Disclaimer: I do not own Metal Gear or any of its affiliates. Anything that you recognise is property of its respective owners. Any relations to persons living or dead are purely coincidental.
Base/s: Metal Gear
Title: The Results of a Bad Day
Summary: Raiden, to put it mildly, is fed up with this crap. What does a guy have to do to get a minutes peace around here?
Music used for inspiration: None
Raiden, as Rose would have put it, was not a happy bunny.
The man himself would have worded it rather differently.
In short, he was pissed the fuck off.
He grumbled to himself as he picked his way through rubble and debris. Something had exploded, people got shot, yadda yadda yadda.
The mission (if one could even call it that) was done. Finito. He'd even been paid, which was nice.
Of course, most of it had been a disaster.
But he wasn't going to get into that right now. He'd done his job correctly.
Right now, all he wanted was to get out of this god forsaken hellhole, touch up his tech, and go home.
He continued to grumble about this and that as he made his way to where his vehicle had last been parked.
He stopped. He gritted his teeth and counted to ten.
The car was still there. Well, bits of it were. He suspected that burning pile of slag a few meters way was probably part of it too.
Not cool. So not cool.
He closed his eyes for a second and ran a clawed, metallic hand through his hair. It was okay, he could commandeer another at some point. For now he'd just have to walk.
He gave a humourless smile.
At least he wouldn't be getting tired at any point in the near future.
So he started walking. He stubbornly paid no mind to the terrified people who were crawling out of the woodwork now the immediate danger had passed.
Just keep walking. No one will start anything (even if you sort of want them to), you're freaking terrifying. Just glare at them, and- There we go. Not a word.
He spotted one of the vehicles of the men he had been engaged with earlier. They wouldn't need it anymore.
Despite not being a religious man, Raiden was close to thanking God the closer he got the no doubt air conditioned vehicle.
He was pretty tough, but what little skin he had was feeling the heat. Now, he'd grown up in Africa, but he seemed to have lost some of his resistance to heat in the years he'd been away. Not that he'd had much to begin with, with his pale complexion.
Shit, now he sounded like Rose, talking about complexions and stuff.
Besides, metal and heat were never a good combination, and his metallic body was feeling decidedly uncomfortable. It didn't matter, not really, but he'd still rather be away from the blistering heat.
That air-con would be his.
He could almost feel it now, on the road on the way to the pick up zone, on his way home-
His preternatural hearing detected a dull thud and then, almost instantaneously, the sound of something whistling through the air. He tensed.
The jeep exploded.
He went very still.
A group of very armed men emerged from whatever hole they had been hiding in, bristling with weapons and menace. Cybernetic limbs gave them away as more than a simple mercenary force, and their weapons bore the signs of money.
Raiden breathed. In through the nose, out through the mouth... Calm. He was totally calm.
The jeep smouldered.
The sound of a loud, slow clap drifted across the heavy, heat laden air.
A man in a suit was smiling at him; tinted sunglasses perched on his nose and rings glittering on his fingers.
He was grinning, and Raiden could pick out a gold tooth or three in that smile.
"Well, my dear cyborg. You do a thorough job!" He praised, a hint of an accent colouring his words. Raiden glowered at him, not impressed.
The suited man seemed to give him a once over. He nodded approvingly.
"Yes," He said with a touch of sibilance. "Very good for, for an American." He said the word with obvious disgust.
"Liberian, actually." Raiden muttered, but was ignored.
The suited man carried on.
"I suppose I should thank you, cyborg!" His grin widened.
Did humans actually have that many teeth? The cyborg wondered idly, or did he actually have twice as many as a regular person?
"You played right into my hands!" Suit man crowed, spreading his arms wide.
Raiden regarded him flatly. Seriously?
"Yes! You can scarcely believe it, can you? But it's true! I planned this whole thing! You took out my competitor perfectly, crippled his operation and now I will move in and take what is rightfully mine! Your employer is weak now, he wasted too many men!" He clenched a fist on front of his face with relish. "And now what was theirs will belong to me. There's just one loose end…" he trailed off, before looking straight at the cyborg. "You."
Raiden raised one blonde eyebrow.
"So," he began, speaking for the first time since the man had made his overly dramatic appearance. "You aim to, what, kill me?" he asked, clearly doubting the validity of this plan.
Suit man nodded, still grinning.
Raiden was still for a moment.
The he laughed.
"You're shitting me, right?" He asked when his chuckles died down. "You come here, acting like some sort of villain. I don't even know who you are."
Suit man frowned and looked somewhat insulted.
"I'll have you know that I am a very powerful man!" he defended.
"I'm sure." Raiden drawled. "Now, if you don't mind, I've had a rough day, so I'm just going to-"
Suit man managed a smile that looked painful. Clearly, he was not used to sass.
A single bullet impacted in front of the cyborgs foot.
Said cyborg continued to look sincerely unimpressed.
"No! You will die here and I will-" The man, who still had not introduced himself (how rude), turned an interesting shade of puce and seemed to be gearing up for a monologue.
Raiden held up a metallic hand.
"Now, I'm going to have to stop you right there." He said seriously. "I have had an extremely bad day. I have no wish to listen to you monologue and pretend you're someone I give a shit about. All I want is to get out of this godforsaken heat, leave this crap hole of a country, go home and see my wife and my kid, and get some damn rest. I was having a bad day before." He said, scowling now and building up steam. "And then you assholes blew up that damn jeep. That jeep had air-con. And you blew it up."
He glared.
"If you don't mind, I need to relieve some stress."
He grinned darkly, and languidly raised a hand to unsheathe the katana that was strapped to his back.
"My therapist says I should take up a hobby to deal with tension and not let my violent impulses get the better of me. But you see, violence is so satisfying." He purred.
He settled into a comfortable combat stance, the edge of his blade catching the harsh sunlight.
Suit man looked quite derailed. He blinked behind his tinted glasses, not sure of what to make of his victim ranting at him.
"Uh, open fire?" He tried.
His men complied.
With a bloodthirsty grin, the blonde cyborg entered the fray.
To call the following event a 'battle' would have been rather an inaccuracy. What happened could only best be described as a massacre.
Slightly out of breath, Raiden flicked his blade to relieve it of some of the blood on it, before looking around. The red faded from his vision as he took in the destruction he had just wrought.
He winced.
He may have gone slightly overboard.
Just slightly.
His eye caught the still smoking image of the jeep and his gaze hardened.
Eh, worth it.
He may have gone slightly overboard, but damn if it wasn't satisfying as hell.
He sighed and sheathed his blade, making a mental note to clean it thoroughly he first chance he got.
Picking his way through body parts and wrinkling his nose at the blood soaked dust and sad that now made up the road, he resigned himself to a long trek back without a vehicle.
He had not made it three steps before he tensed, unsheathed his blade and had the bloodied metal resting against the throat of whatever idiot had thought it a good idea to approach him from behind.
The civilian on the other end of the blade promptly soiled himself.
Raiden rolled his eyes and lowered his blade slowly but kept it out of its sheath.
The townsman fell to his knees, shivering and scrambled backwards.
He looked as though he was trying to say something.
"What?" The blonde demanded, having half a mind to just walk on and leave the twit to his blubbering.
"You want car, yes? Ghanem, his car is round corner. You take it!" he stuttered, terrified.
Raiden raised an eyebrow at the man's heavily accented English. So that guy did have a name? Raiden had been calling him 'Suit Guy' in his head while he was screaming. Weird.
But he heard the magic word. Car.
"Huh. Thanks." He said to the man on the floor, surprised at the help.
"You leave now! Get out of our town, demon!"
Ahh, that's what it was.
Still, free car.
Awesome.
Much more cheerful than he had been, Raiden strolled around the corner and there, lo and behold, was the finest sight he's seen in a long time.
Top of the range too, nice.
Car wasn't really the right word though. 'Hummer' would have been more appropriate.
The blonde didn't have the keys, but that wasn't a problem.
He sighed as he got behind the driver's seat and switched the air-con on.
Oh yeah, that was just as satisfying as he had hoped.
As he made to leave the tiny village, he mused that should his family ask about the mission (and they would, they always did), he should probably give them an edited version.
No need to worry them unduly.
Yes, he thought was he left behind a scene of body parts, gore, destroyed property all topped off with a good layer of fresh blood, the cliff notes version would do just fine.
- End -
Aaaand, done. Done in two hours. This was done because I needed to take break from my damn assignments. They're driving me nuts. But, if I could write them as fast as I can write fanfiction, I would have my masters by now. -_- Alas, that is not the case.
Still, like it?
I went for a more… tongue in cheek flavour than my last one. :)