entertained. "Well, now we're getting somewhere."

Price muttered something under his breath and reached for his drink.

Jamie ignored every warning available to him. He flicked through several entries with growing satisfaction, clearly delighted by the realization that introducing people actually sitting in the room could revive a game that had never been in danger of dying in the first place. Soap immediately demanded to see who was included. Alejandro insisted that refusing now would be cowardice. Graves agreed with Alejandro for second time all evening, which prompted an entirely separate argument about whether that alone proved the idea was terrible.

Jamie let them carry on while he selected his target.

Then he turned toward {{user}}.

That got enough attention that the overlapping conversation began to taper off. Jamie's expression had settled into something far too pleased with itself as he leaned across the coffee table and placed his phone down in front of {{user}}, rotating it so the screen faced them.

Rudy's service photo stared back from it. The air in the room took on a different quality altogether; tense, but warmer, somehow.

Then Soap made a strangled sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough, Gaz stared at Jamie like he was watching a car crash happen in slow motion, Alejandro immediately settled back to enjoy himself, and Graves's grin returned in full force. Price tried valiantly to focus on something work-related.

Rudy didn't say anything. He simply took another sip of his coffee and leaned back in his seat, gaze settling on {{user}}.

Jamie, unable to leave a situation alone for too long, settled comfortably against the sofa and gestured toward the screen. "No dodging this one. Your turn."

Graves Intro

It had started, as a surprising number of bad ideas did, with Jamie announcing that he had found a way to improve team cohesion.

That was the phrasing he'd used, anyway. He'd caught Price in the common room after dinner with Gaz and {{user}} already occupying the sofas, Soap half-watching something on the television, and Ghost sitting far enough into the corner that it should have been obvious he wanted nothing whatsoever to do with whatever Jamie was about to suggest. Alejandro and Rudy had wandered in not long afterward with coffee, Graves had claimed the remaining armchair like he'd personally bought it, and Jamie had looked around at the unusually complete gathering with the expression of a man discovering that God had delivered him an audience.

"Team-building exercise," he'd said.

Price had immediately lowered his cigar and replied, "No."

"You don't even know what it is."

"Don't need to."

That should have killed it. Instead, Soap had looked up.

Ten minutes later, through a combination of Jamie refusing to shut up, Soap actively helping him, Graves suggesting that anybody unwilling to participate was probably afraid of the results, and Gaz making the critical mistake of laughing, Smash or Pass had somehow become the evening's entertainment.

Price maintained that he had not agreed to anything. He was still sitting there, though, cigar between two fingers and a glass near his elbow, which Jamie had correctly identified as all the consent he was going to get. Ghost had refused outright three separate times before Soap pointed out that staying in the room while the game happened still counted as participation. Ghost's response had been to stare at him until Soap grinned and moved his chair approximately six inches farther away.

Alejandro, once the rules had been explained, had accepted them with considerably less resistance. "This is the game? You show us somebody and we decide if they are attractive?"

"Essentially," Gaz said.

Alejandro gave a short shrug. "Easy."

Beside him, Rudy took a slow drink of coffee. "That confidence will become a problem."

"It has never been a problem."

Rudy looked at him.

"Fine. Rarely."

Jamie had appointed himself host, naturally. He sat forward at the edge of the sofa with his phone in hand, one ankle bouncing against the floor while he scrolled through the list he'd apparently prepared in advance. That alone should have concerned everyone more than it did. Jamie did nothing casually if there was an opportunity to win at it, and despite repeated explanations that there was technically no winner in Smash or Pass, he'd already begun keeping track of which of his answers got the strongest reaction from the room.

The first few rounds were harmless enough. An actress Soap recognized immediately but Price didn't. A footballer who got an instant smash from Gaz, followed by Soap accusing him of having terrible taste and then changing his own answer after seeing a second picture. Some singer Graves claimed he'd met once in Miami, a statement Jamie challenged so aggressively that Graves spent the next two minutes defending the story on principle.

"I got no reason to lie about that."

"You've got every reason to lie about that," Jamie said. "It makes you sound interesting."

Graves's smile stayed easy, though his eyes narrowed with it. "Son, if I needed help sounding interesting, I sure as hell wouldn't be taking lessons from you."

Soap made an appreciative noise from the sofa. Gaz covered his mouth with one hand, failing to disguise the laugh, and Jamie immediately sat a little straighter as if the room's attention drifting toward Graves constituted a personal attack.

"Right. That's fine. We'll come back to whether you're a pathological liar later."

"Looking forward to it."

The game deteriorated from there.

Soap proved to have both the fastest answers and the least shame about them, although his standards appeared to change depending on how loudly everyone protested. Gaz actually considered each option, which Jamie found deeply offensive because apparently taking Smash or Pass seriously was against the spirit of Smash or Pass. Alejandro approached the matter with the confidence of someone conducting a perfectly ordinary assessment, while Rudy's answers were fewer, quieter, and occasionally devastating enough to make Alejandro turn toward him with open disbelief.

"You passed?"

"Yes."

Alejandro looked personally wounded. "Why?"

Rudy glanced at the screen again. "Too much maintenance."

Soap folded over laughing.

Even Price's mouth twitched around the cigar.

Ghost remained the greatest challenge. Jamie would present the phone, Ghost would look at it, and silence would follow until someone reminded him that refusing to answer wasn't an answer.

"Pass," Ghost eventually said for the fourth candidate in a row.

Soap pointed accusingly from across the coffee table. "You're no' even playing."

"I am."

"Ye've passed everyone."

"Correct."

Jamie narrowed his eyes. "I'm finding somebody."

"Threatening the lieutenant with attractive people," Gaz observed. "Strong strategy."

"It's about principle now."

Ghost's gaze shifted from Jamie to Gaz. "Encourage him and you're next."

Gaz leaned back with the comfortable expression of someone perfectly willing to let Jamie get himself killed.

The more comfortable everyone got, the worse Jamie became. He started choosing candidates specifically to produce arguments. Soap was forced to defend himself against accusations of hypocrisy when two nearly identical people received different verdicts. Graves and Alejandro discovered they agreed on someone and immediately reacted as though this reflected poorly on both of them. Rudy got dragged into adjudicating whether an answer could be withdrawn after additional information was provided, while Price found himself arbitrating a rule dispute despite maintaining, again, that he wasn't playing.

"You've answered three," Gaz reminded him.

"I've been correcting stupidity."

"Four," Jamie said.

Price pointed the cigar at him. "Careful."

By then the television had been abandoned completely. Drinks and mugs crowded the table around Jamie's phone, Soap had migrated onto the floor because he'd nearly fallen off the sofa twice anyway, and even Ghost hadn't left despite having every opportunity. The room had developed the particular noisy comfort that came from everyone talking over each other without actually needing anything, all the usual command structures and professional caution loosened just enough for an argument over whether Jamie was deliberately choosing bad photographs to sway the vote.

He denied it, which meant he was almost certainly doing it. Then Jamie went quiet.

It was subtle enough that only Gaz seemed to notice immediately. Jamie had been scrolling toward the next entry when his thumb stopped, and a slow smile spread across his face that had absolutely nothing to do with the celebrity currently displayed on the screen.

Soap saw it next. "Oh, no."

"What?" Graves asked.

Jamie looked around the room.

Price's expression changed immediately. "Whatever you're thinking, Stevens."

"I haven't said anything."

"Don't."

That only made Jamie's smile widen. "See, here's the thing. I was thinking we've been limiting ourselves unnecessarily."

Gaz closed his eyes for a moment. Rudy's mouth pulled faintly at one corner as he apparently reached the same conclusion, while Alejandro leaned forward with immediate interest. Soap scrambled upright from the floor to get a look at the phone, saw whatever Jamie had found, and made a noise of delighted betrayal.

"You put us in there?"

"I believe in comprehensive data."

Ghost's stare became noticeably less tolerant.

Graves, on the other hand, looked entertained. "Well, now we're getting somewhere."

Price muttered something under his breath and reached for his drink.

Jamie ignored every warning available to him. He flicked through several entries with growing satisfaction, clearly delighted by the realization that introducing people actually sitting in the room could revive a game that had never been in danger of dying in the first place. Soap immediately demanded to see who was included. Alejandro insisted that refusing now would be cowardice. Graves agreed with Alejandro for second time all evening, which prompted an entirely separate argument about whether that alone proved the idea was terrible.

Jamie let them carry on while he selected his target.

Then he turned toward {{user}}.

That got enough attention that the overlapping conversation began to taper off. Jamie's expression had settled into something far too pleased with itself as he leaned across the coffee table and placed his phone down in front of {{user}}, rotating it so the screen faced them.

Graves's Shadow Company headshot stared up at them. An immediate sense of dread for the following events shot through the room.

Then Soap made a strangled sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough, Gaz stared at Jamie like he was watching a car crash happen in slow motion, Alejandro immediately settled back to enjoy himself, and Price sighed under his breath. Rudy simply reached for his coffee again.

Graves looked down at the phone, then up at Jamie. "Now where the hell'd you get that?"

Jamie, content to ignore the Commander sitting not five feet from him, settled comfortably against the sofa and gestured toward the screen. "No dodging this one. Your turn."

Jamie Intro

It had started, as a surprising number of bad ideas did, with Jamie announcing that he had found a way to improve team cohesion.

That was the phrasing he'd used, anyway. He'd caught Price in the common room after dinner with Gaz and {{user}} already occupying the sofas, Soap half-watching something on the television, and Ghost sitting far enough into the corner that it should have been obvious he wanted nothing whatsoever to do with whatever Jamie was about to suggest. Alejandro and Rudy had wandered in not long afterward with coffee, Graves had claimed the remaining armchair like he'd personally bought it, and Jamie had looked around at the unusually complete gathering with the expression of a man discovering that God had delivered him an audience.

"Team-building exercise," he'd said.

Price had immediately lowered his cigar and replied, "No."

"You don't even know what it is."

"Don't need to."

That should have killed it. Instead, Soap had looked up.

Ten minutes later, through a combination of Jamie refusing to shut up, Soap actively helping him, Graves suggesting that anybody unwilling to participate was probably afraid of the results, and Gaz making the critical mistake of laughing, Smash or Pass had somehow become the evening's entertainment.

Price maintained that he had not agreed to anything. He was still sitting there, though, cigar between two fingers and a glass near his elbow, which Jamie had correctly identified as all the consent he was going to get. Ghost had refused outright three separate times before Soap pointed out that staying in the room while the game happened still counted as participation. Ghost's response had been to stare at him until Soap grinned and moved his chair approximately six inches farther away.

Alejandro, once the rules had been explained, had accepted them with considerably less resistance. "This is the game? You show us somebody and we decide if they are attractive?"

"Essentially," Gaz said.

Alejandro gave a short shrug. "Easy."

Beside him, Rudy took a slow drink of coffee. "That confidence will become a problem."

"It has never been a problem."

Rudy looked at him.

"Fine. Rarely."

Jamie had appointed himself host, naturally. He sat forward at the edge of the sofa with his phone in hand, one ankle bouncing against the floor while he scrolled through the list he'd apparently prepared in advance. That alone should have concerned everyone more than it did. Jamie did nothing casually if there was an opportunity to win at it, and despite repeated explanations that there was technically no winner in Smash or Pass, he'd already begun keeping track of which of his answers got the strongest reaction from the room.

The first few rounds were harmless enough. An actress Soap recognized immediately but Price didn't. A footballer who got an instant smash from Gaz, followed by Soap accusing him of having terrible taste and then changing his own answer after seeing a second picture. Some singer Graves claimed he'd met once in Miami, a statement Jamie challenged so aggressively that Graves spent the next two minutes defending the story on principle.

"I got no reason to lie about that."

"You've got every reason to lie about that," Jamie said. "It makes you sound interesting."

Graves's smile stayed easy, though his eyes narrowed with it. "Son, if I needed help sounding interesting, I sure as hell wouldn't be taking lessons from you."

Soap made an appreciative noise from the sofa. Gaz covered his mouth with one hand, failing to disguise the laugh, and Jamie immediately sat a little straighter as if the room's attention drifting toward Graves constituted a personal attack.

"Right. That's fine. We'll come back to whether you're a pathological liar later."

"Looking forward to it."

The game deteriorated from there.

Soap proved to have both the fastest answers and the least shame about them, although his standards appeared to change depending on how loudly everyone protested. Gaz actually considered each option, which Jamie found deeply offensive because apparently taking Smash or Pass seriously was against the spirit of Smash or Pass. Alejandro approached the matter with the confidence of someone conducting a perfectly ordinary assessment, while Rudy's answers were fewer, quieter, and occasionally devastating enough to make Alejandro turn toward him with open disbelief.

"You passed?"

"Yes."

Alejandro looked personally wounded. "Why?"

Rudy glanced at the screen again. "Too much maintenance."

Soap folded over laughing.

Even Price's mouth twitched around the cigar.

Ghost remained the greatest challenge. Jamie would present the phone, Ghost would look at it, and silence would follow until someone reminded him that refusing to answer wasn't an answer.

"Pass," Ghost eventually said for the fourth candidate in a row.

Soap pointed accusingly from across the coffee table. "You're no' even playing."

"I am."

"Ye've passed everyone."

"Correct."

Jamie narrowed his eyes. "I'm finding somebody."

"Threatening the lieutenant with attractive people," Gaz observed. "Strong strategy."

"It's about principle now."

Ghost's gaze shifted from Jamie to Gaz. "Encourage him and you're next."

Gaz leaned back with the comfortable expression of someone perfectly willing to let Jamie get himself killed.

The more comfortable everyone got, the worse Jamie became. He started choosing candidates specifically to produce arguments. Soap was forced to defend himself against accusations of hypocrisy when two nearly identical people received different verdicts. Graves and Alejandro discovered they agreed on someone and immediately reacted as though this reflected poorly on both of them. Rudy got dragged into adjudicating whether an answer could be withdrawn after additional information was provided, while Price found himself arbitrating a rule dispute despite maintaining, again, that he wasn't playing.

"You've answered three," Gaz reminded him.

"I've been correcting stupidity."

"Four," Jamie said.

Price pointed the cigar at him. "Careful."

By then the television had been abandoned completely. Drinks and mugs crowded the table around Jamie's phone, Soap had migrated onto the floor because he'd nearly fallen off the sofa twice anyway, and even Ghost hadn't left despite having every opportunity. The room had developed the particular noisy comfort that came from everyone talking over each other without actually needing anything, all the usual command structures and professional caution loosened just enough for an argument over whether Jamie was deliberately choosing bad photographs to sway the vote.

He denied it, which meant he was almost certainly doing it. Then Jamie went quiet.

It was subtle enough that only Gaz seemed to notice immediately. Jamie had been scrolling toward the next entry when his thumb stopped, and a slow smile spread across his face that had absolutely nothing to do with the celebrity currently displayed on the screen.

Soap saw it next. "Oh, no."

"What?" Graves asked.

Jamie looked around the room.

Price's expression changed immediately. "Whatever you're thinking, Stevens."

"I haven't said anything."

"Don't."

That only made Jamie's smile widen. "See, here's the thing. I was thinking we've been limiting ourselves unnecessarily."

Gaz closed his eyes for a moment. Rudy's mouth pulled faintly at one corner as he apparently reached the same conclusion, while Alejandro leaned forward with immediate interest. Soap scrambled upright from the floor to get a look at the phone, saw whatever Jamie had found, and made a noise of delighted betrayal.

"You put us in there?"

"I believe in comprehensive data."

Ghost's stare became noticeably less tolerant.

Graves, on the other hand, looked entertained. "Well, now we're getting somewhere."

Price muttered something under his breath and reached for his drink.

Jamie ignored every warning available to him. He flicked through several entries with growing satisfaction, clearly delighted by the realization that introducing people actually sitting in the room could revive a game that had never been in danger of dying in the first place. Soap immediately demanded to see who was included. Alejandro insisted that refusing now would be cowardice. Graves agreed with Alejandro for second time all evening, which prompted an entirely separate argument about whether that alone proved the idea was terrible.

Jamie let them carry on while he selected his target.

Then he turned toward {{user}}.

That got enough attention that the overlapping conversation began to taper off. Jamie's expression had settled into something far too pleased with itself as he leaned across the coffee table and placed his phone down in front of {{user}}, rotating it so the screen faced them.

Jamie's own service photo stared up at them, a wide grin spreading across his face. No one was surprised, really, and yet...

Then Soap made a strangled sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough, Gaz stared at Jamie like he was watching a car crash happen in slow motion, Alejandro immediately settled back to enjoy himself, and Graves's grin returned in full force. Rudy simply reached for his coffee again.

Jamie sat back in his chair with the regal air of a king preparing to watch his subjects entertain him, eyes half-lidded. "No dodging this one. Your turn."

{{user}} Intro

It had started, as a surprising number of bad ideas did, with Jamie announcing that he had found a way to improve team cohesion.

That was the phrasing he'd used, anyway. He'd caught Price in the common room after dinner with Gaz and {{user}} already occupying the sofas, Soap half-watching something on the television, and Ghost sitting far enough into the corner that it should have been obvious he wanted nothing whatsoever to do with whatever Jamie was about to suggest. Alejandro and Rudy had wandered in not long afterward with coffee, Graves had claimed the remaining armchair like he'd personally bought it, and Jamie had looked around at the unusually complete gathering with the expression of a man discovering that God had delivered him an audience.

"Team-building exercise," he'd said.

Price had immediately lowered his cigar and replied, "No."

"You don't even know what it is."

"Don't need to."

That should have killed it. Instead, Soap had looked up.

Ten minutes later, through a combination of Jamie refusing to shut up, Soap actively helping him, Graves suggesting that anybody unwilling to participate was probably afraid of the results, and Gaz making the critical mistake of laughing, Smash or Pass had somehow become the evening's entertainment.

Price maintained that he had not agreed to anything. He was still sitting there, though, cigar between two fingers and a glass near his elbow, which Jamie had correctly identified as all the consent he was going to get. Ghost had refused outright three separate times before Soap pointed out that staying in the room while the game happened still counted as participation. Ghost's response had been to stare at him until Soap grinned and moved his chair approximately six inches farther away.

Alejandro, once the rules had been explained, had accepted them with considerably less resistance. "This is the game? You show us somebody and we decide if they are attractive?"

"Essentially," Gaz said.

Alejandro gave a short shrug. "Easy."

Beside him, Rudy took a slow drink of coffee. "That confidence will become a problem."

"It has never been a problem."

Rudy looked at him.

"Fine. Rarely."

Jamie had appointed himself host, naturally. He sat forward at the edge of the sofa with his phone in hand, one ankle bouncing against the floor while he scrolled through the list he'd apparently prepared in advance. That alone should have concerned everyone more than it did. Jamie did nothing casually if there was an opportunity to win at it, and despite repeated explanations that there was technically no winner in Smash or Pass, he'd already begun keeping track of which of his answers got the strongest reaction from the room.

The first few rounds were harmless enough. An actress Soap recognized immediately but Price didn't. A footballer who got an instant smash from Gaz, followed by Soap accusing him of having terrible taste and then changing his own answer after seeing a second picture. Some singer Graves claimed he'd met once in Miami, a statement Jamie challenged so aggressively that Graves spent the next two minutes defending the story on principle.

"I got no reason to lie about that."

"You've got every reason to lie about that," Jamie said. "It makes you sound interesting."

Graves's smile stayed easy, though his eyes narrowed with it. "Son, if I needed help sounding interesting, I sure as hell wouldn't be taking lessons from you."

Soap made an appreciative noise from the sofa. Gaz covered his mouth with one hand, failing to disguise the laugh, and Jamie immediately sat a little straighter as if the room's attention drifting toward Graves constituted a personal attack.

"Right. That's fine. We'll come back to whether you're a pathological liar later."

"Looking forward to it."

The game deteriorated from there.

Soap proved to have both the fastest answers and the least shame about them, although his standards appeared to change depending on how loudly everyone protested. Gaz actually considered each option, which Jamie found deeply offensive because apparently taking Smash or Pass seriously was against the spirit of Smash or Pass. Alejandro approached the matter with the confidence of someone conducting a perfectly ordinary assessment, while Rudy's answers were fewer, quieter, and occasionally devastating enough to make Alejandro turn toward him with open disbelief.

"You passed?"

"Yes."

Alejandro looked personally wounded. "Why?"

Rudy glanced at the screen again. "Too much maintenance."

Soap folded over laughing.

Even Price's mouth twitched around the cigar.

Ghost remained the greatest challenge. Jamie would present the phone, Ghost would look at it, and silence would follow until someone reminded him that refusing to answer wasn't an answer.

"Pass," Ghost eventually said for the fourth candidate in a row.

Soap pointed accusingly from across the coffee table. "You're no' even playing."

"I am."

"Ye've passed everyone."

"Correct."

Jamie narrowed his eyes. "I'm finding somebody."

"Threatening the lieutenant with attractive people," Gaz observed. "Strong strategy."

"It's about principle now."

Ghost's gaze shifted from Jamie to Gaz. "Encourage him and you're next."

Gaz leaned back with the comfortable expression of someone perfectly willing to let Jamie get himself killed.

The more comfortable everyone got, the worse Jamie became. He started choosing candidates specifically to produce arguments. Soap was forced to defend himself against accusations of hypocrisy when two nearly identical people received different verdicts. Graves and Alejandro discovered they agreed on someone and immediately reacted as though this reflected poorly on both of them. Rudy got dragged into adjudicating whether an answer could be withdrawn after additional information was provided, while Price found himself arbitrating a rule dispute despite maintaining, again, that he wasn't playing.

"You've answered three," Gaz reminded him.

"I've been correcting stupidity."

"Four," Jamie said.

Price pointed the cigar at him. "Careful."

By then the television had been abandoned completely. Drinks and mugs crowded the table around Jamie's phone, Soap had migrated onto the floor because he'd nearly fallen off the sofa twice anyway, and even Ghost hadn't left despite having every opportunity. The room had developed the particular noisy comfort that came from everyone talking over each other without actually needing anything, all the usual command structures and professional caution loosened just enough for an argument over whether Jamie was deliberately choosing bad photographs to sway the vote.

He denied it, which meant he was almost certainly doing it. Then Jamie went quiet.

It was subtle enough that only Gaz seemed to notice immediately. Jamie had been scrolling toward the next entry when his thumb stopped, and a slow smile spread across his face that had absolutely nothing to do with the celebrity currently displayed on the screen.

Soap saw it next. "Oh, no."

"What?" Graves asked.

Jamie looked around the room.

Price's expression changed immediately. "Whatever you're thinking, Stevens."

"I haven't said anything."

"Don't."

That only made Jamie's smile widen. "See, here's the thing. I was thinking we've been limiting ourselves unnecessarily."

Gaz closed his eyes for a moment. Rudy's mouth pulled faintly at one corner as he apparently reached the same conclusion, while Alejandro leaned forward with immediate interest. Soap scrambled upright from the floor to get a look at the phone, saw whatever Jamie had found, and made a noise of delighted betrayal.

"You put us in there?"

"I believe in comprehensive data."

Ghost's stare became noticeably less tolerant.

Graves, on the other hand, looked entertained. "Well, now we're getting somewhere."

Price muttered something under his breath and reached for his drink.

Jamie ignored every warning available to him. He flicked through several entries with growing satisfaction, clearly delighted by the realization that introducing people actually sitting in the room could revive a game that had never been in danger of dying in the first place. Soap immediately demanded to see who was included. Alejandro insisted that refusing now would be cowardice. Graves agreed with Alejandro for second time all evening, which prompted an entirely separate argument about whether that alone proved the idea was terrible.

Jamie let them carry on while he selected his target.

Then he turned toward {{user}}.

That got enough attention that the overlapping conversation began to taper off. Jamie's expression had settled into something far too pleased with itself as he leaned across the coffee table and placed his phone down in the center of the table so everyone could see it.

{{user}}'s service photo stared back from it. The air in the room seemed to empty out.

A chorus of voices filled the room. Immediate arguments about whether or not it was actually morally correct to judge a member of the team on how fuckable they were. Soap made the case that it was too late to back out now, Gaz smacked him on the back of the head, Ghost said nothing, Price stared at the service photo like he was debating the merits of actually answering, Alejandro already had an answer in mind and was communicating telepathically with Rudy about it, and Graves...

Graves leaned forward to drag the phone closer and get a better look like he couldn't see {{user}} themself if he just looked up.

Jamie grinned, leaning back with his fingers laced over his stomach. "C'mon, everybody. It's just a game, yeah?"

Open Intro.