A/N: For the fact that Community just premiered. And that I love Annie and Abed.

Chapter 1

It was Annie Edison's first summer living with Troy and Abed, and it had been one of her best summers yet.

Sure, while they'd only had a month and a week of summer because of summer school, she couldn't complain. They had three more weeks, and for the first time ever, she was not counting down the days until a new semester started, or planning the fastest routes from one class to the next. She hadn't even skimmed through all of her textbooks yet.

And what was weirder is that she could have cared less.

Right now she was happily sitting between the guys as they watched the last bit of their movie, not really paying attention to their conversation about whether the X-Box, the PS2, or the Wii was the best gaming system, because while Abed was on the fence on all three, Troy was pro X-Box, if they bought a Live account. Annie listened without any comment as all three of them blew off the movie. And even though the guys weren't watching the movie, they would see it through until the end of the credits.

Because that's how the guys were.

And they were the reason she cared less about school.

At first, while moving in with Troy and Abed had been ridiculously fun, they hadn't exactly let her into their clique.

Which she totally understood now.

They were the definition best friends, and she was the girl that they hung out with in the group. But ever since she and Abed's little "episode" in the Dreamatorium they had let her in a bit more, bits at a time, now to the point where they let her rap with them, or invited her to premieres of movies like the Dark Knight Rises so long as she dressed up as Catwoman.

They even let her help pick movies when they didn't know what they wanted to watch, though that was rare, and tolerated her favorite shows when she wanted to watch them(though there were only a few).

Abed had even come and sat to watch with her on occasion, that's how awesome he was. Troy and Abed had taken to educating her on certain movies and TV shows so that way she wouldn't always be out of the loop when they made jokes or pop culture references. And, they promised to invite her to their next game of Blazer Tag.

The credits were rolling.

The guys noticed just as the last logos at the end appeared.

Troy yawned, stretched. Annie watched Abed closely. Though to the untrained eye he never was tired, Troy had taught her the signs. And he was featuring a few of them. Blinking, staring at the menu screen, as though he were pondering something, but his stare was too blank. They were sleepy.

Excellent.

It was time for them to go to bed, then, to their bedroom, since the blanket fort had been replaced by the once Dreamatorium room.

Even without the Dreamatorium, since they had taken it down after Evil Abed's attempt at ruining their timeline, the guys had somehow rigged the entire house to be their playroom now.

And though Annie liked to keep it clean and orange paint tape free, and liked to keep forks out of walls and out of people's sides, she was willing to give it her all in Nerf Gun battles and using toothpaste as war paint (which was painful so they had only done it once), see how many sour patch kids they could stuff into each other's mouths, toast in the shower pranks, heck all of the pranks.

Like the one she was about to pull.

Sure she had to wait a few hours to get started so they would be fully in their REM cycle, but she could wait. She was patient.

Because pranking had taken over their apartment.

It had happened when summer school had ended.

And it was so time for pay back.

So she watched them enter their room, exhausted. She had been the one that had insisted on movie night so late, had taken too long of a shower on purpose, had lounged about making her portion of dinner, so it had been even later.

Excessive? Maybe.

Worth it? Oh it was so going to be.

"Annie."

Abed startled her out of her conniving.

"Yes?" she replied curtly. Too curtly.

Abed tilted his head.

Oh no. What if he found her out now, at this stage in the game?

"Should you brush your teeth first, or should I?"

Phew! Close call!

"You go first," she sighed, relieved.

"Are you sure? Normally you go first."

"Oh," Annie furrowed her brow. She couldn't break pattern, not with Abed scrutinizing her, "Right. Yeah! I'm gonna go first."

"But I thought you said-."

"Changed my mind," she told him, almost too forcefully, heading towards the bathroom with too much bounce.

She was going to get caught for sure.

Annie pulled out her tooth brush from her hide out, and started the process of getting ready for bed.

She was too antsy.

It was time for patience.

She had to remember that, she reminded herself as she spit into the sink. She looked at herself in the mirror, and found bags under her eyes.

And maybe a few hours of sleep.

Annie slumped back to her room, teeth and face squeaky clean.

"You done with the bathroom?"

Why was Abed catching her so off guard tonight?

It had to be the tension.

It was going to be such a good prank.

"Yep," she said too easily, and wondered if it made her sound guilty at all. The way that Abed kept looking at her made her think it was. "Um, yes," she grinned, giving a thumbs up. Still too guilty and still five feet from the door. "Yep." Two feet away and those eyes were so unrelenting, "Yeppers." She was in her room, she could hide behind her door. Safety! Finally! "Yepper-ooney," she added faintly, giving one last thumbs up.

She shut the door behind her.

He knew-

No. No. No he didn't.

She was tired. It was late. Every excuse to act weird right?

He didn't know there was a prank.

Everything was going to be fine.

She just needed a few hours of sleep.

Annie put her phone on vibrate, set an alarm, stuck it under her pillows, and counted a few sheep, and told herself that if she didn't wake up when the alarm went off she would kick herself in the bu…

Sleep took her. Maybe she had been more tired than she thought.

But then-

The alarm went off.

She felt her pillow hum against her face.

She woke up.

And smiled.

Time for pay back.

She had picked a black outfit, and had gathered her supplies: a pair of handcuffs, a bottle of honey, twine, plastic wrap, a bucket full of feathers, speakers, zip ties, and a box of Legos. She smiled to herself as she looked to the boy's bedroom door.

Because they had gotten her last. And they were good.

For example, it had been raining a few weeks ago. When Annie had made to go to babysit Shirley's kids, she had grabbed her raincoat and umbrella, and headed for her car. When she opened up her umbrella over her head, flour had exploded, cascading around her in the lobby. She stared out into the rain for half a moment, spluttering flour dust and blinking the white powder out of her eyelashes, before she twisted her mouth.

Those boys were SO going to get it.

Of course, the flour had to be in retaliation of the cake fight she'd initiated. She'd made them cake "for no reason," which had been cause of worry. Troy had been concerned about food poisoning to the point of it killing them, but Abed had explained Annie was a normally non-violent person, and that it had to be something else. Annie insisted it had been cake innocently made. Finally, the only option was to eat it to discover what had been done to it, but as they ate it, she cried out, "I think I see something in your cake!" They both looked down in unison- she pushed their plates right into their faces. That had, of course, resulted in a massive cake fight, where the apartment had ended up one sticky mess, and they had all been sufficiently smeared with the stuff, laughing together on the tile floor.

This whole thing hadn't been started by her, though they insisted it had been. Troy had replaced the lotion in her bottle with mayonnaise on purpose and she hadn't meant to turn all of Troy's whites pink! She hadn't seen her red bra in there- he shouldn't have asked her to do his laundry darn it! It wasn't her fault!

And initially it had been just her verses Troy. This had consisted of her putting a rat on his bunk in his room, and him hanging her lingerie out in the lobby for everyone to see (those had been more vindictive times). And she was still missing her favorite red bra, the one that had ruined Troy's whites.

But when Abed had used one of Troy's towels instead of one of his own, and there had been blue Kool-Aid powdered onto the towel, so when he had dried off, he had inserted himself into the pranking game.

He had come out in the same towel to both Annie and Troy, who had been eating their breakfast with thinly veiled animosity, looking like a Smurf, causing Annie to choke on her Cheerios and Troy to spew his Lucky Charms everywhere.

He stared at them, and if anyone else but those two had been in the room, they would have thought that he sounded like a robot, but both Annie and Troy balked as he said impassively, "I just wanted you two to know, that before while I thought that this game was maybe a good idea for a backsplash comedic arc in the series for a season or two that I would sit back and watch while you two hashed it out, this is now something I'm going to be participating in and it'll only last for less than a season until one of us or all three of us does something awkward enough for it to take up an entire episode and stop." He turned back to the bathroom, and walked through the door, before popping out again and pointing at them, "And you two better watch your backs."

He shut the bathroom door.

They stared at where he'd been moments before blankly, when Troy turned to her.

"You were going to turn me blue? That would have been awesome!"

Abed had gotten back at them the very next day. He'd tied a rope around each of their door handles, leaving enough slack that they could poke their faces through and yell at one another and at him, as he sat in his bathrobe and ate his breakfast in between them nonchalantly, watching each of them go back and forth like a tennis match.

Ever since Abed had joined, though, the pranks had become less embarrassing, and it had become more of a pastime between the three of them. Without school Annie found herself staying up late planning pranks instead of studying.

Of course, though it had started out as every man for themselves, Abed and Troy had soon started teaming up more frequently. Like framing her door with newspaper and then filling the gap between the door and newspaper with packing peanuts so that when she opened the door the packing peanuts avalanched into her room.

But it was alright. She had more than enough ways to get back at them.

In the middle of the night, she had snuck out to Abed's DVD collection, and had mismatched DVD cases with their DVDs. So when Abed went to pop in Batman Begins, he gotten season one disc three of Mad Men. That had freaked him out so bad he'd nearly had a break down. But he'd soon gotten revenge.

She also replaced their candy cigarettes with real cigarettes. The result had been satisfying.

Of course, they had woken her up one morning with a, "Annie, are you up? School starts in like fifteen minutes!" She had scrambled out of bed, freaking out because she hadn't even laid out her clothes or packed her bag or thought of a decent breakfast to eat or anything! When she'd come running out, still pulling on her shoes with one hand and frantically holding her hair up so she could use the bobby pins she'd stuck in her mouth and found them both sitting there, in their recliners that they'd lined up to watch her door with smug smiles on their faces, she had jabbed at them with her bobby pins until they'd tactically retreated into their bedroom.

It had escalated since then. After all, it had been going on all summer break. And though they were good, she was better. She was going to prove it once and for all.

On the down side, she was getting pretty paranoid though. She double checked everything she ate, since she didn't want her mouth dyed purple again, she kept most of her things in her room, locked at all times for various reasons, and she was always looking over her shoulder in case they tried to freak her out with that gorilla suit again.

But because of it, the boy's pranks had become less frequent, and more extreme.

And it was her turn.

She was almost done. The zip ties were tied, the legos were set out neatly and perfectly-. Everything had gone smoothly thus far. She was almost ready to breathe a sigh of relief. Almost. Not yet.

She was putting the last of the plastic wrap over the door, giddy with excitement. She was SO getting them back. And the sun was just beginning to rise.

The plastic wrap was secure.

Time to initiate pay back.

She sat lazily in a recliner, pulled out her iPod, and connected it to the speakers.

And let the good times roll.

"Gimme Gimme Gimme" by ABBA blared into life, rocking the apartment complex. (Ever since the Halloween two years ago they'd all had somewhat of a fear of anything ABBA playing too loudly if they weren't mentally prepared. Thank goodness she'd built up an immunity to it.)

She watched them leap out of bed, Troy jumping down from his bunk to the floor as though ready to fight a horde of zombies or something. He saw Annie smiling at him, and she threw in a wave, before pointing to the time.

The clock read 5:52 AM.

Troy shouted his horror. "NO! Five o'clock only comes once a day! Only o-uh-uh-uhnce!" he cried.

By now Abed had sat up- and knocked the honey right onto his head. She giggled as the goo seeped into his hair, dripped down his face- and he discovered that his hands were cuffed together as he tried to wipe it away.

"Abed!"

"I'm ok," Abed said, tasting the dribbling honey that was now dribbling over his eyes, "Just sticky. And she handcuffed me."

"And I've got the key," chimed Annie, holding it up for them both to see.

Troy turned back from watching the damage done to Abed, "Bad choice, Annie-."

Abed was licking his face, unable to see due to the honey, and was unable to warn Troy as he ran full tilt-

Into the invisible plastic wrap she'd taped over the open doorway on the door frame.

He bounced right off of it, stumbling backwards, and stared at the door in confusion, and then at Annie, "You created a force field?!"

Abed had wiped a good deal of the honey from his eyes with his cuffed hands, though his eyelashes were still sticking together, "She used plastic wrap."

"Oh!" he made the connection in his head, "You think you got the best of me?" He made to run at it again-

"Troy!" Abed directed, standing awkwardly (lack of balance from hands being cuffed together) and handing him an Exact-o knife, "Use slice. It'll be more effective."

Troy grinned evilly up at Annie, before replying, "Gotcha."

It was time for Annie to run.

She leapt up from her chair just as the guys cut through the plastic wrap.

Troy ran through first- and ran right onto the patch of Legos she'd laid out on the floor in front of their door.

He stumbled down onto his knees, crippled by the pain, howling, "The pain!"

Abed nimbly leapt over Troy and the Lego trap as Annie dashed into the kitchen, stuffing the key in her bra as she went.

She was making for the bathroom, her safe zone, where her last prank was. She reached out for the bucket as she heard Abed behind her, and with a triumphant, "HA!" she spun around and tossed the bucket's contents onto his head.

The feathers flew in front of his face, sticking to him, making him stop just long enough that she was able to run into the bathroom and almost shut the door behind her. Almost.

Abed wedged half of himself through just in time- he was so skinny! And he was wiggling his way through far too persistently.

No! Her plan was failing!

"Go away!" she threatened, pressing herself into the door to keep him from invading.

"So you can lock yourself indefinitely in the bathroom while we are stuck on the outside?" Abed wondered aloud, before frowning, "No."

"Abed! Get- out!" she shoved hard against door.

Abed called flatly, "Troy, I need back up."

"I'm comin'!" Troy shouted and Annie heard his feet pounding towards the door.

Annie's eyes widened as she realized what was going to happen, "No wait-!" She stepped back from it just in time as-

Troy slammed himself through the door.

Annie fell backwards, pieces of door scattering around her.

Her head smacked on the tile, door shrapnel flying everywhere and there was Troy, in slow motion, flying to her left, eyes wide and mouth open in terror, arms snatching at nothing to try and catch himself-

Something slammed into her, on top of her, and knocked the air from her lungs.

Abed was staring at her face- Abed, with honey dripping from his long nose and feathers instead of hair, and she wanted to smile, because it was so ridiculous.

But she couldn't breathe.

She couldn't breathe!

Abed cocked his head at her, "Are you alright?"

"Ugh, I hit my face on the tub," Troy groaned, sitting up on his elbows. "How about you?"

She really couldn't breathe-

"I think something's wrong with Annie," Abed said, brows furrowing as he stared at her, "She looks like a fish out of water."

"No, more like-," but Troy stopped himself, "Hey, hey Abed. Get off of her."

He tilted his head at Troy, "Why?"

"No, seriously, get off of her- she can't breathe-," Troy was grabbing at Abed's pajama top.

"Oh," Abed looked down at Annie analytically, "That makes sense." He pushed away from her, before suggesting, "You should sit up."

"Hee hee who, hee hee who," Troy said soothingly as he and Abed helped her to sit up.

No breathing- no air.

Abed looked over at Troy, "That's for women in labor."

"Oh. Right." Troy nodded, confused momentarily, before shouting, "Breathe Annie breathe!"

But she couldn't- and she couldn't think- and it was freaking her out-

" Try and breathe slowly. Stop panicking," Abed told her, patting her on the back until-.

She gasped aloud.

Her lungs had opened up again.

Air, glorious air.

"Whew!" Troy sounded so relieved. "Annie I thought you were gonna die!"

"Actually people can go without air for six minutes without dying," Abed told him matter of factly, before turning to Annie, "Are you alright?" Abed wanted to know, pulling a stray feather out of her hair.

"Yeah," she nodded to the two of them, blinking around at them, "Yeah I'm fine."

She looked to Troy, and then to Abed, who still was covered in honey and feathers.

And then the three of them busted up laughing.