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.

Since he's the resident non-dyslexic in the study group, Frank reads some highlights from the article out loud. "For the spring semester, Dean D has decided it best to not host the annual paintball assassin's competition with the reasoning that the cleanup requires significant effort from our janitorial staff and additional funding to pay them for overtime. This announcement comes suspiciously timed with the announcement of the accepted student open house that will be held at the end of the week."

"What's that?" Percy asks.

Annabeth raises an eyebrow. "Seriously? You didn't go to any of those in high school?"

"Wise Girl, it's a miracle I'm here at all, let alone that I'm graduating soon."

"Okay, point taken. Basically, it's an event for high school seniors that have been accepted here. You're supposed to go and get to know the school and get all your questions answered, and New Rome is supposed to get as many kids as possible to commit."

"Oh! Yeah, I never got invited to any of those."

"Ours was canceled because of COVID, Seaweed Brain."

Jason scratches the back of his neck. "I'm supposed to help out with that because I'm an ambassador, but I'm looking for some excuses to get out of it if anyone wants to have an emergency family picnic."

Piper rolls her eyes. "Keep reading, Frank."

So Frank keeps reading. "In our last interview, Mr. Brunner expressed disappointment in the cancellation of this year's paintball assassins game and suggested that the students shouldn't be restrained from paintball, should they want to participate. He would like us to put it on the record that he and the Campus Activities Office in no way are insinuating support for the underground paintball assassins game happening here on campus."

"Damn," says Leo.

"Here's what you need to know about the underground game of paintball assassins," Frank reads. "The game host is unknown, as are many of the players. The Mars Coed Fraternity has been recruited as a security force and is taking players into custody. Anyone who is caught playing paintball may face a heavy fine."

"That's right!" Dean D says, strutting into the room in cop-themed drag. Nothing fazes Frank anymore. He'd rather not think about what the dean might wear to the accepted student open house though.

"Francis," he says to Frank. Oh god, the dean is about to ask him for something. If he's learned anything at New Rome Community College, it's to never cross the dean. Ever.

"Yes, Dean?"

"We're looking for someone to give a little speech at our admitted student open house, and your name came up." Clearly, Frank's name did not come up because the deans still does not know his name.

He continues, "It's just a few minutes. Tell them why you love it here so much and what kinds of classes you're taking. There'll be a lot of kids looking to major in early education, so it's important we have someone representing them."

Oddly enough, it's kind of an honor. Out of all the people in his major, they want him to represent the education department.

How can he say no to that?

"One more thing," says Dean D. "You will need to discourage others from playing in this underground paintball assassins game. This includes the other ambassadors. I can't fathom what kind of impression this would make on our future students."

Frank looks to his friends for an answer. They love paintball. Hell, he kind of likes it too.

But this speech is a big freakin' deal. His grandma would have been so proud of him.

"Thank you for the opportunity," he says. "I'd be happy to."

Dean D leaves the study room, high heels clicking against the floor.

"I thought he'd never leave," Piper says, putting her feet on the table.

And then they're interrupted again. Honestly, they don't have that much studying left to do since the final paper for their senior capstone class is an individual project, but this is Frank's favorite time of the day. He likes to sit here and wind down after a day of classes with his friends. There's minimal drama and all chill. Can he just have his chill time?

Apparently not, because Malcolm Pace needs to use the pencil sharpener.

The machine buzzes as he pushes his pencil in. Who uses actual pencils anymore?

And then Frank's friends aim their paintball guns.

"Don't worry, guys," says Hazel. "I've got this one."

"Hazel?" Frank asks. "You guys are playing the secret underground paintball game and didn't invite me?"

POP-POP-POP!

"That was excessive," Malcolm mutters. He finishes sharpening his pencil and then sticks his fingers in his mouth to whistle.

At first, Frank is offended. Why shouldn't he be? His entire friend group including his girlfriend has a secret paintball alliance without him.

There's no time to get mad over that, and Malcolm dropped his gun on the carpet, so Frank picks it up just in time to help his friends stop the ambush.

"Goddamn Chess Club nerds!" Jason grunts, shooting Malcolm's friends with pink paint.

There's some hesitation at first. Frank hasn't shot somebody with a paintball since his sophomore year. He doesn't do stuff like this. These are his friends.

Then he remembers his grandmother. She would have been proud of him for giving the speech at the open house, sure, but she'd be even more proud of him for firing at a ton of enemies in a game of paintball assassins. She was a militaristic old lady.

And then he hits someone in the chest with a paintball, and it's empowering. The joy of paintball has been returned to Frank Zhang.

When the siege ends, the study group puts their guns away and takes their seats. No, Frank will not be giving Malcolm his gun back.

"So what's stopping Malcolm and the Chess Club from reentering the game?" Frank asks. "I mean, nobody's regulating this."

Annabeth shrugs. "Honor system, I guess. None of the dead players have tried to reappear, at least, not that I know of."

"Shit, the dean." Leo runs a hand through his hair, trying to neaten it, not that that'll do anything.

"Francis," Dean D says to Frank. "Would you know about a student in the library complaining to me about how you just shot him with a paintball gun?"

Shit. "Uh, no sir," Frank says.

Dean D shrugs. "That's good enough for me."

"Did you guys hear about the prize?" Leo asks when echoing of the dean's heels fades.

"Yeah, what do you make of that?" Piper asks.

Jason starts to talk. "I mean, I would-"

"I was asking Annabeth."

Annabeth jumps, not wanting to get in the middle of a couple's squabble. "I uh... Well, that means someone is sponsoring the game. I wonder who though? Like, someone would have to have gone above Dean D's head... or maybe they aren't affiliated with New Rome."

Leo then says, "I heard something about a player who uses black paintballs. He took out Jake Mason and a couple of others just last night."

"That has Nico's energy," Hazel says.

"That's no fun," says Piper. "I mean, I thought the appeal was painting each other all sorts of crazy colors. Black is just... not fun."

"So you think this guy is a threat?" Annabeth asks.

Leo shrugs. "That's what Jake told me. Said the guy was good. They didn't even see him, but some others have. Briefly."

"Okay," Jason says, pulling out a notebook and some colored pencils. "Let's come up with a strategy. Percy, you-"

"Plan Time!" Percy says. "I love Plan Time like I love my lady!" He throws an arm around Annabeth for emphasis.

Everyone looks at Annabeth expectantly. She belches and says, "Since this is all undercover, we can probably just find out who this person is and take them down during the daylight hours. He only attacks at night, right Leo?"

"From what I've heard, yeah."

"Cool, so we travel in numbers to keep safe, and Frank and Leo can go to the cooking class later today."

"The cooking class?" Frank asks. "Why would we go there?"

"It's a coverup," Annabeth explains. "Nobody would actually take advantage of a free cooking class on a college campus, so it's where everyone's getting ammo. Just go to the class and ask the dealer for black paintballs. If he says he can get you some, follow him out and corner him, interrogation, you know."

"What if he catches on?" Frank asks. "Somebody must be paying extra for that because I've never seen a black paintball before."

"That's why you guys are going," she says. "You're like the Shaggy and Scooby of the group. Nothing you ever do goes the way we plan, but it always turns out pretty good."

That's good enough for Frank.

✎✎✎

Somebody could have told Frank that the paintball ammo exchange disguised as a cooking class would actually entail some cooking. He's not a very good chef. He's the guy that made instant Pilsbury cookies for the Christmas party.

And for some reason, he got this idea in his head that maybe he'd be better at making this dish today because it's vegetables, not baking. Then, he gets excited because this dish is vegetarian, and he has a vegetarian friend he could maybe cook this meal for in the future.

He will not be serving this meal to Piper ever. In fact, he will not be telling Piper that he sort of knows how one should make this meal because he will be super embarrassed if she asks him to make it for her.

"Frank, the carrots are burning again," Leo states.

It's a good thing they're not here to learn how to cook vegetarian dishes.

The lesson ends, and there's no time like the present to ask this guy about some paintball ammo.

"Excuse me," Frank mutters to the instructor on the way out. Wow, it is really hard not to get distracted by this guy's literal eyepatch.

"Yes?"

"Uh, what do you know about black paintballs?" he asks quietly.

And he must be guilty because he takes off running out of the lesson room and down the hall of the biology building.

This whole incident just proves Frank's theory that nobody ever tells him and Leo the real plan because Annabeth jumps out from around a corner and aims her camo gun at the suspected paintball dealer. Does she have her own equipment now? Frank doesn't remember Mr. Brunner handing out cool guns. Then again, he does have a fondness for her.

Anyways, it's a great interception, and Frank is quite thankful that Annabeth made an appearance even if he was out of the loop. Now, they can interrogate the guy and find out who the mysterious competitor is, and then hopefully win the prize, whatever that is. Annabeth's going to be such a great interrogator.

She steps towards the kid with the eyepatch and starts to speak in a low growl. "If you don't want to get shot, you're going to tell us who you're supplying the black paintballs to."

POP!

You can barely see it on the dealer's black t-shirt and black jeans, but he's been coated in paint. This mysterious competitor shot his own dealer. That's metal.

Annabeth ducks and paint splatters on the wall behind her. "Dean D is going to kill someone for that."

"He's going into the lab!" Leo shouts.

Annabeth takes off running, and even though Frank is the athlete of the group, he finds it hard to keep up. The two of them run into the lab, only to be soaked with...

"Thank god, it's just water," says Annabeth. Her blonde hair is plastered to her face.

It would seem that their enemy isn't smart enough to rig the lab safety shower to spray paint. Then again, the water still slowed Annabeth and Frank enough for him to get away before they could learn anything about this new and mysterious player.

"Shoot," Frank says.

"Hey, guys, look what I found!" says Leo. "The guy dropped his notebook!"

"Anything important in it?" Annabeth asks, ringing out her t-shirt.

Frank scrambles to turn off the water, but can't quite find the button.

Annabeth flips through the notebook while the rest of the study group files in. Where have they been this entire time?

"Find anything important?" Jason asks.

"You missed all the action," Frank says. "Annabeth's looking through the notebook that Leo found, and I'm trying to turn off this shower."

Percy turns a dial and the water stops. "You were saying?"

"I was so worried about you!" Hazel says, wrapping Frank in a hug. "I'm so glad you're still in the game."

"Me too, but like, I'm totally wet."

Percy jumps. "Shoot, Annabeth, can I give you my sweatshirt?"

Annabeth crinkles her nose like she wants to yell at him for suggesting such a thing, but then she sighs and says, "That would be nice." It is so chilly in this lab, probably because of all the frogs they're keeping on ice. On that note, Frank would like to leave now.

"Holy shit," Annabeth says. "Leo, you are a national treasure."

"I am? I mean, hell yeah I am!" Leo says. "Remind me why?"

"This guy's email address and password are in here, and get this: he's from City College."

"I love it when you talk nerdy," Percy says. "Also, can we revisit your interrogation strategies because I would love to unpack that-"

"What else is in there?" Piper asks.

"Piper, we cannot take his bank account information. That is illegal."

Piper waves her arms and says, "I know that, but like, maybe the password to his Starbucks account? Or his Hinge profile? I'd love to hack his Hinge profile."

"No."

"But Annabeth-"

"I just hacked into his email," Leo says. "I mean if anybody cares."

"What did you find?" Jason asks, trying to read over his shoulders.

Plainly, Leo says, "Outgoing emails to a Luke Castellan. Heavy implications that there's going to be mayhem at the open house tonight."

"What kind of implications?" Hazel asks.

"Well, right here it says, 'there will be mayhem at the open house tonight.'"

If there were ever a time for Frank's nervous tummy to churn, it's now.

✎✎✎

This isn't Annabeth's weirdest or most elaborate plan; it doesn't involve the group dressing as celebrities, which is certainly a plus, but it's not normal by any means.

Frank takes his station in the back of the room, posing as a regular guy ready to give a speech. The important thing here is that he does not get caught up in the middle of any paintball battles tonight. This speech is too important. Besides, there are still some finishing touches he has to put on it.

In front of him, Annabeth and Percy are pretending to be prospective students, dancing and mingling with the others, except there's less mingling and more dancing. How did they get so good at dancing? Frank's never made it through a dance without tripping on his feet, meanwhile, they're acting like characters in an eighties dance movie.

Then you've got Leo, who is acting as a representative from the engineering department since the Mars Coed Fraternity so conveniently arrested Jake Mason. He's munching on a cookie and effortlessly boring the high school seniors with a story about some drone or something he built that may or may not have fueled Coach Hedge's addiction to painkillers.

Jason and Piper are in the kitchen, which means that Jason did manage to get out of being an ambassador at this event, but also that he's probably consoling Piper, who is surrounded by more dead animals than she would have preferred on this fine evening. Beyond that, Frank doesn't have eyes on them, so he's not sure what's going on back there or what kind of support he could offer them other than what they ask for through the Bluetooth headset he's wearing. If they text, he'll send a cupcake recipe.

Frank taps his headset and checks in with Leo. "...and that's the story of how I almost lost my pinky finger! Now the story of how I almost lost my middle finger is..." Yeah, Leo is doing just fine.

He listens in to Percy and Annabeth for about two seconds and decides he can't stand that weird fight-flirting thing they do.

He tunes in to Hazel, who is keeping watch of the rickety old New Rome elevator that probably should not be in use. "You good, Hazel?"

"Uh, kind of tied up at the moment... Going up?" And then there's something that sounds like muffled whacking.

Frank was beaten up by enough bullies in middle school to know what was going on in that elevator. "Hazel are you okay?" He looks across the room towards the elevator that's supposed to deliver her any second now.

POP-POP-POP! Someone in that elevator is being shot and if it's Hazel, Frank is going to riot because nobody shoots his girlfriend, even if it's just with paint.

Ding! The elevator doors open, and Hazel comes out, dusting her hands against her pants and whistling a little tune. So she won a shootout and is being nonchalant about it. Frank loves this girl.

She gives him a thumbs-up and mouths, Good luck!

Shoot. It's time for Frank to give his speech. He's not the best public speaker. Gosh, his hands are going to shake and he's going to say weird things like gosh and golly gee and everyone's going to make fun of him.

He grabs his piece of notebook paper with like ten bullet points scribbled onto it. He never got to ask Dean D if he is supposed to talk more about his experience as an education major, or as a student at New Rome in general. He has some talking points on both, just in case. On second thought, he's giving this talk to all the kids in attendance—not just potential education majors—so maybe he should have put more energy into just general New Rome notes.

He tugs on the microphone, but it doesn't go high enough to reach his face, so he has to lean into it to talk. "Uh, hello, everyone—Oh!" The microphone screeches. Maybe he doesn't need to be so close to it.

"Welcome to New Rome. Uh, my name is Frank Zhang, and I am an education major from just outside Vancouver in Canada."

His headset buzzes with a subtle pop-pop. He scans the room, but there are no paintballs in sight. Annabeth and Percy are watching the rest of the partygoers, keeping their eyes peeled for anything suspicious. Meanwhile Hazel keeps nodding encouragingly. Shoot, it looks like he got nervous and froze.

So the silence in the presentation room right now can only mean that there's something crazy happening in the kitchen.

And then there's this huge pop that could only have come from the present moment. The party is in danger! Frank's friends are in danger!

He reaches into his suit jacket and retrieves his orange paintball gun, aiming it at the source of the sound.

"Francis!" Dean D scolds. "I agreed to let you give this speech on one condition!"

Then he sees the bits of latex on the cookie tray. It was a balloon. It was a balloon that popped and now Frank has exposed the underground paintball game for nothing.

"Don't listen to him!" Hazel cries, reaching for her own paintball gun. "Dean D and Mr. Brunner are behind this game, and City College is trying to hijack it!"

Jason and Piper burst out of the kitchen, their aprons covered in what Frank can only hope is frosting.

Piper shouts, "You wouldn't believe what was—Oh! You figured it out already. Carry on!"

And carry on they do, with poor defenseless high schoolers caught in the crossfire.

When Dean D and Mr. Brunner attempt their escape, Annabeth and Percy cut them off with a killer tango, and then Frank wonders why nobody turned off the music for his speech.

Unfortunately, Percy gets a little too into the spins and leaves the door unguarded, and Dean D and Brunner make their escape, but not before firing paintballs of their own at Annabeth and Percy.

"I was going to return this dress!" Annabeth complains. "You owe me like, four dollars and a teaspoon of weed!"

"No time for that!" Frank yells, hopping off the stage and following Dean D and Mr. Brunner down the hall.

"Wait for me!" Hazel calls, following close behind him.

Not unlike previous chases Frank's participated in since enrolling at New Rome Community College, he and Hazel chase Dean D and Mr. Brunner around the Big House until they reach the Campus Activities Office. Frank still can't believe that they haven't replaced the carpet he tore up the other week. Actually, yes, he can. That's so very typical of New Rome.

"So you're the sponsors?" Hazel asks when she backs them into a corner behind the front desk.

Dean D and Mr. Brunner aim their guns at Hazel and Frank, respectively. "Yes," says Dean D, "and this year's theme was undercover spies."

"I think we pulled it off," Mr. Brunner adds.

And of course, because Hazel thinks of everything, she asks, "What about the competitor with the black paintballs? He was in correspondence with faculty from City College."

"You know City College can never keep their hands off our paintball games," Dean D says.

"Okay, okay," says Frank. "And you guys are playing?"

"We wanted to mix it up," Mr. Brunner says with a shrug. That checks out.

"Okay," Frank says, still pointing his gun at the dean. "This is a stalemate. Let's just all shoot our feet on the count of three. We'll end this game right here, right now."

"Sounds fair to me," says Mr. Brunner.

"Ditto," Dean D adds.

Frank looks to Hazel for approval. "Let's do this."

"One..."

"Two..."

"Three..."

And they all shoot each other. He can allow himself to be disappointed in Mr. Brunner, but Frank should have known better than to expect Dean D to keep a promise.

Then again, Frank shot the dean in the chest with an orange paintball of his own.

Hazel's Mary Jane shoes are squeaky clean. She shot Mr. Brunner.

Frank drops his gun on the ground. "Come on, Hazel," he says. "I have finals to study for."

"Do you want to put on a Disney movie and study together?"

He smiles at his girlfriend. "I don't think there's anything else I'd rather do."