The tension crackling in the air was thick enough to cut with a knife. Eight armed (and 2 unarmed) men and women stood in the warehouse, five facing five, staring each other down. You could hear a pin drop or….

"Seriously!" Two men, the youngest on either side, chorused suddenly, though only one of them took his eyes from the opposition to stare at his own team mate. Alec Hardison gaped at his long haired colleague and said, "Now is not the time to growl at the large, heavily armed men, Eliot…and did that dude growl back at you?"

One of the other men had indeed let out a menacing rumble, peering out from beneath the brim of his hat along the length of a very unpleasant looking rifle. The rest of his team were armed with an assortment of shotguns, rifles and big ass hand guns. It looked like they'd raided an armory.

The quasi-Mexican stand off was halted as one of the men, the oldest of his group, big and holding two automatic weapons, spoke. "Spencer? That you?"

Eliot peered across at the shadowed faces before a fraction of the tension eased from his shoulders. "Clay? Heard there was an incident in Bolivia involving a helo. Word is you're dead."

"That was Max's plan," the big man replied. "Didn't take. "

"Eliot," Nate Ford said sharply, still holding up his small handgun. "You going to introduce your friend?"

The hitter actually relaxed his posture and gestured. "Nate, Clay. Clay and I…worked on a few projects together. Nate is…our version of you, Clay."

"Are we just going to stand here all night?" Parker asked suddenly. "Cause it's going to get boring really fast. Unless someone gets shot."

There was a little too much gleeful anticipation in her tone for Hardison's comfort. "Um, why don't we put down the guns before there's screaming and running and blood. No one wants that…right?"

"Are we scaring you?" Mocked the uber hottie with the long pony-tail and shit, was that a mini rocket launcher attached to her gun? Oh, that was both terrifying and…no, it was just terrifying, as was the gleam in Parker's eye as the blond eye balled the nasty weapon. That was a scary thought. Parker with a rocket launcher.

"So, what are you all doing here in this high security store house, hmmm?" The young guy on Clay's team asked, shifting slightly and Alec caught a glimpse of a padded laptop case strapped to his back. Oddly, it might even be the same case sung around his shoulders. "Taking a stroll? Maybe got lost from your tour group?"

"Oh, like y'all should talk! Coming up in here with enough guns to take over a small Eastern European nation. Are you supposed to be in here? No need to answer because I have seen the security schedule and I know the answer."

"Hardison," Sophie and Nate chorused as Eliot gave him a 'shut up' look.

One of the guys on the other team gave him an odd look. "You got a half-brother we don't know about, Jensen?"

The guy in the hat smirked and the woman snorted. Clay shook his head as the young guys squawked in protest and simply talked over him. "Why are you here?"

"Max is bad," Parker said, obviously getting antsy. "We don't like bad people."

Clay looked from his team to Nate, to Eliot and back to his team before lowering his weapons. "I think we might have something in common."

The office seemed overly crowded with the presence of the other team. Parker wasn't sure what to make of them. They weren't like the other team of con men they'd worked with on one job and they certainly weren't like her team.

And they sure as hell weren't normal. Parker might not have been an authority on the topic, but she knew enough to see that they weren't it.

Pouring herself a large bowl of cereal, she peered out over assembled bodies and decided there was way too much testosterone in the room.

Nate and the big guy, Franklin Clay, were standing over by the planning desk, pouring over the hard copies of all the info they had amassed on evil Max. From what she'd over heard, the two men though a lot a like, which was scary. And Parker did not get scared…but she could almost see the two of them coming up with a plan which, while utilizing all their skills perfectly, would sound like the deranged ravings of a lemming.

All lemmings were suicidal and stupid. It was the only reasoning she could come up with that might explain the cliff thing.

Not that she thought Nate was stupid and she was pretty sure he wasn't suicidal…most of the time.

Eliot had once asked her and Hardison if they were having a creepy contest. Nate and Clay were having a crazy contest that she did not want to be involved in.

Bowl in hand, she crept around the perimeter of the room until she was behind Eliot's chair, then silently hitched a hip up onto the right arm rest. Sophie was in a chair on his other side, trying to engage Linwood Porteous, or Pooch, as everyone on his team called him, in conversation. He was far more pleasant than Clay, but that wasn't saying a lot.

Aisha al-Fadhil, who was in possession of at least one gun Parker really wanted, was interesting and she hoped they'd get a chance to talk a bit after the job was done and Max was either dead, in jail or weeping in a corner (The first two outcomes were preferable, but the latter had a certain potential for amusement), had been on the couch, but had left to peer at what Clay and Nate were doing. Also, Aisha seemed at times to scare the crap out of some of her own team mates, a skill Parker liked to think she had and this was a rare opportunity to chat with a peer.

The guy in the hat, whom every just called Cougar (Hardison had found a file that ID'd him as Carlos Alvarez, but Cougar sounded more fun), was at the opposite end of the couch, very still, like a creepy statue. Only his eyes were moving, skipping from Eliot, to where Hardison was chatting with his new fiend, to a mirrored surface where he could see the reflection of Nate's little pow-wow.

Hardison and Jake Jensen were conferring over their laptops and neither of them had stopped tapping at their keyboards since they had come to the conclusion that they knew of each other in some abstract way from the land that computer geniuses lived in. There had been some mutually appreciative babbling that had left increased in pitch and speed until Nate had suggested Hardison show Jensen the cyber intel stuff he had on his big computer.

After that, the volume of their combined, techno fueled excitement had lowered, but occasionally one of them would let out a loud exclamation and, if you listened, you could hear them talking, discussing a myriad of topics for hot Cylons to a debate Gummie Frogs vs. Gummie Moose. And there were compliments on each others style, both computer systems and brightly colored t-shirts.

Though Parker doubted Hardison would ever wear a yellow t-shirt with pink bunnies on it. Eliot would probably tease him if he did, without real malice, but Hardison was sensitive. Even she could tell it was joking, 'cause it was Eliot, who wore beads in his hair and owned a flat iron, so he couldn't be too entrenched in the 'Grrrr! Man Do Man Things' mindset.

She was distracted from her musings by Nate saying, "Eliot, Parker, recon for tomorrow night."

"Cougar, go with them," Clay grunted, earning a look and a silent nod from the be-hatted man.

Over in happy computer guru land, Jensen exclaimed, "Dude! The Bank of Iceland was you! Nice."

Hardison looked pleased. "Well, those Journey firewalls you designed for certain intelligence agencies are solid. I mean, the redundancies built into the system…Wow!"

"Huh." Pooch said contemplatively from his spot on the couch, glancing over at the two techies. "This mutual admiration society could get old really fast."

Sophie made a noise of amusement while Aisha grinned wickedly.

Eliot and Cougar were still exchanging measuring looks and Parker hooked Eliot's arm with her own as they left the room. They might be working with this other team (for this job), but they weren't her team.

TBC…