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"This is... paintball."
Sceptically, Diana surveyed the gun that had been thrust into her hands, turning it this way and that to scope out its weight and functionality.
"Yeah! It's a great team bonding experience," Akko told her enthusiastically, already clad in combat gear with war paint smudged unevenly across her cheeks. "My dad and his colleagues do it all the time. Getting hit with exploding paint is really good for morale! Apparently."
"Great for my Instagram profile picture," Amanda grinned, posing.
Obediently Constanze snapped a picture.
Still unsure of the logic behind Akko's decision to send them all on an afternoon shooting one another with neon substances, Diana raised an eyebrow at the whole thing.
The surrounding grounds were huge, full of barricades, obstacles, foliage and towers, exactly like an adult playground. It just seemed so...juvenile.
"Are you sure about this?"
“It's war," Lotte answered before Akko could, adjusting her helmet. "It's also research for my next fanfic."
"I just want to kill someone," Sucy added. "You better stay on your toes, Cavendish."
That was all it took to switch on Diana's competitive side; with her signature dexterity she tied up her hair, slinging her gun over her shoulder while she did so, and Jasminka had to nudge Akko three times to get her attention as she was staring at the scene with her mouth open.
"R-right, is everyone ready?" she asked, ignoring Amanda's knowing smirk. "We can do this in teams if you like-"
"We'll protect you, Diana!" Barbara declared, rushing to her side, Hannah hot on her heels as she fixed everyone else with a warning glare.
They were clad in matching, customised pink combat clothes despite Akko telling them it wasn't practical.
"Yeah." Sucy flashed her teeth. "That sounds good to me."
Lotte took a step away from her ominous smile.
"Let's march then, troops!" Amanda ordered, raising her weapon, and Constanze took another picture for her Twitter as they took off into the grounds to set up camp before the game officially started.
Teams Red and Blue nodded their affirmations, leaving in different directions to set up their own sites and establish strategies.
Akko looked back at Diana, mouth drying up at the sight of her in tight-fitting black tactical gear, hair pulled back and wielding a weapon. It was a sight she'd never expected to see and it was fulfilling a fantasy she'd never even known about.
She shook her head to dislodge the thoughts; never mind that, she had a battle to win and some morale to boost. Exams were coming up and they all needed to de-stress, so it was Akko to the rescue. She shouldered her own paintball gun and strode after Sucy and Lotte, a little giddy at the thought of bringing everyone together.
An hour later and it was carnage.
Barbara had taken a bullet to the stomach, and Hannah had committed an act of seppuku in defiance, throwing herself at the guilty Jasminka as she sat on a bench in the Green Team’s camp eating a packet of crisps. Immediately Jasminka had flipped her to the ground and kept her there with a foot as she continued to eat.
Lotte, appearing out of nowhere soon after, landed a shot to her chest with surprising precision, effectively breaking the bag; salty snacks went everywhere as Lotte stormed the Green Team’s camp and Jasminka surrendered, holding up her hands as she lamented her loss. Of the crisps, that is.
Hannah heaved a sigh of relief and wandered over to the med bay, where Barbara was sipping juice on the stretcher, absently rubbing her sore stomach.
"It is an actual battlefield out there," Hannah sighed, hoisting herself on the opposite bed and kicking off her boots.
"Diana is in full Rambo mode, she'll be fine." Barbara waved her concerns away, helping herself to another juice.
Truthfully, she was sore in body and spirit after she'd been hit by Jasminka of all people - she was looking for a chocolate bar when the gun accidentally went off and hit her perfectly in the abdomen.
Cue her endless wailing, Jasminka’s surprise, and Amanda's chortle as she left her there to bleed to death. Well, not really, but it was very dramatic as she limped over to the medical centre afterwards.
Plus, Diana really was fine. Better than fine. She'd taken to combat surprisingly quickly, ducking and weaving pellets and wielding her weapon like she’d done a stint in a warzone. Perhaps she should have been the one flanking them for protection. At the very least they shouldn’t have agreed to divide and conquer the camps as it was now Diana’s sole responsibility to represent the Blue Team and lead them to victory. Not that she’d notice her teammates were gone; her sudden tunnel vision was rather frightening.
Barbara huffed at her misfortune all the same and Hannah tried not to smile.
Meanwhile Sucy had gone full rogue, turning on her teammates the moment they'd started to discuss what they wanted for dinner that night. Everyone was fair game after that. It was always going to turn out that way, Sucy reasoned; it was fate.
Slinking in the bushes, she spied Lotte trying to sneak up after Amanda, who was crouched down retying her shoelace.
After witnessing the ransacking of the Green Camp and seeing Jasminka off towards the med bay, Amanda had been forced to flee. Constanze was nowhere to be found, but Lotte was hunting them down one by one.
It was seamless, the way Lotte moved in on her prey, shooting Amanda before she had the sense to glance up. Like a shadow of death.
"Lotte," she whined, taking off her helmet to dislodge some of the paint from her forehead. "I was just getting started! Besides, when did you get so good at paintball?"
"Edward is part of the military," she told her, wiping her brow. "I need to get inside my character’s minds."
Gawking, Amanda watched Lotte bound off for her next conquest, not even offering her a hand or so much as a look of sympathy.
Sucy merely chuckled from behind her tree. Lotte was saving her a job; she would leave her to it for now and claim her victory against her teammate later. For now, she had a fort to build.
As for Akko, she'd lost motivation the first several minutes into the game after she'd seen her teammates barrel off into the wilderness with the intensity of actual soldiers, sparing no man on their hunt for blood and victory.
Her dad may have been wrong about the "good fun" element, particularly when Sucy had cocked her weapon in her direction and splattered the tree next to her with five rounds of exploding paint.
After that debacle she'd had to run for life. Lotte was long gone; she’d muttered something about Sucy and the crazy glint in her eye the second they’d entered the grounds but Akko had waved her off, determined to have fun with her friends. She'd slipped away as Akko was bemoaning her longing for sweets, just before Sucy cocked her gun and open-fired. Vanished, just like that. Meanwhile Sucy had turned criminal, cackling madly as she reloaded her gun, and Akko had had to run for her life.
If anything, she wanted food, rest and a hot shower; she also wanted to stare at Diana some more, but she was proving elusive, padding around the grounds with the stealth of a ninja, the laser focus of a cheetah and the body of a Greek goddess-
She suddenly heard a twig snapping and her entire body tensed. This was it. This was the end. Shot by her own teammate on a bloodthirsty killing spree. Deep down she'd always known this would be how it ended, that Sucy would be the one to -
"Diana!"
Relieved, Akko sank back down on her tree stump.
"Sucy has gone rogue," Diana said without preamble, not dropping her defensive pose. "She's stationed at Fort Kinoko, west of here by quarter of a mile."
"I know, she tried to shoot me." She motioned to her outfit, which had spatter all over it. Then she noticed the gun being aimed at her chest. "Wait, you're not going to shoot me are you?!"
"This is a game of paintball, correct? The objective is to win by eliminating all the other teams' players. This was all your idea. I should defeat you."
"But!" Akko said desperately, wondering what she'd unleashed in the usually prim, proper Diana Cavendish. "Since Sucy has lost her marbles, surely the game has changed! We can team up and bring her down!"
She watched Diana consider the merit of her proposal, her predatory gaze softening.
"You make a valid point. Manbavaran cannot be trusted. Because of her, the rules have changed. Victory... would be restoring peace to this attempted dictatorship. I accept your truce."
Mind boggled, Akko slowly nodded, figuring all of that mumbo jumbo meant she wasn’t getting shot. Though what a way to go, she thought, eyeing up Diana's outfit as she stood properly upright.
Hand on her hip, gun held upright with the other, she asked pointedly, "Shall we go?"
Akko scrabbled up. "Team Dianakko," she exclaimed, punching the air. "I have no loyalty to Sucy, let's bring her down! Then get ice cream after, I'm starving."
"There's no ice cream in war," Diana told her seriously, "just the sweet taste of winning."
"They might have a flavour in that," Akko mused, wading into the trees after her, "or chocolate is always a safe choice."
As they made their way through the foliage, Diana shushing her every time she tried to speak – “I was only pointing out that flower, jeez!” - she was massively regretting ever opening her big mouth in the first place to suggest a “fun, teambuilding afternoon.”
Diana was using military gestures and everything. For all Akko knew it could have been interpretive dance; she certainly couldn’t understand any of it. Was she saying there was a bird ready to wrestle her gun from her hands or that there was a branch up ahead she should avoid? At this point Diana breaking into song and dance would be less surprising than her evolution into this.
Before Akko could lament her lost afternoon, Diana held up a hand and Akko proceeded to bump into her back.
"At ease," she authorised. "I think that's... Amanda."
Akko's stomach dropped - Amanda would take them prisoner and chop off their hair, she was certain of it. Except she could see a flash of orange in the distance, which meant she didn't have a helmet on, and the angle was all wrong, like she was sprawled on the floor.
"Amanda," she called out, ignoring Diana's warning glare.
"Akko," came the weak reply, and Akko picked up her pace because what if Sucy had actually stabbed her for the cause -
"It could be a trap!" Diana shouted behind her.
"Chill, Cavendish," Amanda griped; she was indeed sitting on the floor, picking the paint splatter off her helmet, nursing her pride.
"What happened?" Akko asked, out of breath. It looked like they weren’t far from the Green Team’s base.
"Lotte," Amanda snorted. "She's demonic."
"Fanfic," Akko muttered, scrunching up her fist. "We'll avenge you Amanda!"
Bemused, she asked, "Isn’t Lotte on your team?"
"Oh yeah..."
"We're taking out Sucy," Diana said, appearing behind Akko and surveying the situation. "This is a temporary comradeship. Can you walk?"
"If I wanted to," Amanda drawled, "but I like it fine just here."
"Stop sulking and get up, O’Neil, we're storming the fort! It's all hands on deck."
“You’re using too many analogies,” Akko complained as she hoisted Amanda to her feet, shrugging at the baffled look Amanda was giving her about Diana, trying to silently communicate that it was easier to go along with Commander Cavendish.
They trudged through the undergrowth as carefully as possible. Technically, Amanda was out of the game, but Diana thought she could be a sacrifice – or a distraction – if needed, not that she was saying that part out loud. Akko was dragging her feet a bit but at least she was still in the game, and she seemed to be seeking some form of vengeance on her own teammate if her mutterings about “poisonous mushrooms in my soup” were anything to go by.
Meanwhile Diana could only guess at the fates of Lotte and Constanze. Amanda had told her what had happened earlier at the Green Team’s Camp, how Hannah had dramatically charged Jasminka only to be flipped over and defeated; how it was in response to Barbara dying at the hand of an accidental gunfire. How Lotte had shot Jasminka and ruined her snack and then sniffed Amanda out of the bushes as she tried to flee, putting a bullet in her head.
It didn’t surprise Diana that Lotte was the one to watch. She’d always suspected the timid, thoughtful girl was hiding another side to her.
“Amanda, you can walk,” Akko complained, throwing her arm from around her shoulder. “You were hit in the head.”
“It’s more dramatic this way! Where’s Constanze? I need her to take a picture.”
A tell-tale click sounded and they all turned to the noise in surprise.
“A true friend!” Amanda cried out. “Constanze, I’ll use that picture for my FaceBook – CONSTANZE NO!” she yelled, for Diana was using the moment to aim her gun. Before anyone could move, Constanze included, Diana fired and hit her square in the chest.
Constanze stumbled and let out an ‘Ooof.”
Akko and Amanda seemed to hold their breath, wondering what would happen next, when Constanze shrugged and held out her hand for Diana to shake.
“It’s been a pleasure,” Diana told her, returning the handshake with a curt nod.
In that moment, Constanze had a new respect for Diana Cavendish.
Rather than continue trudging all the way to Fort Kinoko where Sucy was likely to blow them all up, Amanda and Constanze opted to nurse their wounds with the rest of the disqualified players at the med bay.
To Diana’s credit, she’d only ranted and shook her fist a little: “You lily-livered cowards-” but Amanda had pointed out that the Green Team were all out now anyway and she wouldn’t have to drop the truce to defeat them.
She blinked as though realising her path to victory was smoother than anticipated and waved them on their way, leaving Akko to deal with Commander in Chief Cavendish.
“Promise me we’re getting ice cream after this,” Akko griped, following her through the trees again.
“Yes, fine, but can you please concentrate, there’s a lot at stake here.”
Akko decided ogling the outfit was small recompense for her lack of ice cream at that moment, and for withstanding Diana’s salty tone. She sniffed, not caring for it at all. She wanted head scratches and praise thank you very much.
However, they had finally arrived at Fort Kinoko, recognisable as such because Sucy had somehow created a flag bearing a mushroom with teeth. It was raised high, openly glaring at insects, humans and trees alike.
Akko shivered.
Diana motioned to the Fort, gesturing this way and that, looking frustrated when Akko merely shrugged at her efforts.
“I can understand your silences better,” she told her seriously.
“I said let’s take a moment and strategise-”
Before she could finish her sentence, a loud boom sounded out, and the nearest bush burst into flames. Jumping at the sudden noise, Diana and Akko glanced at the fire and then at each other, momentarily yanked out of the game in the sudden realisation that Sucy had created grenades. She was throwing grenades! Actual fire was raining down upon them!
“They’re barely sparklers,” Sucy shouted down from the highest point of the fort, lobbing another of her makeshift explosives.
“Can she read my mind too!?” Akko gasped, grabbing Diana’s hand so they could tear into the trees and hide, not daring to spare a backwards glance as they tore across the ground with surprising speed.
“You said the part about the grenades out loud.”
“Oh.”
They stopped short, hiding behind the largest tree they could find. It would buy them some time; Sucy didn’t have the throwing arm to reach them, and even she couldn’t bend flying objects mid-air.
“Sucy having more weapons changes things slightly,” Diana huffed, swatting a loose strand of her hair from her face, Akko watching her as though hypnotised. “We’re not going to be able to get close. She has the perfect vantage point. However, if one of us is the decoy…” She turned to Akko with a serious expression. “You need to protect me.”
Akko’s mouth fell open. “Huh?”
“I’m going to charge the fort; you need to stay covered and try to shoot her, or distract her at the very least.”
“I can’t let you do that, Diana!”
“But I have to!” She stood tall, cutting a commanding figure; even the surrounding insects were leaning in to listen. “Don’t you see, our freedom is at stake! If Sucy wins, it’s all over, everything we hold dear, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a world where Sucy wins at anything, ever.”
“You have a point,” Akko conceded. Mushrooms in her soup would be the least of her worries then. Sucy would be unbearable, and that was if they made it out of this game alive.
“Let me charge the fort though,” she begged, unable to come to terms with the fact Dianakko were being torn apart, just after they’d called a truce.
Diana shook her head grimly. “I can do what needs to be done. I fear you’ll hesitate from sentimentality.”
“Pfft, not likely, she put some plant serum in my coffee the other day; I started hallucinating.”
Another loud noise in the distance caused Diana to grip Akko’s arms, desperately seeking her gaze. “We have to do this, and it has to be now.”
“Right, yeah, we have to leave the grounds once our two hours are up.” Akko straightened her helmet, summoning all her courage and wondering whether she had the time to carve a haiku of love and regret into the nearest tree.
This was it. The end of times.
"This is war," Diana declared, pulling her in for a rough, passionate kiss. Instantaneously Akko grabbed handfuls of her shirt, kissing her back so hard she saw stars.
"I'll never forget you," Akko told her, breathless, resting her forehead against Diana's for a second's reprieve before -
Diana leapt up and dove beyond the trees, launching into a full sprint, paint immediately splattering around her as she dodged Sucy’s pellets.
Akko jumped up with her gun poised, firing off a dozen rounds. She started to run too, figuring it was better than sitting behind a blockade with her poor aim. She couldn’t even see Diana anymore; smoke was filling the clearing, courtesy of Sucy’s explosives, and occasional paint pellets sailed past her ears but she kept moving, shooting her own bullets into the sky, hoping that one would land.
She left the hazy no-mans-land and found herself looking directly up at the Fort. It was closer than she’d anticipated. Sucy was facing the wrong way to her, gun poised over the railing as she watched for the pair. Diana had managed to reach the ladder to the Fort during all the confusion, jumping up the first several wrungs with no hesitation.
Anxiously, Akko watched her, torn between rushing over to watch her back, literally, or to keep out of sight of Sucy since she hadn’t been spotted yet. The decision was soon made for her however as Diana’s foot banging on the metal caused Sucy to spin around, glance down, smirk, and fire her gun without hesitation.
It happened in slow motion.
A pellet hit and Diana went down, falling backwards into a heap. Akko yelled out. Before she could run to her, Sucy aimed her gun at her helmet. She braced herself for the feeling of paint exploding in her face, for pain to flicker up all her nerve endings; she closed her eyes, waiting for the end, before -
“I AM EDWARD,” Lotte roared, and Akko snapped her eyes open just in time to see her blasting her gun into Sucy’s back.
Somehow, the orange-haired girl had snuck up to the highest level of the Fort. At what point she’d done so, nobody knew, but she’d somehow outwitted them all. Mouth open, Akko watched as Sucy fell to her knees.
“I knew it would be you, Lotte,” she cursed, rubbing her spine. “That hurt.”
Like a spell had been broken, Lotte blinked and looked around; she saw Sucy at her feet, paint all over the back of her shirt; she glanced over the railing at Diana, who was sitting up and shaking her head to dislodge the leaves; she then locked eyes with Akko, who gave her a thumbs up from the ground, genuinely impressed, and then she looked out over the smoke-filled grounds.
And then she promptly shrieked. “What have I done!!”
Akko left her to her existential crisis and went over to Diana, who was returning from her own haze.
“Are you okay?” she asked, crouching down beside her.
“I almost had her,” Diana said, sighing. She let her gun fall to the wayside, pulling her hair from its tie and shaking it loose.
Akko’s mouth twitched at the genuine disappointment in her voice; she helped her dislodge some of the dirt from her hair. “We made a great team! Dianakko, taking out dictatorships since twenty eighteen.”
Diana smiled back. “This was actually a good idea.”
“Don’t sound so surprised!”
“I was rightfully sceptical.”
“As your girlfriend,” Akko declared, puffing out her chest, “would I ever steer you wrong?”
“Yes,” Diana deadpanned. “But in this instance you were right. Shall we return to the group? I have a feeling these bruises will start to hurt sooner rather than later.”
Akko helped her up and they left the clearing, still listening to Lotte’s rapid-fire apologies and Sucy’s cursing in the background.
The sun hadn’t even set; they’d lived an age of war during broad daylight, and their allocated two hours hadn’t even passed. Thinking over what they’d just experienced, she started to understand that book about the shipwrecked boys who were a shade away from eating one another. Akko shivered. She never wanted to be trapped on a desert island with her friends, that was for sure. Being stuck with Diana on the other hand…
“Um, that kiss was really nice,” she told Diana mischievously, “it was like role-play but real life because at that point I thought Sucy was going to end us all.”
At that, Diana leaned over to kiss her, smiling against her lips. “All’s fair in love and war.”
"I've never needed an ice cream more," Amanda groaned, tilting her head back against the seat and bringing the cone lethargically to her lips.
Jasminka frowned at her way of eating, watching for any drops.
Hannah and Barbara sat around her, asking about her head, Barbara still clutching an ice pack to her stomach as Amanda bragged about her injury and the circumstances in which she’d received it: “I was wrestling with Lotte for her gun-”. Besides them, Jasminka started to insert crisps into her own triple-scoop while Constanze, reunited with a stanbot, held her own ice cream, identical to Diana’s, who she kept glancing over at and saluting.
In the corner Lotte still looked horror-struck at her own actions, stuttering out apologies to anyone who would listen.
Sucy had no such remorse, rolling her eyes at the ice cream in her hands. She was still sore at having Fort Kinoko usurped - she'd had grand plans for that! Now all she had was ice cream. Damned Kagari and damned Cavendish, who it must be said could brandish a weapon. Perhaps she'd consider teaming up the next time; they'd take everyone by storm. If they recruited Lotte too, they’d be unstoppable. Smirking, she started to eat her dessert, imagining the future glories.
As for Akko and Diana, they were sitting across from the rest, Akko happily murmuring sweet nothings to her ice cream.
"I'm sorry," Diana said hesitantly, abashed, not impervious to the nickname Commander Cavendish she’d now received as a result of their afternoon. “For how I acted in there."
Akko waved her off, expecting her girlfriend’s remorse and not accepting it. "No way, that was so cool! You could've been black ops! Everyone acted differently in there anyway. I mean, Lotte took out most of the team. Who saw that coming? I'd trust you and her in an apocalypse no problem."
Diana smiled gratefully and took a bite of her own ice cream. It turned out victory tasted like butterscotch.
"You can, um, keep the outfit," Akko told her shyly, avoiding her eyes.
Diana raised an eyebrow but made no comment. She'd almost shot her girlfriend earlier; she could keep her teasing to a minimum for the rest of the day.
"At least it was a new adventure!" Akko beamed, looking around at the dishevelled but happy group. It really had boosted morale! She owed her dad an apology.
Amused, Diana followed her gaze, noting that everyone there had a smile on their face, for one reason or another.
"Trust me, Akko, being with you is adventure enough."