Author's Note: Chapter eight. Annie deals with the inevitable consequences of being confused as hell, tries to suss out how exactly the team's mind works under pressure, and learns that a) that mistakes don't necessarily go away just because Cobra invaded the Pit, and b) quartermasters can be just as creatively evil with their punishments as scary PT instructors.

In this chapter, her relationships with various members of the Joe team begin to coalesce a little more. I'm not planning to turn this into a canon/OC fic—far from it—but I do think that it's likely that she would get along amiably with at least some of the Joes. And honestly, Roadblock can't be cooking 24/7: it's entirely possible that other cooks could still utilize their kitchen privileges for bribery purposes.

Side note: 92G is the MOS for quartermasters assigned to food service.

Rating: T for language.

Disclaimer: G.I. 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.

Chapter Eight: One for the Road

The G.I. Joe team was now officially under status code 1071: "Pitfall." Changes had to be made, and quickly, if they were going to get the whole team packed up and ready to leave as soon as possible. Security measures had been tripled for the time it would take to clean out the base, and schedules were altered. For one thing, there was no morning PT. There was no time for morning PT.

Beach Head was not in a good mood.

Annie didn't know much yet, and there wasn't time for that briefing she and the other greenies had been promised. Instead, she learned as generations of soldiers had always learned: by shutting up and eavesdropping on the experts. Her mother had always said that the best way to learn was to sit quietly while the experienced ones talked. Granted, nobody was actually going to be sitting while Pitfall was in effect, but she managed just as well by keeping an ear out while she fetched, carried, cleaned, packed, and panicked.

The word was "Cobra." She'd heard of them before, of course: she had gotten the standard briefing soon after getting off the transport, and back before then, she remembered hearing reports about battles and thefts on the news. Now she was getting the other side. Crazed pseudo-Nazi new world orders, mad scientists, cloning projects, robots, brainwashing, taking over towns in Oregon. Annie had trouble believing half of it, but she knew that if she'd heard it all before getting a few days' experience in the Pit, she would have dismissed every part of it out of hand. Now, with the memory of the toxo-vipers fresh in her mind and the mental image of Zartan and his color-changing skin, her bar for weirdness had risen significantly.

As for Zartan . . . well, the ninjas weren't talking, but the kitchen crew had the inside story. Storm Shadow had some kind of blood feud against him—"My name is Thomas Arashikage. You killed my uncle. Prepare to die" as Chopper had put it—and Snake-Eyes was joining in. Both were desperate to kill Zartan, which didn't mesh well with their positions as subordinates to General Hawk. The possibility of bloody ninja vengeance meant that Zartan was being kept under extremely strong guard . . . Not that the quartermasters had been briefed about the security conditions, but the head of the custodial division stopped into the kitchen every day for a noon cup of coffee, and he was the one who had to clean up after "those guys who were welding metal grates over all the ventilation ducts." According to him, the laundry crew was already laying in extra bleach for Storm Shadow's uniform, and Maintenance had perfected a new technique for getting the Arashikage poison solution out of carpet. In response to this, the prisoner appeared determined to never sleep again: after the fourth trip down with a Thermos, the kitchen crew gave up and just set up a coffee urn next to his cell.

Annie couldn't exactly blame him. The idea of being the target of a ninja vendetta gave her the chills.

Not that there was much to think about that kind of thing. In addition to helping clean out the Pit, the kitchen staff still had to keep everyone fed. The lack of PT meant that there was a little more time available, but Annie couldn't help thinking that she was getting just as much exercise despite not having Beach Head breathing down her back. It didn't help that part of Pitfall was getting all the permanently-installed appliances shut down, so the kitchen was using only what it absolutely had to and was scrambling to find a use for all its leftover supplies. People were eating a lot of sandwiches.

The mood in the Pit was mixed. Annie found herself hovering near the kitchen door as she worked, sometimes voluntarily taking up the slack in the serving line in an effort to gauge what was going on in peoples' heads. People were . . . it was hard to explain. The same strange air of confidence that had pervaded during the emergency was still there, a little more strained but unmistakable. Nobody was happy that Cobra had gotten into the Pit, but the attitude was businesslike: there was no point in complaining about what might have happened when you had work to do in the here and now. On the other hand, bitching about what was actually happening was practically mandatory. (Lift-Ticket, Cross-Country, you're up.) The Joes were a lot more forgiving about blowing off steam than some of the other units Annie had served with. But overall, they seemed immune to the extraordinary situation they were in. They just got on with things.

Maybe it helped that nobody had died. The point of the attack seemed to have been a distraction—using toxo-vipers and robots to provide cover so that Zartan could be quietly inserted into the Pit. "Everybody knows," Whiskey Down told Annie, grimacing a little as he hefted his end of the crate they were packing, "that Cobra considers its NBC people expendable. They didn't even bother to arm 'em properly because they were just there to get their asses kicked. Lucky for us, though—good practice for the greenies."

Annie had to agree with that. It had been good practice . . . of a sort . . . She hadn't actually killed anybody, or she didn't think she did . . . And that was another one of those topics that just didn't bear thinking about when there was work to be done. She squashed the memory of the firefight firmly, trying to focus on the tasks at hand. None of the Joes had died, and that was the thing to hold on to.

Granted, there had been some injuries, and she knew that about as well as anyone else did. Clutch, who had been in the motor pool when the toxo-vipers broke in, had gotten body-checked by one of the robots, leaving his neck and lungs bruised all to hell. (Rumor had it that Doc had to drug him to get him to shut up long enough to be moved.) Sgt. Slaughter should have been in the infirmary, but he had cleverly averted attention from his injured ankle by offering to show anyone who asked what a real "potentially incapacitating tissue laceration" was. Annie knew these because despite Pitfall, life went on as it always must, and she was once again stuck on bucket duty.

Eighteen hours after she had first been rustled out of bed, she was wheeling her cart back down the hall to the infirmary. Bucket chow was simpler under Pitfall conditions: soup and soft bread, virtually guaranteed to elicit bitching and moaning from the soldiers stuck on bedrest. Not that she minded much—if someone was still in bed while the Pit was being struck, they were there because they had to be and probably were due some of that therapeutic complaining.

This time, Lifeline met her at the door with a couple of interns in tow. Since interns were to medical staff what humans were to Mutt (someone who hadn't quite ascended to the level of actual person yet and could be considered fair game as far as harassment is concerned), they seemed apprehensive about being summoned for yet another duty, but it soon turned out that Lifeline had only deputized them to help Annie distribute the food. With their assistance, she unpacked the cart and began passing out the rations.

Most of the patients on bedrest were people Annie didn't recognize. A few were fellow greenshirts, and one was vaguely familiar as the chopper pilot that had brought Annie and the rest of her group to the Pit only a few days previously. Snow Job was still there, clearly in a pique over his shattered leg preventing him from taking part in the night's firefight, and she could see one half of the bruised Clutch peeking out from behind a privacy screen.

One bed over from Snow Job, a fully-clothed Dusty was sitting cross-legged on his mattress, in the process of signing his release forms. His face was pale under its heavy tan—must have been one hell of a concussion, Annie thought—and he wasn't moving with much confidence, but this was Pitfall and if you could walk, you could help get the place squared away. Nevertheless, he was still jabbing away at Snow Job, and Snow Job was still simultaneously ignoring and insulting him.

She did a quick mental check of the food supplies. "Are you eating here?" she asked the desert trooper, trying not to make it obvious that she was hoping he wasn't. One more set of dishes to clean, one more addition in the chorus of complaining . . . However, Dusty inadvertently promoted himself from "background soldier" to "soldier who doesn't actively inhibit the 92Gs" when he shook his head.

"Nah. Doc says my brain's only a little bruised now." He grinned a little, amiable to a T, and began to lace up his boots. "And if what I hear about Beach's mood is true, the best place to be right now is looking busy, not lying around complaining about a little old thing like brain damage. I'll be in the mess hall."

"Better hurry, then." Annie turned to the next bed and began to lay out the tray, watched keenly by a bandaged and clearly ravenous Footloose. She twisted a little to aim her next words at Dusty while still keeping an eye on her work. "The self-serve station is putting nachos out tonight, and Whiskey Down said something about a 'backlash.'"

Footloose let out a heartfelt groan at the mention of nachos, and Dusty perked up visibly. "Are those the kind with the liquid cheese that comes in the big bag? Where the bag goes in the plastic box and you stick your plate under the spout and press the button that says 'press for cheese'?"

"That's the one. Are they popular?"

"You could say that." Dusty finished lacing up his boots and swung his feet onto the floor, tucking the clipboard with his release form under his arm. "We normally only have 'em when 'Block's out on a mission; something about that 'press for cheese' thing offends his gourmet soul. If 'Block is on base and it's nacho night, you definitely don't want to miss the argument. Dinner and a show."

Annie grimaced a bit as she moved on to the next bed. Dusty, release form in hand, followed behind as he looked around for Lifeline. "Lucky us, then," she said as she assembled the tray for the half-conscious greenshirt there. "But I don't care how angry he gets—we have to use it all up. All the excess perishables and the stuff we can't transport. Ever tried stowing a fifteen-pound sack of liquid cheese product? One time in Germany, someone fell on it."

There was a cough from the next bed over. Clutch was lying there, looking more than a little worse for wear; judging by his appearance, something had slammed him hard in the chest and throat, and he seemed to be having trouble breathing. "Hey, Dusty," he said in a hoarse whisper. "Go find Ace and put fifty bucks on five or more broken plates before dinner's over. I'll pay you back tomorrow."

"Gotcha covered." Annie gave the desert trooper an incredulous stare but either he didn't notice or it didn't faze him. He stopped by Clutch's bed to check over his discharge paperwork, but aimed a grin at his fellow invalid all the same. "Maybe you can recoup your losses on the greenshirt-washout pool. Sixteen drops? Really?"

Clutch shook his head. "I thought it was a sure thing. One of 'em pissed himself when Beach turned up."

Hearing that, Annie couldn't help snorting. Clutch grinned at her. "Problem?"

"Ninjas, and now Beach Head." She shook her head as she fixed the next tray. "The bogeymen of the twentieth century. If Cobra Commander has any kids, he probably tells them to be good or the Joes will get 'em."

"Cobra Commander does have a kid," Dusty pointed out. Annie raised an eyebrow. "His name's Billy. Smart. Lost a leg and an eye while fighting Cobra. Trained with Storm Shadow for a while. That prosthetic leg gives him one hell of a kick." The desert trooper scratched his head. "I think he's staying with his mother now. Storm said he's gonna make him an official apprentice once he's old enough to drive."

" . . . okay," Annie said slowly. "Now you're just pulling my leg."

Dusty held up his hands, still clutching the release forms in one of them. "Would I lie?"

"Yes," Clutch and Snow Job said together. Dusty managed to flip them both off while still keeping hold of the paperwork—an impressive feat of ambidexterity, Annie had to admit.

"I've got nothing to prove. And you can ask anyone on base about it—the kid's scary good." Dusty shrugged, but perked up as he spotted a dark-skinned man in a white coat coming down the aisle. "Hey! Hey, Doc! I've got my paperwork. Can I go now? It's nacho night."

"You know the rules," Doc said as he took the forms. "Light duty, as far as you can manage. Don't go climbing on any of the catwalks. If you start getting dizzy, headaches, or blurred vision, get back here right away. I know I can trust you not to do anything stupid, so don't do anything to make me revise that judgment. And if you even think about getting in a fight, I'm sending you to into the city for a prostate exam. Do I make myself clear?"

"You're a sadist, Doc," Dusty said cheerfully.

The medic shook his head. "Ah, but it would be downright embarrassing if I saved you from bullets and shrapnel, only to have you die from prostate cancer. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. Off you go."

Dusty threw a mock salute to Doc, grinned at Clutch and Snow Job, nodded to Annie, and headed out of the infirmary with a bit of a spring in his step. His color still wasn't very good, and that springy step seemed a bit uneven, but otherwise he was clearly enjoying being up and about again. Annie, who knew she was scheduled to be part of a loading crew again as soon as she got off dinner duty, didn't see what he was so happy about. Her muscles were already aching after the long day and the lack of sleep: getting out of bed was hardly a privilege from her point of view.

Still . . . whatever floated his boat. Annie moved on down the rows. The interns had handed out the trays on the other side with remarkable quickness, and everybody was already eating. The bitching was starting up, too. She ran her finger down the checklist and counted off: fifteen, sixteen, seventeen . . .

"Sir?" she said. Doc looked up. "The order was for eighteen patients to be fed. Was the eighteenth supposed to be Dusty?"

Doc shook his head. "The eighteenth was that toxo-viper." Annie's stomach clenched at the words, and her sudden shock must have shown on her face, because the doctor raised an eyebrow. "No, he's not dead. We put him on the list because we thought he'd be on solids, but his injuries were more severe than we'd thought. We're feeding him intravenously right now—probably more than his crew would do for us."

"What's going to happen to him, sir?" Annie said carefully.

"We don't normally move base with prisoners, but right now there's not a lot of choice. He and Zartan will be coming with us, under heavy guard." Doc gave her an odd look. "Weren't you the one that shot him?"

She nodded. The tension in her gut was easing, but it was quickly replaced by mixed emotions: annoyance, relief that the viper hadn't died, shame that she had shot him and shame that she was ashamed. It was a bit late in her military career to be having a crisis of conscience, but—well—

Never mind, Annie. Work to do.

And the worrisome thing was that Doc seemed to know all of it. His look had shifted a bit, and there was a note of almost-sympathy in his voice when he spoke. "You'd better get moving," he said, deliberately changing the subject. "If it's nacho night, then I'll be seeing at least five cases of indigestion in the next few minutes."

"Yes, sir." Thank God for the distraction. Annie repacked the cart and set off back down the rows of beds, quietly promising herself that she would bake Doc a big chocolate cake. She might not be Roadblock, but she was still a pretty good cook—and hell, cake was cake.

The thought cheered her immensely. Quartermasters sometimes didn't get much respect, but cooks who rewarded good behavior with baked goods could become very well-liked indeed. And if Doc could threaten his patients with prostate exams, then maybe Annie could get into the G.I. Joe spirit by bribing people with food. It wouldn't hurt to try.

One person who could not be so bribed, however, was Roadblock. While the mess hall itself showed no particular signs of a struggle—unless the three-way glaring contest over the extra-spicy salsa was counted—the kitchen wasn't so lucky. Roadblock was standing by the long counter, holding a fifteen-pound bag of liquid cheese easily in one hand and pointing at Whiskey Down with the other. Whiskey seemed to be holding his ground, but it was clear from his demeanor that this wasn't something he wanted to deal with.

"This," Roadblock said, "is not cheese. This is yellow dye number seven with plastic added. I wouldn't use this for dip. I wouldn't use this for shower grout. Cobra Commander puts caviar on saltines, and even he wouldn't use this! So why is G.I. Joe being served this crap?" He glared down at the senior quartermaster, a figure of holy vengeance on behalf of all non-artificial dairy products. Annie fought the urge to look for a camera.

"You know the Pitfall rules, Roadblock," Whiskey said. "If we can't transport it, we have to use it up."

"So use it up. Give it to Beach to pour in the mud pit. Feed it to Zartan! But don't go giving it to my team!" Roadblock crossed his arms, clearly not going to concede the point. The bag of cheese sloshed warningly.

Annie was tempted to eavesdrop on the conversation, but quartermaster-versus-heavy-gunner culinary squabbles not withstanding, the kitchen was its usual hive of activity and everybody needed to pitch in. She took her turn at the chopping station and the grill, trying to keep half an ear on what was going on. After twenty-five minutes of wrangling over vintages, flavors, and the dictionary definition of "cheese," Whiskey Down conceded that what went with the nachos was technically a "cheeselike product" but refused to serve anything else, citing Pitfall regulations. Roadblock growled a little, rolled up his sleeves, invaded the storeroom with considerably more effort than Cobra had put into invading the Pit, and produced a block of Gouda from his own personal stash. He pushed Chopper away from the counter and began grating the cheese with the intensity of a brain surgeon.

"Sir," Annie murmured to Whiskey as he moved over to the grill, "why didn't you kick him out? I know he's supposed to be some kind of super-cook, but rank and procedure-"

To her surprise, the senior quartermaster just grinned. It was only a little, but it was there: the lines in his face deepened, and he seemed to be holding back a bit of laughter. "Roadblock knows the rules," he said quietly, joining Annie by the grill, "but he's got the soul of a chef. Not a cook, neither—a real honest-to-God gourmet. Think of it this way. Did the bedridden Joes complain when you brought the bucket chow down?"

"Well, yes-"

"But did they eat it?"

"Yes."

"Exactly. People whine, but they get the work done." Whiskey Down shook his head a bit. "But sometimes, the kind of chow we have to make offends Roadblock's sensibilities: he knows it's because of regs or because we need to use this stuff up, but he wouldn't be Roadblock if he didn't say it stank. If I let him argue with me for a while, he'll take over and fix something even when it's not his night. He gets to say what he thinks, the team gets an extra dish we don't have to cook, and I have an excuse to stand around talking for fifteen minutes instead of working. Everybody wins."

Annie was briefly tempted to say something—something about regulations, maybe, or how a soldier making trouble for the support division should be reported—but there didn't seem to be much use to it right then. She was achy, still confused from her moment of worry in the infirmary, and Roadblock . . . well, when Whiskey Down put it like that, Roadblock invading the kitchen didn't seem like such a big deal. That damn work was still getting done, after all. Nothing to see here. These aren't the broken regs you're looking for.

And speaking of broken regs, a thought occurred. "Too bad for Clutch," she said. "He just lost fifty bucks."

"Betting again? Clutch has never stopped hoping for a repeat of what happened to that rack of dishes. And speaking of losing," Whiskey Down added calmly, "we're going to have some help while we clear out the kitchen tomorrow. Dusty is coming down to get the freezers squared away, and there'll be a couple of KPs for the grunt work."

Annie perked up. Well, that was good news at any rate. "Dusty?" she said. "A desert trooper fixes freezers?"

"And air conditioners. Irony is practically a requirement around here." Whiskey cocked his head. "It's going to be your job to supervise those KPs personally, understood? That's an order."

That surprised Annie. She loved supervising KPs—as the Control Freak incident attested. But she'd been punished for that (still officially pulling extra hours for that, though Pitfall meant that now everybody was doing the same schedule she was) and hadn't expected to regain control of the kitchen monkeys so soon. "Sir?" she said cautiously. Maybe her work during the Cobra attack had put her back in Whiskey's good books.

He noticed her quizzical expression and grinned again. "You were on site when it happened," he said. A warm feeling began to spread through Annie's chest: she'd been right! Proven reliability will always redeem one silly mistake. "So," Whiskey continued, breaking her reverie a little, "that means you're the only one who won't be asking them questions about the incident. They're already testy, and General Hawk has to make a show of punishing them in case Washington starts asking questions, so it won't be pretty." He caught her surprised expression. "What? You didn't think we'd forgotten about you shoving that Marine under the sink?"

Now Annie was royally confused. "Sir, what are you talking about?" The warm feeling was fading, replaced by a sense of dread.

"The ninjas are on KP." Whiskey shook his head a little. "You're the most junior, and you need to work on that attitude problem, so you get to play with them. Fair warning—don't ask them to pass you anything you don't want thrown."

Annie gulped. "Who's being punished here? Them or me?"

"Both." Whiskey Down shrugged one shoulder, apparently unconcerned with the fact that he'd just placed Annie in the position of giving orders to angry ninjas. Ninjas, who hated taking orders anyway, who were already in a bad mood over being unable to kill someone they had a personal grudge against, and who would not look kindly on the PFC who would be telling them to do dishes.

"To err is human, to forgive divine," Whiskey continued blithely. "Neither of which is G.I. Joe policy. Remember: no passing, and for the love of God, don't ask them to chop any vegetables. Carry on, Short Stack."