Solid Snake, or as on the grid, after the Big Shell incident, he was now AKA John Doe, sat in the rear compartment of the Haven military helicopter, adjusting himself to keep a relaxed position. The Haven wasn't known for comfort, but the number of weapons and apparent stealth capabilities made it an ace-in-the-hole for operations in, and out of, White House directions. The size of the chopper made him doubt that fact stubbornly, but the "speckies" were precouis about what they entitled "correct".

As Campbell had once put it in his last conversation with the resigned Colonel. The United States Government, since 1965, had become nothing but a faulted compass map key.
They can only see in four directions: North, South, East, and West. Anything such as NorthEast or SouthWest was a simple formality to them, and rather unimportant in the grand scale of the direction the world was taking. They all knew now, of course, that this was the cause of the Philosophers, or the Patriots as covert intel read off. To keep the world going in one direction, one path, a favorably "settled" path or at least the United States while enforcing unseen law to the "outer regions" of un-USA.

Snake never felt too interested in politics, albeit keeping up with the world so as to keep himself in pace, and to keep his own personal knowledge updated. Even in the front of combat or war, intel, information, and knowledge was valued. Many of the new generation, trained from the menstrual aftermath tutalage of a dying economy locked down from the Big Shell Catastrophe, found this at an estimated, yet remarkably contracted pace. The government kept things tied, even within and under their own ranks.
Networks and lies, conspiracies and threats. Information was hard to value or identify nowadays. He couldn't blame the generation of soldiers for being uneducated, mentally degraded, or in the most derogatory sense, undermined to the point of being primitive killing machines. Their information no longer came from news media. It came from the government. Or rather, what the government figured "would best configure an easier and more profitable advance in world virtues".

Even his, Otacon's information, no longer came from public views. Sure, there were extremely thin lines of non-bullshit fact that could be scraped from the bread and butter of bumbling conspriacists that had experience in massmedia propaganda. But as Mei Ling had jokingly put it, 'The quality and quanity of everything nowadays is the figurative visualization of a cardboard box filled with C4...'

"Drop altitude. Ready the Shuin-TAV lift." the COM crackled, in pale comparison to the winds shredding the exterior of the helicopter.

Snake dropped his cigarette, watching it gracefully tuck out and push into a full front flip diving manuver, before splashing against the arget ground and rolling about to maintain stability and avoid injury in a fashion similliar to a NAVY Seal or Perimeter Hopper. He crushed it's heated end with the side of his foot, jealous of the protective layer that shielded it from the grooves in the reinforced metal.

Roy Campbell Jr. has contacted him only a few short months ago, something about a "deciduous duplicitous double operation" or DDDO, so discrete and conboluded, the Patriots would NEVER be able to discover the FULL story before he, namely Philanthropy, could get what they needed. The mission was a bust if they couldn't find someone of excelling combat record, someone off the grid and just willing enough to volunteer for non-government commissioned suicide...namely himself.

He didn't know the full details. Campbell said it would all become clear in the beginning, and that it would be BEST if he didn't contemplate the exact objectives of his mission. In fact, the operation itself, without the contradictory, nonsense titlement, was a "move blindly with a gun in your hands" assignment. Only he was given nothing more than a pack of handpin grenades, a few LDBNIK (Like Death But Not Insta Kill) Antipersonnel mines with practically no charge, a Nikita missle launcher that had no reticule or targeting, and a Grenade Launcher with no rounds.

Bullshit is always bullshit, nothing is ever new about it and it clings to you like a bad smell...

No matter which way he could ponder it, he was obligated to perform this duty. It wasn't as if he had any true dignity or honor accompanying or even awaiting him. He never looked at killing or espionage as true heroism. This mission only reinforced the fact that he was a trained wolf, no, not even that. Even wolves had more honor in their killing, for survival, than he did. Not a Green Beret. Not a FOXHOUND Operative. None of those suited him...

He didn't know how to describe himself anymore.

It didn't matter.

He was about to jump out of a plane flying at over a hundred knots to fall thousands of meters down into a staging zone in what could be considered a particular hostile zone, a fate which left him dead or erased from the world itself, even more than he was now.

"The mission was all that mattered." He muttered, as wind cut his cheek and sliced around his neck.