Challenge Entry - Fic - "Outing Incident"
Hi there! Setsuna here!
I have been lurking around the site for a couple of months and have stepped out for the shadows to join!
I did post something before, but took it down because it stunk far worse than the Fly-camouflage from MGS3!
Hopefully I got it right this time!
So please go easy on me.
Title: Outing Incident
Fandom: MGS2 (Post-Tanker)
Pairings: Female!Snake/Female!Otacon (Friendship)
Rating: PG-13 (I think...)
Word Count: 3,510 (Give or Take)
Warnings: AU, Gender-swap, Blood, Swearing, Violence.
Summary: Sometimes all it takes is a lovable-oddball to reveal the warm mushy-center within a cold hard-shell.
For the record, I found Feminine-versions of their real names so they can still be called; Hal & Dave.
Please Enjoy!
*Disclaimer: I don’t own Metal Gear/Metal Gear Solid or anything belonging to Hideo Kojima
or Konami.*
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“Snake…”, a petite dark brown-haired woman nervously says, as her grey-eyes wearingly glances around at the surroundings from behind thin-framed wire-glasses, “Are you sure we should be out in the open like this? Especially with the bounty on our heads…?”
“We’ve been cooped up in the apartment for nearly seven-months, the heat had to have died down by now”, her companion gruffly responds, grabbing her by the wrist and gently drags her further down the side-walk, “Besides, you need to lighten up and learn to live a little”
“But why does it have to be at a bar?”
“We all need a stiff drink from time to time”
“I don’t think that is such a great idea, considering how you get after a few drinks”
“I’m not that bad, Otacon”
“Oh really, what about the counter at that bar in Alaska?”, Otacon reminds, crossing her arms.
“Not my fault that the town-drunk tried taking me on in a fight”, Snake laughs; opening the door and letting the loud music of the establishment pour out into the street.
“If I didn’t know for a fact that you have double-X chromosomes, I could swear you were male, Dave…”, she sighs, shaking her head as she follows the tomboyish woman inside.
“So…? What will it be?”, the barkeep asks, as the two women approach the counter.
“A bottle of your strongest Vodka”, Snake answers.
“And for you, Miss?”, he says, turning towards Otacon.
“Um, what do you have?”
The bar-keep rolls his eyes at the response, “Just great…”, he groans.
“Just give her the weakest stuff you’ve got, she's a bit of a light-weight”, Snake interrupts.
“Hey!”, she protests.
“Schnapps it is then”, the bartender replies, walking away the fill the orders.
“Snake… You tell me that I need to live a little and you didn't even let me decide!”, Otacon quietly hisses.
“Yeah I know, but you were taking too long and I want to get are drinks sometime this year”, she whispers, rolling her eyes.
“Well, I’d like to know my choices before I chose my course of action… Okay?”
“Yeah, whatever…”, she scoffs, “I’ll be right back, sit here and wait for our drinks”, she adds, walking towards the back of the bar.
“Sure…”, she moans, taking a seat on one of the stools, ‘I warned her about drinking so much of that green-tea!’, she chuckles in her head.
“Where’d your friend go?”, the barkeep inquiries, as he sets down a bottle and a glass full of a colorful-liquid.
“Restroom”, she replies, lightly sipping her Schnapps, “Mmm… Fruity…”
“Hey pwetty lady…”, a male’s voice says from behind her, “What’s a place like you doing in a girl like this…?”, he slurs with the bad-grammar being another indicator that he was completely intoxicated.
“That pick up line was cheesy…”, Otacon informs, not even turning her head to look at him and she could still smell the alcohol on his breath.
“Look at me when you speak to me!”, he growls, roughly grabbing her by the wrist.
“Lemme go! You’re hurting me!”, she pleads, struggling to release herself from his vice-grip.
“You’re going to make it up to me for your rudeness, little lady”, he snarls, harshly pulling her off of the stool onto the floor, “I don’t want any teeth”, he says.
Otacon’s eyes widen as she watches his hand descend towards the zipper of his jeans, closing her eyes in horror as the image of someone unzipping their pants standing over a teenage-version of herself flashes in her mind.
“Excuse me…”, she heard a familiar voice say, causing her to peek open an eye and sees Snake standing there tightly clutching the man’s shoulder, “That’s my friend… Keep your hands off her”
“Don’t interfere!”, he barks.
“Can’t say I didn’t warn you”, she smirks, as she pulls him backwards slamming him onto the floor with a soundly thud, “You alright Hal?”, she questions, as she helps her friend up off the floor.
“I’m okay… Bottom is probably a little bruised though”, she answers, slightly wincing as she massaged her skirted-behind.
“If that’s all, then it’s nothing to worry about”
“That wasn’t a wise decision on your part to attack my friend!”, another man grunts, charging at Snake’s backside, only to be greeted by the back of her gloved-hand to the face.
“You’ve seriously picked the wrong night to mess with me”, she smiles, as she cracks her knuckles.
“You little punk!”, the men roar, as one charges again and the other starts swinging his fist.
Snake rolls her blue-eyes in annoyance before swiftly lifting her knee up to catch the charging man on the chin stopping his bull-run and knocking him out cold, but unfortunately in doing so slowed her reaction-time in blocking the other man’s punch, catching it on the cheek instead.
“How did you like that?”, the other man cockily taunts.
“I know kids who can hit harder than that!”, she retorts, spitting out a bit of blood.
“You fucker!”, he curses, pulling back for another strike.
“THAT’S ENOUGH!!”, Hal shouts, causing Snake to stare in shock at the fact that such a powerful demand had come from the mousiest person in the whole bar.
“Hal…?”, Snake blinks.
“Violence isn’t always the answer to every little-problem”, she rants, “Whatever happened to simply talking out diff…”, she abruptly cuts off, as she falls to the floor and quickly holds a hand to her face.
“Hal!”, Dave yells, immediately crouches next time the female, “Are you alright, Hal?”
“I… I…”, she stammers in a daze, with her glasses sat crooked on the bridge of her nose, one of the lens were cracked.
“Let me see”, she orders, when she notices crimson starting to seep from in-between her fingers.
Upon removing her hand, she finds her top-lip coated in blood that streamed from her nostrils.
“H-how bad is it…?”, Hal stutters.
“Your nose is bleeding”, she flatly replies.
“Really…?”, the smaller woman gasps, looking at her blood covered hand, “Your right!”, she blinks, hurriedly pulls out a handkerchief and holds it to her nose to siphon the flow.
“You fucking asshole!”, Snake snarls, instantly standing and turning towards the drunkard, slugging him across the face, knocking him to the floor, “How dare you hit a defenseless woman?!”, she growls, as she saddles his waist and begins to repeatedly pummel his head & torso.
Suddenly, she is tackled off of the man by another bar-patron and even more fists start to fly, with a few kicks thrown in as well when several more patrons join in on the brawl, leaving the only innocent-victim of the fight helplessly watching while kneeling on the floor with a blood-soaked handkerchief held to her nose.
-Sometime Later-
“I can’t believe you did that, Davette!”, Otacon scorns using her full name, as she types in a code into a key-pad beside the door of the warehouse they stood next to, the key-pad slides down to reveal a scanner and she removes her glasses leveling her eye with it.
“Retinal-scan, confirmed”, the computer says, “Welcome home, Dr. Emmerich”
“Well what else am I to do, you got injured, Hallie!”, she argues.
“A simple bloody nose isn’t worth the cuts and bruises you received defending me!”, she snaps, spinning to face her, “Now come on, we need to get those wounds treated”, she sighs, letting her anger to cool from the fact that now isn’t the time to be fighting, “Remove your jacket”
Snake silently does as she is told, carefully struggling out of the denim-confines and sits down on a kitchen-chair in her black t-shirt and blue-jeans as Otacon brings out a first-aid kit.
“I remember the last time you had to do this was after the Tanker-incident”, she says, trying to converse in small-talk while her companion quietly takes out a roll of gauze and receives no answer, “Damn it Otacon! What do you want me to say, ‘I’m sorry for getting into another Bar-Fight’, is that it?”, causing the smaller woman’s grey-eyes to meet her blue ones.
“I’ve already forgiven you… I realize that you can’t help being the way you are”, she answers, “This may sting a bit”, she warns, as she inserts a syringe into her friend’s arm and causes the battle-harden woman to grit her teeth.
“What makes you say that?”
“Don’t tell me that you’ve forgotten how hard you grabbed and shook me at Shadow Moses, not once but twice, remember?”
“Oh yeah…”
“You know, for someone with an IQ of 180, you sure are slow”, Otacon points out, as she finish her search for fractures and stands back up to put away the medical-box.
“H-hey!”, she protests.
“I was joking!”, the otaku laughs, “Now who’s the one who needs to lighten up?”
Snake grumbles at her own words being used against her as she watches her companion vanish down the hallway.
“You’re injuries are mostly superficial, the most serious being a couple of bruised-bones and a lump on the head”, she diagnoses, returning to the living-room, “I think you should at least lay down for a bit and rest while the pain-reliever is still working”, she advises.
“What are you going to do?”
“Take a shower, I have blood in my hair and I can still feel the residue of it on my skin. Afterwards I’m going to see if I can dig up what I can on the people who framed you”, she replies, taking out a couple towels from the hall-closet, “Now lay down, Doctor’s orders”
“You’re not a medical-doctor”
“Don’t argue with me over technicalities. Bed. Now.”
“Aye-aye, doctor…”, she mutters, mockingly saluting while getting up and stumbles into her room, kicking off her shoes before flopping onto her bed.
‘Man, ever since the Tanker-incident, Otacon’s been acting like a mother-hen’, she thinks, as she places an unlit cigarette in-between her lips, bobbing it up and down.
Thud!, she heard echo from down the hallway.
“What the…?”, she mumbles, quickly sitting up and places her feet on the floor, “Otacon?!”, she calls out, as she stands up and heads down the hall, “Hey, Otacon! Did that suction-cup shelf fall off the wall again?”, she asks, standing outside of the bathroom-door.
Dave is greeted by silence accompanied by the running shower.
“Otacon answer me!”, she yells, knocking on the door and is again greeted with no reply, “God damn it Otacon! Answer me!”, she roars, now pounding on the door.
She suddenly stops knocking to look down at her feet when she feels her socks becoming wet, seeing water flooding out from under the door. After she tries to turn the knob and finding it locked, she rams her shoulder on the door causing the wooden-frame to splinter as the metal of the lock tore through it.
“Hal!”, she exclaims, seeing her companion slumped in the tub with her eyes closed as water continued to overflow from the bathtub.
She rushes over to the tub, unclogs the facecloth from the drain and turns the water off, before gently taking hold of her friend’s shoulders and tries to shake her awake, “Hal? Come on, wake up! Say something!”, she pleads.
“Uhh…”, Hal groans, but doesn’t open her eyes.
Dave takes note of the paleness of her skin and the soap-suds still among her wet-hair, ‘She must have gotten light-headed and passed out’, she mentally notes, as she wraps a towel around the damp-frame of the woman in front of herself.
She lifts her up into her arms and carries her out of the bathroom into the other bedroom of the apartment, laying her down on the unmade Queen-size bed; made of a box-spring and mattress on the floor with a nightstand on either side, she glances around the room at the long dresser and several book-cases covered in random-articles from the various anime & Manga she watches/read, the walls were covered in posters and wall-scrolls of the same nature as her collections, a desk with a computer set on top of it, a hamper overflowing with clothes, and a table supporting a television & a DVD/VCR player.
Rolling her eyes at the mess on the floor as she stumbles after tripping over a pair of Otacon’s sneakers on her way towards the closest to look for something to clothe her partner in, and what she found would probably make any otaku drool with envy; multiple t-shirts jackets and sweatshirts with printed-pictures from even more anime & Manga. She pulls out the only thing long enough to preserve Hal’s dignity, a light-pink summer-kimono with dark-pink cherry-blossom petals scattered across the fabric and held closed by a red-obi (belt).
“It’s better than nothing”, she mutters, carrying it back towards the bed and removes the damp-towel, slipping the kimono onto the otaku’s slim-frame with a slight-smile of her face as she straightens it.
“So…What do you think, Dave?”, she recalls Otacon ask, as she steps out of her room wearing the kimono with her hair pinned-up.
“Are you seriously going to wear that out in public?”, she sneered.
“Of course! It’s an anime-convention, I’m supposed to dress like this or at least something related!”, she exclaimed, puffing her cheeks out.
“If it is that important to you, maybe I should go with you to make sure you don’t do something stupid”, she had replied.
“Good, because I’ve already have a costume for you to wear!”, the otaku smiles.
“Wait?! What?!”, she stammered.
‘Who would have guessed that it was a female secret-agent’, she thinks, looking at the framed-picture of them at the ‘New York Anime Festival’ on the night-stand, ‘At least the costume had pants’, she mentally adds in relief, as she pulls the blankets over her friend and turns to leave.
“Snake…?”, she heard Hal weakly whisper, causing her to turn back around to face her.
“Hm? What is it Hal?”
“What happened…?”, she quietly asks, looking around in confusion.
“You passed out in the shower”, Dave explains.
“Oh… The loss of blood from the nose-bleed must have caught up with me while washing”, she mutters, as she tries to sit up while holding her head, but only to be gently pushed back onto the pillow, “I have work to do, Dave”
“The only job you have tonight is to rest and recover”, she sternly states.
“But…”
“No buts, Hal! Who’s to say that while you’re hacking in your condition that you won’t get light-headed again and press the wrong-key getting discovered, which in turn leads them right to our door”
“True… But you could have said it a little nicer though”, the hacker pouts.
“Just get some sleep, Otacon”
“Yes, ma’am”, she tiredly salutes, before closing her grey-eyes and muttering, “Thank you…Dave…”
Dave remains standing in the room until she hears the soft-undeniable sound of her room-mate’s snoring before she leaves the otaku’s room.
‘It’s the least I can do in return for all you’ve done for me’, she thinks, fishing around in the back of the fridge and pulls out a hidden-stash of Plum-Wine, ‘Especially after I screwed up your life by turning you into a criminal and getting you caught up in that bar-fight’, she mentally apologizes, pouring the alcohol into a glass and walks back into her room to nurse her conscience.
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Sunlight streams in through the curtains, but Snake didn't appreciate the day-light as she buried her head underneath the pillows, groaning in pain from the brightness even in the darkness under the pillows as she blindly gropes at her nightstand trying to locate her alarm-clock before it went off, succeeding in deactivating the alarm one second too late.
She closes her eyes in an attempt to will away the ache plaguing her head, only to reopen them and pulls her head out from beneath when she heard music filtering through the apartment from Hal’s room, causing her to quickly get out of bed when she suddenly remembers that her room-mate owned a CD-alarm clock; that either lulled the hacker back to sleep or further into consciousness, to prevent the latter from happening.
When she reaches the doorway into Hal’s room, she sees that her room-mate was already awake and standing in the room holding up the kimono while examining it, she had changed into a mid-thigh length pink flannel-nightshirt and her shoulder-length hair was still slightly-tousled from sleep as it framed her apprehensive features.
“It’s going to take practically forever to get out these wrinkles…!”, she cursedly mutters, as she shakes the article trying to get out the wrinkles, “Why did she even put me in it to sleep…?”
“Because it was the only thing I could find”, the soldier responds, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed.
“Ack! Snake!”, she stammers, turning around, “G-good morning”
“You really should clean your room, do you know how hard it is for me to find stuff in here”
“I know where everything is”, the hacker defends, “And it’s not like my room is booby-trapped”
“That is for our own safety, remember?”, Dave snaps, holding her head.
“Someone obviously got plastered last night”, she verbally notes, “Do you want me to get you the hang-over pills?”, she asks, receiving a nod from the older-woman, “You should run a comb through your hair, you look like a porcupine”, she whispers, as she walks past.
Snake blinks for a moment before looking across the room at the mirror on the dresser and sees her reflection; her chin-length hair was sticking up every way possible and a few impossible, causing her to chuckle at her appearance as she uses her fingers to smooth-down the wayward strands.
“Oh, Snake!”, she heard Otacon exclaim from down the hall, “You really did a number on the door this time! It doesn’t even latch anymore”
“Well what did you expect, it was an emergency!”, she calls back.
“Then you get to explain to Mei Ling’s friend about what happened to their property”, she replies, returning with a bottle in her hand, “Here, take two”, she instructs, as she walks past and sits on the edge of her bed.
As Dave pops the pills into her mouth and shallows, she notices that Hal was hiding the left side of her face behind her bangs, “Hal?”
“Hmm? What is it, Dave?”
“How’s your nose feeling?”
“It’s sore to the touch, but nothing seems to be broken”, she replies, briefly rubbing her nose.
“Is that all?”, the warrior asks, as she steps closer towards her friend.
“Y-yes…”, the hacker stutters, as Dave takes a seat next to her.
“Then why are you hiding your face?”, she inquires, gently brushing the woman’s dark-locks from her face to reveal bruises surrounding her left eye-socket and cheek-bone with a small-cut in her eye-brow from where the nose-piece of her glasses dug in from the impact, “You really should put some ice on it before the bruises darken”, she advises.
“It’s nothing, it doesn’t hurt too bad”, the otaku assures, swatting away Dave’s hand and letting her bangs fall back in front of her face.
“Okay, something is seriously wrong if you’re not concerned about bruises on your body”, the older woman says.
“Nothing is wrong”, she smiles, “I’m just more worried about who framed you during the Tanker-Incident, that’s all”, she adds, sitting down at her computer and wakes it from sleep-mode, “Now out of my room, I have work to do”, she waves her partner out before turning back towards the monitor and begins to rapidly tapping the keys on the key-board, as the hacker becomes lost within the world that only she understood and probably won’t come out of it until she found what she was searching for.
‘She’s hiding something…’, Dave mentally notes, staring at her partner’s back, ‘But knowing Hal, she won’t tell me until she’s ready to’, she sighs in her head, as she closes the door.
Unnoticed by the warrior, the hacker she was worrying about was glancing over her shoulder watching her leave, ‘I’m sorry, Dave. But there are some-things I don’t want you to know about me…’, she woefully thought, before turning her attention back to the task at hand.
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