[color=yellow]"Hey, there he is."[/color]

Earle drew up his rifle as the man emerged from the brush, coated in snow as it fell from the very air around him. He looked...medieval-ish, the way he was dressed and the way he had a wicked looking, gleaming blue sword in his hand. The evil-looking grin that covered his face suggested that this man was not here to make friends. Earle thought this rather quickly as he leveled his rifle at the man. Yemen took place just slightly behind him, her rifle also leveled at the man.

[color=yellow]"Hey! You there! Friend or foe?"[/color]

That shout drew the attention of everyone else; Powers brought his light machine gun to bear at the unknown male, while Cho drew his scope and fixed it on the man's face. McKinzie shrank back slightly; her SMG wasn't good at this range and she was only a communications specialist, not a fighter. Puck advanced forward as well, shotgun pointed in the general direction of the perceived hostile. The automated sentry swiveled on its tripod to face the new contact. All of a sudden it was a standoff and the stranger was apparently outnumbered.

Earle slowly advanced closer, rifle still up.

[color=yellow]"Friend or foe, pal? Friend or foe!"[/color]

No answer. The man was determined to stay silent. Cho held a hand to his ear.

"HQ, this is Wolf Leader, we have encountered an unknown contact, possibly friendly, possibly hostile. Assessing situation now."

Earle was getting edgy from the silence. He was like that, sadly, and his nerves made his hands shake slightly. They also made him clench involuntarily, and his rifle barked as it fired a burst straight at the stranger. The three rounds pinged against the mail he wore and knocked him to a knee, but when the man stood up again with his grin still up and no injuries whatsoever, that was when Earle really freaked.

[color=yellow]"Dude, he's a foe man, he's a foe!"[/color]

That was when the warrior charged. Earle leveled his rifle and fired another burst, clumsily and panicky, it missed by a mile as the mysterious warrior closed the distance in a heartbeat.

[color=yellow]"Shit shoot him shoot him shoo-"[/color]

He was instantly cut off by a blade chewing into his side and slicing clean through him diagonally upward. Like a hot knife through butter. His two halves, along with the junker that used to be a rifle, fell to the stones and grass while the warrior leapt back into the brush, sending up a flurry of snow and frost as he disappeared again.

[color=lightblue]"Shit he got Earle! Earle's down! Earle's down!"[/color]

Yemen backpedalled, spraying her immediate front with fire, emptying her whole magazine into the forest ahead of her while the rest of the team rallied to her aid. Puck reacted first, going not for her but for the fallen soldier, but she quickly determined that Earle was dead; the sword had cleaved straight through his heart. If the blood loss hadn't killed him, the trauma would have.

Cho went pale. How fast had that been? Just a few seconds was all that warrior had needed to brutally kill one of their own. That sword had sliced through flesh, bone and ballistic ceramic plating like it was paper. How were they to stand up to this? Well, it wasn't all hopeless. He'd seen the effect Earle's bullets had. If not the injury factor, the warrior could not stand firm against modern firepower. He had orders to give, and he had to give them fast.

"Yemen, fall back to defensive! Powers, high ground, give us some suppression zones! McKinzie, Puck, you two hang back, keep your weapons hot and stay close to each other!"

Once done he touched a hand to his ear again.

"HQ this is Wolf Leader, contact is hostile, repeat, contact is hostile, code black. We already have a man down."

And with that done, he returned his attention to the battlefield. Where the warrior had entered and exited, there was a full field of frost that had appeared from nowhere, it seemed. He had an idea.

"Powers, set your turret to scan thermals as well. Give us a feed."

[color=lightgreen]"Roger."[/color]

In all of their heads-up displays, the team received a small feed of the turret's viewpoint, in an array of colours that made up the thermal camera within its housing. They scanned for the hostile, hopefully he would show up again.