The Fall of Scarlett

When the tactical nuclear strike erased what remained of Los Angeles, there were no victors.

The Joe assault had failed. Duke was dead. Snake Eyes died shielding Scarlett from the blast, his body taking the worst of the explosion as collapsing concrete buried them both beneath the ruins.

Hours passed.
Then days.
No rescue came.

Scarlett drifted in and out of consciousness beside the bodies of the two men she trusted most while the city burned around her.

Buzzer wasn't searching for survivors. He and a crew of newly recruited Dreadnoks were scavenging the dead city before the military could establish a permanent exclusion zone. Fuel, ammunition, medicine, vehicles—anything worth taking disappeared into Dreadnok trucks before someone else could claim it.

Finding a living Joe wasn't part of the plan. Finding Scarlett was.
At first she was nothing more than a prize. A bargaining chip. Maybe revenge.
Every time she woke, though, she fought. Broken ribs. Shrapnel wounds. Radiation burns. Dehydrated and barely conscious. She still tried to stab him with broken rebar, steal weapons, and drag herself back toward Snake Eyes.

Buzzer had spent his life around loudmouths and cowards.Scarlett wasn't either.
Against his own expectations, he began to respect her.

The Dreadnoks kept moving from one abandoned safe house to another—empty ranches outside the city, forgotten warehouses, abandoned machine shops, and derelict truck stops—always staying one step ahead of military patrols while Scarlett slowly recovered.

Buzzer never interrogated her. That wasn't his style. Long before becoming a Dreadnok, he'd spent enough time studying sociology to understand something most people never did.

People rarely changed because someone argued with them. They changed because the story they believed about themselves stopped making sense. So, he never told Scarlett what to think. He simply asked questions.

“If command knew where you were... why didn't they come?”
“If Duke was worth recovering... weren't you?”
“What would you have done if the roles had been reversed?”

Some days she refused to answer. Other days she shouted at him. Sometimes she threw whatever was within reach.

Buzzer never pushed. He knew anger usually arrived before acceptance. Weeks turned into months. Scarlett replayed the battle thousands of times.

The flash.
The silence.
The waiting.

Buzzer never claimed the Joes had betrayed her. He didn't have to. He understood that people trusted conclusions they reached themselves far more than ones handed to them.

Eventually, Scarlett began asking the questions aloud.

He treated her as someone worth saving. He changed her bandages, found antibiotics, shared rations equally, and one day quietly handed her back her knife. That trust mattered more than either of them expected.

The first time Scarlett laughed, it caught everyone by surprise. Torch accidentally launched himself through the rotten second floor of an abandoned motel while trying to steal an old vending machine. Even Scarlett couldn't hold it in. Nobody mentioned it afterward. They simply made room for her around the fire.

Months later, Buzzer returned from Los Angeles carrying a scorched military duffel recovered near the blast zone. Inside were the last pieces of Scarlett's former life.

Her crossbow.
Her tactical harness.
A burned Joe shoulder patch.

She built a small fire and fed every piece of her old identity into the flames. The crossbow was the last to go. No one celebrated. They understood what they had witnessed.

Scarlett wasn't changing sides. She was burying the woman who had died in Los Angeles. The military gear disappeared. Leather replaced nylon. Scavenged armor replaced regulation issue. Black war paint covered the face once recognized across the Joe Team.

The discipline remained.
The skill remained.
Only the loyalty changed.

Buzzer never asked for an oath.

One evening he simply tossed Scarlett an old aluminum baseball bat wrapped in fresh athletic tape. “You'll need something that isn't a crossbow.” She caught it one-handed, tested the balance, and rested it across her shoulder. It felt... right.

Months later, Zartan finally paid a visit to one of the Dreadnok’s safe houses. He found Scarlett sparring with three younger recruits. She disarmed the first, swept the second onto his back, and stopped the bat an inch from the third man's face before offering him a hand up.

Zartan watched in silence. Finally, he asked, “Tell me... if a Joe patrol rolled over that hill right now... what would you do?”

“I'd warn my people.”
“My people,” Zartan repeated.
“What happened to Scarlett?”

She looked across the camp. Mechanics rebuilt trucks from scrap. Others cleaned weapons, argued over engines, and laughed over a meal. “It isn't perfect,” she said quietly. “But no one here ever left me to die.”

She met his eyes. “The woman who answered to that name died in Los Angeles.”
Zartan studied her for a long moment before nodding once. “Good. The Dreadnoks don't need another Joe. They need someone who chose to stand beside them when she still had every reason not to.”

He tapped the baseball bat resting against her shoulder. “Welcome home... Nok.”

For the first time since Los Angeles, Scarlett smiled back.

No oath was spoken.
No ceremony followed.
None was needed.

The G.I. Joe Team had lost Scarlett. The Dreadnoks had gained one of their own.