To George R.R. Martin; I make no more money from abusing your world than I do from G.I. Joe. Please don't sue me.
And the chain of events in Westeros starts to go off the established rails...now. God help everyone.
Snake Eyes would never in a million years ever admit to reading Stranger in a Strange Land. At least, to anyone but Shana, who already knew. He had a reputation to maintain, after all. It wouldn't do to have it get out that the Silent Master of the Arashikage, a silent and implacable avatar of death feared around the globe, had a secret fondness for Robert A. Heinlein.
But he had read Stranger in a Strange Land. He remembered in particular Valentine Michael Smith's ability to turn things ninety degrees to reality, effectively removing them from our plane of existence. He had not thought to ever find out what the people that Valentine Michael Smith had turned ninety degrees to reality must have felt like. But one moment he was giving a sullen and very smelly Timber a bath, and the next he was being squeezed through reality, and quite suddenly he could sympathize with the fictional victims of highly evolved Martian psychic powers.
It felt like that funny little feeling in the pit of your stomach that you got when you jumped out of a plane in a drop zone, just you hit terminal velocity and your internal organs started floating. Only through your entire body, which was then put through a blender. Topped off with a headache.
It wasn't pleasant.
For a moment, he thought he smelled wood smoke and burning hair, and singing floated in the air. But it was as ephemeral as the memory of a dream, and it was gone so fast that he might have imagined it.
The whole thing must have lasted less than a second, though it felt far longer. One heartbeat and he was rinsing suds out of Timber's fur with the hose in the motor pool. The next, he was blinking at a cloudless blue sky and getting an impromptu shower as Timber vigorously shook himself, sending water in all directions.
There was sand under him. That was odd. The Pit was in the desert, but the Utah desert that was their current location was more hard-baked clay and rock than sand. It was also hot. That wasn't unusual.
What was unusual was that it didn't smell right. The Pit always smelled of diesel and floor cleaner and gunpowder, of truck exhaust and metal and people. The air here smelled like...well, like desert. Sand and dust and sun.
Someone prodded him in the side. Or made a move to prod at him, anyway; the little sixth sense at the back of Snake's brain tinged. He caught the hand before it made contact and bent the fingers back at an unnatural angle.
"OW!"
Snake Eyes let go of Tunnel Rat's hand and sat up, which did not help his headache. Tunnel Rat was shaking his hand and glaring at Snake Eyes. "See if I check and see if you're dead again, Snake."
*Don't poke me.* Snake Eyes surveyed the area.
Desert. Definitely desert. Sand dotted with scrubby little shrubs and a few sad-looking patches of tough wiry grass. It wasn't Utah, though, and he and Tunnel Rat weren't the only ones present. As far as he could tell, in fact, everyonein the Pit was here, as well as what appeared to be the entire contents of the armory and stores department.
Wherever 'here' was, anyway. The Joes were slowly picking themselves up out of the sand, looking various shades of bewildered, confused, and disconcerted.
Timber, who was apparently not feeling any better about the situation than Snake Eyes, whined and moved closer to Snake, leaning up against the ninja's legs. Snake Eyes scratched the wolf's head comfortingly. Still leaning against Snake, Timber raised his nose and sniffed the wind questioningly, his version of getting his bearings.
Snake Eyes blinked. Not just the Pit, apparently, because there was Storm Shadow, in full battle gear, his sword still in one hand, looking utterly bewildered. He knew that Tommy had been on a mission in Trucal Abysmia up until about twenty seconds ago. Judging from the crimson stains on Tommy's uniform and the blood dripping from the blade of his sword, that mission had been getting very interesting.
"TOMMY!"
The ecstatic shriek sounded very out of place amidst the general confusion. A black-haired blur elbowed Shipwreck out of the way and tackled Storm Shadow, knocking him off his feet. Tommy's sword fell to the sand, forgotten.
The blur was a woman. Snake Eyes recognized her; he'd seen just her once before, in a photograph that Tommy kept in the bottom of his sock drawer. Apparently it wasn't just the Joe team who'd been pulled to...wherever this was, then.
Storm Shadow didn't seem to be complaining about the overly enthusiastic greeting. At some point Junko had gotten Storm's mask off, and she was kissing him as if the world was about to end. Tommy, the present weirdness of the situation apparently forgotten, was giving as good as he was getting. Neither participant looked as if they planned on coming up for air anytime soon. Shipwreck was goggling at the couple, mouth hanging open. Several wolf whistles sounded, proving that soldiers are soldiers, even soldiers who have just been mysteriously transported to God only knew where.
Snake Eyes sighed and shook his head. Over in the sand, apparently not minding that by this point he had an appreciative audience, Tommy's hands were starting to stray into PG-13 rated territory.
"WHUT THE FUCK IS GOIN' ON!?" A familiar Alabama bellow echoed across the desert. It wasn't directed at the couple in the sand, however; Beach was some distance away, and Snake doubted that he could see through the small knot of curious onlookers that his sword brother was attracting. Tommy's hands were leaving a PG-13 rating in the dust and heading fast for a hard R. Snake Eyes sighed again, strode over and prodded Tommy not-so-gently in the ribs with the toe of his boot before things could escalate to NC-17.
Tommy finally came up for air and glared up at his sword brother. If looks could kill, Snake Eyes would have had a hole burned right through his skull. "What?"
*Not that I don't sympathize, but if you two could control yourselves for a couple of hours, we've got problems. If you didn't notice, shit just got weird. Also, hello.* He bowed politely to Junko, who was extricating herself from Tommy's arms, standing up, straightening her clothing and brushing sand off of herself.
Junko, who was wearing battered old yoga pants, sneakers, and an oversized t-shirt that looked like it would have fitted Tommy a lot better than her, nonetheless bowed formally, with poise that would have shamed an emperor. "The Silent Master, I presume? It is an honor. Tommy has told me a great deal about you."
Snake dipped his head in return.
"I noticed." Tommy retrieved his sword, frowned at it, and produced an oiled cloth from a hidden pocket. "But no one is trying to kill me now, which is an improvement over five minutes ago, and there were…other things that required my attention."
Activity was happening over in the vicinity of Beach and Duke. Snake Eyes distinctly heard Hawk barking orders, but he didn't hear his name attached to any of them yet.
"I saw." Shana's voice was dry. She moved up to stand beside Snake Eyes. "I think everyone saw, actually."
Junko glanced around, and seemed to notice the staring Joes for the first time. She went slightly pink. Apparently not put off by the elbow to the ribs, Shipwreck winked at her.
Tommy sheathed his sword, unfazed. "Junko, meet the G.I. Joe team, or part of it. Left to right, Dusty, Shipwreck, Tunnel Rat, Snow Job, Alpine, Spirit, Clutch, Zap, Ace, Ripcord, Chuckles, Lifeline, and Heavy Duty. All of whom can put their eyeballs back in their heads before I remove them. You'd think they'd never seen a man kiss a woman before."
*Kiss? You just got to second base.*
"Shut up. Junko, Snake Eyes, Snake Eyes, Junko. I've been training her, but you knew that already. Red, stop looking at me like that. Snake isn't the only one here allowed to have a girlfriend. Junko, this is Scarlett. For some reason I've never fathomed, my sword brother decided to go and fall in love with her. Now, does anyone know where the hell we are?"
"Dude." Tunnel Rat interjected. "Dude. You have a girlfriend?!"
"Is that so surprising? I was on the other side of the world from all of you five minutes ago, and had an ex-spetsnaz wet-team-for-hire trying to kill me. Junko was in Tokyo. What happened?"
"You never said that you had a girlfriend!"
"I wasn't aware that it was any of your business." Tommy shook sand out of his mask.
Dusty was shading his eyes with one hand and squinting at the horizon. "Judging from the angle of the sun, we're not far from the equator. And there's water to the east; I know mirages when I see them, and that's not a mirage." He pulled a small pair of binoculars out of his pocket, held them up to his eyes, and fiddled with the focus knobs. "Yep. Big body of water. Can't tell if it's a lake or an ocean, though." He poked at one of the sad little shrubby bushes clinging to life in the sand with the toe of his boot. "Huh." He crouched to examine the plant more closely, broke a leaf off and sniffed it. Apparently unsatisfied, he tossed the leaf away and turned over a nearby rock. Several many-legged creatures scuttled for cover. "Huh. That's weird."
"What's weird?" Alpine was squinting at the horizon too.
"I have no idea where we are." Dusty stood up again and dusted his hands off. "And I've never seen this kind of bush or this sort of scorpion before in my life."
"I thought you'd been to every desert on earth!" Snow Job was already shedding clothes.
"I have. That's the point. You don't want to take your shirt off, you know. You'll burn like tinder with that tender white skin of yours."
"Shut up. It's fucking hot."
Dusty shrugged. "Fine. Don't listen to the desert trooper while we're in the desert. "
"Storm Shadow has a girlfriend!?" Tunnel Rat still seemed shocked by this.
"It would explain why he's been disappearing on 'personal leave' for a week every two months like clockwork." Spirit shrugged amiably. "I figured he had a woman somewhere. Didn't you notice he always came back in a good mood?"
"I would too, if I had a stone cold fox like that to go cozy up to." Clutch muttered this to Ace under his breath. "How come the ninja always get the hot women?"
"The 'fox' is right here." Junko's voice was sharp. "And she does not like being talked about as if she isn't present."
"Ooh. Feisty." Shipwreck grinned. "I like feisty. You ever get bored with the ninja, darling, just let me know. That offer still stands for you too, Scarlett."
It was at about that point that Snake Eyes heard Hawk yell his name, so he missed Shana kneecapping Shipwreck for the fourth time that week.