Author's Note: And yea, there was more plot, and it was convoluted . . .

Thanks to everyone who's stuck with this story so far. It's gone much, much further than the light humor piece I originally intended, and I hope the shift in tone isn't putting you off. Rest assured that, evidence to the contrary, I do know where this is going.

As ever, if Annie begins to show signs of Mary-Suedom or otherwise goes off the rails, I want you to let me know ASAP. She winds up in an odd situation in this chapter, one which may seem a little unlikely for a greenshirt—but everyone picked for Joe has their odd range of skills, some of which may come in handy in the most unlikely of places . . .

This chapter also contains an indirect reference to a fic by the devious CrystalOfEllinon. If you spot it, you'll likely know which 'fic I'm referencing, so let me just say-'twasn't my idea, I merely borrowed it from her.

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 Thirteen: Table Talk

"Sir, someone is fucking with me."

Flint glanced up. "And?"

"And . . . and it's freaking me out, sir." That about summed it up.

In retrospect, she probably shouldn't have sought Flint out at this hour of the morning. When she'd discovered the bullet missing, she had immediately opened her footlocker, looking for the little paper bag that contained the other odds and ends she'd rescued from the steam trays. The bag was in its place, but almost all the bullets had been filched from it; only one, wrapped in an old betting ticket, was left behind. Surprised, irritated, and yes, freaked out, Annie had decided to go straight to the person with the most immediate authority. Duke was too low and General Hawk was too high; Sgt. Major Beach Head handled a lot of the personnel issues (albeit reluctantly), but he had apparently been called out on some special assignment. (Sgt. Slaughter had run PT that morning, to the regret of all.)

That left Flint as the person to report to in a situation of serious regulatory violation. Today, though, he went on duty at 0700, and Annie had shown up at 0703. The coffee apparently hadn't had time to kick in.

"Someone went through my footlocker, sir," she added. That got Flint's attention, and his brow furrowed as he straightened up a little.

"Are you sure about this, greenshirt? That's a serious accusation, especially in this unit."

"Dead serious, sir," Annie said. "And it wasn't an accident, either. Someone specifically picked through my things to remove these items."

"What items?" Flint was already pulling a stack of paper towards him, reaching for a pen with the other hand. The form on top of the stack looked worryingly official.

"Bullets. About seven or eight of them, I think."

The hand on the stack of paper paused. "Bullets?"

"Yes, sir."

"About seven or eight. These were loose bullets?"

"Yes, sir."

"In your footlocker?"

"Yes, sir."

" . . . Short Stack, you are aware that greenshirts aren't supposed to have ordinance among their personal possessions, aren't you?"

Um. Annie shuffled a little. Yes, she had been aware of that rule, technically, but . . . "The regulations manual states that the greenshirts aren't supposed to either bring in personal weaponry or retain ordinance issued to them here, sir. I didn't bring them in, and they weren't issued to me."

"You actually read the manual?" Flint raised an eyebrow.

"Uh. Yes, sir."

"Nobody reads the manual."

"I'd sort of gathered that, sir."

"Well," Flint said after a moment's consideration, tapping his fingers on the desk, "there's a few ways we can handle this, Short Stack. Violation of a soldier's privacy is not tolerated, period, but you have to understand that it appears nothing of value—sentimental or otherwise—was stolen. You picked these up as, what, curiosities?"

"Sort of, sir. People keep leaving them in the steam trays."

"And then they were stolen."

"Yes, sir."

"Have you considered the possibility that they might have only been borrowed?"

This time, it was Annie who frowned. "Borrowed, sir?"

"Let me put it this way, Short Stack." Flint gestured to his desk. Placed there were an inbox and an outbox, a computer, a few family photographs (all of an extremely well-dressed group, usually standing in front of some historical or cultural landmark), a coffee mug, a jar full of pens, and a few other odds and ends. "At least once every two weeks, usually while stealth training classes are being conducted, something on this desk will change. I once turned my back for five minutes, and looked back to find all of my books carefully re-alphabetized by author rather than title."

"Oh, no." Annie felt her heart sink. "Sir, don't say it was the-"

"All right, I won't say it. But if the bullets return within two days, let me know. I'll keep your report on file in the meantime. And if anything else goes missing, let me know right away. Understood?"

" . . . yes, sir."

"Bullets?" Chopper said, frowning. "That's not a kitchen superstition I'm familiar with. I know Gung-Ho swears that the only way to christen a stove is to shoot a squirrel off the top of it, but I think I would've noticed he was pulling that crap. Besides, he's banned from the kitchen since the gumbo incident."

"Awful lot of 'incidents' around here," Annie muttered, but carried on mashing the strawberries without pause. "So how would a bullet get into the steam tray, then?"

"Pranksters. Carelessness. You haven't even been here a month, 'Stack, you sure haven't seen the worst of it." Chopper shifted to the side and Annie quickly swept the two pounds of now-pulped strawberries down the long board towards him, where they quickly went into the sauce tureen. "There was a guy named Grunt, back in the early days of the unit. I was only on staff a few weeks before he quit—went civvie, would you believe?-but he sure managed to cram a lot of mayhem into a few days, lemme tell ya." Two cups of sugar went into the tureen, and the sweet aroma of strawberry syrup began to emerge as Chopper whisked the pot onto the nearest warm burner. "None of 'em meant any harm by it, though. Way I hear it, to get headhunted back when the unit was formed, you had to be something seriously special, and that meant there was a lotta camaraderie there."

Annie was willing to accept that. Sort of. "But the bullets?"

"I'm getting to that. Bullets are nothing. Honestly, you learn to live with it." As Annie slid across the next mashed pile of fruit, Chopper gave emptied the tureen into another pot held out by a harassed-looking KP monkey. "Move your ass," he informed the soldier calmly before turning back to his work.

"You haven't met Deep-Six, have you?" he continued. Annie winced and made the sign of the cross. "Oh, you have. Well, imagine coming into the kitchen at 0500, ready to get to work, and finding that guy skinning a six-foot bull shark on your nice clean counter. Bullets in the steam trays are nothing compared to cleaning up shark guts while Deep-Six just . . . watches you."

Okay, Annie had to admit that that idea was pretty hair-raising. At least the ninjas did you the courtesy of not being visible most of the time. Still . . . "But why would someone steal bullets?" she persisted. The last lot of strawberries went into the pot, and she ran her gloved hands under the sink quickly before turning her attention to the next task—slicing slabs off a chunk of spam the size of an industrial air conditioner.

"You probably had it right the first time," Chopper suggested. "Someone's fucking with you. You did piss off the n-"

"Not. A. Word."

That got a snort from Chopper. "Look, it's not as bad as it seems. Things have just been a little crazier than normal these past couple of weeks."

"Yeah . . . so I gathered."

"Seriously, 'Stack, you should just drop it. I know everything seems nuts right now." To her surprise, Chopper slowed in his work long enough to put a hand on her shoulder. His eyes were a warm brown, his expression a cross between amusement and concern—an odd thing to see on a man with shoulders like a linebacker and a fading series of Hell's Angels tattoos visible on his biceps. For a moment, looking at the open friendliness of his face and the worry now evident there, Annie felt small.

Well, smaller than usual.

"Seriously," he repeated, giving her shoulder a little shake. "It seems crazy. But these are good people. It's like this because they deal with crap none of us ever had to, not even in the worst overseas postings. You have to let them blow off steam 'cause they deserve to."

Annie took a deep breath. "Couldn't someone have told me that earlier?" she said.

"Dusty says he did." Chopper released her and went back to his sauce, a grin on his face. "He also says you looked like it would take a while for you to get it through your head."

The brief good feeling vanished, and Annie pulled a face as she cut another half-inch-thick slice off the block of spam. "Nice of him to render judgment," she commented a touch icily.

"Relax. Everyone gets talked about, and to be fair, your Rulebook Up My Ass attitude has been raising some eyebrows. There are worse things to be known for, especially with this group."

"Yeah? Like what?"

Murphy stuck his head around the corner, not even pretending he hadn't been eavesdropping. He was carrying a bottle of Kahlúa in one hand and balancing a tray of blintzes with the other. "Once upon a time," he began, "when the unit was young and we were all fresh-faced and idealistic, there was a greenshirt who earned himself the name 'Hands-On' . . ."

"Y'know what? Never mind."

Annie let the issue go, at least as far as the rest of the unit was concerned. They never reappeared, but she began checking her possessions regularly, and nothing else ever seemed to go missing. She was irritated—to say the least—but the whole issue seemed to be a dead-end, and chewing over it just made her more and more pointlessly frustrated.

She still took some precautions. The final bullet, the one that had escaped notice, she wrapped in paper and stuck in the bottom of a box of feminine hygiene products. If that one went missing too, she could narrow down the list of possible suspects to 1) women and 2) certified creepers.

But, as she once overheard Zap telling Footloose, "There's this thing called 'real life,' and some people argue that it's more important than karma crystals and paranoia." She got the impression that there was a story there and didn't ask, but Zap had been correct in the essence of the argument: worrying about phantom thieves and missing ordinance was only adding stress to an already-stressful job. Annie couldn't wish away her fears, but G.I. Joe was doing a good job distracting her from them.

Besides, she had a target now.

Carter Hall, the toxo-viper, was in medical isolation while he recovered from the surgery on his shoulder and collarbone. He would live, but he definitely wasn't grateful for the fact that he'd been treated much better than prisoners of Cobra ever were, and even when conscious he kept up a stony silence that pretty much defied any attempts at questioning. Doc had quickly declared that, as a patient still recovering from invasive surgery, Hall could not be given over to the tender, scary mercies of any of the more notorious Joes. That made him pretty much a wash on the intel-gathering front, and Hall was temporarily ignored in favor of questioning Zartan.

For Annie, though, he was a golden opportunity. She was irritated, still paranoid, and frankly resented him more than a little for causing her to question her job and her ability to do it. Which made Hall the best kind of person to be feeding: a captive audience that she disliked.

Heavily sedated for the first few days of their acquaintance, and afterwards still kept partially immobilized while his shattered collarbone and shoulder began the long, arduous healing process, he had no way of escaping from her. He couldn't even demand that a different person bring his food; Annie was the person legitimately assigned to the duty, she wasn't exactly torturing him, and there was that whole "terrorist who invaded a secret government installation with intent to kill" thing. And it made no nevermind if he maintained his silence, because anybody who's spent enough time in the soul-crushing hell of customer service knows how to pour out their grievances at length.

"I think you would benefit from reexamining your life choices," she told him briskly on day three as she peeled back the foil covering on his bowl of lovely, nourishing, bland-as-hell broth. "At least, that's what I keep hearing on the talk shows. Sally Jessy Raphael and stuff like that. Of course," she added, "I wouldn't trust Sally Jessy as far as I could throw her. I've been reading the Cobra files, you know, and they're all over the place about mind control, but I bet you guys have nothing on Sally. Between her and Springer, I'm not surprised you haven't taken over America yet. The airwaves have already been conquered. You guys haven't got a chance."

Or, later the same day: "It all comes down to civility, I think. Oh, you and your terrorist buddies probably would've said it was because of money or greed or the capitalist imperialist running dogs—y'know, I still don't know what that phrase means? It always reminds me of my Uncle Joey's friend Todd, who never managed to get a girlfriend but was very into greyhounds, if you know what I mean—anyway, there's lots of reasons, but I personally think it's civility. Interesting, isn't it? The stuff your kindergarten teacher tells you still applies. 'Don't take other people's stuff.' 'Stop pushing and wait your turn.' 'Don't invade a government installation in a purple jumpsuit.' If more people obeyed the basic rules of civility, we wouldn't have to do this. So it's really all your own fault. Should've listened back in kindergarten, buddy."

For the first four days after he regained full consciousness, Hall kept stubbornly quiet. Annie would bring him three squares a day, usually with a fresh topic of conversation ready to go, but he was about as talkative as Sgt. Snake-Eyes and even less personally engaging-a record in Annie's book. But as a captive audience he couldn't be beat, and if that bothered him, it was no skin off her nose.

On day five, as Annie was setting down a bowl of mixed salad and informing him of all the various unsavory connotations of the color purple, the toxo-viper let out a low groan. She jumped a little, surprised at that, and almost spilled the bowl of salad across his lap. For a moment, the world seemed to hold its breath.

"Fuck," he said at last. "You really never shut up, do you?"

"Well, you weren't doing any talking," Annie pointed out, putting the bowl back down, "and nature abhors a vacuum, I always heard. Welcome back to Earth."

Hall gave the bowl of salad the kind of look usually reserved for a small, giggling clown doll that follows you everywhere. "You know, when I said I wasn't afraid to die, I meant it. It'd be quicker than this shit."

"Yeah, but that would be merciful. And from all the Cobra literature I've had to read since you people decided to attack, we here at G.I. Joe are ruthless, tyrannical capitalist scum who 'use the facade of justice as an excuse to push their own power-hungry agenda.'" Annie poured a glassful of orange juice from the Thermos she had brought and set it down on the table next to his bed. "If I'm annoying you, you brought it on yourself, going up against clearly psychopathic evil types like us."

The toxo-viper shifted a little on his bed, trying to get comfortable. One side was heavily taped up, the arm strapped to his chest and a figure-eight splint keeping both his shoulders held back and immobilized, so this wasn't a very successful endeavor. "Shut up. Please. I'm not a TB, okay? Just shut the fuck up about it."

Annie raised an eyebrow. "TB? Doc did a tuberculosis test, didn't he?"

"A . . . T . . . B, dumbass," the toxo-viper said, as if he was spelling it out for an especially slow child. "TB. True Believer."

"Nice." Annie planted her hands on her hips, her expression unbelieving. "So you're captured as part of a group breaking into the Pit, and suddenly you don't believe in any of the Cobra dogma, right? Just a regular guy trying to make ends meet?"

"That so hard to believe, huh? You really think everyone working for Cobra is that stupid?"

"Ah, because there's so very much evidence to the contrary." Yeah, it was juvenile as hell, but just sniping at someone felt so damn good. Annie almost grinned before she caught herself and assumed a suitably impassive facade.

"You sound like a fucking five-year-old."

"You have a problem with that, I take it?"

Hall groaned. "I was shot by a crazy fucking cook. All the ways the mission had to go wrong, and I got shot by Julia Child's retarded niece. Just shut up, would you?"

"You invaded our base. Technically, this whole thing is your fault."

"I was ordered to. Take it up with the goddamn Baroness!"

Annie was about to reply when a sharp rap on the door drew her attention. Steeler and Torpedo, the two unfortunates currently on guard duty outside, were looking in through the small plexiglass window. Steeler was knocking on the window with a closed fist, a communicator held in the other.

"Drink your OJ, kid. It's good for you." Annie picked up her now-empty tray and headed back to the door, ignoring the rather offensive gesture that Hall made with his one free hand. Torpedo opened the door and Annie slipped out into the corridor, tucking the tray under her arm.

"Flint wants to see you," Steeler said briefly. Annie reflexively clutched the tray, the adrenaline high from the argument slipping away to be replaced by good old-fashioned dread. She reviewed the rulebook in her head. Was talking to the prisoner like that against any regulations? There was a coda to section #31 (Treatment of EPWs in High-Risk Conditions) which stated that "proper decorum is to be observed when seeing to the needs of the EPW," but she didn't think she'd violated that. She certainly hadn't given away anything about G.I. Joe . . . unless Uncle Joey's friend Todd was somehow connected to all this? Unlikely.

"What for?" she said automatically. Reporting a regulatory violation to Flint? That was one thing. Specifically being summoned by Flint, presumably for a very specific reason? That was another thing entirely.

"No idea." Steeler hooked the communicator back onto his belt. "But Flint wants to see you."

Still clutching the tray, Annie went. The administrative offices were several floors up from the prison level, and in her experience people who rightly answered to "sir" didn't like to be kept waiting, so she scrambled as best she could. The elevator was packed, mainly with motor pool jockeys who were talking about some kind of new filter that could cut heat emissions for silent running, and it seemed to rise agonizingly slowly. Annie stared at the closed doors, wondering just what the hell was going on. Maybe it was about the bullets? Had they turned up something on . . . okay, that was too ridiculous to imagine. She had to stop thinking about that conspiracy-theory crap.

Finally, out of breath from sheer nervousness, Annie skidded into Flint's office and came to a halt in front of his desk, almost dropping the tray as she saluted. Flint looked up from his computer, but didn't say anything. Lady Jaye, who was seated in front of his desk, rose instead.

"Short Stack," she said. Her expression wasn't unfriendly, but Annie couldn't read it, and that almost made her more nervous than the summons itself. "At ease."

Fat chance of that, but Annie managed to relax a couple of millimeters. "Ma'am."

"I'm not a ma'am, Short Stack. I thought Beach Head had yelled that into all our new recruits." Jaye studied Annie, apparently taking a measure of pity on the flustered quartermaster. "Do you know what this is about?"

"No, sergeant," Annie said truthfully.

Flint put a hand on the computer monitor and rotated it until it faced Annie and Jaye. A video feed was running on the screen—black-and-white shots from several angles at once, showing a very familiar prison cell. One was evidently live, since it showed Hall reluctantly drinking the orange juice; the other was a recording, showing Annie in the act of almost spilling salad all over a prisoner of the United States government.

"You got him to talk." It wasn't a question, and Annie wasn't sure if it was a good thing, either. She was a quartermaster; lodging an administrative complaint with an officer was one thing, but being called on the carpet regarding a high-stakes prisoner wasn't normally in the job description. She nodded, not quite trusting herself to say anything.

"How?" Jaye said. It was pretty obvious to all present that she already knew, but she was going to make Annie repeat it for some reason. The quartermaster took a breath and tried to relax.

"I talk a lot, sergeant. And I was the one who shot him, so I felt responsible. I thought I was helping by . . . uh, telling him where he'd gone wrong."

"You harangued him. A lot." There was definitely amusement creeping into Flint's voice, and that was never good where a warrant officer was concerned.

"Did I do something wrong, sir?"

"You didn't actually reveal any classified information . . . though probably only because you don't have access to any." Flint rotated the monitor again, putting it back in place. "But you did manage to get some from him. Zartan's tough to make sing at the best of times, and since we don't condone torture, we haven't found out who specifically ordered the attack. While you were squabbling with the prisoner, though, he mentioned the Baroness giving the order."

Annie glanced back and forth between Flint and Jaye. Okay, so she wasn't going to be on punishment duty until the end of time? She could live with this.

"Talk to him some more," Jaye said simply. "We're going to give you a list of topics to pursue. Introduce these into conversation by any means possible—but don't be obvious about it, or he'll clam up again. Your strength seems to be a mildly harassing monologue, so stick to that whenever possible." She held out her hand, and Flint passed her a folded piece of paper. "Destroy this as soon as you've memorized it."

As Annie reached for the paper, Jaye withdrew it for a moment. "Nobody else is to know about this," she said. "Is that understood?"

Annie nodded slowly, and Jaye let her take the paper.

Flint turned away in his chair, already reaching for another set of files. "Good. Dismissed, Short Stack."

"Yes, sir!" He didn't have to tell her twice. Tray and paper in hand, Annie scurried out.

She was supposed to have been back in the kitchens ten minutes ago, but she was pretty sure this was more important. Thankfully, the bunkroom for female greenies was empty at this time of day, and Annie sat down heavily on her assigned rack. Various things were running through her head, most of them nervous obscenities, as she unfolded the paper with shaking fingers.

There were six lines, neatly typed:

Introduce following topics of conversation. Further instructions will follow when data has been obtained.

-Faction dissonance within Cobra

-Faction dissonance between different Vipers. Star-Vipers of primary concern.

-Motivation behind attack. Subtlety encouraged.

-Motivation behind insertion of shapeshifter into Pit. Subtlety encouraged.

-Possibility of informer within G.I. Joe.

" . . . Jesus," Annie breathed. The word informer stayed there, almost hovering in front of her eyes, even as she tore the paper into tiny pieces and began to swallow them. "I did not sign up for this."