Sam stood tucked behind the corner of a decrepit old shack, pistol gripped tightly in hand. Bullets streaked past his head, barely missing him and instead taking out chunks of rotten wood. There was a pause as his assailant moved to reload: an opportunity to return fire. He quickly leaned out, raising his gun and aligning his aim. Just as his finger flexed to pull the trigger, another shot rang out. The mercenary in his sights was flung sideways by a bullet coming from somewhere off to the right. He leaned back against the wall as quiet settled over the clearing; for a moment it seemed like that was the last of them. Just as the tension in his shoulders started to dissipate, the roar of engines ripped through the silence like a wild animal as several armored vehicles barreled into the scene. Enemy back up had arrived, though they were too late; there was no one left to save.

Men poured out of the vehicles and began a tentative sweep of the area. For the time being, Sam and his partner retained the element of surprise. He popped out the magazine from his gun and looked through the witness holes. "Great, half empty," with a sigh of exasperation, he reinserted the clip. The sound of footsteps crunching through underbrush was distant, so he raised his gun and slowly peered around the side of the building. There was a pistol lying near a corpse several feet out, though it was too far away to reach without being seen. A dead body was splayed over a metal crate farther past that, but going after it would guarantee unwanted attention.

"What do you say we make things interestin'?"

Sam nearly jumped out of his skin as Rico suddenly appeared right beside him. "Jesus Christ!" he growled through his teeth; if he hadn't swallowed his reaction, they would have certainly been discovered. "More interesting than having to shoot down an army with half a clip?"

Rico pulled the assault rifle from his back and handed it to Sam, "Snagged a couple mags off a guy on my way over here. I've got enough ammo for my pistols until I can grab something else."

"You sure are confident." Sam took the gun, performed a quick press check, adjusted the strap, and put the rifle in a two-point sling across his torso. "So, what exactly are you proposing?" Although, most of the soldiers were taking their time going through the remaining supplies, the sound of footsteps inside the shack meant they needed to get on with their work. Apparently, the mercenaries had assumed the pair had already flown the coop after the firefight. Perhaps, it would have been wiser to leave as soon as possible, especially since they had yet to be discovered. Unfortunately, there was still a vital piece of information somewhere in the encampment. Their competition's wealthy sponsor had a knack for getting what he wanted. He managed to beat the adventurers to the journal detailing the location of the artifact and the matching cypher to decode it, so they needed to do some catching up if they were to get their payment in the end.

"I thought we could make a friendly wager, raise the stakes a little," a cocky grin spread across Rico's face.

He looked at Rico. The guy was crazy. But there was something about that fiery glint in his eyes that he couldn't resist. He'd been in tight spots before, and they had already taken down the previous squad. There wasn't anything to suggest it couldn't be done again, regardless of their being outnumbered. "Are you always so competitive?"

"Only if there's good competition to be had," Rico winked. Dangerous situations such as this were quite commonplace and have all but lost that adrenaline rush, so he often took to spicing things up. What's more, Rico possessed some unique qualities which made the treasure hunting business not so life-threatening. If he wanted to, he could run out into the clearing without a care in the world. "How's about we both keep a tally for how many guys we drop. By the time we get back to civilization, whoever's taken down the most gets a bigger cut of the payment after all this."

Sam stared at him for a moment. Messing with the money was the last thing he wanted to do, but there was no chance of convincing Rico that they could just throw a few rounds of drinks into the pot instead. Stubborn as he was, the only thing Sam could do was play along. "60/40."

"70/30"

"You don't even need the cash!"

"Doesn't mean I don't want it," Rico gave the most smug grin he could manage, "Besides, the payout for this is so huge, thirty percent is still a serious amount of money."

Sam hesitated. He really needed to make this work for him, "Nope. 60/40 or no deal. If there's one bullet hole or bloodstain on your shirt, I win by default." If Rico really was dead set on making this bet, then he should be happy to even the playing field a little by actually avoiding injury. At least, that was what Sam hoped Rico wanted. It'd be easy for him to just screw Sam out of the money.

Rico nodded his head with a smile, he was almost moved to laugh, but they still needed to maintain their privacy. Of course he was going to go easy on him; he had anticipated Sam wanting to put a set of rules in place. He was confident enough in his skill that he still had a good chance of winning. And it was true, he really didn't need the money anyway. He reached out for a handshake, "Deal." Just as their hands connected to finalize their agreement, Rico quickly pulled away and unholstered one of his pistols, "Look alive."

"Finishing up the southwestern quadrant, then we should be clear. Keep your eyes open in case the targets try to make their way back," one of the mercenaries spoke over his radio as he patrolled along the side of the shack. Rico motioned with his chin towards the edge of the building, gesturing for Sam to take care of the situation. Sam nodded his head in affirmation, pulled his gun close to his chest, and inched over to the very corner, still remaining just out of sight. Though the guard was only a few feet away, the seconds elongated to what felt like minutes as he steadily made his way down. Right as the man's foot stepped past the wall to round the corner, Sam encircled his head with his arms and the gun. He pressed the body of the rifle to his neck and chin and then wrenched it to the side. There was a heavy cracking sound, then the soldier's lifeless body dropped to the floor. Sam slung the gun over his shoulder and began scavenging. "Ah, perfect," he took the pistol rounds for himself, but decided to do Rico a favor and toss him the M4 Carbine. His mouth formed around the words "keep up" with a cheeky smirk.

Now was the time to move. Rico made his way to the east side of the wall to start trimming down the enemy. A man sat turned away from him, resting against a supply crate not too far out. With the way clear, he moved fast and crouched behind the container. The little sound he created was just enough to alert the mercenary to attention. He straightened out, turning his head as he raised his gun, but his perceptiveness wasn't enough to save him. Before he could make a call, Rico rose from his crouched position, clasped his hands together, smashed his fists into the man's skull with a distinct crunch, and pulled the limp body over the top of the crate. Under ordinary circumstances, that may have only been enough to fracture the skull, but Rico was no ordinary man.

The others were still milling about the settlement, so it wouldn't be long before the bodies would be found and they'd be alerted to a presence in their midst. From Rico's vantage point behind the crate, he could only see about five enemies stationed around the east side of the camp; the southern cabin where he and Sam made their deal was blocking his view of the other half of the clearing. Inside any of the three buildings could be the information they sought and there would have to be a few more people hidden in them as well. This'll be interesting, he thought as he weighed his options. The smart plan would be to stealthily make his way around the outskirts of the camp and take out as many mercenaries as he could before getting caught in a full blown firefight with an unknown number of assailants. But his pride was on the line. If Rico were to open fire now while his partner was making his way around the other side of the camp, it would draw everyone towards himself. Sam would be forced to choose between revealing his position and joining the fray or slowly picking off people on the outskirts of the battle without somehow being noticed.

It's easy money. Rico rose from his crouched position, pistols raised and landed a headshot on an opponent straight ahead, half way across the field.

Two men were stood by a pond near the center of the clearing; they were the only ones that could be made out easily from the west side of the shack. "Coulda sworn I saw something over that way…" Sam's voice, nearly a whisper, trailed off as he tried to see through a protrusion of trees. His eyes focused on the silhouette of a man as he meandered into view, evidently on the look out for the thieves to return. The pair by the pond were out in the open, but a single man outside of anyone else's awareness made a much better target. The distance between him and the trees was too great to travel unspotted, so he opted to take the long way. He headed due south of the shack and into the thick foliage of the jungle. His footsteps fell softly on the loamy soil. A gentle wind masked the rustling of the leaves as he travelled along the curved edge of the tree line to an area where he could clearly eye his prey. Only, when the soldier came into view, it became apparent that he was not alone. Instead, two men stood guard at the edge of the camp.

"It can never be easy," he grumbled to himself in frustration. The two targets were right beside each other, locked in a conversation about their personal lives. With how close they were together, it would have been impossible to attack one without alerting the other, and in turn alerting the rest of the squad. Just as he had picked up a stone to throw as a distraction, a gun shot went off in the distance. "You gotta be fuckin' kidding me!" he exclaimed with less restraint than would have been wise. But it was no matter, the men were off headed east to what could have only been Sam's partner wreaking havoc.

"The hell do you think you're doing?" Sam's voice hissed virulently into the two-way radio.

"Whatever do you mean there, darlin'? I'm just playin' our game." Rico smiled audibly, his tone as sweet as honey.

"You don't see any faults in your strategy at all?"

"I hardly think you should be one to judge," his sentence was accented with the sound of a gunshot coming through the microphone, "As I recall, you've had your fair share of harebrained schemes."

His lips pressed together in a thin line as he sucked on his teeth. He hesitated to respond, "Maybe so."

"If I were you, I'd worry more about myself and the money I'd be losing chattin' away."

With an indignant huff, he tucked and rolled out from the trees to crouch behind supply crates that the two men were previously standing beside. One had fallen behind as they broke into the gunfight, but Sam hesitated to attack as two more men emerged from the nearby building in the northwest corner of the clearing. With how many bodies were already on the ground it was hard to tell how many of the current squad had been felled, but it was suffice to say that Rico was now ahead on the scoreboard. Begrudgingly, Sam made his decision to play Rico's game and enter the ring. He rose and fired his gun, shooting the nearest soldier in the back. The man's death was finalized with a second bullet to the forehead, and now the rest of the hired army was aware of Sam's position.

Inside the southernmost building, Rico pressed his back to the wall by the doorway, periodically stealing looks outside to get a sense of his surroundings. His opponents laid out suppressive gunfire. A fresh corpse was lying by his feet with another out on the porch. There had been a couple of close calls, but he'd still managed to avoid disqualifying himself. It hadn't seemed that there was anything relevant to their job inside, but it was difficult to say given his current preoccupation. And there wasn't going to be another opportunity later to be sure, as there was a mercenary rearing up to throw a grenade. Rico slipped outside as it flew towards the doorframe, sprinted down the porch, and dove over its half-wall fence just as it went off. The explosion blew out the entire front outer wall and left a gaping whole in the porch floor. The building itself, already aged and rotting away by that point, looked like it was fit to collapse. Rico prayed the soldiers weren't stupid enough to risk destroying their own boss's resources.

In the middle of the clearing, there wasn't anywhere to hide. His head turned frantically to find another cover spot. Just as his gaze fell on a fragment of a stone structure behind him by the pond, there was a sudden feeling of white hot pain, flesh and muscle tearing. He let out an agonized yell, rushing to the wall, then leapt behind it. He pressed his hand to the open wound with a wince, and as he pulled it away he saw his fingers were stained heavily with blood, "God fucking dammit." A bullet had taken a chunk out of his arm. Although thankfully it missed the bone, Rico lost his chance to win the bet. Above his head, more bullets continued to rain. Heat radiated from the injury as it worked to heal. Within the hour, it would be completely closed up. The searing pain of the wound and irritation from the healing process rang persistently in the back of Rico's mind. It was familiar, though, something he knew he could deal with. He took a deep breath, mentally putting it aside, and pulled out his pistols. Their current clips were used up and only one for each remained. After discarding the empty magazines, he opted to instead use the stolen M4.

While prepping the rifle, Rico caught a sight of Sam out of the corner of his eye. He looked up in time to see as his partner was getting pushed back by two mercenaries with one more on the way. Shouldering the gun, he set an enemy in his sights and fired. Rico killed the one farthest away; Sam managed to take down the two closest to him.

A wave from Sam was offered in gratitude for the assist. As his hand lowered, he noticed the large blood stain on Rico's shirt sleeve. A surge of gratification glowed in his chest, "Seems to me like this bet is already won."

"Don't get cocky on me now. There's still plenty of work left to do. I counted seven still up and active."

"You're not gonna be able to distract me from this."

Rico huffed, "Fine. I'm disqualified. But I know I've still landed more kills so far."

"What does that matter if I get to keep the money?" Sam laughed heartily into the microphone.

He rolled his eyes. The gaping wound on his arm was nothing compared to the hit to his ego after losing on a technicality. He'll have to get Sam back for this, but that was a problem for later. This skirmish had gone on long enough. With nothing left to lose, Rico just wanted to get this over with. He straightened out, eyes looking down the sights of his gun, picked a target and fired. Another one down.

Feeling mighty from his victory, Sam was also eager to move on to the next step and get what they had come there for. Thinking it'd be wise to hit their enemies from two sides, he pressed forward to attack from the northeast area of the clearing. His new cover spot was nestled between more crates and the wall of another building, though his six o'clock was left open. Both him and Rico had thought all their assailants had come out into the light by now, but unfortunately it seemed one had not yet been accounted for. A man approached the thief from behind, previously having been on guard by the armored vehicles. His footsteps were quiet and calculated as he hoped to take care of Sam stealthily. One misguided step set off his internal alarms and Sam swung around with his rifle at the ready. That same moment, the mercenary pulled out his own gun and like in a Mexican stand-off the pair had fired at each other simultaneously. Though Sam had managed to kill the soldier, he didn't leave the interaction unscathed. He looked down at himself and saw blood pouring from his leg and staining his pants. His knees buckled at the site, though his body was oddly numb, and he collapsed onto the ground. The severity of the wound hadn't fully dawned on him as his countenance was still calm. One hand pressed to the open wound, desperately trying to stop the bleeding while the other shakily pushed the boxes next to him aside. Of course, it would have been too simple to find a medical supply crate. With a grunt, he wrestled off his tropical shirt and tore the cloth into strips. Thankfully down in the dirt with him was a stick which he could use to fashion a makeshift tourniquet with some extra fabric. He prayed to God that it wouldn't have to come to that. He dug his fingers into the new hole in his jeans and wrenched his hands outwards, tearing the denim apart. Though this was not he first time he'd been shot, the sight of such a grievous injury sent a wave of nausea coursing through him.

Rico was still on the opposite side of the pond, trying to finish off the last of the mercenaries as Sam dressed his wound. He was too preoccupied to take notice of what had happened to his partner. There hadn't been much movement in the area where Rico knew Sam had last gone to, so he turned his attention to the shack. There sat his partner on the ground with heavily bloodstained clothes and a dead body beside him. Something stirred within Rico. This sort of work always left one liable to injury and even death. Sam was no fool, he knew what he was signing up for when he took this gig. This wasn't the first time he'd been injured on the job either, but up until this point, most of the other occurrences had been fairly minor where he could power through after a quick clean up. This was different. Something stirred within Rico. Even from that distance, it was obvious that the injury was more serious. It left his partner collapsed and vulnerable on the ground. And he wasn't the only one to notice. Soon one of the soldiers followed Rico's line of sight to Sam. Just as he raised his guns to fire, the feeling brewing inside Rico came to a head.

With inhuman speed, the thief sprinted across the clearing. In the seconds that passed as he ran, he could feel his form drastically shift. It was a visceral sensation that rippled across his whole body from within. His bones became more dense, his skin thickened and changed to a fleshy grey hue, his extremities to an ashen black, his fingers turned to claws and even his teeth became fanged. An animalistic snarl erupted from his throat as he lunged at the soldier poised to fire at Sam. In a flash of blood and talons the man was dead, body eviscerated. The other soldiers let loose a barrage of bullets on the beast, but it did nothing. The wound on his arm had also disappeared. Sharp claws tore into flesh, cries were let out to an apathetic sky, blood soaked into the soil.

"What the fuck…" Sam whispered, the remark involuntary.

A pointed ear twitched at the stimulus.

He locked eyes with Rico, unable to look away. Dilated, cat-like eyes stared back at him. The creature's shoulders were hunched and its chest heaved with every breath. Even half way across the field, it loomed like an oncoming storm.

Silence settled over the clearing once more. It slowly stepped towards Sam. The high of the battle had not yet faded, so its sights were set on its next victim: a wounded animal already incapacitated on the ground, an easy kill. Recognition crossed its face as its vision settled on the details. The brushed-back, brown hair resting on a receded hairline, a five o'clock shadow from not having time to shave the day prior, and just the peak of a tattoo of a flock of birds in flight on his neck. No, this was not some poor creature on the brink of death, but the man who was invited to this very job because of his expertise in this field. Suddenly its posture straightened, pupils turning to narrow slits. Much more gradually than the initial transformation, Rico became his normal self. The vibrant, dark olive color of his skin returned, like a corpse coming back to life. He glistened with sweat in the sunlight as it peeked through the treetops. The monstrous shapeshifting and subsequent battle had been strenuous on his body. He gazed down at his blood soaked hands and beneath them saw the mutilated remains of the mercenaries on the ground. There was no fear of the beast nor sense of regret, only confusion as to why it had come out. "It's been over a decade…"

With a pained grunt, Sam used his good leg to try and push himself away and out of sight. With the armored vehicles behind him, there was a slim chance of an escape. The sound of Sam's struggling sprung Rico back into reality. As if nothing out of the ordinary occurred, he scurried around the encampment looking for a crate of medical supplies. He picked it up and hefted it over to the side of the northeast shack where Sam was squirming away. It wasn't difficult to catch up to him as he'd really only managed to drag himself a few feet.

"Please…" a quiet and desperate plea escaped his lips as he kept trying to get away.

Rico kneeled beside him and pressed a firm hand on his chest to keep him from moving. "I ain't gonna hurt yah, hun. I've gotta take care of that bullet wound, else you'll bleed out or get an infection."

"Just keep the money, whatever you goddamn want. I don't know what the hell just happened, but – God – just don't do that to me." He tried to pry Rico's arm off of him, but it didn't budge, though he didn't seem to be applying much pressure to his abdomen either. He balled up his fist and struck Rico's wrist to try and get him to break his grip. It did nothing. On contact, Sam was hit with an immediate sense of regret, worried that trying to hurt Rico would be enough to push him over the edge.

The look of fear Sam had was uncanny. It resurfaced an old memory: the terrified face of a cruel man and later, his wife. He despised to see his partner so petrified. This was never meant to happen; for years he wasn't even aware that it could happen again. Rico took a hold of Sam's hand before he could use it to strike him again, clutching it in his own like he was reassuring an old friend before a major surgery. Though his hands had grown rough and calloused over years of hard labor, the grip he had was oddly tender and warm. He looked into Sam's eyes with determination, "Listen to me."

The man's whole body froze as he was bid to lend an ear to his present captor.

"I will not hurt you. I do not lose control. You are safe with me. You are safe from me." Each sentence was emphasized with a pause.

Sam swallowed hard. He recalled some of the stories his brother Nate had told him. The unbelievable suddenly felt very real and imminently life threatening. He mentally chastised himself for not taking it seriously before, especially with what he'd already seen his partner was capable of. It was almost embarrassing. Rico had kept his eyes locked on Sam as he took his time to mentally process everything. There was an assuredness to his stare that eventually wore Sam down. He let out a breath he didn't know he was holding and thanked the lord that the two fought on the same side. "All right, doc," he laid his head back on the ground, body relaxing, "fix me up."

Rico, scooted back so he could take care of Sam's leg. "Let me take a look at this..."