𝙸 𝙲𝚊𝚗'𝚝 𝙲𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚜

𝚂𝟺𝙴𝟷𝟹: 𝙿𝚊𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚋𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚆𝚊𝚛 𝚃𝚑𝚎𝚘𝚛𝚢

Inspired by Community S6E11: "Modern Espionage."

Frank POV

Jake Mason doesn't have a particularly sweet tooth, but he's a supportive guy, so when the New Rome cheerleading squad hosts one of their frequent bake sales, he's always there to buy a couple of treats. So here he is, around eight pm on a random day of the week, pushing his chair back towards the parking lot, ready to go back to his apartment after a long day of pushing himself around this mildly inaccessible campus.

It was a rough day. He finally got his midterm grade back on his robotics project, and it wasn't good. His online PE credit from over the summer didn't transfer, and now he has to call the online college program about that so he can graduate, and now he's being told that he might not earn the documentary certificate because he wasn't actually in any of the shots. That was his boom mic, for crying out loud! He's worked on so many documentaries, he's even bought his own!

So the silver lining in his shitty day has got to be Lacy's homemade snickerdoodles. The cheerleaders always have the best packaging—a seasonal bag tied together with a bow on top of the twist tie. This one has little bunnies on it for springtime. Jake's always wanted a rabbit.

"Hey there, Jake. Going somewhere?" Lou Ellen Blackstone asks, her dark hair blowing in the wind. She never talks to Jake, only when she's running a bake sale and he buys something because it cannot be stressed enough, Jake Mason loves himself a bake sale.

Dark parking lot, Lou Ellen actually speaking to him, nobody else around... She doesn't seem like the type to mug a disabled person, so she must be playing the game.

And as suspected, she pulls out a purple paintball gun and aims it at him, but he's ready for this.

With a push of a button, an automatic paintball gun appears on the armrest of his chair. "You should know better than to challenge a future engineer," he taunts, aiming his gun.

POP-POP!

Jake looks down at his shirt, which is coated in black paint.

Lou Ellen grunts. Her arm is also covered in black paint. Jake doesn't have black paint, and it would seem his foe doesn't either.

"Where are you?" Lou Ellen shouts. "Show yourself!"

And then the spotlights turn on. They've been busted.

Clarisse La Rue and the rest of the Mars Coed Fraternity pull up on those Lime rental scooters. "Jake Mason and Lou Ellen Blackstone," she says. "You're being taken into custody for illegal participation in paintball warfare.

✎✎✎

"Did you hear what happened last night?" Piper asks the study group.

Frank shakes his head.

"Guys, seriously? It's all over The New Roman Times!"

"Nobody reads The New Roman Times, Piper," Annabeth says.

She groans and slams her coffee cup against the table. It's nice to see that Piper's switched over to reusable cups for the remainder of her senior year, but Frank's a little concerned as to how she's going to fuel her coffee addiction after she no longer has fake money to spend at Starbucks. "There's this crazy paintball conspiracy going on around campus. People are playing the game underground."

"Can't they just wait for Dean D and Mr. Brunner to throw an end-of-the-year barbecue like they usually do?" Hazel asks.

"No, and here's why," Piper says before turning her computer around. She scrolls to an article on The New Roman Times's website, which Frank has never visited until this day.