Author's Note: There is no way in Hell that this chapter can measure up to all the grand things I had planned for it. I'm sorry, readers. Mea culpa.

On the other hand . . . Ninjas. On KP.

Rating: T for language.

Disclaimer: G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.


Chapter Nine: The Fork in the Microwave

Tap, tap, tap. The soft sound of pen against paper, and the international sign for "how the hell do I write this letter?"

Curled up in her bunk, Annie sighed and hunched over her notepad, trying to concentrate. Stress and lack of sleep had conspired to give her a rampaging headache, but there wasn't much to be done about it: she had to write that letter, come hell or high water, and it would be easier to get it done if she wasn't on painkillers at the same time. Writing to this particular person required all the cunning and verbal agility she could muster.

Dear Ma,

There. That was safe enough.

I write this from an unknown destination-

No. Wrong wrong wrong. Sarah-Ellen Barindowsky "Ma" Gorshin was not the sort of person you could use unusual turns of phrase with. Ma . . . well, if Ma had been in G.I. Joe, her name would be Eavesdrop. Gossip was her raison d'etre, and she had a flawless memory and an eerily encyclopedic knowledge of both the world and her daughter. If Annie used that opening, Ma would see the stilted, formal language and instantly deduce that her daughter was keeping secrets from her. Which, technically speaking, Annie was: secrets don't come more secret than the big "CLASSIFIED" stamp on her deployment orders. But she had to write the letter, because some people you just don't screw with. General Hawk had nothing on Ma.

Well, there was always the last resort. Telling the truth. Or most of the truth, anyway: never an easy proposition when your mother's involved, and especially not after a really, really bad day. Annie cringed and began again.

I don't know where I'm going yet, because there's been some industrial accidents here (true enough, when you considered that war involved numerous industries and that bullets winding up anywhere near a quartermaster could be definitely called an accident) and all of us are being reassigned while they get the place cleaned up. Don't worry, I'm okay! But it's another one of those need-to-know things, and I'm not high enough to need to know. I'll give you the forwarding address for the mail as soon as I get it.

Thanks for the last letter. In answer to your question—yes, there's lots of good-looking guys around here, and yes, they don't mind dating so much in this outfit, but no, I'm not asking any of them out. I'm a- greenshirt?-rookie here and anyway, I think they're all a little nutty. Nice, but nutty. There're two different dog handlers who treat their dogs like human beings, a guy who swears he's freezing any time the thermometer drops below sixty-five, and this combat teacher named Tommy who acts like a smug jackass. Plus, grunts and quartermasters don't mix. Give up on the future grandchildren, okay?

I did some work with the sharpshooting class not too long ago. The teacher is a guy named- Low Light?-Lou, and he doesn't talk much, but he said if I can stop humming I might be able to score more time with the class. The PT instructor said I should consider gluing my mouth shut, but I'm pretty sure he was joking. I think he's angry that his obstacle course was one of the things that got messed up.

I might not be able to write much for a while because there's a lot of tension around here. Some people think the accident might not have been an accident—

Annie paused and frowned at the paper. Was there a better way to put that? She wasn't sure. Maybe she could just not send the letter.

Writing letters had never been her strong suit, but Ma freaked out if she didn't send at least one a week. She knew for a fact that every photo she'd ever sent home went on the big message board in the diner, and that Ma got some kind of perverse pride out of telling people about Annie's postings in dangerous territory. Too bad she couldn't own up entirely—Ma would've adored those Cobra bastards, especially the one that Annie had put a bullet in. But secret was secret.

Her brain gave a throb, and she put her head down on her knees and groaned. Why was writing to her mother harder than shooting a man? Maybe it was that the man didn't look like a man; he'd looked like, well, a purple-suited robot with a really big gun. But she couldn't deal with her Ma by shooting her. Knowing Ma, she'd just get right back up and threaten to make Annie serve Mr. Klepczak in booth twelve, who was remarkably indiscriminate about whose ass he grabbed.

-the accident might not have been an accident. They think someone might have been pulling a prank, so everyone's on edge and they're trying to find out who did it. All us newbies got questioned, but I've got an alibi you could use for a rolling pin, so nobody's getting in my face about it.

I'm doing really well, though. That guy I mentioned—the guy who freezes if it's not frying out—is actually a qualified refrigerator repairer, so he's been helping us get all the units here fixed up before we move out. His name is—

Damn. What was his name, anyway? She couldn't put "Dusty" in a letter, because Ma loved codenames and would repeat them at every opportunity. It had been all right when Annie's letters mentioned D12 (corpsman in Korea, so-called because nobody could pronounce "Doschevitzen"), Recon (engineer in Germany, real name Rincohn) or SassyAss (long story), but Dusty was an official-type Joe codename and it would be a major breach of secrecy to use it in a civilian communique. Yet it would look strange if she mentioned someone in greater detail and never mentioned his name . . .

Oh, well. Compromise time. Thank God Ma would never meet any of these people.

His name is Sandy. It's kind of nice to have him in the kitchen, because he's very friendly and funny. Not like Sna a pair of sergeants I got on KP today. They were complete nightmares. Sandy says that sometimes people act like that when they're overstressed.

She stopped again, tapping the pen against her lips as she thought. "Overstressed." Hah. Not a good word for ninjas, but about as close as she could get. After all, they were very tightly-wound . . . and they sure stressed her out.

Hoo boy. The ninjas. Those two were definitely up Ma's alley. They were straight out of those TV shows she liked—the ones she'd started on after she'd dumped Star Trek for being too dull. (Read: peaceful.) But Ma never had to have those insanely-skilled, sneaky, loathesome geniuses of torment under her control. Especially not after she'd made the mistake of pissing them off.


Eighteen hours earlier . . .

They were grouchy. She was grouchy.

They didn't want to be there. Neither did she.

They were being punished for trying to kill a prisoner of the United States government. She was being punished for shoving a jarhead under a sink.

This was war.

Annie was in the kitchen long before she was due to be up. There weren't any other KP assignments today: it was as if some mysterious thing had spooked everyone into good behavior. That was fine with her. It's easier to plan your counterattack if there's nobody around, tripping over your plans.

Plotting music! She needed plotting music. She flipped on the radio, surfing through the various channels before settling on "Eye of the Tiger." Which, given that the ninjas made her feel like just as much of a grade-school dropout as Rocky Balboa ever was, could be considered perfectly appropriate. She cranked the volume up, ignoring the off-kilter looks from the cleaning personnel swabbing out the ovens, and surveyed her territory.

Technically speaking, a ninja in the kitchen ought to be a cook's dream come true. Annie had visited one of those newfangled sushi restaurants once, where the chef flipped the ingredients and cut eggs in half in midair; clearly, some measure of practice at stabbing and slicing things could help in cooking. But those chefs . . . well, they weren't ninjas. Especially not cranky, angry, sneaky-bastard ninjas like Storm Shadow and Snake-Eyes.

In an ideal world, this could have turned into something good. The two different groups of high school misfits, put on detention together, teaming up to make grouchy ol' Principal Abernathy's life a living hell. Maybe Annie could have been played by Molly Ringwald. (Storm Shadow? He could be that punk kid from the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.) Annie liked this scenario, but rejected it for two reasons: 1) she was actually on Abernathy's side on this, and 2) attempting to murder an enemy prisoner of war probably counted as something slightly worse than "wacky hijinks."

Annie was forced to face the facts. In only a few hours, there would be two hostile engines of death under her personal command, doubtless remembering everything she made them do and planning to give it back to her in spades. She had three options. Firstly, she could cry like a girl. This was tempting, and doubtless therapeutic, but not technically helpful. Secondly, she could try to cooperate with the ninjas. This was also tempting, and a little more likely to succeed, but would involve a truly staggering amount of grovelling for no guaranteed payback. Ninjas were frightening, vindictive, and pointy.

Thirdly, she could do everything in her power to make their lives miserable. Worryingly, this was the most tempting of all.

Of course, she knew that she would be in hand-to-hand Hell for the next forever if she went forward with that plan. Annie was under no illusions: her handful of days in G.I. Joe had already shown her that there was far more going on with the unit than she had ever imagined, and that the ninjas were a big part of it. She was a cog in the domestic machine, and they were some of the finest warriors on the planet. For a ninja, a personality disorder was probably required by law, and she would be bucking for serious pain if she decided to deliberately irritate them.

But the little voice in her head—the voice you should never, ever listen to—was pointing out that no matter what she did, the grouchy commandos would cause her misery. What was that old saying? Might as well be hanged for a sheep as be hung like a lamb? Something like that. And frankly, torturing the ninjas was the only possibility that offered an equal payback in schadenfreude for the pain she was sure to suffer.

"To know an enemy, you must understand the enemy," Sun Tzu probably said. Annie's knowledge of classical texts stopped dead at her seventh-grade report on the Canterbury Tales, but the deathless possible-words of the great tactician made good sense. She couldn't outmuscle the ninjas, and she certainly couldn't out-sadism them. (Was that even a verb? Could you sadism somebody?) And they would take any opportunity she gave them to terrorize the kitchen staff. So how could she inflict maximum pain without giving them that opportunity?

It was then, standing there in the kitchen with "Eye of the Tiger" fading into a commercial for Hop 'n Gator ("the beer with Gatorade!"), that Annie had her great inspiration.


PT the next morning was strange, to say the least. The other quartermasters were giving her a wide berth, although Whiskey Down kept shooting her inquisitive glances and Eighty-Six impulsively hugged her before they went onto the obstacle course. Even Sgt. Major Beach Head was acting weird—which is to say he laughed when he saw her and didn't bellow her into temporary deafness more than three times. By the time the cooks hit the showers, Annie had the distinct feeling of wearing a scarlet letter. D for Dead Meat, maybe.

Breakfast preparations went forward as usual. Dash for the showers, scrub like hell to get all the PT grit off in less than five minutes before grabbing clean cammies and stampeding for the kitchen. Fire up the grill, crack open three more ten-gallon jugs of milk for the dispensers at the cereal station. Pancakes again this morning, with pear compote and cinnamon, and this time there were no KP monkeys to help. Except . . .

"Good morning."

Annie could have sworn she was in the clear. She had had her back to the room for approximately three seconds while she fumbled with a container of condensed milk, but her ears were open and she was more than ready. Okay, she had been telling herself. Let's go. Let's do this. Bring it on. Hasta la vista, baby. Then, for the handful of seconds that it took her to find one can of pears, the ninjas materialized. Right behind her.

It turns out that cans of pears in syrup are really, really heavy when dropped from shoulder height. Also, that rubber kitchen clogs don't protect your toes nearly as well as desert boots.

"Um." Said this mistress of composure.

Both ninjas had clearly just come off of PT themselves. Storm Shadow was wearing a white tank top and gray sweats, and the top had turned almost transparent after a good soaking in one of Beach Head's many inventive pits o' doom; Annie could see the fuzzy outlines of several unusual markings, and she guessed that if she stuck her head a bit closer, she could see quite a few scars on his chest. (She didn't, however. Despite evidence to the contrary, the quartermaster did not in fact have a death wish.) Snake-Eyes was just in his usual skinsuit. Both ninjas were dripping wet and covered in gray-green mud, although Annie couldn't help noting that there were no muddy footprints leading from the door. She didn't dare glance up at the ceiling, but made a mental note to get the janitorial staff into the air ducts with mops later.

"Storm Shadow and Snake-Eyes, reporting for KP," said the more talkative of the ninjas with crisp officialness. Only the glint in Storm's eye gave away the fact that he was feeling less than a hundred percent happy with the current situation. In fact, if Annie had learned anything in her past few days in the Pit, that glint could be called "manic." Or possibly "plotting."

"Here, as ordered," Storm added calmly. Annie took a deep breath, trying to steady her nerves. Normally, when ninjas were calm, pain happened. But she'd pretty much resigned herself to that when she made her plan, so . . . Against all odds, she found herself cracking a small grin. After a certain point, she told herself, there was nothing more that they could do to her. The ball was in her court.

"Good," she said, crossing her arms. "For starters, you two are absolutely filthy. That's against hygiene regulations. Both of you, go scrub up now, and quickly. Kitchen clogs and rubber gloves are by the door."

She wasn't sure what Storm Shadow had been expecting. Maybe he was used to terrorizing kitchen staff and had expected deference; she hadn't been around long enough to know for sure. Or maybe it was the opposite, that he had thought she would start barking orders and making him clean grease traps. (It had been tempting, to say the least.) But though she was a quartermaster now, Annie was still at heart a waitress—and waitresses can't either yell or kowtow. They have to be subtle.

And they know a lot about making customers' lives miserable. Annie giggled inwardly, thinking of her plan.

At least the ninjas cleaned up quickly; they reappeared behind her again less than a minute later. (At least, so she noted after she was finished having a minor heart attack.) Nobody could make rubber clogs and gloves look good, but they seemed to be bearing the indignity with their usual aplomb. At least, Snake-Eyes was . . . as far as Annie could tell through his clean mask, which was thick enough to effectively conceal any facial expressions. Storm Shadow still seemed to be tense, waiting to spring. It was obvious: he hated being there, he hated the fact that he was there because he'd tried to kill a man who he thought deserved to die, and he hated the oversized petunia-pink rubber gloves that had been the only set left on the rack. Annie couldn't blame him on that last count, but the other two meant that she had to tread carefully. At least, in the beginning.

"All right, sergeants," she said, turning back to the pair. The other quartermasters had given up trying to get her to contribute to that morning's breakfast; instead, both the QMs and their assistants steered a wide berth around the trio, somehow managing to convey that they saw absolutely nothing at all and yet inexplicably decided to avoid that particular area of the kitchen for some reason. Maybe it fell under the United States' rules about letting the condemned die with dignity. "Let's get to work."

Storm Shadow's facade cracked just a little, and a sly grin crossed his lips. Evidently, he thought he had the upper hand. For a moment, Annie almost pitied him. "What is it, Short Stack?" he said. "Grease traps? Garbage duty?" The grin widened. "Knife sharpening?"

All activities with potential for chaos. (Whiskey Down had once favored her with an explanation about those interesting slash marks in the linoleum, and Annie had learned her lesson well.) But unfortunately for the ninjas, chaos wasn't part of the Plan. She turned back to her station and retrieved two small objects, holding them up for the commandos to see.

"Know what this is?"

The objects were rectangular and made of metal, and shaped so that one slid seamlessly into the other to make a complete metal box. The box had a thin slit in one end of it, with the edges smoothed over as if by long use. The ninjas contemplated it for a moment as Annie slid the pieces apart again.

"An extremely dull puzzle," Storm Shadow said dryly. Snake-Eyes signed something which Annie didn't catch, but Storm Shadow nodded. "Ah. My sword-brother's superior knowledge of kitchen accessories has bested me. He says it's a napkin dispenser."

"Correct." Annie reassembled and disassembled the dispenser again. "There are fifty napkin dispensers in the mess. Four are the large industrial models, the rest are on the individual tables. Forty more are scattered throughout the Pit, in the kitchenettes and janitor's closets. You two are going to fill every one."

There was a moment of silence, and then Storm's eyes narrowed slightly. "That's it?" he said. "Fill napkin dispensers?"

Annie nodded. She didn't have to be Psyche-Out to guess that Storm Shadow was wondering what the catch was. It wasn't an obvious attempt at humiliating them, it wasn't an onerous duty that she was clearly pushing off onto them . . . And she could almost see the penny drop. And there was no potential for chaos.

Oh, Annie was sure that the two of them could come up with something, given a bit of time. But she didn't intend to let them have that time. "Insert the napkin stack sideways, like this," she quickly rattled off, demonstrating the procedure as quickly as possible. "Napkins are in the boxes by the drawer. One dispenser on every table. Go."

Exchanging inscrutable glances, the ninjas complied. Annie waited until they were out of sight before allowing herself a small, secret grin. Chew on that, boys.

It is a universal fact of life that ninjas are easily bored. When you're capable of improvising a weapon out of almost anything at hand, constantly thinking fifteen moves ahead of everybody else in the room, and in possession of a reputation that would make Chairman Mao piss his pants in sheer terror, a lot of what happens in life just doesn't bother you. Consequently, there are lot fewer things to occupy your amazing ninja brain, and boredom quickly results.

Previous attempts at putting the ninjas on KP had resulted in the varying disasters known only as the Incidents. There had been the Soap Incident, when the Joes' former head of food services had decided that what Storm and Snake needed was to spend a few hours on their hands and knees scrubbing every inch of the kitchen tile. One broken femur and an impromptu skating competition later, Whiskey Down had been hastily promoted to fill the position and promptly instituted a policy of "no ninjas. Ever." But the executive orders of a quartermaster are nothing compared to the force of Murphy's Law, and Incidents continued to happen with fair regularity.

Shingle had once decided to utilize Storm's skills by, yes, putting him on knife-sharpening duty. Unfortunately, people who routinely chop through bone take the notion of "sharp as you can" very seriously, and the next cleaver Shingle had been handed actually went through the cutting board, through the counter, and narrowly avoided doing serious damage to the plumbing. People were still finding hand-eating cutlery in the backs of the drawers. The Cleaver Incident was rarely mentioned again.

And nobody wanted to talk about Snake-Eyes' spell with the dishwasher.

It isn't that ninjas are evil. (Technically.) What they are, especially when confronted with the authority of non-ninjas whom they don't respect, is anarchic.

So why are we dragging out all this ancient history? Because, dear reader, while Annie Gorshin smiled her little secret smile in the kitchen, she did not have the opportunity to directly observe what sort of effect her Plan was having on the ninjas currently reassembling the twenty-ninth and thirtieth napkin dispensers. It happens that, just as she had anticipated, the humble napkin dispenser is not a device well-suited to anarchy.

It could be dropped—once or twice, for comedic effect, but all you'd get was a dinged-up dispenser and everybody in the mess hall wondering why the ninjas were suddenly getting clumsy. Ditto throwing it: while hurling a metal box at someone's head was tempting, it was also very difficult to pass off as either an accident or a direct consequence of the duty being assigned, and ninja creed dictated that they had to be more subtle than just flat-out braining somebody for giving them a boring duty. Snake-Eyes, who despite being one of the world's most deadliest men had the kind of calm that can only be acquired by growing up in a peaceful, loving farm family, managed to amuse himself by seeing how quickly he could get done with his half of the mess. Storm Shadow, who had the kind of calm that can only be acquired by growing up in a dojo full of shadowy assassins and being sent into Vietnam because said assassins thought it would "settle him down a bit," was not so easily distracted.

By the time they had hunted down and filled every dispenser in the Pit, more than a half-hour had passed and Storm Shadow was getting noticeably irritated. Dull, repetitive work with no potential for chaos was anathema to him. Worse, he was only doing that dull, repetitive work because of an incident stemming from his notable lack of control in the first place.

Which meant that, when they returned to the kitchen, Storm Shadow was not feeling terribly charitable towards the whole endeavor.

And what Annie had failed to figure was that a ninja doesn't need any props to cause chaos.

After the dispensers, they refilled every salt and pepper shaker in the Pit. Then they alphabetized the canned foods.

By the time they were finished with the cans, Annie was beginning to feel downright confident. The more talkative of the two ninjas was visibly sulky, but he seemed unable to find any way to retaliate without making himself look like an idiot. Snake-Eyes was, as ever, silent and stolid—and of course, much harder to figure. Annie would have been more comfortable if she could have seen both her KP monkeys' faces, but even after only a few days in the Pit, she understood that asking Snake-Eyes to unmask was a major no-no. Besides, Storm Shadow's expression was sour enough for both of them. She cracked a bit of a smug smile as she ordered them to go and make sure every bottle of sauce and juice in the fridge had its cap screwed on tight.

Then Storm Shadow smiled back.

Annie froze. For a moment, she swore a bucket of cold water had been dumped down the back of her neck. It wasn't a big smile—she had never yet seen Storm Shadow do anything that could be described as a grin—but it was all the worse for that, small and secret and just a little bit sly. She glanced across the room at the industrial-sized walk-in fridge, where she knew that four dozen bottles of various descriptions were being stored. Most of them would be transported to the new Pit in refrigerated trucks, and if their caps weren't on tight, something might spill or spoil. It seemed innocuous enough, but-

Her eyes narrowed. "Something funny, sergeant?" she said. The white-clad ninja just smiled back, and Annie mentally called on the Spirit of the Great God Beach Head to keep from twitching. That same smile had previously presaged four (4) very painful sparring sessions, three (3) instances of making Annie certain she had swallowed her own lungs out of sheer exhaustion, and one (1) mental promise to get the hell out of the service as soon as her tour was up. However, she was determined not to be beaten. It was just a smile. She still had the upper hand.

"All right, if you're having such a good time, then you can put that cheerful disposition to work." Annie checked her clipboard, mentally ordering herself not to freak out. People smiled all the time, after all. "Once you're finished with the bottles, you can take the latest batch of dirty aprons down to the laundry. Remember, we need to have this place spic-and-span before we pull out tomorrow."

"The laundry?" Storm Shadow said, raising an eyebrow.

" . . I know you're not deaf, sergeant. Dusty swears that you can hear what color of undershorts someone's got on."

"The laundry." Storm Shadow nodded to Snake-Eyes, who responded with a complicated gesture and nodded back. Was he . . . was he grinning too? Annie's eyes narrowed. It was hard to tell under the mask. She had never seen Sgt. Snake-Eyes grin.

"You're right, brother. They do have ironing boards down there."

"Planning something?" Annie said rather loudly. If she hoped to disrupt their plans, it didn't work. Storm Shadow just gave her an innocent-as-a-lamb face and headed off towards the walk-in fridge and the dozens of bottles that awaited them.

As soon as they were gone, Annie leaned back against the wall and took a deep breath, her hands over her eyes. The laundry. She hadn't been planning to send them to the laundry. She'd had everything figured out in the kitchen, all the angles, but she hadn't even thought about . . . dammit! They hadn't even done anything yet, and she was already worrying! Deep breaths, girl. Annie tried to focus, remember Storm Shadow's sour look from earlier. They were probably just covering up how pissed they were that she had foiled their plan.

But still, the little voice at the back of her mind pestered her. It wasn't the same voice that had persuaded her to try this plan; no, this was a different voice, the voice every waitress possesses. The one that says Table 4 looks ready to dine-and-dash and No, no matter how many times he's tried to grope your butt, you are not slick enough to make dumping hot soup on him look like an accident. The voice of intelligent self-preservation. Annie wasn't very familiar with it.

Glancing around the kitchen, her eyes lit on a well-known figure. Despite being a desert trooper, Dusty Tadur did indeed specialize in refrigerator repair, and he was currently inspecting one of the kitchen's chest freezers in preparation for tomorrow's big shut-down. He'd been in Joe for a while, and he seemed not to be too insane. Annie scooted over towards him.

"Dusty?" she said cautiously.

"Yeah?" came the voice, echoing slightly due to the fact that he had his head crammed into a freezer. "What's up?"

"I just told the ninjas to take something to the laundry."

Dusty pulled his head out of the freezer. He was wearing his usual desert cammies, but though the sheikh-like headdress was gone, the goggles were still lodged haphazardly on his forehead. A thin layer of frost had formed on the lenses.

"Y'know," he said conversationally, "you're going to die soon."

Annie groaned a little. "Sarcasm isn't going to help. Please, Dusty. I had them under control before. Everything was going great. Tell me what I did wrong just now."

The desert trooper paused for a moment, considering. "You did do one thing wrong," he conceded.

"Yes?"

"You got the ninjas on KP."

Annie growled. "I had them beat. They shouldn't be smiling. I shouldn't be freaking out because they're smiling!" She made a fist and thumped it against the wall, glaring at nothing. "I hate this. I won! I shouldn't be getting nervous just because he grinned."

"Storm Shadow, huh?"

"Yeah."

"That just means you're smart. It's never good when Storm smiles." Dusty paused for a moment, wiping the frost off of his goggles. "It's like monkeys."

" . . . monkeys."

"Yep. Fear-grinning. Sometimes shows they're afraid, sometimes a method of showing dominance."

Annie tried very hard not to lose her temper. "Look . . . Dusty, I don't think monkeys are going to help me!"

"Sorry, Short Stack. I'm just the refrigerator guy right now." He ducked back into the chest freezer. Annie groaned and put a hand to her forehead, where a mother of a headache was forming.

Her eyes fixed on the other side of the kitchen, where the door to the huge walk-in fridge was just a crack open. The ninjas would be in there right now, screwing bottle lids back on. And maybe talking among themselves? She steadied herself and, trying not to breathe loudly, crept across the floor towards the fridge. Storm Shadow might have good hearing, but between the bustle of the kitchen and Annie's sniper-school sneakiness, she was willing to bet she could at least manage to get close. Not daring to even twitch, she planted herself against the door and put her ear to the crack.

There was a rattle of glass, and what sounded like a dog. No, not a dog—a strange huffing sound. It took her a moment to realize that it was Sgt. Snake-Eyes. Sgt. Snake-Eyes, the bacon-eating walking weapon man, was laughing. And Storm Shadow was too, making a sound that was less a laugh and more an eerie cackle.

"It's a good plan, brother," Storm Shadow said, catching his breath. He was whispering, apparently trying to avoid being overheard. Annie bit her lip. "Remember the last time?"

Another strange huffing laugh from the quieter of the ninja, and then a silent gap apparently occupied by a flurry of sign language. (Annie mentally promised herself that she would buy an ASL dictionary tomorrow.) Storm Shadow cackled again, the sound muffled by what sounded like his hand over his mouth. "Do you think they'll even let her stay on base after this?" Another pause. "You're one to talk, brother. You remember what you did to that greenie who tried to catch Scarlett in the shower . . ." Pause. "Are you kidding? The general won't do anything to us. A quartermaster versus his two best commandos." Pause. "Now is not the time to develop a conscience, brother. If you wanted to be nice, you shouldn't have suggested the ironing boards." Pause. "Well, if she won't send us to the laundry after all, we can still use the baking pans."

Oh God. Annie flattened herself against the wall, blocking out the rest of the conversation. That was it. They did have a plan, a big plan, one that could conceivably get her thrown out of G.I. Joe. She didn't know what happened to you if you got kicked from a super-secret 100% classified unit, but after meeting the robots and the guy who carried the laser gun, she was ready to guess that it involved brainwashing. And Area 51. She scuttled away from the door and hid behind her usual station, trying to ignore the bustling of the kitchen all around her and taking deep breaths.

"Dusty?" she said aloud. The desert trooper wasn't paying attention (or so she guessed, given that he had disappeared completely inside the freezer) but she had to say something. "What could they possibly do with an ironing board? Talk to me, Dusty. I'm scared."

"He can't hear you," Storm Shadow said. Right behind her.

Again.

"JESUS fucking CHRIST!"

Annie's shout carried. Heads turned, trays dropped, people stared. In the motor pool, Cover Girl looked up from the engine she was trying to pay attention to, and Beach Head looked up from the Cover Girl he was paying attention to. A mechanic paused as he clambered out of the cockpit of an AWEstriker, Whiskey Down dropped a can of peaches and swore, and a few levels above on the desert flats, two long-eared fennec foxes peered out of their burrow and wondered what the hell was going on now.

The ninjas were unruffled. "We finished the bottles," Storm Shadow reported, smiling coolly. "May we go to the laundry now, private?"

"Okay. Okay. Fine." Annie ran a hand over her face. "Just . . . look. Just tell me what you're planning, okay?"

Picture of innocence, as ever. "We're not planning anything, private. You told us to take the aprons to the-"

"What did you say about ironing boards earlier?"

"What about ironing boards?"

"You. Mentioned. Ironing boards."

"A laundry room has ironing boards, doesn't it?"

"Why would you care that there were ironing boards?"

"I like my uniforms ironed. Much more comfortable that way."

"Funny, because I've never seen you with creases on your ninja pajamas." Annie's grip on the edge of the counter was white-knuckled. "I don't even care at this point. Just tell me. And. Stop. Smiling."

The grin was wider than ever, and Annie thought she was going to scream. "What were we planning to do with the ironing boards, private?"

"Yes."

"You certain you want to hear, private?"

"Yes."

"Absolutely positive?"

She swallowed. It suddenly occurred to her that the ninja was only average height, but he sure didn't look it. Right then, Storm Shadow looked very, very tall, and his eyes were glinting in the harsh fluorescents of the kitchen. The diner in Illinois seemed a world away. " . . . yes."

"Nothing."

There was a moment of silence. Then Annie swallowed again and said "Excuse me?"

"Nothing."

" . . . you mean you're not telling me?" she hazarded, her voice hoarse. Somebody laughed in the background, and Annie wanted to punch them. "Why not? I won't—I mean, I don't mean—I'm not the one who put you on KP! Why are you torturing me?"

Storm Shadow shrugged. "No, I mean there was nothing we were planning. We made it all up."

For a moment, Annie's brain refused to believe that. "Dusty just told me! Ninjas can do anything. What are you planning? Tell me!"

The white-clad ninja yawned. "We were planning, Short Stack, to get you back for making us do useless tasks by tormenting you about a nonexistent prank. In short, we baited you and let your own fevered imagination do the work." He glanced at his watch, and another smile lit up his features. "Wouldn't you know! Breakfast is over. Come on, sword-brother."

He slid calmly past the stunned Annie, who was having trouble processing everything and had experienced what a later generation would refer to as a Mental Blue Screen of Death. Storm Shadow neatly shucked off the petunia-pink gloves and laid them, gentle as a lamb, on Annie's head. "Remember," he said, patting the stunned quartermaster on the shoulder. "Hand-to-hand is at two o'clock today."

And he was gone.


Years would go by. Teams would be disbanded and reformed. And almost a decade later, when Senior Quartermaster Anne Gorshin would be faced with a young recruit by the name of Sean Collins, she would take one look at him and turn to her staff. And she would say: "That boy is not coming into my kitchen."