As it flew over the island, the hatch opened on the hypersonic transport. The force of the wind rushing inside caused the entire plane to explode, engulfing Snake Eyes and the unfortunate flight crew in flames.

Once again, foiled by physics.

Let's try that again.

As it flew over the island, the hatch opened on the hypersonic transport. The force of the wind rushing inside was immense, but somehow, amazingly, the craft survived. Snake Eyes ran for the hatch, hurling himself into the abyss. Buffeted by the wind, Snake Eyes plunged through the air.

Although air friction did slow his fall some, the distance from which he was falling exacerbated the fact that Snake Eyes was still travelling approximately the speed of sound. Unable to open his parachute in time, Snake Eyes was knocked unconscious by his impact with the ocean surface. Bereft of any floatation device, well, I'll leave the rest to your imaginations.

One more time, shall we?

As his hypersonic transport flew over the island, Snake Eyes defied the laws of nature and made it safely into the air. However, because the plane was flying away from the island, when Snake Eyes jumped, he fell through the air away from the island, eventually landing somewhere out at sea.

Cursing his bad luck, he began to swim.

"You be careful down there, Vern," Storm Shadow said. "Snake Eyes doesn't pull punches."

"With all due respect, Storm Shadow, you've said yourself that Snake Eyes isn't the kind of guy that kills Vipers for kicks," Vern replied.

"I know. Still…even Snake Eyes has bad days," Storm Shadow said.

"I'll be fine," Vern said. "It's not like he's a cold-blooded killer who spends his time thinking of slightly perverse ways to kill people."

"Yeah, I was always the psychopathic one growing up," Storm Shadow said.

Vern laughed. "Well, then I don't have much to worry about, do I?"

"According to the Author, actually, you might," Storm Shadow said. "In this cartoon, I'm about two steps above a serial killer."

"You've murdered a total of two people so far," Vern said. "Cobra Commander is still ahead of you by 9, 999,998 some people. Plus, you're a trained assassin. It makes sense that you would kill people. Heck, in a world without Cobra, Snake Eyes would probably be killing people too."

Storm Shadow sighed. "But I'm still written like a sociopath."

Vern patted the other man comfortingly on the shoulder. "That's okay. I've always just been a faceless storm trooper with amazingly terrible aim. I've never gotten any character development."

Storm Shadow smiled ruefully. "Well, I suppose you should get down there and I should be thankful for the depth that I used to have."

Vern nodded, and walked down the irrationally long set of stairs to the beach. As Storm Shadow watched Vern move further and further down the mountain, he mused that the whole thing looked a lot more similar to Kung Fu Panda than he remembered.

Snake Eyes came up on the beach sputtering. As he stood, he switched on his night vision goggles and looked around. No Vipers yet…time to start walking.

Or, better yet, time to start stewing about Scarlett.

He had loved her longer than he could remember. Although he had only met her with the induction of the GI Joe team, it had always felt to Snake Eyes as though he had loved her before, for there was something all-too-familiar in the leafy eyes and russet hair. But it felt wrong, very wrong, at least this time around. For this was not the woman he felt he'd known lifetimes ago. This woman was so plastic, so flat…

Yet he couldn't stay away from her.

He knew he was playing with fire. He knew that the cards were stacked against him, that his love was doomed…yet he couldn't help but want her. Was it fate? Was it destiny? Or was it just bad writing?

He guessed he would probably never know. But he couldn't help but feel frustrated, knowing that his devotion to Scarlett was just a paper man created to appease the fans of the original comics series who would have been miffed if their relationship hadn't at least been acknowledged. It was equally as frustrating to know that the fact that Scarlett had chosen Duke was the direct result of those Sunbow cartoons…

Curse you, Sunbow! Snake Eyes screamed silently to the unfeeling night. Curse you and your inability to have a mute character in a cartoon!

And just thinking about Sunbow, about Scarlett, about Duke, about the unfairness of it all…

It made him so mad.

However, Snake Eyes didn't know quite how mad it made him until he realized that he'd just killed six Vipers. Maybe he should go in for that anger management class that Flint had recommended…

Storm Shadow watched, perturbed, from a perch located a convenient distance away. "I wonder, then, if I'm still the violent one," he murmured.