(Untitled)

[140_96]

Who: Mei Ling and Otacon
What: Operation Fix Otacon! Mei Ling has come to attempt to get Otacon to shave and to eat something other than instant ramen. And perhaps find out what the hell is going on with REX.
Where: Otacon's room ~the domain of the nerd~
When: Backdated to June 13-14.
Warnings: General geeky shenanigans. What else did you expect?

Comments

[animu_nerd]

A walking nerd zombie was perhaps the best way to describe him. As the door creaked up, he looked at the much older Mei Ling apologetically, rubbing his unshaven chin, and wincing at how much that felt like coarse wallpaper.

"You didn't have to do this," he told her, looking at the amount of presents (gloves?), his eyes dotting on the figurine for a second with a wide-eyed interest. "But...thank you." He was grateful. Really grateful, but Otacon was also the type of person who had trouble admitting he was in the wrong for grieving this long. Thankfully, distraction not only came by way of underaged girl in costume figurines, but the robot that was holding everything.

He started at Mk II.

"He looks like..." he didn't finish his sentence, already running to his room and returning with a deactivated MK-II his predecessor had made. The difference on colors and ways of transportation was evident.

"...the other Otacon before me made it," he explained. "The plans for him are under a series of locks I haven't quire deciphered yet. But I think there might be a way to reactivate him, if I do." He gently placed it close to the wall, letting it lean there.

"...maybe I should go take a shower."

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The Mk II waved at Otacon before lifting the basket up.

"I'm never going to get used to this while... two Otacons deal. Time travel I can deal with. Maybe there's more of you in a parallel universe somewhere but those worlds shouldn't interact."

Mei Ling got herself through the door and prepared for the worst. Yeah, good thing she brought gloves because she doesn't even want to know what those... things on the floor were originally. Paper? Paper pulp?

"A shower sounds like... a good idea." She wasted no time getting the gloves on and picking up what looked like weeks old half empty pots of cup ramen before disposing it in a garbage bag. "There's a set of clothes and some toiletries in there for you. You were better when you had a child of take care of, honestly... at least she made sure you did this."

[animu_nerd]

The idea he had a child in the future broke his mind, really.

"Don't remind me, I'm wondering if this will cause my own future to change...especially since," he looked away, at the clean set of clothes he was holding. "I'll be right back."

By 'I'll be right back' he meant he was going to take a fifteen minute long hot shower and cry in there for an hour and maybe...attempt at getting his beard a little bit more shaven than what it was right now. Razor blades were pretty sharp, after all.

He returned about twenty-five minutes later, his face covered with tiny little pieces of red-stained toilet paper.

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"... You really don't shave that often, do you?" noted Mei Ling as Otacon came back. By this time she had cleared a path through some of the garbage on the floor.

Without a moment's hesitation, she grabbed Otacon by the chin and looked carefully at his face. Well, it didn't look like he was going die from bloodloss. "You're fine." she concluded, letting go of his face.

There was Otacon's chair, so she took the opportunity to sit down on it regardless of the fact that he'd been glued to it probably for the past few weeks/months. Crossing her legs and arms all boss like (or at least she attempted to make it look boss-like, there was a temporary loss in her balance as she crossed her arms), it was questioning time now.

"So... tell me about your former self and what he left for you."

[animu_nerd]

"I do actually," he interjects, walking on the much cleaner floor. Other men would have been embarrassed by all the stuff around him but he seems rather comfortable in his pile of things. It's almost worrying. "It just has a tenancy to grow back again really fast."

Translation: He shaved maybe once a week, both due to his annoyance and never overcoming it and...being lazy. Big surprise that was!

When he as suddenly grabbed he gave a quick protest "h-hey!" but it was too late and damn Mei Ling was much stronger than he gave her credit for in her tiny little form. He blushed slightly from the physical contact (which was also pretty sad when you thought about it) as he was, thankfully, released from his prison.

The chair smelled like eau de nerd. Unconsciously, he stiffened up from her questioning, sitting down on a nearby pile of cardboard boxes that his predecessor had left him and...falling right in.

Right! That had been the empty ones. Quickly, he stood up, apologized and sat on the ones that had piles of books and magazines. Much better.

"This is going to be hard to explain," he says, finally starting to explain. Idly, he keeps pushing up his glasses and scratching the back of his neck as he talks. "Maybe I should start with where I come from." He points to his hair, and how grey it is. "I've been told before that the other me had brown hair. There's also the issue of Meryl..." he trailed off, looking at the floor. "From my time, she's dead, Mei-Ling. Sniper Wolf shot her and she died of her injuries. Snake and I escaped from Shadow Moses together and then I fell out of a locker here. It was...really strange."

To put it lightly.

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The mess was classic nerd - he knew where everything was so he didn't have to bother finding things in it. Mei Ling was a little like that at university, but she liked clean spaces because they were the best places to start creating things from.

That being said, she put a hand to her forehead as Otacon fell through the pile of cardboard that he was meant to be sitting on. Okay, so maybe he didn't know quite everything in his room. But since he managed to find a seat and now it was time to exchange information. You are such a derp, Otacon but I still like you.

She sat there thoughtfully as she listened to Otacon talking about his timeline. Very strange things happening indeed. His time was markedly different from hers, the Otacon sitting infront of her was one of if things at Shadow Moses went differently. Well. This was difficult, because she came from where Shadow Moses went differently.

At least Snake and Otacon were seemingly gay for each other connected at the hip on both counts.

"Well, as Tacitus said, we take refuge in audacity now." began Mei Ling quietly. "Because where I come from, Meryl is happily married. I was at her wedding. You have a daughter, live her on an airplane with Snake..."

This was sounding ridiculous. But was anything in her life anything but? She looked at Otacon apologetically.

"I'm the, or was the captain of the USS Missouri. So I've learned a few things. I've retired now at the ripe age of 28 to do something different. Hence the reason I'm here."

[animu_nerd]

Otacon had been like this ever since he had run away from his home, living in the campus of any college or university he could mooch off of, earning degrees both online and getting job offers thanks to hacking skills. Of course now that he had a large black dot over his profile for getting caught hacking into the Pentagon, most of those days were over...thankfully Snake and Shadow Moses had changed all of that, as terrible as it might have sounded.

Then again, Smash Academy seemed to hire ANYONE if Otacon's observation had been any indication. Even men that had risen from hell itself.

Despite his faux-pas, he sat with his arms crossed as he listened to her talk, only to undo them a few seconds later to push up his glasses as he had a tendency to do ever two minutes or so. She was giving him a lot of information to digest and think about. Despite his younger age, Otacon still was himself; this was both fascinating and frightening prospect. Thankfully the initial shock of age and time differences was much easier after you had been in the school for a while.

Oh yes, this reminded him how much he missed Mei Ling's proverbs. Errr not that Otacon was bad with them (yes he was), just she had a much poetic way with them. He closed his eyes at the thought of Meryl being alive. That was good news. But married? Living in an airplane with Snake? Having a daughter? It all sounded so far fetched!

So far fetched it could only make sense. And damn, Mei Ling retired at 28 after being a naval captain? That's insane. Kojima was insane.

"I'm...twenty six," he said carefully, looking at her. "At least I think I am. The year here is 2011. It's so different than what I am used to. Everything's changed. And now that Snake left here again...." he trailed off, looking at the ground.

It wasn't hard to see Otacon almost wanted to follow him, but the other man had told him to stay here for backup purposes. They needed him here, to try and find out where his older self had hidden REX.

"Can you...tell me more about everything? I...honestly never saw myself having a daughter. Who did Meryl marry?" quietly, he wondered who was the girl's mother? Why hadn't Mei Ling mentioned her?

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"Everything? This is going to take a while." Mei Ling took a deep breath and grew silent. There was the problem that Otacon was asking her for everything. Where in the world to start?

Actually, now that she thought about it Otacon's daughter was a good place to start.

"Sunny..." She smiled, wondering how the little girl was doing. "Let's get this straight, you're not actually her biological father. Her mother is Olga Gurlukovich, a mercenary. Forced to work with the Patriots against her will. Raiden will know of her. Her daughter was held captive by them. She was made to work with computers, so she's actually a computer programming prodigy despite her young age. You ended up taking care of her. She ended up taking a lot of your personality traits. She's not the most social of people but she's smart and curious."

An idea struck Mei Ling at that moment. To save herself explaining everything, there was another way of showing Otacon what happened in the future.

"Actually, to make this easier why don't I just show you? They're not the best quality but they'll do."

She took out her phone excitedly. She forgot she took a couple of photos of the day of the wedding and they were there with her in her pocket.

"Okay, found 'em-" Mei Ling called up one of them on the screen after a moment of tapping. She turned the display to Otacon. "This is Sunny. She was at Meryl's wedding. She's quite cute, isn't she?"

She flicked to the next photo.

"This is Meryl, at her wedding. With her husband, Johnny. Or Akiba. I don't know if you remember him from Shadow Moses but he had a bit of a... stomach problem. It turned out he had no nanomachines, which was helpful in the end but... oh well."

Another flick and another photo appeared on the screen.

"Ah yeah, Colonel Campbell was there too. He walked Meryl down the aisle. We were there, as well as Meryl's brigade Rat Patrol 1. It was a lovely day."

She gave a soft sigh. It was a sign of things to come that the wedding went well - the world was at relative peace afterwards.

"What was it Goethe said... 'The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.'"

The phone was on slideshow mode, so the next picture appeared without Mei Ling doing anything.

"Oh yeah, that's you and Sunny. She's actually quite attached to you. Thinks the world of you and Snake. I spent time babysitting her too. Sunny liked cooking eggs. You had three chickens on board your airship... Liquid, Solid and Solidus. She cooked with their eggs. Not too well though, she got your lack of cooking skills too."

She called up the last photo in the set.

"You... don't look too bad at 38. This is in 2014 though. I'm finding it hard to get to grips with the fact that you're only 26."

Mei Ling smiled as she put her phone away.

"Sadly... Snake couldn't make it to the wedding. But when we last saw each other, you said you'd spend your time chronicling the last of Snake's life. And with that, any questions?"