Are you familiar with the term suspension of disbelief? As per Wikipedia, it's is a reader's willingness to ignore minor inconsistencies to enjoy a work of fiction. I'm introducing Hunter's replacement in this chapter, get some ropeand hang the mo fo.

From the spot he had picked for his three minute mid-afternoon breather, Captain James Baron could just make out what was left of the memorial erected in Lt. Hunter's honor after his death two weeks prior. He hadn't been able to catch whoever kept peeing on the sandbags propping up Hunter's boots and he wanted to. He was too much of a soldier to condone such blatant disrespect, personal feelings about the deceased aside. Halting the anonymous pisser was high in his to-do list but Hunter's death had lengthened it considerably. Captain Baron had been quick to discover Hunter's gift for alienating people invaluable in keeping their pettier problems at bay. Now, with a broken chain of command, each passing minute found him longing for a cattle prod or a whip.

He eyeballed the assorted paperwork piling up on his desk and the tab on one of the files there: First Lieutenant Kai Benally. It'd been left for him the night before with the news that Hunter's long awaited replacement was en-route from Saddam's hometown of Tikrit along with a large tub of industrial strength air freshener for the latrines. It was this very name from his XO's mouth that brought him out of his reverie. Reinforcements were in!

"Lieutenant Kai Benally, sir!"

"At ease," Baron ordered. Boots scuffed wood as the lieutenant complied, placing a copy of his orders before his new Captain. He looked over the letter sized printout, giddy with anticipation at the prospect of unloading the Filipino cook and the memorial pisser and every other trivial matter upping his daily consumption of Mylanta to a bottle and a half then appraised the new addition.

Benally sported a short patchy haircut –proof that hair cutting shouldn't be outsourced to third country nationals no matter how much money the practice saved, dark skin, prominent cheekbones and pupils lost in the dark irises of almond shaped eyes slighted slanted inward towards a small rounded nose. If pressed for a guess he might say Navajo and though there was no feathered headdress in sight he could bet she hadn't paid taxes a day in her life. Her life? Baron reached for the file he'd only had a chance to skim for ten seconds before reveille, before coffee, before breakfast and there was no denying it. Lt. Kai Benally did not have a penis, no need to check. F for female had been marked by every question inquiring after gender.

"You are a woman," he declared dumbly.

"Yes sir," her decidedly female voice agreed suppressing a chuckle.

Baron thumbed through the pages on the Lieutenant's file reading carefully at facts he'd only just absorbed a minute earlier when Monday was still behaving like a normal day.

"The officers and men of your Company who served under my command in this area the past month have conducted a series of most difficult operations with excellent results, and I wish to commend them for the splendid work that they have conducted. A spirit of willingness and enthusiasm to tackle most difficult assignments marked their duties throughout…" His voice trailed off as he continued reading the text of a two star General's commendation just under his breath.

"West Point graduate, position with psych ops." Baron continued to himself 'multiple language proficiency, made 1st lieutenant in record time.' He flipped through the last of the documentation and raised an eyebrow at a commendation by the same General where Kai Benally was one of three singularly named. He put the whole file aside and sighed. The cosmos had aligned.

"Any idea how you came to be the new platoon lieutenant in an infantry unit ma'am?"

"I was wondering about that myself, sir. Must have been a clerical error."

"That must be it." Baron reclined his chair. "I take it you are not at all inconvenienced then ma'am. This," he patted her file "reads like you got lost on the way to say… Colonel Ryan's outfit. Was that the case here?"

"I only know my orders Captain."

"You know Lieutenant, your papers are in order, you are no more or less qualified for this position than the man you are replacing and I think the gender policy is shit so I'm going to inform the powers that be that they screwed the pooch and as far as I'm concerned you got the job for however long it takes them to come looking for you."

"Thank you sir," she said.

"Hold that thought ma'am because your first task of the day is getting it through to the cook that she can't scratch her ass and serve my food without a very long and thorough trip to the restroom to wash her hands in between. And that goes for scratching anything else on her. Have fun. She's only speaks Tagalog."

"Yes sir."

"Welcome to my week Lieutenant."

Ta da! I'm still hoping us writers of FanFiction band together and devise a standard Hunter Replacement. It's my fantasy world okay? In this parallel universe I walk around in a silk kimono and Belgian chocolate is not prohibitively expensive so no boring rules apply. Meanwhile, I'll have a lot of time in my hands for the next six weeks and I wanted to have fun with the role. If after taking all these facts into consideration you still wish to tell me there's not enough disbelief to suspend to that a female platoon lieutenant in this particular scenario is a believable role, just know that I'll cover my ears and shout the lyrics to "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" until I'm blue in the face.

Thy Author