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Clay knew he was ancient by Spec Ops standards. Hell, he was almost forty and most his age were either teaching it, forced to retire, or dead. But he was lucky, even though they thought of his team as losers they were the best because he was damn good at what he did. And what he did was stick behind his men and in turn they stuck behind him. They gave him their all, making him look good to the Brass.
He and Roque should’ve both been put out to pasture for all the regs they broke but their records showed they got results. It also showed that Roque was too loose a cannon to be with any other unit besides The Losers. His performance on his past teams was always barely acceptable and that was usually due to his attitude. Clay knew that Roque had inner demons that fought each other and didn't want to bow down under orders. Roque had ambition to be nobody’s bitch and never to follow blindly without knowing the odds. That kind of attitude had no business really in Spec Ops but somehow it worked for Roque, most of the time. It worked best when it came to The Losers.
If Roque had attitude then it seemed Pooch had soul to balance it out. Out of all The Losers Pooch was the most balanced because somehow that man rarely lost his cool about anything. Pooch was so easygoing it was almost like watching water flow by. You tell the man he needs to fix an old World War II tank from some junk heap and he’ll ask how long he’s got. No deadline bothered him and more often than not he came through with cobbling together whatever it is they needed, when they needed it. Clay often wondered if it was because he had a life outside of Spec Ops that made him so mellow. He wondered if what gave him soul had anything to do with the fact that Jolene was there waiting for him at the end of it all.
Clay found it odd but soothing about how mix and match his unit was. He has a Second in Command that psych evals stated was either a borderline sociopath or psychopath. It all depended on whether or not the eval was done on a good day or bad day for Roque. He had a driver cum mechanic that could operate and fix just about any type of vehicle made and some that never were. And that brought him to his two problem children, though in actuality they weren’t all that troublesome. It just depended on which one of them was the one with the trouble.
Cougar was originally given to Clay because he'd lost his old unit. Being a survivor, the only survivor, of one’s unit, really and truly fucks with the head. Technically Cougar should have gotten a headcase discharge but he was too good of an asset for them to give up. So the Brass in their utter wisdom, loaned him out with no permanent assignment but that didn’t seem to snap him out of it. By the time they gave him to Clay he was almost broken beyond fixing. From moment one Cougar was technically no trouble at all except that he didn’t interact with the rest of the Losers. For the most part he ignored Roque’s yelling, threats and intimidation and he tolerated Pooch’s kindness and easy manner. Whenever they had down time he’d find somewhere to nest and hole up in until it was time to get back to the job. Clay was almost ready to write him off as he couldn’t seem to get through to him. That was until the day the Brass finally relented and gave him a Tech Spec of his own.
The Brass was at its wits end with one Corporal Jake Jensen. He was too smart for his own good. He’d managed to piss off every single one of his CO’s he’d been assigned and a few he hadn't. It was reported that disciplinary reports regarding his insubordination and illicit technical activities always seemed to disappear when put directly into the system, even the hard copies upped and walked when no one was looking. The worst part was that nobody could prove he’d done it. Oh, they all knew he’d done it but there was no proof and he was clean as a whistle. But word of mouth got around about how difficult a soldier he was and after the incident he had with his last unit, let’s just say Clay was his last stop before either death or discharge.
From day one of Jensen joining the Losers, Clay knew his team would never be the same again. By the end of their first job together Jensen had bonded with Pooch and gotten Roque so twisted he didn’t know whether he was coming or going. That in and of itself gained Jensen space to impress Roque with exactly where he needed to go for the maximum boom; always a plus to get on Roque’s good side. The most amazing thing had been Cougar’s reaction to Jensen after that mission. He watched Jensen. Cougar still kept apart from the rest of the team but Jensen never let that bug him. He sought out the sniper wherever Cougar was hiding out and would sit near him typing away on his computer and talking to no one in particular about some of the most outrageous trivia one could think of.
Cougar in turn never made it difficult for Jensen to find where he was holed up. Eventually it morphed into Cougar doing gun maintenance while Jensen rambled nearby. It was almost as if Cougar was keeping an eye on their newest member without making it seem as if he was. Jensen for seeming oblivious to how annoying his chatter could be seemed to be moving closer and closer into the huge personal bubble space Cougar had built up around himself. Oddly enough the closer Jensen got to Cougar. The closer Cougar came into the circle of the team.
Jensen had this habit of up and jack rabbiting when he got an idea up his ass about something. Initially it usually involved only Pooch’s mechanical skills. But when he started getting Roque in on it, Clay knew he’d be having a talk with the MPs about one of his team or getting into some altercation with someone over their antics. When the incident that shall never be named, even in his own mind, happened. No one was expecting the rescuer and defender to be who it actually was.
Jensen had cobbled something together with Pooch’s help and suggestions from Roque for improvement. He still had no idea what the doohickey was supposedly to have done especially as it didn’t survive the incident. When the object of the attack, half a dozen Seals, decided to confront Jensen alone to teach him a lesson, they were unprepared for what they actually got. Pooch, Roque and he were halfway across the field when they saw things starting to go down. None of them knew where the hell Cougar was until the first one took a swing at Jensen and then a Hispanic Tasmanian Devil appeared out of nowhere. Between Cougar and Jensen, all six Seals were on the ground by the time the rest of the team reached their location.
Then to all their amazement Cougar turned around looked Jensen in the eye and said the first words that did not have to be coaxed out of him. “You need a keeper and a leash. Good thing I’m good at long range protection.” Then turned and walked off, with a smiling and chattering Jensen following behind. Since then it was always Cougar and Jensen together. Usually Jensen would be babbling up a storm with Cougar’s silent and occasional replies. The most amazing part though, was that from that single moment his ultimate team had finally cemented and came together. As hodgepodge as they seemed, they worked and worked well. They had each other’s backs and if it seemed they didn’t. Well, that was quickly corrected when someone tried to get between them. After all they didn’t call them The Losers because they never won.