"How are you feeling, Lieutenant?"

Pepperoni's eyes fluttered open. She could see Colonel Victoria standing over her, waiting for her answer. She tried to come up with something witty. "Ever seen Aliens, ma'am?"

"I wouldn't be at liberty to tell you if I had, Lieutenant."

She pushed herself up into a sitting position, shaking the dizziness away. "As interesting as that would be, I meant the movie."

"Oh. Yes, when I was twelve."

"I feel like one of those face-huggers got me."

Another voice came from across the room. "I guess you could say it John Hurts."

"He wasn't in Aliens, he was in the original. Who is that? Amaretto?" She leaned forward to try and get a good look. Her loyal driver waved back at her. She waved back. "Hey. I feel like I had bad pizza. What's up with that."

The colonel explained. "You've come from a completely different part of the world, so you needed to be inoculated against local viruses and such. A couple of you had some difficulty with the inoculation. You've recovered in a timely manner, though, and just in time to head out for your first mission. You think you're ready to move out?"

"Little hungry. Other than that, forget what I was complaining about. I think it's going away really quickly." She wasn't lying. The feeling inside her like she was going to throw up had already faded to a mild discomfort, and it was getting smaller with every passing second. She pushed off of the bed and planted her feet on the ground. "Yup. I'm ready. You?" She looked over to her driver.

Amaretto stood up herself and saluted playfully. "Si!"

"Good. Follow me." She turned and, without even waiting for them, walked out of the room. They followed obediently, Amaretto dashing the first couple of meters to catch up and then falling in beside Pepperoni. The colonel led them out of the building, which wasn't a usual-looking infirmary, but they assumed it had been adapted to its current use. She didn't look back check that they were both still with her before she started talking again. "It's almost noon. You'll have time for a quick lunch before you go, and you should be at your destination by sunset."

Pepperoni quietly pumped her fist in the air. She turned it into clearing her throat when the colonel suddenly glanced over her shoulder. "Right. Um, so where are we headed?"

"It's not so easy to say right out." The colonel finally led them into a small building without windows. There looked to only be three rooms. The one they were standing in took up half the building, and the other two were unevenly divided at the back, the smaller one sporting the colonel's nameplate on the door. Victoria took off her cap, stuffing it into her pocket. "That's better." She ushered them towards the larger of the two back rooms. "Wait in there. I'll join you in a moment."

Pepperoni and Amaretto opened the door and stepped in. Immediately, the fourteen girls already in the room stood at attention. They relaxed a little bit once they realized it wasn't the colonel, but not entirely because Pepperoni was also an officer. She noticed that there was only one empty seat, so she pointed Amaretto to it and waited standing, looking up at the large map on the wall in front of them.

One of the girls pointed to the two chairs sitting under the map. "I bet one of those is for you."

Pepperoni folded her arms over her chest. "I always stand during our briefings. Why would this be any different, Ravioli?"

The door opened behind her and the colonel stepped in. "Stay seated." She closed the door and took an extra moment to lock it. Stepping over to the center of the room, she produced a laser pointer from her pocket. "Pay close attention, because I won't be speaking loudly. Don't breathe a word of your mission to anyone. We cannot risk the enemy knowing you're coming until you're already on your way through them. Understood?"

"Yes ma'am!" Fifteen excited voices rang out together.

Pepperoni nodded, adding. "Classified mission, ma'am?"

"Something like that." She stepped off to the side, pointing the laser at the map. "This is how I'll be showing you where to go. Read the names, memorize them, do not repeat them out loud. This is how I will be briefing you from now on." The laser stopped on one town. "This is your destination." She ran it along a roundabout route across the country. "This is your route. Got it memorized?"

Several of the girls immediately confirmed that they'd memorized the route. Pepperoni traced along the route with her eyes, back and forth, over and over, burning it into her mind. The colonel waited until all of them had given her confirmation before turning off the laser and moving on.

"When you engage the enemy, do not take prisoners, do not try to get information from them. If they retreat, hunt them down. Any enemy forces that see you must die."

"That's a tall order, ma'am. We won't let you down." Pepperoni nodded to her troops, and they chorused their response as one again.

The colonel looked over them for a few seconds before continuing. "Next, a matter of great importance. You will each be supplied with one incendiary grenade besides your standard equipment. Keep it on you at all times, do not lose it, and do not use it unless absolutely necessary. Understand this, you are not to be captured. Dead or alive. Only use it in the event that you are going to be captured or your corpse can't be recovered."

Several hands went up. One of the girls at the front didn't wait to be picked. "Are you telling us to blow ourselves up to avoid capture, ma'am?"

Clasping her hands behind her back, the colonel glared down at the lowly private, who shrunk back in response. "I'd prefer it if you didn't waste my resources, soldier."

Sensing that the colonel wasn't going to give them any more on that subject, Pepperoni decided to elaborate on that. "Probably preferable to what they'd do to us as captives."

Amaretto frowned at whatever dark fate she was imagining. "What about if we're dead, though? What do I care what they do with my body when I'm dead? Just don't fuck it." She looked up to see both officers just staring blankly at her. "Wait, would they?"

The colonel let that thought sink in for a moment. There was no guarantee any of them would face such disgrace after death, but it was hard to guarantee they wouldn't. They needed the context anyway, however realistic is might have been, so she waited until it looked like they'd all come to terms with their hypothetical situation before changing the subject. "Alright! You've still got some time before you move out, so let's get you something to eat!"

Pepperoni hopped in place. "Food time! Let's eat!"

All the thoughts that might have interfered with their appetites didn't survive the walk to the mess hall. There was a large buffet that had been prepared for them with nearly every type of food any of them were named after. It didn't look like anyone else was around, strangely enough, so the food was practically untouched.

The moment they reached it, the raid began. Heaping helpings of lasagna and pizza were stacked onto plates and covered in spaghetti and ravioli. Other assorted foods that most people couldn't spell, pronounce, or recognize were scooped, ladled, and sliced into portions fit for a person the size of any two of them. The colors of the day were red and orange.

Twenty minutes in, Pepperoni was most of the way through her third pizza with a fourth one sitting next to her waiting. She was experimenting with how much of the slice she could fit in her mouth all at once when a thought struck her. Pizza slice still in her mouth, she looked down at her next pizza. She was pretty sure she could eat it.

Swallowing both the slice in her mouth and the one in her hand, she stared at the next pizza. She leaned over and elbowed Amaretto beside her. "Hey… you still hungry?"

The girl turned and immediately reached after the neglected pizza. "Yes? I'll finish that for you if you can't."

Pepperoni slapped her hands. "I'm still hungry too, stop it."

"Ow. Okay." Rubbing the backs of her hands, Amaretto nodded towards the pizza in question. "So then what's the problem?"

"I can eat four pizzas in a day. No problem. Five, six maybe even. And I could definitely eat that one now, but that's four in one sitting."

Amaretto seemed to think it over for a moment, then quietly pushed her lasagna away from her a bit. "Why do you think that is, then?"

Pepperoni grinned. "I've grown as a person." She grabbed a slice in each hand and started eating. Amaretto watched for another couple seconds before smirking and heading back to her own food.

"Hope you enjoyed that meal, ladies! Now load up!"

Pepperoni was about ready to get out of earshot of the colonel so it could be her turn to do the yelling. She led her girls over to the colonel and the crates of weaponry they were being supplied with. Machine guns, pistols, grenades and knives. Each girl would get her own, both gunners and drivers. In amongst the weapons was the incendiary grenade. They all sobered up at the sight of it, quickly selecting a pocket and storing it away out of sight.

The CV-33's were loaded down as well with all sorts of extra equipment they might need. Collapsed ladders, wooden boards, spaced armor, shovels, water tanks, rope, hammers, screwdrivers, drills, and coiled cables that could all be necessary at any given moment. It was like they were expected to be combat engineers as well. At the very least, Pepperoni thought, they'd look like angels to any lucky combat engineers they did meet.

Pepperoni knew her crews. She directed the pairs of drivers and gunners into their vehicles, putting them where she knew they belonged. Finally, she hopped up on top of the CV-33 at the head of the column and climbed in. She patted Amaretto's shoulder and gave her a thumbs-up. Her driver returned the gesture, grinning ear to ear.

"Let's go, girls."

"Si!" The Carro Veloce lurched ahead, rolling towards the front gates of the base.

Pepperoni stood up out of the top and waved to the seven CV-33's behind her. "Anzio! Forward!"

One after the other, they started following her lead. All eight of them rushed out the gate at full speed. They were heading towards battle, leaving a cloud of dust flying up into the air behind them. Pepperoni was so caught up in the moment, the feeling of the wind in her hair as she leaned forward out of the top hatch, that she didn't even realize it until they'd been heading down their road for a good half hour. She had no idea what they were even supposed to do once they reached their destination.

Ducking inside, she tapped Amaretto's shoulder. "Keep going. I'll be back in a bit."

"Si! Wait, what?"

Pepperoni climbed out of the CV-33 and stood on top of it, gauging how far it was to the second one. The space looked about three meters, and it was directly behind her, so she jumped. It hadn't really occurred to her what would happen should she land short of her mark, but it didn't need to. She landed squarely in front of the drivers eyes, both feet firmly planted on Carro Veloce metal. She patted the gun and climbed up to the top.

The Carro Veloce's gunner greeted her, standing out of the vehicle. "Ma'am? That was quite the jump. What can I do for you?"

"Nothing yet, but close the formation. I'll need to jump back. I'm holding an impromptu mobile meeting, so stick around." With that, Pepperoni stepped past her and jumped over to the third Carro Veloce.

One after another, she gave the command to close the formation and for the gunners to join her at the front. They all quickly found that, especially with the distance closed, jumping from one CV-33 to the next was rather easy. In only a few minutes, all eight gunners sat or stood on the four lead vehicles, two to a Carro Veloce. They'd made up a decent cross formation as well, so Pepperoni wouldn't have to shout too loud for the girls on the fourth vehicle to hear her.

"Alright, ladies! It has come to my attention that we're on our way into combat. Possibly a heavy war zone. Fact is, we have no idea what we're going to be facing. We don't even know what kind of allied forces we can expect, but that's not the problem. Turns out, I don't really know what we're supposed to do once we get there. Any thoughts?"

The gunner from the third tank, currently at the right of the formation, raised her hand. "We should probably locate the allied commander in the area. If there isn't one, that means it's you, in which case we defer to your judgment." The others all nodded in agreement.

Pepperoni shrugged. "In that case, I wouldn't be able to make any decisions until we get there. Again, we don't know what it looks like. I'll have to take stock of the situation first, figure out who to shoot and all that."

Another girl raised her hand. "I have a question. Do we call you Duce now?"

She was about to answer, but stopped to think it over. Did she want to be Duce? Did being the lieutenant count? Was it right to replace Anchovy in their hearts? Didn't she have to prove herself in battle first? "Eh… not yet, at least. If that's all, then return to your vehicles. No more than three people on a tank at any given time, though, and that includes the drivers. We don't want to weigh them down too much."

They stood and saluted, then quickly turned and hopped away across the tops of the CV-33's. She turned and dropped back down into her own vehicle. So she still didn't know what their mission really was. Just that it was classified, or 'something like that'. She had to wonder what that meant exactly, she just had to. But she didn't.

She leaned forward to complain to her driver, losing all interest in the mission for the time being. "I can't tell if I'm hungry because I need food or because I just know I could eat more. Explain what my body is doing."

"Please don't break into the rations. We need those, Lieutenant." She glanced over her shoulder. "I've got this covered. Why don't you take a nap so you're nice and rested when we get there. I'll wake you if anything happens."

A nap did sound nice. Not as nice as a snack… or a meal. It was worth a try. And before she knew it, Pepperoni was sprawled out as much as humanly possible in the back of the Carro Veloce, snoring loudly. She might have dreamed, but whatever she dreamed would soon disappear and be forgotten.

She was pulled back to the waking world by Amaretto's shouts.

"Lieutenant! Active firefight! We're headed right into the middle of it!"

Jumping up, Pepperoni was completely awake without a second's delay. She pushed the hatch open and stuck her head out, looking around. They were driving along the same road as before, just entering a town. The sun was getting low on the horizon, casting the considerably barren land around them in a dusky orange shadow. Ahead, straight down the road through the center of the town, she could see a courtyard around a large building. The windows were all gone, and the walls pocked with bullet holes. A section of the roof had collapsed in on itself as well.

The building still looked in use, and as they drew closer she could see several soldiers standing guard outside, some patrolling further down the street. It wasn't another five seconds before most of them were pointing their weapons at her. She quickly reached down and grabbed her radio to issue an order to her girls.

"Halt!"

The eight Carro Veloces stopped immediately, waiting in silence for further orders.

Pepperoni looked out over the two dozen men aiming various weapons at her. She cleared her throat, putting forward her best English, emphasized with over-exaggerated hand gestures. "Hello! Are you the good guys?"

An officer stormed out of the building, trailed by two other men. He pushed his way through the soldiers to the front, looking up at the strange girl who had appeared out of nowhere. He frowned, clearly tired and weary. "I'm Captain Toscano, and I'm in charge of the United Nations forces here. Would be the major, but we just spent several hours digging him out from under that pile of rubble. We've been in constant battle for the past day and a half and have finally managed to push them back to the old hospital at the edge of town. So I'm sure you'll understand, if you're with the enemy we'd rather you just turned around and went away."

"Hmm." She reached down and grabbed her map, opening it and showing it to him. "I think we're here to help you, but just in case, would you mind showing me where exactly we are?"

He casually pointed. "Right here." It was pretty obvious he had been overworked and wasn't ready to get his hopes up for reinforcements.

Pepperoni was glad to be able to tell him. "Perfect. Colonel Victoria has sent us to support your men! Lieutenant Pepperoni, ready for action!"

Slowly, the men lowered their guns. The captain stared blankly at her.

"Pepperoni?"