The jungle was full of birdsong as the morning stretched on, the air peaceful and heavy with the wet scent of greenery and exotic flowers.

To some it might have seemed a little piece of paradise, but Akutaro just wished he was anywhere else as he swatted another unreasonably large insect away from his face. He consoled himself with the knowledge that at least he wouldn't have to tolerate this farce alone much longer.

Akutaro stepped out of the thick underbrush and into a small clearing which looked like it might have at one time supported a small ammunitions bunker, perhaps during the war. He didn't give much thought at all to what the history of this island might have been before they were dropped here, however, as he cast a quick look around to make sure none of the Red Team was in sight. No one was going to ruin his plans now that he had come this far.

He glanced down at his GameGuy again when it chimed to see a new message pop up. He quickly typed out a response with his thumbs and sent it off.

Within seconds, instead of a reply, a dry branch snapped in half with a loud crack somewhere off to his left.

Akutaro nearly jumped out of his skin. He brought his paintball gun to bear with one hand, training it in the direction of the noise.

"Relax, Bro! Put the gun down. It's just me."

Akutaro let out a sigh of relief when he saw Akujiro step out of the bushes, his hands raised in the air in surrender and thick lips pulled back in a grimace. "Jeez, Jiro. Don't scare me like that."

Akujiro strode over to his side, and the two clasped hands and held them tightly between them. "Glad you were able to find me without any trouble, though," Akutaro said.

"Yeah," said Akujiro. "I just had a feeling when that Renge broad was showing us the map of the island that it would be the best place to meet."

"Guess it was too bad for her, huh, that she didn't think to take our GameGuys away from us."

"But she deserves whatever she gets for last time." The indignity of being cast as stock villains in her movie some months ago was still a bit of a sore spot for the brothers. What did she think Ouran was, her own personal, real-life love sim? On second thought, maybe they didn't want to know the answer to that. "Besides," said Akujiro, "she can't make us fight each other. Even if we have to be our own team, even if we have to steal one of the flags with no help from anyone else, I'm not going to betray my own flesh and blood."

No sooner had Akujiro said that, however, than a peal of hysteric, mocking laughter made the two jump and raise their weapons, looking frantically around the edge of the clearing for the source.

But even though the laughter seemed to be coming in stereo from every direction at once, there was no one there—until they looked up and saw the Hitachiin brothers perched in a nearby tree, straddling a couple of branches in their swim trunks and warpaint.

"Well, well. Look at what we have here," Kaoru said when they had begun to sober, wiping an eye.

"And we thought we had the market cornered on brotherly love," Hikaru said, holding his stomach.

"What a touching scene. It doesn't make what we have to do any easier." Kaoru aimed his gun at the yakuza brothers, followed by Hikaru a half second later, then said with a tilt of his head, "Actually, on second thought, it kinda does."

"You . . . you little pricks!" Akutaro shouted at them, clenching a fist. "You followed us!"

The twins tsked. "Followed him," they said, pointing their guns at Akujiro. "And it's not like it was that hard."

"Though we must say," said Hikaru, "using the IM function on the GameGuys to coordinate one another's location was a capital idea."

Akujiro snarled and raised his rifle.

At which the twins swiftly popped him in the side and breast pocket with a couple of paintballs each.

For a minute Akujiro just stood there in disbelief. Then his collar flashed as red as the splotches of paint on his jacket and sent out a long beep. "What the—I'm on your team, you team-killing fucktards!" he yelled when he realized what had just happened.

"Not anymore, you aren't!"

"That tears it." Akutaro pumped his gun. "Nobody treats my brother that way!"

He sent a volley of blue paintballs up into the canopy, which smacked against the tree trunk and knocked Hikaru and Kaoru off their branches. Seeing the smug grins wiped off their faces as they fell, Akutaro allowed himself a triumphant guffaw. But it was short-lived, as a moment later—

"Ha-ha, you missed us!"

—A hail of paintballs sprayed the surrounding area red. The two yakuza brothers ran for cover behind the crumbling remnants of the bunker foundation.

Akutaro poked his head up a moment later, but the twins had completely disappeared into the surrounding jungle. "Shit. Where did they go?"

"Give it up," one of the twins yelled back to them. "One of you's already out of the game. You're just putting off the inevitable hiding like this."

"Like you should talk!" Akujiro yelled back from behind the wall. "You two're brothers. You guys of all people should understand why we did what we did. We couldn't fight each other!"

"You're still deserters," said the other Hitachiin.

"And one of you's a dead deserter."

Akujiro and Akutaro looked frantically around. It was impossible to tell which direction their voices were coming from, like the surrounding forest had become an audial house of mirrors. "Don't tell me you wouldn't do the exact same thing if you were put on opposite teams and forced to hunt one another down!" said the latter.

"But, see, the thing is—"

"We weren't. So there."

Then suddenly the savage twins were standing there on either side, like some demonic mirror images of one another bracketing the yakuza brothers. Forced back to back with Akujiro, who simply covered his head, Akutaro hardly had time to swing his gun around let alone pull the trigger before the Hitachiins opened fire. The last thing he saw before he squeezed his eyes shut against the impact was the evil grin of the one facing him, burning itself into the back of his eyelids in double.

The long beep of his collar pronouncing him "dead" made Akutaro open his eyes, only to see his uniform jacket as bright and red as his brother's. The twins, however, were nowhere to be found, and the clearing was quiet again save for Akujiro's panting.

Akutaro threw down his gun and swore at the top of his lungs.

—o—

His howl of frustration was all but completely swallowed by the dense forest, only startling a couple of birds into taking flight in the immediate area, and by the time it reached the American football team it was but a faint echo.

Nevertheless, it made them pause in their thwacking of the underbrush and look cautiously about.

Komatsuzawa more or less ignored it, however, as he had more important things to worry about—like being miserable. He was hot, and hungry, his migraine wasn't going away any faster, and the humidity here was fogging up his glasses something awful—to say nothing, of course, of the fact that they might at any moment be ambushed by the other team. And in this visibility, it could happen completely without warning.

"Did you hear that?" Ukyou said, stopping abruptly in front of him.

The journalism club president smacked squarely into his underling's back with a grunt, adjusted his glasses, and pulled Ukyou aside. "Do you mind? It's hard enough walking in this hell hole without people rudely stopping in front of you. And hear what? I don't hear anything but that incessant buzzing."

"It sounded like someone in the last throes of death. I'm telling you guys: the game has begun. For real. There's no getting out of this alive."

Komatsuzawa snorted. "No getting out of thi— What's with the dramatics, Ukyou? It's a game. That's all!"

But even he didn't sound entirely convinced of that. Needless to say, his teammate's talk was making him just a little nervous.

"It's not just that," said Sakyou. "I heard it, too. It wasn't natural. I'm telling you, there's something weird about this island. I can just feel it. Like. . . ." He gripped his gun tighter in both hands. "A presence."

"Oh my God," said Ukyou. "Doesn't that remind you of something?"

"A presence? Oh, grow up! You're journalists, and as such you two are supposed to be skeptics. Next thing you'll be talking about the island being haunted by evil bogeymen—Eek!"

Komatsuzawa squealed like a little girl and nearly jumped into Sakyou's arms as something small and dark let out an equally high-pitched squeal of its own and barreled out of the underbrush just past their feet. "I don't believe in spooks, I don't believe in spooks. . . ." he repeated like a mantra to himself when it was gone, though Sakyou tried to reassure him, "It was just a little pig, President. Island's probably full of them."

All that noise manifested itself as no more than a muffled mumbling to the American football team, who waited silently with ears open behind Kuze's raised hand of caution.

He turned to his comrades with a nod and proceeded to give them further directions with a complex catechism of hand signals.

"Hold up, Captain," Tarumi interrupted him mid-sentence. "We play football, not baseball. Remember?"

Tougouin scratched his head. "I can't understand a word you're signing."

Kuze's shoulders slumped in a huge yet silent sigh.

"There's someone in the trees just up ahead," he whispered to his teammates, fixing them with his narrow, serious gaze. "If we play our cards right, this could be our first catch of the day."

"All right! Lock and load!" said Tarumi.

Kuze raised a finger for quiet.

Then he pulled out an orange.

"Now, we're going to need clear heads and steely nerves if we're going to pull this off. So I want everyone to take a whiff of the orange." Tougouin and Tarumi exchanged uneasy glances out of the corners of their eyes, but Kuze had an intensity about him that was hard to refuse as he thrust the fruit under their faces. "Breathe it in! Let the refreshing scent travel through your bloodstream and bolster your reserve. Can't you hear it susurrating to you, 'You are regional champions three years running, you can take on anything'?"

"I don't hear anythi—"

"Sniff harder!"

Tarumi shrugged. "Okay, but . . . What are we going to do about the Blues?"

The mumbling grew closer and Kuze held up a hand again . . . and took a long whiff of the orange with the other.

Beside him, Tougouin readied his firearm.

The jungle was quiet—almost too quiet—and Komatsuzawa didn't like it one bit. Inexplicably terrified of going any farther, he ducked behind a mossy rock, hissing for Sakyou and Ukyou to shut up already, nobody cared about who would win in a fight between Rambo and Predator. Then he silently gestured for them to follow him as he eased out from behind the rock, not knowing that just a stone's throw away, Kuze and his football team were fanning out and cautiously stalking him and his club mates in much the same way.

Until Sakyou stepped on a pile of dry palm fronds.

Perfect silence descended on the valley but for the echo of that loud crackling and popping—which for some reason only got louder when he tried to ease his foot off of the offending foliage. His club president was trying really hard not to let loose a fowl tirade, but it wouldn't have made their situation any worse. Their cover was already blown.

That was Kuze and his team's cue to leap out from their cover, paintball guns a'blazing.

Startled by the sudden barrage, the jungle lighting up bright red all around them amid the deafening snapping of paintballs, Komatsuzawa shouted and opened fire at random, spraying the surrounding jungle liberally with blue paint. He just caught a glimpse of Kuze's sharp eyes and Tougouin's huge frame among the foliage as he ran back toward the cover of the rocks, screaming all the way, where Ukyou and Sakyou already crouched, alternately returning fire and dodging the Red Team's paintballs.

"What the fuck was that!" said Komatsuzawa, assessing the paint damage to his jacket sleeves. He wiped some spatter from his glasses. "Did you see where they came from? It's like they just popped up out of the ground like some kind of mutant daikon babies!"

"I'm telling you guys, it's Predator all over again!" said Ukyou.

"Would you shut up about stupid Predator already!"

"Or the velociraptors in Jurassic Park!" Sakyou offered.

"Oh my God, you're right! . . . If the velociraptors could use guns, that is."

"Dude, they can open doors. Of course they can operate firearms."

Komatsuzawa tore at his hair. Could they pick a worse time to have a more pointless conversation?

"But, man," said Sakyou, "whoever they are, they're good. I can barely get a shot off."

"It's the American football team, you dolts!"

All of a sudden, the age-old terror of their kind's fiercest natural predator, the varsity jock, gripped them hard.

Ukyou paled. "Holy crap, we're dead!"

"Retreat!" Komatsuzawa yelled.

And they did.

Tougouin lowered his Splatmaster when he saw the journalism club hightailing it like crazy down the hill in the opposite direction. "It's Komatsuzawa and the journalism club. They're making a run for it."

"Well, we can't let them get away," Kuze shouted back, emptying a new canister of balls into his gun. "These losers could be the easiest kills on the island. After them, Orange Team!"

And the three abandoned their positions in hot pursuit.

—o—

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest. . . .

"I wouldn't want to be a chimney sweep," Tamaki was singing, while Honey followed a bar later in a harmonic round-robin, "all black from head to foot/ From climbing in them chimneys/ and cleaning out that soot. . . ."

Needless to say, as they marched through the underbrush crooning, their weapons slung over their backs, stealth was the farthest from the hosts' minds. Even Mori, picking up the rear and nodding time, had a spritely spring in his step.

It was Tamaki who interrupted their diversion as they stepped into a little glade and disturbed its residents. All of a sudden, like their footsteps had set off a domino effect, dozens of butterflies in a rainbow of colors rose from the jungle floor to float in the shady air and surround the trio.

Naturally, Tamaki gaped.

"Amazing!" he said to the canopy and the insects, whose tiny feet were tickling Honey into a fit of giggles. "It's a veritable Garden of Eden, this is, our own island paradise in which the hand of man has never set foot! That makes sense if you think about it. . . ."

Mori, his shoulders covered with a fine layer of butterflies, smirked just a little.

"It's too good to be true, isn't it, Sempai? Like something out of a Disney cartoon! A butterfly garden is what this is—an enchanted butterfly garden!" Tamaki's eyes were shining as he said so, nodding with his conviction. "Next time we see him, we should totally suggest this to Kyouya for a themed club meeting!"

Honey stopped and turned to him then, putting a finger to his chin in adorable contemplation.

"Actually, Tama-chan, I think we're already in one."

"Extra-extracurricular," supplied Mori from beneath a headdress of beating wings.

Tamaki's shoulders slumped at that. Honey's bright and sunny mood may have continued on undaunted at that thought, but it seemed as though a cloud had suddenly appeared over the host king's head.

"Gosh darn it, I miss him. I miss Haruhi, too. Heck, I even miss those rascally twins."

He unslung his paintball rifle from his back, thrusting the butt into the ground as he sank to one knee, as though with the weight of this burden.

"Aw, but this is all too bittersweet," he said through clenched teeth. "Here we are a bunch of hired guns, sent out to kill our very friends, and we're playing with butterflies like so many giddy schoolgirls. Oh, the irony of it all! What a cruel twist of fate! Don't they know we're murderers!" And he sobbed into his sleeve.

Honey patted his shoulder.

"There, there, Tama-chan. We're not really going to kill anybody, you know."

Tamaki sobered instantly, even though there were tears in his serious eyes when he lifted his head. Yes, he was that good.

"You just watch and see. We'll get the Red Team's flag and then we'll all get to go home, all eighteen of us, everything like it was before. We'll still be the same hosts we were before. You'll still be the same Tama-chan. Kyouya will be the same Kyouya, Haru-chan the same Haru-chan, and then we'll all have a great laugh about all of this when it's over." Honey flashed him a grin as he tilted his head. "Right?"

Tamaki blinked, his breath catching in his throat mid-sniffle.

Mori just smiled benevolently down at them.

"By glory, you're right, Honey-sempai," Tamaki said then, pushing himself back to his feet and picking up his rifle again. "We don't have to let the direness of our situation get us down. We don't have to let our hearts be changed toward our comrades. If we let that happen, then our captors have already won."

He turned himself just slightly, his poise set with a heroic resolve that he could only hope was captured at the best angle by the surrounding hidden cameras.

"After all, we are, here now in the prime of our youth, trapped on a deserted tropical island with no rules but one: survival of the fittest. We may as well make the most of it. What do you say, Blue Team?" And Tamaki raised a fist into the air, swinging it about like a conductor as he marched on, singing at the top of his lungs, "I'd rather be the gypsy—let's go!—who's camped at the edge of town/ The one who has the dancing bea—Nana!"

The verse was cut off prematurely as Tamaki's feet suddenly came up from under him, and he fell back into the underbrush with a thud that made his comrades wince.

"Tama-chan, are you alright?"

"Agh!" came the pitiful response. "Monkeys! Always with the banana peels!"

—o—

Right about then, Komatsuzawa and his club mates might have been thinking that "Orage" was a pretty appropriate name for the football team after all, because they were certainly making enough noise for a whole storm. Their war cries made it sound as though they were right on his teammates' heels as they charged through the underbrush. And with this rough terrain, Komatsuzawa felt like either his legs or his lungs were going to give out at any minute.

He leaped down a short embankment and right into a very shallow stream that happened to be trickling through the jungle—then promptly tripped and fell face-first into the water. He hopped to his feet a second later, his uniform dripping wet and clinging uncomfortably to every part of him, and making it nearly impossible to run, let alone get back out of the stream. Naturally, he dropped a couple of F-bombs, because not only was he wet and miserable, but this meant the note his club had received the day before had been a very accurate forewarning after all.

Ukyou and Sakyou's eyes went wide when they finally caught up with him. It didn't really occur to them to stop, however, until they were half-way up the other side of the embankment.

"President, are you hurt? You're soaked!"

"How do you get that wet in, like, a foot of water?"

"You idiots!" he blasted them, splashing about like a spoiled little child. "What do you think this is? A train wreck? Don't just stand there gawking. Help me out!"

Ukyou turned back to do just that, grabbing his taller club president roughly under the armpits. Just as he was doing so, the football club emerged from the jungle and resumed fire. Fortunately for Komatsuzawa, however, Ukyou had inadvertently turned at that moment, shielding his upperclassman, so that Tougouin's shot hit him square in the kill zone in the back.

"No-o-o-o-o!" Komatsuzawa wailed, though one couldn't be sure if it was because one of his teammates had been hit or because said teammate staggered out of the way when he was hit. Landing on his ass in the foot-high water and exposed to the Red Team's paintballs, Komatsuzawa fired back like a madman until the sad, empty clicking of his gun told that the ammunition was depleted.

What happened next happened as though it were in slow motion.

Komatsuzawa looked up over Ukyou's shoulder to see the football team staring at horror at their captain, his left shoulder drenched in blue paint. Kuze took it in in dumbfounded shock, before it dawned on him and Komatsuzawa alike that the hits he had sustained were nonlethal. Then Kuze pressed his lips together in a tight line and glared daggers at the journalism club president.

Komatsuzawa started. His heart hammered in his chest and he felt like if he weren't soaked from the chest down already he would have wet himself, as he frantically groped for his fallen bag, screaming for Sakyou to cover him, his hands shaking so bad he couldn't reload his rifle properly.

It was like a bad dream when Kuze raised his rifle and aimed at Komatsuzawa's chest, and proceeded to stick him with a paintball with each determined step forward he took.

When he had had enough, and Komatsuzawa was sprawled in the water, groaning next to a pouty Ukyou, the attentions of the football team turned next to Sakyou—who was still standing on the riverbank in shock. Feeling they were really in no rush, and not seeing the blurry shape that zipped among the shadows above, Kuze and Tarumi took aim at him, until—

"Captain!" Tougouin yelled, and slammed into Kuze, tackling him to the ground.

They all heard the shot a split second later—the loud, resonating crack of a sniper rifle.

Tougouin pushed himself up off of Kuze and looked down at his own side, where, under his left arm, was a small, round spot of bright blue. It mightn't have looked like much, but the linebacker's collar announced clearly enough that that shot had nonetheless been more than adequate to take him out of the game.

"Tch! Of all the. . . . Snipers!" Tarumi said.

"What are you waiting for, Sakyou?" Komatsuzawa yelled over his shoulder, snapping his teammate out of his funk. "Take them now! Avenge your president, goddamn you!"

"Yeah, right. I'm going to live!" Sakyou yelled back, before running for cover.

"Get back here, you ungrateful coward!"

On the other side of the stream, Tougouin rolled onto his side. "Go," he told his teammates in a low growl, laying a heavy hand on Kuze's arm. "Hurry. Get out of here and find some cover before you're next." The gig was up for him and he knew it. He had accomplished his mission, taking the bullet for his leader, and now his part in this adventure was through.

Still. . . .

"I'm not going anywhere without you," Kuze said, shaking his shoulder. "The Orages never leave a man behind."

Another shot whizzed past them. Kuze ducked automatically, while Tarumi fired a few rounds into the woods where the shots had come from. It halted the enemy's fire momentarily, but, "I can't get a sight on the shooter at all! He's like a ghost!"

Tougouin shook his head. "This is where we part ways. It's been an honor to fight beside you one last time, but now it's over. I'm finished. But you and Tarumi must live to fight another day. Do not let my sacrifice be in vain. Go, Team Orange."

He pushed his Splatmaster into Kuze's hand, noting his hesitation. "What are you waiting for? Go!"

Kuze gritted his teeth. Though it pained him, he took the gun, nodded resolutely and leaped to his feet.

Then he disappeared with Tarumi back into the jungle, covering their backs as they went, as blue paintballs kicked up the dirt at their heels.

—o—

None of this had any impact on Kasanoda or his neck of the woods.

And so far, even though he hadn't run into any trouble yet, he was rather enjoying himself. After all, what was this game but a larger, more exotic version of kick-the-can with firearms? The adrenaline coursing through his veins at the thought of what battles awaited him brought on a natural high, while the peace of the jungle, the calls of the different birds overhead, brought out the naturalist in him in spades.

Which was not to say that Kasanoda had let his guard down. No, he treated the hunter-and-hunted nature of this game very seriously, keeping his eyes and ears wide open for the first sign of danger, allowing that primal side that was buried deep inside him to come out and play. . . .

And yet he still nearly jumped out of his skin when he went to hop over a log and caught a human shape crouching beneath it. He reached for his gun.

From the look of things, he scared the other person just as badly. The figure gasped and started, staring at him with wide eyes.

Kasanoda stared back as recognition dawned on him, and he forgot the gun in his hand. "Fujioka?"

Her big brown eyes blinked up at him. "Casanova?"

A smile broke out on his face then and he could feel his cheeks heat up.

"It's okay," he said quickly, putting out an empty palm. "I made a promise to protect you. So don't you worry, Fujioka. Your secret will be safe with me." And he saluted her gallantly.

Haruhi just stared after him as he hopped away again lickety-split into the jungle.

It wasn't until a good minute later that Kasanoda realized she could have tagged him right there. Never mind that he could have tagged her for an easy kill.

He shook his head. "As if I could do that to Fujioka," he said to himself through a lopsided grin. Besides, she had reminded him too much of a frightened little animal crouching behind that log, so vulnerable and maidenly in that one moment, for him to have been able to do her any harm.

No, if anything it made him feel incredibly good that he had spared her. His steps even felt lighter, as though his heart were really exerting some sort of anti-gravitational force on his feet with its soaring. And it wasn't necessarily that he hoped his chivalric actions might earn him some brownie points with Fujioka when this was over, either. His intentions were much purer than that. They may have been cast on opposing sides, he and Fujioka, but that did not mean they had to be enemies.

All those warm feelings rushing through his bloodstream boosted Kasanoda's confidence as the echoing of paintball fire reached him from out of the distance. He hurried in the direction of the sound, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. With Fujioka as his mascot, the fair lady to his errant knight, he felt ready to take on anything.

Unfortunately, no amount of enthusiasm could make Kasanoda turn around any faster as a pair of whooping, ululating, half-naked, paint-streaked first-years jumped out of the foliage from behind, barreling toward him.

Kasanoda did the first thing anyone's instincts would tell him if two whooping, half-naked persons were barreling down on him. He went stock-still and hoped they didn't see him.

Unfortunately for him, he happened to be standing in the open and right in the twins' path.

They didn't even stop as they raced by on either side, and hardly acknowledged Kasanoda's presence except to pop him several times with their paintballs. Then they disappeared again, their whooping uninterrupted.

Kasanoda stared after them as his collar flatlined. It took a moment for the realization to sink in that he was KIA.

He was KIA and he hadn't even gotten one shot off.

Forget lowered expectations, Kasanoda's spirits plummeted in a veritable nosedive back to Earth. His shoulders slumped. "Aw, goddamn it."