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After leaving the infirmary, Duke calls three Joes to the briefing room. Once they are seated, he begins. "Now that we're all here, i have what may be the most problematic assignment G.I. Joe has faced so far."
"What makes you say that, Duke?" Mainframe asks him.
"Because it's a long term deployment to go undercover at a location that even Cobra must not know of, seeing as how they've never made a move on it; Joes, I'm sending you to Groom Lake-" Duke says, and is cut-off by an excited shout by another of the trio.
"You mean it?!, Haha, that's gotta be the best-when are-when are we leaving? Right now, right?" Sci-Fi asks a bit too close in Duke's face. Mainframe holds a hand over his mouth while the third drags the first back to his seat.
"Thanks, Lady-Jaye... I was just getting to that, Sci-Fi." Duke tells him, and takes a breath before continuing. "Anyway, we've recently received a tip-off of something occurring there. I want the three of you to find out what it is. Any questions?"
Mainframe raises a hand first. "I noticed you didn't mention if this was a Cobra plot; was that on purpose?"
"Very good catch, there. As for why, it's because we've already sent Snake-Eyes there to determine just that. All he found was a small crate with a dozen semi-conductor boards, each one as big as a VCR." Duke explained. "Any other questions... Yes?"
"I got one; any reason why i have to take Dorky McGlowstick along?" Lady-Jaye asks, still being in "Stalker, tell that red-head..." mode due to the election frenzy before she nudges her head toward Mainframe. "I can get sending the snake charmer; but him?"
"What the hell'd you call me?!"/"Oh yeah? You... you're a toothpick fairy." Mainframe and Sci-Fi both say.
"As you were!" Duke demanded. "Sci-Fi's not going with you, Lady-Jaye. You're going with him because Mainframe is gonna be leading this one."
While the four of them iron out the specifics, Flint and Beachhead are at the airfield welcoming a group of four Joes from the Japanese branch that were sent to inspect the new vehicles before requisitioning some of them. As two of them glance around, the others, Wirecutter and Azimuth, bow and introduce them. "Flint, Beachhead; these two are Shavetail*, and Thatchweave*."
"Good afternoon; Beachhead'll lead your pilot to the hangerbay, and I'll take the rest of you to the motorpool." Flint tells them, only to notice an odd expression on her face, and gets a look of shock and remorse after Azimuth explains, causing him to head to the nearest intercom. "Bazooka, front and center on the airfield."
Once he gets there. "Wirecutter, you're back... what's wrong?" He asks, wondering why Flint, and Wirecutter's companions, start walking away.
"Bazooka, i... i don't know how to say this, but, I'm not going to be Wirecutter after this demonstration." She tells him, hesitating and looking down when he asks what she means. "You... know i care about you, right?"
"Did something happen?"
"The worst thing possible... I'm... I'm having someone else's baby." She confesses while covering her face.
Bazooka feels a dropping sensation in his chest before he stops gawking and puts an arm around her shoulder. "How?" He asks, and she explains that two months ago, a U2 from a base in Australia had returned from a flight over Yemen. The pilot reported seeing a glint from the Andaman islands, so a second flight went out and caught a circular object on a patch of swampland south of it with a Cobra symbol painted on it's roof.
"I was sent along with another Joe named Gearbox* to capture any enemy troopers we could find for uniform swapping. We found one, but he got off a warning before we could subdue him. We were chased down for two and a half days before... before Gearbox took a round to the lung." She tells him, barely able to hold herself together. "We hid wherever-wherever we could; but didn't think we were... that i was getting out alive... and he-he told me he didn't want to... before he died, he told me he wa-wanted to know what it felt like."
"It? Oh."
"彼の後...その後、パトロールは私が去るのを見たヘリ空母に搭乗するために停止しました...シャープ大佐が去る前にここでの攻撃のために。 それで私は立ち去って Wata Mokashin を盗みました。 ビルマ**に向かう貨物船が数時間後に私を見つけました... ごめんなさい; たとえ私が許せなくても... お願い, 私を憎まないでください。" She begs him while wiping her face, too distressed to speak English. (After he... after that, the patrols stopped for boarding the heli-carriers i saw leaving... for the attack here before Colonel Sharp left; so i made my way off and stole a "Water Moccasin". A freighter heading to Burma** found me a few hours later... I'm so sorry; even if I'm unforgivable. Please, don't hate me.)
"Wouldn't fix nuthin'." He tells her, making her flinch before feeling his lips against her forehead. "I still love you, Taeko."
"But... after what i just did to you?" She asks him, only for both of them to hear Duke cut-in.
"Oh, i think i can find someone to get in touch with the Minnesota state senator and make an arrangement for that thing we didn't hear just know." He tells the pair while he, and Mainframe's team, are exiting an M151.
"You mean it, Duke?" Bazooka asks, and starts smiling along with Mainframe and Lady-Jaye while Duke explains it to Sci-Fi in the background. "Hear that, Taeko; now you can live at my house and have all the yucky raw fish you want."
She, however, declined while pressing her face against his shoulder. "I'd rather have some yucky hamburgers."
Chapter Forty-eight.
*OC's. Removed the first one because i was never thought much of both being from the same branch.
**This takes place the year before the country's name was changed to Myanmar.
