8 Letters and a Lot of Bullets

An Unlikely Situation

A worried look appears on your face as you ran down the field and dig into a new position. You realized you were the only person still alive on your team. It was true moments like these that made you love paintball, to the point where you have put years of hard work and effort, as well as a significant portion of your wallet simply for the game. You quickly thought up a strategy in your head, it was a 1v5 situation with three enemies covering you from where you are, one had dug into a low lying set of bunkers on the left side of the field, and two others to your right using some triangular inflatables as cover. 'Hmm' you thought to yourself as a flurry of paintballs whizzed past your bunker.

'I just need to stay behind cover until I can get the player suppressing me from the snake. They have good strats, not gonna lie' you take a few snapshots with your CS2 paintball marker as you let your fingers go wild on the double-length trigger . You hear your hopper whining as you slam back into your bunker, the only thing saving you from a whole pod of paint being dumped on you. "AW FUCK" you yell as you feel something smack into your arm 'probably a hit.' You thought until you check your arm to realize you got a lucky bounce, and the ball didn't explode. You take another few shots at the snake position and get a happy feeling in your chest as you hear a "HIT" come out from it. "DAMMIT DUDE GOOD SHOT" the dead player yells.

'Okay, this is either gonna or really cool, or really painful' you say in your head as you visualize a plan. You take a deep breath and launch yourself from the bunker, practically flying to the snake barricade as some paintballs get near misses, sounding like an angry swarm of bees. You spray nearly a whole hopper of paint at a guy sitting in the back and then dump a new pod in and chuck the empty pod behind you. You decide to rush the two guys in the Doritos and get a lucky flank on one and bunker the other. 'I could actually win this' you think to yourself as you slide into a new position. You spray and pray that you get a hit on the back bunkers, where your last two enemies were cowering behind. Normally, you wouldn't care if you win or lose a match, but this was different, as this is a special tournament with thousands watching, and prize money on the line.

You could feel your teammates watching you from outside the field as your heart beat faster. You build up courage and run and slide to where you think one of your opponents is, adrenaline running through you as you raise your marker and hit one, only to get out as your head painfully snaps back from a well placed shot to the forehead.

"Ughhh" you groaned as you were pulled up by the player who got you out. " Good play my dude," he said through his mask. "But not good enough....." 'yeah yeah yeah' you thought.... it didn't matter, your coach was gonna have your head for this fuckup. Not to mention the small fanbase you had would be horribly disappointed. You thought of your friend Erica as you limped off the field. You weren't sure about her, but she made you feel some type of way. You had asked her out in your freshman year in college and had gotten a no obviously. You moved on and dated other people, but recently those feelings had started to creep back into your mind. You tried to silence them, but your attempts were futile, which made it really hard to study engineering, which is what you worked so hard and paid so much for.

Well, you didn't pay a dime, Uncle Sam did. You had served 4 years in the Air Force as a TACP, seeing the occasional firefight here and there in Kuwait and Afganistan. Luckily TACP didn't put you too much in harms way, you were on the ground to direct air suppourt wherever it was needed. Sure you had held your own the few times that you were in trouble, but the flyboys above always had your back, no matter how jealous of them you were, since you didn't make a pilot slot. Despite this, your love for aviation had remained through your service, and now as you're a student again, you have put more time into both civil aviation and drone piloting.

Now you're in College in San Francisco so hey that's pretty cool. Anyway, we're getting sidetracked, you push back the net and walk off the field to your friend Sean (pronounced Shawn if you didn't know) patting you on the back saying " good try Y/N you got closer than I would've." Sean didn't perform well under pressure, you learned that the hard way when  you convinced him to ask a girl out, only to see him a nervous wreck when he finally got the balls to. On the other hand, your other teammate Michelle was pounding a can of Red Bull. " y'know that stuffs gonna kill you" you remarked.