Author's Note: It arises from the dead, yet again. Sadly, my laptop cannot say the same; its temporary system failure just lost most of the next chapter I had planned. So as a buffer/bonus in the meantime, here's a typical day for a Joe cook. Hope you like it!

And enjoy the respite, Annie. Next chapter, we move into Plot territory.

Rating: T

Disclaimer: GI 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.

Snack Break

The human capacity to adapt is absolutely incredible. That wasn't to say that PFC Annie Gorshin, now currently known as Short Stack, was actually getting used to her situation: after spending years as "PRIVATE!", learning to respond to and think of herself as "Short Stack" would take more than a few days in the company of the Joes. Nevertheless, she was learning to get on with things.

She couldn't help looking at the world of the Pit from a kitchen-crew point of view. She might have been infantry, and almost qualified for sniper school, but the kitchen was where she was at home. Grease jockeys would congregate in the motor pool, the PT course was Beach Head's personal territory, the pilots monopolized the roof on sunny days in order to watch the planes being tested, and the ninjas . . . Annie was worrying too much about the ninjas lately. They probably hung upside-down and recited Confucius until they learned how to attain enlightenment by punching someone's kidneys out through their nose. (Annie was still hazy on what culture ninjas came from, though she had a sneaking suspicion that it might not have been the one with the little orange-robed guys.) And the kitchen was where Annie felt at home.

It was a core of order amidst the chaos, and by clinging to that core, she slowly felt her life stabilize. By her third day on duty, she had a good handle on the routine:

0515-0555: PT. Spend most of the time getting shouted at. Exercises, followed by running laps and a try at the greenshirt PT course: newbies wouldn't be expected to defy physics quite just yet, and Beach Head was forced to settle for running them into the ground.

0555-0610: Designated shower time. Every member of the kitchen staff had to be cleaned up before they signed in, but Sergeant Major Shouty's love of mud pits and barbed wire meant that some days, the quartermasters did everything but run through a car wash to get the thick coating of muck off as quickly as possible.

0610-0645: Bully the KPs. Technically speaking, this meant "fixing breakfast," but it often boiled down to the same thing. The quartermasters were the cooks, and the non-quartermaster kitchen staff were there to act as their helpers, but soldiers on punishment detail got the dirtiest jobs the kitchen had to offer. Peeling potatoes was only the half of it. It was amazing how many things needed to be fixed, cleaned, drained, mopped up after, lugged around in fifty-pound bales, and on one memorable occasion, immolated.

Annie had decided, shortly after graduating from quartermaster training, that she should never rise higher than PFC. The reason was simple: she secretly enjoyed ordering around KPs far too much, and someone like that could never responsibly hold serious command. She had spent too many years as a waitress, and every waitress cherishes the fantasy of making those bitching, ass-pinching, no-tipping, "I don't understand why you don't have a vegetarian option, all the good restaurants have a vegetarian option" bastards pay.

She had admitted this to Whiskey Down on her second day in the kitchen. His response? "Hitler was a vegetarian too." No wonder she liked the kitchen so much.

0645-0830: Breakfast rush. Annie would keep the pancakes and waffles coming, make sure the syrup jugs were topped up, and listen through the open door for any interesting tidbits of gossip. Apparently, the warrant officer was on the outs with somebody named "Lady J." Annie made a mental note: Joes 3, frat regs 0.

0830-0915: Cleanup time. Bully the KPs some more, especially since men who would cheerfully slog through miles of muddy battlefield with their own intestines hanging out still hated being stuck on dish duty. Supervise the cleanup of the fryers and the griddle, and be sure the grease traps were scrubbed out. Fish out the various things that people dropped in the steam trays: in addition to the usual bullet or two, Annie had found a wallet, two watches, a crumpled five-dollar bill, three betting tickets with "Ace" scrawled on them, and a tightly-folded magazine photo of a woman wearing a web belt and not much else.

0915-1100: Late for hand-to-hand! This was inevitable, since no matter how many helpers and KP monkeys there were, the amount of cleaning-up to do was always greater. She would skid in the door of the dojo and avoid meeting the eyes of Sgt. Scarlett, Sgt. Storm Shadow, or Sensei Bacon. This meant she would often find herself being used as a demonstration dummy by the ever-capable instructors. The calluses on her back and shoulders were coming along nicely.

1100-1300: Lunch rush. Quartermasters were always released early from the mandatory physical training sessions, something which did not endear the Joes and greenies who had to stay and suffer through the full course. Well, if they wanted to do their own cooking, then they could.

Lunch was where Chopper and Shingle really shone. Annie would have some autonomy at breakfast, but lunch wasn't her territory, and she would do as she was told ASAP. She would usually find herself at the long griddle, working on yet another few pounds of the truly ungodly amount of meat the base consumed every day. Many of the Joes were of a very straightforward disposition regarding food: I want it to taste good, and if it does, I want more.

1300-1630: Variable. As a greenshirt, Annie was still learning the ropes of the base, and different days would see her assigned to weapons drill, armory detail, or grunt work in various parts of the Pit. One day she found herself as part of a team that was helping to unload stacks of machine parts from a truck. She was as useful as she could be—not very, considering that her fellow detail members tended to be very large men—but got some satisfaction out of seeing that when Clutch's gear had been going through the laundry, there had been an "unexplained breakage" in one specific washing machine. Trifle not with the ways of ordinance men, for they are crafty and willing to make you wear shrunken pants.

1630-1715: Scramble for dinner. Joes who hadn't been able to get to lunch or breakfast—and there were more than a few—would have been living on granola bars all day, and consequently would not take kindly to a less than satiating meal. Annie would find herself flying from pillar to post (or more accurately, from fryer to salad bar), trying to keep on top of the hundred and thirty things that needed stewing, mashing, frying, freezing, defrosting, setting, rising, or pounding briskly with a meat tenderizer the size of an unabridged dictionary.

1715-1945: The mob descends to feed. Annie and S.O.S., the most junior quartermasters, were usually pressed into service as substitute station attendants. If the ninjas were playing keepaway, Annie would be too frustrated to notice it; cooking three squares for more than a hundred people, with PT, hand-to-hand and grunt work on top of it all, meant that by dinnertime her energy was beginning to run out and her temper fray.

It was on just such an occasion that a fellow greenshirt of Marine extraction, placed on KP duty for the mortal sin of attempting to be smart to his superiors, had decided to double up on the insubordination and crack wise at Annie's expense. Later on, Annie would mentally mark him down as the sort of person who was likely to wash out; maybe her authority was petty and her military specialty smelled like dish soap, but authority as authority. At the time, however, Annie had seen red. With a bark of "Semper fit your ass under that sink and check those pipes, KP boy! You're in my world now!", she had earned herself the new nickname of Control Freak and her own brand-new punishment assignment from the ranking quartermasters.

But damn, it had been worth it.

1945-2100: Cleanup and bunk time. Every smart quartermaster and greenshirt hit the rack as early as possible, knowing that they would be rustled out of bed at oh-fuck-thirty the next morning for another glorious run on Beach Head's latest monstrosity of a course. Annie would finish up in the kitchen, stow her gear for the night, and collapse gratefully onto her bunk, nursing a fresh compliment of aches and bruises.

Tomorrow, she would tell herself. Tomorrow, she would get the hang of this. Tomorrow, she would finally learn that block that Sgt. Scarlett was trying to pound into her head. Tomorrow, she would stop having a minor heart attack whenever a masked figure appeared out of nowhere. Tomorrow she would cook something so damn amazing that the grunts would stop complaining, the person who kept dropping bullets in the steam trays would finally 'fess up, she would get posted someplace more peaceful . . .

But even as sleep overcame her, a new thought would follow that last hope. No, she wouldn't get posted someplace else. Because that same part of Annie that was still a waitress knew the joys of quietly eavesdropping on strange people—the more bizarre, the better. And really, you couldn't get much stranger than the Pit.