Lost

Chapter 6

A/N Sorry guys, I'm an IB student, so I'm trying to juggle five or six huge projects and a ton of studying right now. But here's a chappy, updated because I love you guys, before anything else, even though I have a crap-ton of homework and writing to do.

Jaguar narrowed his eyes at the building, lips curving downward in resentment as he glared at the white monstrousity.

"You're not even inside the building yet!" complained Jackal.

Shark frowned. "You have to go, you know. I'll drag you if necessary, but you have to go."

Leopard winced. "Better you than me," he decided.

Jaguar growled darkly, still leaning on Leopard. "You get to walk me in," he snapped. "Shut up and march, Crutch."

Leopard smirked. "I don't think so." In a quick, fluid motion, he scooped Jaguar up bridal-style again.

Jaguar punched him in the shoulder with a cobra-quick strike, making him curse loudly. "Shite! Are you trying to dislocate my shoulder?"

"No," Jaguar answered honestly. "But that's a very good idea."

Leopard yelped and tossed Jaguar into Shark's arms, dodging the knife-hand aimed at his neck.

Shark staggered, but caught him. "Leopard!" he snapped. "If you reopen his wound, I'll dislocate your shoulder myself!"

Jaguar grinned crookedly, even as Shark carried him into the infirmary.

Meh, he could just break out again.

Jaguar wore a speculative look.

Glancing around, he slid the gutted tennis balls onto the bottoms of his crutches to silence them. Slipping through the halls quietly, he snagged a bottle of ibuprofen, a sponge, a pair of scissors, and a roll of dental floss. At the last minute, he snatched up the real prize- a bottle of tasteless, scentless, sedative.

He spared a moment to consider the possibility of him becoming a kleptomaniac, then dismissed it. Kleptomaniacs collected.

Jaguar was actually going to use this stuff.

In any case, it was easy to hide the 'liberated' items in his loose clothing, and depressingly simple to sneak back into his cabin unnoticed. He was pleased with the results of his improvisation- the crutches were silent.

No one was there anyway, but he still appreciated his effort.

He set his crutches aside, and laid down on the bed, popping two ibuprofen dry. He took a fifteen-minute break, waiting for the pain in his leg to abate, before opening the pack of dental floss.

Hehehehe...

When he was done, a perfect spider-web covered the majority of the cabin, about four feet in the air and attached to the bunks, window-latches, doorknob, and every knot in the wood or loose nail along the walls. It even had some support threads hanging from the beams in the ceiling.

Grinning, Jaguar flung his blanket-cocoon onto the web, then rolled onto it from his bed. Jaguar curled up in the blankets, amused.

Ha! Let's see what his unit-mates thought of that!

Jaguar awoke to voices, and cracked an eyelid to glare at the group of SAS men in the doorway.

"Sleeping here," he complained. "shut the bloody hell up!"

"What is this?" asked Leopard, almost admiringly.

"It's a spiderweb," Shark answered, amused. "One made out of dental floss."

"And... why is it in our cabin?" asked Jackal.

"Well, obviously that's my natural environment," quipped Jaguar.

"I thought you were a jaguar, not a spider," observed Lemming blankly.

"Well... How about I'm a jaguar-spider hybrid? That way I can shred you with my claws and liquify your guts!"

"Liquify my guts?!" shrieked Lemming.

"Well, yes," answered Jaguar, frowning. "How else am I supposed to drink you like a smoothie?"

Lemming squeaked pitifully, ducking behind Shark for safety.

"You're not straining that leg, are you?" the medic asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Actually? No. It's pretty comfortable up here." Jaguar rolled onto his back, wriggling down into the blankets again. "And the sergeant will think it's funny, so no trying to undo it. Or something very... interesting... will happen."

And with those ominous words, he rolled over and went back to sleep.

Even with all the things he wasn't allowed to do because of his leg, Jaguar still found plenty of training to keep him busy. At the moment, he was unloading a cartriage into the center of a target.

The bullets punched a perfect, circular hole in the paper, barely brushing its edges as they slid through, one after the next.

His score read as 99%, and Jaguar smirked. "Can't get rusty, can I?" he murmured.

The crack of the gun seemed to have attracted some of the new members, and Jaguar slid off the earmuffs after checking the safety on his gun.

"Hey," he greeted. "You guys are the new X-Unit, aren't you?"

They all looked a little young to be in the SAS, but who was Jaguar to judge?

The first one nodded. "Um, yeah," he mumbled, tugging at his sleeves. "I'm Mouse."

"Kitten," grumbled the black-haired teen, looking very much annoyed.

"Squirrel," sighed the tallest. His red-gold hair was likely the inspiration for the nickname- he didn't seem hyper.

(Then again, neither had Lemming.)

Deciding to take his chances, he turned his gaze to the last of them.

"Hound." This was, in fact, a fairly decent codename, which was probably why he was the only one not bothered by his sergeant-given designation.

(Or maybe it was because he was the oldest- who knew?)

"I'm Jaguar," he introduced himself. "From S-Unit. You guys have the range, or are you just looking around?"

"Just looking around right now," asserted Hound. "We're new, so I thought it would be a good to figure out where everything is before we have to worry about punishment duty for being late to training."

Jaguar chuckled. "Gimme a minute to clean up, and I'll show you around."

"Hey, thanks!" Squirrel looked surprised by his offer.

Jaguar disassembled the gun, sliding it back into its case after running a rag over each piece. Balancing the box on his hip, he started to limp over to the shelves.

"I got it," offered Mouse, taking it from him.

Jaguar straightened himself out to balance evenly on his crutches as Mouse slid the box onto the empty shelf. "Okay, kiddos, let's go!"

"You're not any older than us!" retorted Kitten, scowling.

"It's the experience that counts!" Jaguar teased, swinging his crutches forward.

"It looks like you've had some," commented Hound dryly.

Jaguar nodded. "Yeah, got pulled out a couple days ago. Infirmary's over there," he gestured slightly vaguely. "I have no urge to go near that unholy cesspool of needles and gowns," he informed them. "Come on, the mess hall is this way."

He spent the afternoon showing them around the base, pointing out everything from trails to bathrooms, and at last ending up at his own cabin.

"Uh, you can come in," Jaguar offered. "The guys won't be back for awhile, and dinner's not for another hour."

Stepping inside, he remembered why he'd been at the range in the first place.

"Oops," Jaguar muttered. "I forgot to clean that up."

The spiderweb was still there, spanning the room.

Jaguar shrugged. "Meh, its comfortable."

Leaning his crutches against the wall, he slid under the web and onto his bed before dragging himself to the pile of blankets in the middle by his hands.

"Is this... Dental floss?" asked Squirrel incredulously.

"I may have liberated it during my escape from the Hell of White Walls," Jaguar admitted freely. "It's pretty durable. I've had this web in here for two days, and its still as good as new."

Kitten just sat on Jaguar's bed, looking annoyed. Hound helped Mouse climb up to join Jaguar, laying in the middle of the web, before sitting beside Kitten.

Squirrel, for his part, just clambered up the webbing and into the rafters, finding a nice angle to lay in.

And of course, that was how the rest of S-unit would find them.