99 red balloons
Floating in the summer sky
Panic bells, it's red alert
There's something here form somewhere else
A war machine springs to life
Opens up one evil eye
Focusing in on the sky
As 99 red balloons go by
-"99 Red Balloons" by Nena

--

Rebecca, Cas and Lizy crouched at the top of the hill where several players from both teams could be seen. Rebecca watched carefully for a moment before her ears perked up, pointing her in the direction of some faint chatter. Out of the corner of her eye was Sprinkles, a wolf-shark hybrid she'd seen around, wearing a red shirt. She gave some silent hand signals to Lizy, who nodded and readied her slingshot, aiming it squarely at Sprinkles' torso. She twitched for a moment, then grinned.

"Perfect," she whispered, and released the balloon straight into their back. Sprinkles went down like a sack of potatoes. Cas have a thumbs up.

"Great shot," she whispered, impressed. Lizy bashfully and chuckled.

"Why thank you, Cas," she whispered back. Rebecca gave her a congratulatory chuck in the shoulder before turing her ears back up. She turned and saw Lyann, a small fox/owl hybrid, running between the trees, also in red. She turned to Cas.

"Pst! Think you could hit a small moving target?" she whispered.

Down at the bottom of the hill, Lyann's own large ears twitched at the sound of Rebecca's remark.

"Small??" she huffed before a direct hit from Cas hit her in the side. Lyann frowned, then laughed up at Cas, who's teammates were high-fiving her for her bullseye.

"Lucky shot!" yelled Lyann as she pulled two balloons out of her backpack and chucked them up at the trio. "Take THIS!" Rebecca shrieked and pulled Cas down by the waist out of the balloons' line of sight. "I don't think so," Lyann cried to them before pelting them with more balloons from her pack. Liz dodged them all while firing another one right into Lyann's arm, laughing loudly and proudly as she did. Down at her feet, Rebecca, an arm around Cas, called up to Liz.

"Yo, can you hold her off? We're gonna spread out and look for others down by those big trees." Liz didn't really want them to go, as she had serious abandonment issues, but felt confident enough that she gave them an approving smile.

"O-okay, I'll try!" she stammered. And just as she said it, one of Lyann's water balloons smacked her right in the shoulder, soaking her black hoodie, with two more hitting Rebecca's leg and Cas's arm, respectively.

"Red for the win!" Lynn cried.

"Not yet!" Liz replied, looking sad about her hoodie, and launched three balloons at once at Lynn, hitting her in the stomach and bowling her over.

"Oh no!" Lynna fake-croaked as she lay in the wet grass, "I think... I have been defeated." She laughed hard, then clutched her bruised stomach and threw her arms up in defeat. "I think I may be outnumbered?" Just as the words left her lips, one more water balloon plummeted down onto her chest.

"Yes you have," smiled Cas, arms folded in victory, and she followed Rebecca and Liz over to a cluster of evergreen trees at the bottom of the hill. Lyann hoisted herself up and shook her fist at the trio.

"Until the next battle!"

"Yeah, when we beat you AGAIN!" laughed Rebecca with a wink.