Intrude 1/5 - Solid Snake/Gray Fox fic
aephlahphphlGAH, this pairing ATE MY BRAIN, and I am REALLY GLAD that I didn't THINK TOO HARD before starting this fic or else I WOULD NOT have done it. I've written much of it already, I think it's going to have four five chapters, and I plan to post one every two days. The second is better and sexier than this one, I swear. :P
also, whoever wrote this on mgs_kink? I want to have your babies make 3 clones of you and then kiss them all.
Title: INTRUDE 1/5: KRONOS
Pairing: Solid Snake/Gray Fox
Rating: PG-13 for now, NC-17 next chapter.
Word Count: 3200
Warnings: Nudity, and everything I know about Special Forces I learned from either MPO or Wikipedia :/ No spoilers, not for anything. :)
Summary: David joins FOXHOUND, America's finest and oddest special forces unit, and has a few things to learn before his first mission.
David hated leave.
Every other soldier he'd met looked forward to it. Talked endlessly about getting back to their hometowns, their families. When David was away from the battlefield, he had nowhere to go. So he looked for an apartment - he didn't care where, so long as it was cheap and nowhere near New Mexico, where he'd lived when he was a kid.
He'd grown up in a so-called 'government facility' - an orphanage, full of abandoned kids who'd never been adopted, never would be and weren't going anywhere except an early grave. With the encouragement of every adult he knew, he'd joined the military when he was sixteen and quickly shunted himself into Special Forces, finding a place in an ODA for diving specialists - a division that had been a great fucking use during the Gulf War, so he'd branched out his skills a lot. His major recommended him for FOXHOUND in '94. It was a step up in the world - more money, fewer rules, and a much more elite personnel - but meant little sense to him. The officer had never liked David, so he figured that rather than a promotion, it was just a way to get him gone. They always told him that he wasn't a team player. FOXHOUND agents worked alone, or autonomously in squads of four, so maybe that was where he belonged.
He wasn't lonely, exactly. Other people just weren't worth the bother.
He was on leave - between positions, really - for a couple of weeks right after he'd been accepted to FOXHOUND. That Thursday, he read in the newspaper that Big Boss had come home to America and reinstated himself as FOXHOUND's leader. There was an editorial about the legendary commander, and his activities with FOXHOUND in the 70s, and with his own mercenary corps in the 80s. David wondered how much of it was true, how much was guesswork and how much was just copied from conspiracist circulars. The writer seemed rather in awe of him, and keen to say that this was all very good for the USA. Why he'd left, and why he'd now returned, the article did not seek to explain.
*
FOXHOUND's HQ was much as rumour had described it; hidden in an isolated part of the mountains, unreachable by roads, and mostly underground. It was also about a thousand miles north from where rumour claimed it was - so much for that. David was ferried there from Seattle in a near-empty chopper; just him, one more rookie and a newly hired technician, plus a pilot who himself was an agent returning from leave. The Air Force personnel had treated their ensemble with a frosty awe; FOXHOUND were the best and the strangest the US military had to offer. Their looks were like a chill wind inside his mind.
When he reached base, he found that everything was about Big Boss. He was fairly glad that he and other recent recruits didn't rate much attention, and wanted to settle in with as little fuss as possible. He almost liked it - time spent on so many different skills, a room shared with just one other agent, little hierarchy aside from the arcane codename system. He was 'Solid Snake'; quite a lofty beginning, maybe because he'd done well on the intelligence test. He hoped to prove he was worth it, so he would be sent back into battle.
His roommate, Stalker Leopard, was the kind of recent recruit who was far too thrilled to have an even more recent recruit to encroach upon. The man was a spy, an ear-to-the-floor type who he knew must be good at what he did, because he was in FOXHOUND, but damn if he wasn't annoying. He was always listening to life, desperately. David traded his cigarettes for Leopard's stories, because it was better than leaving Leopard free to ask questions.
There were a lot of legends surrounding FOXHOUND, considering what a tiny group it was; even including the tech and medical staff, there were fewer than a hundred operatives. All the wildest tales were about either Big Boss - their founder who'd walked away long ago, but now reappeared - or about Gray Fox, his lieutenant. There were stories enough to have cost Big Boss an eye five times over, and some said his codename had once been Snake - the same as David's. Unlike most of the other senior officers in FOXHOUND, no one knew his real name. He was just Big Boss; the guy with one eye. Gray Fox's stories had no beginning, as if he'd been the Fox for as long as there'd been a FOXHOUND, which was longer than David had even been alive.
When they were seen around the base, which wasn't that often, they were usually together. Big Boss striding around with a cigar between his lips, talking angrily, hands a-wave, about whatever the business of the day was; Gray Fox beside him, calm and attentive, a machete swinging from his belt as they passed.
David realised that other agents liked to eavesdrop on their rapid-fire conversations, listening for intel gossip and omens of the unit's future. He thought this a little over-conspiratorial, and didn't indulge - surely the two of them always knew who was listening anyway? But when they passed right by him, it was hard to block it out.
"- advanced bioresearch? That's a hell of a step up from the mud of the Zambezi River. She any good?"
"Oh, she's good, I'm told she's brilliant. Give it another few years and she'll be doing for you everything Clark does for -"
"I don't want to replicate them. I want to destroy them."
"Yeah, but it'll be a hell of an advantage on where we are now. Just another two, three years -"
"Three years? I don't have three years. I'm not even sure I have now, Fox - there's only so long we can keep building up before -"
"We can still buy time. If we don't, her nanomachine research could fall into their hands -"
"We'll do what we can. What's a nanomachine, anyway?"
Maybe once he wasn't a rookie, it would all make more sense.
Big Boss's face unnerved him. Not just because of the patch - he'd seen plenty of half-blind veterans before, and in a way the ones with glass eyes looked far more unnerving. There was just something in the shape of his face that David didn't like. So he'd look at Gray Fox instead, and he decided the agent was well named - his face was sharp, a little worn, and very pale. Freed from military regs, most FOXHOUND agents grew their hair - even David's drill instructor had a long ponytail - but not Fox. His was hardly crewcut, but the thick blond locks stopped neatly at the base of his skull, leaving a fine-shaped neck rising from the black scarf he always wore. It made his face look thinner, more washed out.
He passed Fox in the shower room one morning, and decided that the man simply looked best naked. Damn.
*
He was doing alright. Might even get a real assignment soon, if only as back-up to three veteran agents. ('Box duty', they called it, though he'd yet to learn why). Sooner the better. He'd got done with being a rookie during the Gulf War, and his skills were as sharp as any of the rest here. He'd been commended for his endurance and his stealth, and his pistol aim was steady. Even better, Master Miller said, Snake knew when not to shoot.
(He was thinking of himself as Solid Snake now. That made things a lot easier. And he liked Miller, who was experienced and kind and strangely lighthearted for someone who'd killed so many people.)
But it wasn't all plain sailing. He was good at a lot of things, but his CQC wasn't even up to FOXHOUND'S B level. And CQC was everything. He could've got away with being bad at almost anything else but that. Master Miller worked on him daily, and Snake made progress, but never really liked having a knife in his hand.
One morning he turned up for one-on-one training at 0800, and was surprised to find Master Miller still wearing his dress uniform. He wondered if he'd done something wrong, but his instructor was grinning at him. "Snake, I think you and me have done enough of this. It's time to turn you over to someone who'll show you more."
He heard a rustling from an ill-lit corner. Big Boss was sat on the bench at the back of the room, taking off his trenchcoat and flexing his hands. Miller left, and Snake's breath caught in his throat.
"Miller says you're good." Big Boss sounded slightly doubtful. He was stretching with surprising flexibility, and Snake mimicked his actions, wondering how painful this was going to be. They were both wearing FOXHOUND sneaking suits, and he could see that the old man's body was at least as fit as his own. There were no compromises for age or weakness in the life of a mercenary, he supposed - just survival or death. "He thinks you've got the right mind for an agent. That when you're out in the field, you'll know how to think like the enemy...only better."
Well, that was dubious praise. "Sir."
"It's not enough, kid." Snake nodded slowly. "You have to feel their reactions, only better. Know their will, only better. It'll take real experience to show you that...but this will do for now."
"Sir."
Big Boss dropped to a crouch, checking the fastenings of his shoes. "We'll meet here for three hours every morning, if I can spare them, until you've learned everything I can teach you. Every hold, every throw - how to use every item in the armoury hand-to-hand effectively. Any questions?"
Snake was silent for a second, wondering if he dared - but the great thing about FOXHOUND was that he'd yet to be reprimanded for asking a question, even if half the answers made no fucking sense. "Yeah, I guess I got one - why?"
His commander looked up at him. "Why what?"
He hadn't raised his voice, but the words sounded dangerous. Big Boss's words often did. Snake ploughed on regardless. "Why CQC? There's a dozen ways of killing I know better than this. If I want to take someone down, I'll do it cleaner with a gun than a knife. Unless you've the luck to catch your target alone, it's got little place in a stealth mission. So why does everyone in FOXHOUND learn it so thoroughly? What's the point?"
For five excruciating seconds he felt like he had his ego in his mouth and it was about to get punched good and hard, but then Big Boss said, "I've been training agents in CQC since before you were born. You're the first one to ever ask me that." He didn't seem displeased. "It's about using your senses to stay alive. All of them. I'm sure you're a good eye with a gun, but you need more than that to survive on the battlefield." His hand touched the patch over his eye. "Much more. You might hear his step before you see it. You might smell trouble before it happens." The old man was on his feet in an instant, moving with shocking lightness. "It's about loyalty, Snake. And remembering what it's like to be alive." Snake raised his arms into a guard.
Big Boss felled him with one kick across the knees.
*
His roommate asked about the bruises. It would've been hard not to notice them. Snake explained about the new training routine, and Leopard whistled, acted like he had received some great honour. Like each ache was a medal, rather than a sign that he wasn't up to scratch. He wasn't convinced, and became less so as the days went on. Something - maybe just the ice in his eye, even when Snake was being praised for something - told him that Big Boss disliked him. Maybe even despised him. Big Boss genuinely seemed to like his other agents, and for all they were just expendable tools, got bitter whenever one of them died on a mission. Even other rookies seemed to get a warmer welcome from him than Snake did, though his camaraderie was reserved for the veteran trainers and command staff, and friendship for Gray Fox alone.
So, great. Another CO who probably couldn't wait to be rid of him, only this one had the authority to assign people to incredibly dangerous solo missions. And was pounding the shit out of him every morning in order to teach him CQC. But it was working - he was becoming proficient in it. He'd realised, just from watching Big Boss move, so agile at such an age, that he'd been looking for strength in all the wrong places. Muscles were just conduits, fists just messengers; the power was all in the stance. He learned to use the floor against an opponent - to take force from the webs of his toes and the balls of his feet, to let the dirt kick for him.
Eventually, the knife in his grip became less of a stranger. Big Boss threw in more weapons, showed him how to stab without dropping his gun - and how to face a man with both those things and take him with no weapon at all. It would've been alright, if the man hadn't clearly hated him. Perhaps that was David's place in life. All the more reason to get back into a war.
Gray Fox would come and go while they were training, passing on urgent news, sometimes bringing an early halt if events were truly disastrous, for which Snake's aching body would be grateful. Sometimes he heard more of their conversations, before and after practices. He didn't try too hard to follow the thread, but he liked hearing Fox's deep, clear voice.
"- rough maybe, but I wouldn't be doing him any favours if I let it slide."
"I see, Boss. So you think he's a spy? A la-li-lu-le-lo?"
"No. But I bet you anything they put him up to this."
"Why?"
"They like patterns lately, Fox. Programs. It might be all he's got left -"
"Sure hope so. A man with a pattern is easy to destroy."
"Easy to destroy, huh? We have too many patterns of our own. Need to break them, before someone else does it for us."
"Aye. So are you going to tell him?"
"No."
"You told the other one. Which is it, anyway?"
"Seventy-two. The recessive one. Pre-sabotaged, see, so I don't even have to crush his mind."
There was a moment of quiet. "Wait. Are you trying to help him?"
Big Boss did not reply.
*
He got a few missions. Fourth on a four-man squad. Box duty, mostly, and one time he sat on call as an advisor to an agent infiltrating an island airbase by sea. (Vector Oryx wasn't an experienced diver, but she could see around corners, and was near-impossible to catch unawares. You got a lot of odd types like that in FOXHOUND). He was still a rookie, but now the squad trusted his instincts and his patience, and he felt like he was becoming part of the unit's soul. Something about the smell of dirt-encrusted cardboard, or the kleptomanic thrill of OSP. People told him stuff now, and let him sense the tensions they were feeling.
Through 1995, the conversations were escalating.
Everyone was eavesdropping, even Snake, shamelessly, barely pretending they weren't, their leaders barely pretending they didn't know. Leopard spent half his time following them around with a directional mic. They were constantly agitated - with the agents, perhaps, with the entire fucking world, but surely not with each other. Praise became scant. Big Boss pushed him harder each morning, and the rare times he managed to take the man down became proportionally more satisfying. His knees ached almost constantly but he needed those mornings while he could still have them. It felt like the whole creaking machine was revving up and racing full tilt towards the wall.
You could always hear them before you saw them, four boots in a furious lockstep. "- can only ignore it for so long before they're done calling our bluff. The government -"
"Fox, the government are not our problem. If they want to go to Outer Heaven they can use the sodding CIA -"
"So fuck the government and look at what's behind. He could force you out again any time and the only reason he's letting it go on is because you're playing so nice here."
"Playing nice? I am not. I'm looking for him and when I find him I'll -"
"Boss, I know. But we've run out of chances to buy time. If you don't send someone, he'll know, and he'll have you skinned."
"He already knows. Unless he's completely lost his senses, he knows."
"Then why are we still here?"
The paces came to a halt. "Fox, I did not come back to FOXHOUND to use agents as fucking throwaway pawns. I want to stop that crap for good. I am not sending anyone to Outer Heaven -"
"Fine. I'll go. I'll do exactly what you need me to do there. Get me a helicopter and I'll be ready by 2200."
Gray Fox's footsteps receded towards his quarters. Big Boss dropped his cigar, and furiously ground it out with his shoe.
*
Three days later, Leopard woke him up at 0300 to tell him the news. "Snake, you've got to fucking hear this. Intrude N312 was a fail. What the fuck is happening?"
What the fuck. "No." He put his pillow over his head, angry at his roommate's bullshit. "That was Gray Fox's operation. Fox doesn't fail." Ever. In reputedly over twenty years of missions. The ones he took, if he ever failed he'd be dead by now. Was he dead?
"Well, he just did. But he's alive. Taken prisoner. Got out one last transmission and it doesn't make an ounce of fucking sense... What do we do now, Snake?"
"Go to sleep," he said petulantly. After a while, it seemed Leopard had done just that. Snake uncoiled and lay awake in the dark for the rest of the night, heart pounding.
*
He turned up at 0800 as usual, unshaved, unrested, hoping Big Boss would just kick him around enough times to make life feel normal again. The old man was in his trenchcoat, a folder clutched in one gloved hand. Someone had scrawled 'OPERATION INTRUDE N313' on the front of it. He bit his lip.
"Snake. Don't pretend you've not heard the news. It's time for your first solo mission. I want you to go rescue Gray Fox and find out what the hell his last transmission meant..." He slid a piece of paper out of the file - a typed radio transcript. Below the time and frequency stamps were only two simple words:
METAL GEAR.
2/5: EROS
also, whoever wrote this on mgs_kink? I want to have your babies make 3 clones of you and then kiss them all.
Title: INTRUDE 1/5: KRONOS
Pairing: Solid Snake/Gray Fox
Rating: PG-13 for now, NC-17 next chapter.
Word Count: 3200
Warnings: Nudity, and everything I know about Special Forces I learned from either MPO or Wikipedia :/ No spoilers, not for anything. :)
Summary: David joins FOXHOUND, America's finest and oddest special forces unit, and has a few things to learn before his first mission.
David hated leave.
Every other soldier he'd met looked forward to it. Talked endlessly about getting back to their hometowns, their families. When David was away from the battlefield, he had nowhere to go. So he looked for an apartment - he didn't care where, so long as it was cheap and nowhere near New Mexico, where he'd lived when he was a kid.
He'd grown up in a so-called 'government facility' - an orphanage, full of abandoned kids who'd never been adopted, never would be and weren't going anywhere except an early grave. With the encouragement of every adult he knew, he'd joined the military when he was sixteen and quickly shunted himself into Special Forces, finding a place in an ODA for diving specialists - a division that had been a great fucking use during the Gulf War, so he'd branched out his skills a lot. His major recommended him for FOXHOUND in '94. It was a step up in the world - more money, fewer rules, and a much more elite personnel - but meant little sense to him. The officer had never liked David, so he figured that rather than a promotion, it was just a way to get him gone. They always told him that he wasn't a team player. FOXHOUND agents worked alone, or autonomously in squads of four, so maybe that was where he belonged.
He wasn't lonely, exactly. Other people just weren't worth the bother.
He was on leave - between positions, really - for a couple of weeks right after he'd been accepted to FOXHOUND. That Thursday, he read in the newspaper that Big Boss had come home to America and reinstated himself as FOXHOUND's leader. There was an editorial about the legendary commander, and his activities with FOXHOUND in the 70s, and with his own mercenary corps in the 80s. David wondered how much of it was true, how much was guesswork and how much was just copied from conspiracist circulars. The writer seemed rather in awe of him, and keen to say that this was all very good for the USA. Why he'd left, and why he'd now returned, the article did not seek to explain.
*
FOXHOUND's HQ was much as rumour had described it; hidden in an isolated part of the mountains, unreachable by roads, and mostly underground. It was also about a thousand miles north from where rumour claimed it was - so much for that. David was ferried there from Seattle in a near-empty chopper; just him, one more rookie and a newly hired technician, plus a pilot who himself was an agent returning from leave. The Air Force personnel had treated their ensemble with a frosty awe; FOXHOUND were the best and the strangest the US military had to offer. Their looks were like a chill wind inside his mind.
When he reached base, he found that everything was about Big Boss. He was fairly glad that he and other recent recruits didn't rate much attention, and wanted to settle in with as little fuss as possible. He almost liked it - time spent on so many different skills, a room shared with just one other agent, little hierarchy aside from the arcane codename system. He was 'Solid Snake'; quite a lofty beginning, maybe because he'd done well on the intelligence test. He hoped to prove he was worth it, so he would be sent back into battle.
His roommate, Stalker Leopard, was the kind of recent recruit who was far too thrilled to have an even more recent recruit to encroach upon. The man was a spy, an ear-to-the-floor type who he knew must be good at what he did, because he was in FOXHOUND, but damn if he wasn't annoying. He was always listening to life, desperately. David traded his cigarettes for Leopard's stories, because it was better than leaving Leopard free to ask questions.
There were a lot of legends surrounding FOXHOUND, considering what a tiny group it was; even including the tech and medical staff, there were fewer than a hundred operatives. All the wildest tales were about either Big Boss - their founder who'd walked away long ago, but now reappeared - or about Gray Fox, his lieutenant. There were stories enough to have cost Big Boss an eye five times over, and some said his codename had once been Snake - the same as David's. Unlike most of the other senior officers in FOXHOUND, no one knew his real name. He was just Big Boss; the guy with one eye. Gray Fox's stories had no beginning, as if he'd been the Fox for as long as there'd been a FOXHOUND, which was longer than David had even been alive.
When they were seen around the base, which wasn't that often, they were usually together. Big Boss striding around with a cigar between his lips, talking angrily, hands a-wave, about whatever the business of the day was; Gray Fox beside him, calm and attentive, a machete swinging from his belt as they passed.
David realised that other agents liked to eavesdrop on their rapid-fire conversations, listening for intel gossip and omens of the unit's future. He thought this a little over-conspiratorial, and didn't indulge - surely the two of them always knew who was listening anyway? But when they passed right by him, it was hard to block it out.
"- advanced bioresearch? That's a hell of a step up from the mud of the Zambezi River. She any good?"
"Oh, she's good, I'm told she's brilliant. Give it another few years and she'll be doing for you everything Clark does for -"
"I don't want to replicate them. I want to destroy them."
"Yeah, but it'll be a hell of an advantage on where we are now. Just another two, three years -"
"Three years? I don't have three years. I'm not even sure I have now, Fox - there's only so long we can keep building up before -"
"We can still buy time. If we don't, her nanomachine research could fall into their hands -"
"We'll do what we can. What's a nanomachine, anyway?"
Maybe once he wasn't a rookie, it would all make more sense.
Big Boss's face unnerved him. Not just because of the patch - he'd seen plenty of half-blind veterans before, and in a way the ones with glass eyes looked far more unnerving. There was just something in the shape of his face that David didn't like. So he'd look at Gray Fox instead, and he decided the agent was well named - his face was sharp, a little worn, and very pale. Freed from military regs, most FOXHOUND agents grew their hair - even David's drill instructor had a long ponytail - but not Fox. His was hardly crewcut, but the thick blond locks stopped neatly at the base of his skull, leaving a fine-shaped neck rising from the black scarf he always wore. It made his face look thinner, more washed out.
He passed Fox in the shower room one morning, and decided that the man simply looked best naked. Damn.
*
He was doing alright. Might even get a real assignment soon, if only as back-up to three veteran agents. ('Box duty', they called it, though he'd yet to learn why). Sooner the better. He'd got done with being a rookie during the Gulf War, and his skills were as sharp as any of the rest here. He'd been commended for his endurance and his stealth, and his pistol aim was steady. Even better, Master Miller said, Snake knew when not to shoot.
(He was thinking of himself as Solid Snake now. That made things a lot easier. And he liked Miller, who was experienced and kind and strangely lighthearted for someone who'd killed so many people.)
But it wasn't all plain sailing. He was good at a lot of things, but his CQC wasn't even up to FOXHOUND'S B level. And CQC was everything. He could've got away with being bad at almost anything else but that. Master Miller worked on him daily, and Snake made progress, but never really liked having a knife in his hand.
One morning he turned up for one-on-one training at 0800, and was surprised to find Master Miller still wearing his dress uniform. He wondered if he'd done something wrong, but his instructor was grinning at him. "Snake, I think you and me have done enough of this. It's time to turn you over to someone who'll show you more."
He heard a rustling from an ill-lit corner. Big Boss was sat on the bench at the back of the room, taking off his trenchcoat and flexing his hands. Miller left, and Snake's breath caught in his throat.
"Miller says you're good." Big Boss sounded slightly doubtful. He was stretching with surprising flexibility, and Snake mimicked his actions, wondering how painful this was going to be. They were both wearing FOXHOUND sneaking suits, and he could see that the old man's body was at least as fit as his own. There were no compromises for age or weakness in the life of a mercenary, he supposed - just survival or death. "He thinks you've got the right mind for an agent. That when you're out in the field, you'll know how to think like the enemy...only better."
Well, that was dubious praise. "Sir."
"It's not enough, kid." Snake nodded slowly. "You have to feel their reactions, only better. Know their will, only better. It'll take real experience to show you that...but this will do for now."
"Sir."
Big Boss dropped to a crouch, checking the fastenings of his shoes. "We'll meet here for three hours every morning, if I can spare them, until you've learned everything I can teach you. Every hold, every throw - how to use every item in the armoury hand-to-hand effectively. Any questions?"
Snake was silent for a second, wondering if he dared - but the great thing about FOXHOUND was that he'd yet to be reprimanded for asking a question, even if half the answers made no fucking sense. "Yeah, I guess I got one - why?"
His commander looked up at him. "Why what?"
He hadn't raised his voice, but the words sounded dangerous. Big Boss's words often did. Snake ploughed on regardless. "Why CQC? There's a dozen ways of killing I know better than this. If I want to take someone down, I'll do it cleaner with a gun than a knife. Unless you've the luck to catch your target alone, it's got little place in a stealth mission. So why does everyone in FOXHOUND learn it so thoroughly? What's the point?"
For five excruciating seconds he felt like he had his ego in his mouth and it was about to get punched good and hard, but then Big Boss said, "I've been training agents in CQC since before you were born. You're the first one to ever ask me that." He didn't seem displeased. "It's about using your senses to stay alive. All of them. I'm sure you're a good eye with a gun, but you need more than that to survive on the battlefield." His hand touched the patch over his eye. "Much more. You might hear his step before you see it. You might smell trouble before it happens." The old man was on his feet in an instant, moving with shocking lightness. "It's about loyalty, Snake. And remembering what it's like to be alive." Snake raised his arms into a guard.
Big Boss felled him with one kick across the knees.
*
His roommate asked about the bruises. It would've been hard not to notice them. Snake explained about the new training routine, and Leopard whistled, acted like he had received some great honour. Like each ache was a medal, rather than a sign that he wasn't up to scratch. He wasn't convinced, and became less so as the days went on. Something - maybe just the ice in his eye, even when Snake was being praised for something - told him that Big Boss disliked him. Maybe even despised him. Big Boss genuinely seemed to like his other agents, and for all they were just expendable tools, got bitter whenever one of them died on a mission. Even other rookies seemed to get a warmer welcome from him than Snake did, though his camaraderie was reserved for the veteran trainers and command staff, and friendship for Gray Fox alone.
So, great. Another CO who probably couldn't wait to be rid of him, only this one had the authority to assign people to incredibly dangerous solo missions. And was pounding the shit out of him every morning in order to teach him CQC. But it was working - he was becoming proficient in it. He'd realised, just from watching Big Boss move, so agile at such an age, that he'd been looking for strength in all the wrong places. Muscles were just conduits, fists just messengers; the power was all in the stance. He learned to use the floor against an opponent - to take force from the webs of his toes and the balls of his feet, to let the dirt kick for him.
Eventually, the knife in his grip became less of a stranger. Big Boss threw in more weapons, showed him how to stab without dropping his gun - and how to face a man with both those things and take him with no weapon at all. It would've been alright, if the man hadn't clearly hated him. Perhaps that was David's place in life. All the more reason to get back into a war.
Gray Fox would come and go while they were training, passing on urgent news, sometimes bringing an early halt if events were truly disastrous, for which Snake's aching body would be grateful. Sometimes he heard more of their conversations, before and after practices. He didn't try too hard to follow the thread, but he liked hearing Fox's deep, clear voice.
"- rough maybe, but I wouldn't be doing him any favours if I let it slide."
"I see, Boss. So you think he's a spy? A la-li-lu-le-lo?"
"No. But I bet you anything they put him up to this."
"Why?"
"They like patterns lately, Fox. Programs. It might be all he's got left -"
"Sure hope so. A man with a pattern is easy to destroy."
"Easy to destroy, huh? We have too many patterns of our own. Need to break them, before someone else does it for us."
"Aye. So are you going to tell him?"
"No."
"You told the other one. Which is it, anyway?"
"Seventy-two. The recessive one. Pre-sabotaged, see, so I don't even have to crush his mind."
There was a moment of quiet. "Wait. Are you trying to help him?"
Big Boss did not reply.
*
He got a few missions. Fourth on a four-man squad. Box duty, mostly, and one time he sat on call as an advisor to an agent infiltrating an island airbase by sea. (Vector Oryx wasn't an experienced diver, but she could see around corners, and was near-impossible to catch unawares. You got a lot of odd types like that in FOXHOUND). He was still a rookie, but now the squad trusted his instincts and his patience, and he felt like he was becoming part of the unit's soul. Something about the smell of dirt-encrusted cardboard, or the kleptomanic thrill of OSP. People told him stuff now, and let him sense the tensions they were feeling.
Through 1995, the conversations were escalating.
Everyone was eavesdropping, even Snake, shamelessly, barely pretending they weren't, their leaders barely pretending they didn't know. Leopard spent half his time following them around with a directional mic. They were constantly agitated - with the agents, perhaps, with the entire fucking world, but surely not with each other. Praise became scant. Big Boss pushed him harder each morning, and the rare times he managed to take the man down became proportionally more satisfying. His knees ached almost constantly but he needed those mornings while he could still have them. It felt like the whole creaking machine was revving up and racing full tilt towards the wall.
You could always hear them before you saw them, four boots in a furious lockstep. "- can only ignore it for so long before they're done calling our bluff. The government -"
"Fox, the government are not our problem. If they want to go to Outer Heaven they can use the sodding CIA -"
"So fuck the government and look at what's behind. He could force you out again any time and the only reason he's letting it go on is because you're playing so nice here."
"Playing nice? I am not. I'm looking for him and when I find him I'll -"
"Boss, I know. But we've run out of chances to buy time. If you don't send someone, he'll know, and he'll have you skinned."
"He already knows. Unless he's completely lost his senses, he knows."
"Then why are we still here?"
The paces came to a halt. "Fox, I did not come back to FOXHOUND to use agents as fucking throwaway pawns. I want to stop that crap for good. I am not sending anyone to Outer Heaven -"
"Fine. I'll go. I'll do exactly what you need me to do there. Get me a helicopter and I'll be ready by 2200."
Gray Fox's footsteps receded towards his quarters. Big Boss dropped his cigar, and furiously ground it out with his shoe.
*
Three days later, Leopard woke him up at 0300 to tell him the news. "Snake, you've got to fucking hear this. Intrude N312 was a fail. What the fuck is happening?"
What the fuck. "No." He put his pillow over his head, angry at his roommate's bullshit. "That was Gray Fox's operation. Fox doesn't fail." Ever. In reputedly over twenty years of missions. The ones he took, if he ever failed he'd be dead by now. Was he dead?
"Well, he just did. But he's alive. Taken prisoner. Got out one last transmission and it doesn't make an ounce of fucking sense... What do we do now, Snake?"
"Go to sleep," he said petulantly. After a while, it seemed Leopard had done just that. Snake uncoiled and lay awake in the dark for the rest of the night, heart pounding.
*
He turned up at 0800 as usual, unshaved, unrested, hoping Big Boss would just kick him around enough times to make life feel normal again. The old man was in his trenchcoat, a folder clutched in one gloved hand. Someone had scrawled 'OPERATION INTRUDE N313' on the front of it. He bit his lip.
"Snake. Don't pretend you've not heard the news. It's time for your first solo mission. I want you to go rescue Gray Fox and find out what the hell his last transmission meant..." He slid a piece of paper out of the file - a typed radio transcript. Below the time and frequency stamps were only two simple words:
METAL GEAR.
2/5: EROS