A/N: Before you ask, yes, this is ACCURATE! the game. Or at least as accurate as possible. I haven't actually played Snake's Revenge (because why would I do that to myself?), so this is based off of a let's play. However, I made every effort to be as true to the source material as possible. For instance, ALL of the dialogue is taken DIRECTLY from the game, except for Snake's (since Snake had no lines originally).
That being said, some details were removed to streamline the storytelling, some were added in an attempt to beat some semblance of sense into the game (or rather beat some semblance of character into the protagonist), and some artistic liberties were taken with certain boss fights to make them more compelling.
Hope you enjoy, and hope you don't demand more Metal Gear fanfiction in the future, because I really don't have the time.
"Lt. Snake, we received information from our intelligence man at the enemy's base."
It was always so strange to hear people calling him 'Lt. Snake'. Mainly because his full name, Solid Snake, was really fucking weird and made him wonder what kind of drugs his parents were on when they named him.
"They have a weapon. Is it Metal Gear, which you destroyed three years ago?"
Yeah, thanks for the flashbacks, asshole. And isn't that the sort of thing your "intelligence man" should be telling you in the first place?
Logic be damned, Snake had his assignment: to infiltrate the unnamed enemy base and put a stop to all this (potential) bipedal nuclear nonsense. However, unlike last time - I really should have retired after last time. Why didn't I retire after last time? Why do I keep doing this to myself? - he wouldn't be going this alone. Two men from his unit, FOXHOUND, were to accompany him: John Turner, who looked like a cheap sad-faced Che Guevara knockoff in that beret, and Nick "La Bomba" Myer, a bald black man who vaguely resembled a racist caricature. The former was a spy who was, or at least used to be, with either the Navy or the Air Force, depending on who you asked. The latter was an explosives expert and former(?) Marine who had graduated from Harvard.
Snake himself, as previously stated, really should have retired from FOXHOUND three years ago, after all that crap in Outer Heaven. The things he'd seen there… it'd never been that bad when he was a Green Beret. Well, regardless, he was the leader of this mission and generally considered the expert at sabotaging Metal Gears, despite his having done it only once, and that meant that, well, he just had to hope that these two wouldn't slow him down. He worked better alone.
It was the middle of the night. The chopper had just crossed the Teristan border, and as far as Snake could see, it was just darkness and mountains. As they got closer to the drop zone, he could just barely make out some distant city lights from Teristan's capital, Ishkabibil. Snake frowned. Maybe he needed to brush up on his geography, or else his current events. He'd never heard of Teristan before this mission. And was it just him, or did Ishkabibil sound extremely stupid and fake?
Turner and Myer sat across from him. Turner was sharpening his knife methodically. Myer was polishing his grenades.
Wait.
Snake blinked. Yep, he was carefully buffing each grenade to a near-mirror sheen. Snake was almost tempted to tell him that he didn't have to do that (and also to ask why) but decided against it, instead looking out the helicopter window again. Almost to the drop point now…
Three minutes later, Snake, Turner, and Myer were on the ground. A jungle. Turner and Myer immediately ran off into the trees - with no instruction from Snake. Although slightly irritated at the fact that he had been forced to take command of the other two and yet they didn't even pause to listen to him, he didn't call out to them or anything. One, that would be bad stealth. Two, again, he worked better alone, so good riddance. The only support Snake needed or wanted on an infiltration mission was over codec. …radio. Was over radio.
Speaking of radio, the helicopter pilot was yammering over his. "Snake, the purpose of your mission is to infiltrate the enemy's stronghold. You must collect information from your co-workers."
"If I can find them," Snake said, mostly to acknowledge. He drew his handgun - he could have sworn FOXHOUND always did things OSP, even for small arms - maybe there was a policy change he hadn't heard about? - and started making his way through the jungle, silently. As strange as it was, he wasn't about to complain about being able to bring a Beretta M92F. He was also able to bring a survival knife, although he wasn't as likely to use that - at least not on people.
On the downside, he wasn't equipped with a sneaking suit. He was stuck instead with standard fatigues from the waist down (except he was barefoot for… some reason…) and a tank top. He felt… oddly exposed (may not be the right word) dressed like this. More than he could really account for. After all, he'd only worn the skin-tight tactical espionage getup once before.
Also, he was unable to bring his cigarettes.
Damn it.
"Snake, I have bad news for you," the chopper pilot said over the radio.
"Go ahead," said Snake.
"You went into the enemy's airspace. We can't help you anymore."
Snake blinked again. Was this not a foregone conclusion? He was headed directly towards the enemy base, after all. He'd most likely be in it in less than an hour.
"I wasn't expecting any help from you," Snake said, slightly confused. "I'd been assuming from the start you-"
"See you at the meeting point after the military operation is over. Good luck!"
"…"
I definitely should have retired after Outer Heaven, Snake thought with a long sigh as he continued through the dark jungle. I could move up to Canada. Or maybe Alaska. Didn't Master Miller move to Alaska after he retired? He shook his head. What was he thinking? Master Miller wasn't retired yet…
Search lights cut through the foliage ahead. They were easy to avoid, true, but they weren't exactly cooperating with Snake's eyes' adjustment to the dark. It was to this end that he managed to trip over something - a root? - and, with really nothing else he could do in this situation, quickly crawled underneath a nearby truck.
He waited under there for a few tense minutes, but there was no sound of footsteps. Were there no soldiers out here? Just whoever was manning the searchlights? As far as Snake could tell, he was actually very close to the base now, and the lights themselves were probably situated on the roof. He might be completely alone out here - hell, the undercarriage of the car was stone cold. No one had been driving it any time recently. Maybe he was alone out here.
But it was always better to be cautious, so for caution's sake, he stayed under the car for a few moments longer, listening carefully. Maybe he wasn't alone… there was human-sounding breathing coming from somewhere more or less nearby. Didn't sound like a soldier, though… too ragged and close to the ground.
Snake inched his way over to where he heard the breathing and, from cover underneath a bush, had a look.
It definitely wasn't a soldier, although he may have started out that way. He was a bruised man in an ugly orange jumpsuit, lying on the ground, half curled into the fetal position with his hands behind his back. Probably tied at the wrists. He was gagged, too. Clearly a hostage.
Of course, Snake couldn't just discount the idea that he was a trap. Even if the prisoner himself were harmless, there may be guards lurking close by. Although you'd think they'd make some kind of noise…
Snake picked up a small rock and gently tossed it so that it made a distinct thmp on the other side of the hostage, who started and looked around fearfully. He caught sight of Snake (they were on the same level here, after all), but didn't make a sound. After a few seconds of absolutely nothing, Snake crawled over to him.
"Are you a hostage?"
He nodded.
Snake frowned slightly. He couldn't just leave him like this, but he also couldn't have him interfering with his mission. "If I set you loose, could you get out of here on your own?"
Again he nodded, this time more vigorously.
Snake sort of doubted that, but he didn't have any more time to waste on this guy. Rising to a crouch, he leaned over the man and cut the rope at his wrists, then stood up, putting his knife away and unholstering his gun again. The hostage rolled onto his back and pulled the gag out of his mouth.
"Thanks for your help," he mumbled, his voice dry.
"Don't mention it," Snake said, already stalking out of the clearing. It wasn't long until he practically tripped over another hostage, in the same condition and godawful jumpsuit as the previous one.
"Do you know your way through this jungle?" he asked as he cut the ropes on this man's wrists. The man nodded. "Good. Get out of here."
"Thanks for your help," the man muttered before picking himself up and shambling away.
Snake blinked in confusion for the third time in 45 minutes. Was there a reason why both the guys he just rescued had thanked him the exact same way? …probably not worth thinking about. Snake continued on towards the source of the searchlights.
His radio beeped just as he came within sight of the large, gray fortress.
"Lieutenant, I have arrived at point A."
"Point A?" Where the hell is point A? "Turner, is that you?"
"Let's put the plan into effect."
"The plan? What are you talking about?"
"Good luck infiltrating the enemy's base." The radio crackled as Turner ended the call.
Snake didn't have time to call him back and ask just what the hell he was talking about when Turner appeared out of nowhere, sprinting straight towards the building and screaming. The guards standing just outside immediately noticed, firing their assault rifles and giving chase, and Snake took this opportunity to slip behind a tree only a few meters away from the door. He wasn't about to go save Turner's suicidal ass. Especially when this was probably 'the plan' he had just been talking about.
It only took a moment for the two guards to return with Turner, walking slowly and with his arms up in the air, between them. "I'll take you. Go ahead!" one of the guards grunted. Snake wondered if they actually spoke English in Teristan, or if this guard was just attempting to communicate with Turner. Either way, Snake slipped in the fortress door just behind the two guards (and prisoner) just fine. Once inside he immediately ducked behind some convenient barrels while the oblivious guards (and prisoner) disappeared further into the building.
Snake looked around. He wasn't exactly a stickler for interior design, but good God this building was hideous. The walls were rough, gray, pockmarked, and looked more like they belonged on the outside, not the inside. And the floor, which looked oddly new, was some kind of unfashionable paneling in an eye-searing bright blue.
The auxiliary room Snake slipped into wasn't much better. In fact, it looked exactly the same, except it was devoid of cargo, furniture, or indeed any objects at all except for a card in the middle of the floor, which Snake picked up. Card 1, it said. Snake knew almost instinctually that this base was going to be filled with card-locked doors. He'd had plenty of experience with- no, he'd only dealt with it once. What was he thinking of? Must have been how many times he'd dreamed about Outer Heaven, in excruciating detail.
He exited the room and headed in the direction they had taken Turner. The building's ugliness didn't abate at all, but at least the hallway was filled with barrels, crates, and stacks of bags of cement(?) for him to hide behind as soldiers passed. Mostly burly black men with shiny silver pants and no shirts.
Snake wasn't going to ask and quite frankly he didn't want to know.
He slipped into another empty room to find… what appeared to be an enemy officer (or at least he was wearing something approaching a real uniform), who was just standing there with his hands on his hips, staring contemplatively at the floor when Snake walked in. Once he noticed the gun pointed at him, he raised his hands and blurted out, "Don't shoot. I don't know anything."
Snake choked him out instead and left.
In the next room he went into - still completely devoid of anything - he found Card 2, which was, like Card 1, just lying on the floor. The room next to that one held another hostage, who gave him an extremely hopeful look as soon as he saw the tank top and figured out that Snake wasn't supposed to be here.
"The corridor out there is filled with soldiers," Snake said bluntly, "there's no way you could escape on your own and I don't have time to escort you."
The tied-up man groaned and gave him an 'at least untie me' look. Snake, having already observed that the patrolling soldiers never seemed to actually go into these rooms, figured he could spare the extra five seconds the cut the ropes on this prisoner's wrists.
"John moved to a different spot," the hostage said, removing his gag just as Snake was listening at the door to see if he could leave the room yet.
"…John?" Snake said, turning around slowly. "John… Turner? How did you know I was looking for him?"
The hostage didn't answer, just stared at Snake blankly. Feeling uncomfortable, he quickly left. He belatedly realized that the prisoner hadn't told him where Turner was moved to. There was no way he was going to go back and ask, though. It wasn't even as though finding Turner was particularly high on his priority list.
More sneaking. More entering superfluous, empty rooms in the hopes of finding something useful. (If they left cardkeys lying around like that, surely someone would have dropped a pack of cigarettes somewhere…) Snake briefly wondered what kind of person ran this place. The hallway was packed with random junk, yet all these extra rooms had completely nothing in them? What? Why? In one of those pointless rooms, Snake found yet another hostage. This one was significantly less creepy than the last one and told Snake, unprompted, that "The enemy has a truth gas" upon being cut loose. Sounded like a gas version of sodium pentothal. Snake could think of at least one guy who'd probably love to get his hands (well, hand) on some. Or something like that.
Back in the hallway, that one soldier was getting a little too close for comfort. He was standing right in front of the crate Snake was pressed up against the other side off, scrutinizing it. (Snake wasn't sure if he suspected something or if he was just reading the text on the crate out of boredom.) As soon as he turned his back, Snake stole to the nearest door, opened it silently, and… stepped outside.
He facepalmed. This was the exact opposite of what he should be doing. At least there aren't any guards in the immediate area, Snake thought as he pressed up against the door he had just exited, listening for the soldier he had just escaped from. Had he walked off yet?
Something shone dimly in the dirt as a searchlight passed through the jungle just beyond. Something long, round, and metal, just lying on the ground in front of a pair of parked Jeeps. Snake took a closer look - carefully, in case it was a claymore or something.
A silencer, he thought as he picked it up, good. It must have been dropped by someone getting out of one of the Jeeps. He quickly attached it to his Beretta. This will make things a lot easier.
Back inside again. The next mostly-empty room he went into contained a single canister labelled 'Truth Gas', complete with a mask. While Snake was morbidly curious as to whether or not it would actually work, he wasn't particularly interested in interrogating anyone, and he did not want to lug it around with him. He left the room as it was.
Eventually he found the elevator. It only went down, although Snake could have sworn that the fortress was more than one story high. He couldn't really argue with going to the basement, though. He had no idea where this building to go, and didn't know anything about the building apart from what he'd already seen. He wondered if the 'intelligence man' from the briefing actually existed.
The basement was largely like the first floor - ugly walls, uglier floors, shirtless soldiers wandering around, and plenty of miscellaneous cargo for Snake to crouch behind to avoid said shirtless soldiers. Also, plenty of random rooms that existed solely to exist and not to fulfill any sort of function. They could at least put a couch or something in one of these rooms. Some lockers. Something.
One of the rooms contained another officer, who was, like the first one, just standing there with a stupid expression on his face until he noticed Snake. Like before, his hands shot up and he exclaimed, "Don't shoot. I don't know anything."
"Are you all trained to say the same line upon encountering an enemy?" Snake said, his gun still pointed at the officer's forehead.
The officer just stared down the muzzle of the Beretta. Snake took a step forward, and he blurted out, "Weapons are ready to be shipped. It's difficult to get near the port."
"…what?" Snake said.
"Weapons are ready to be shipped. It's difficult to get near the port."
Maybe both the officers gave him the same line because no one here spoke good English. Snake knocked out this guy, too, and left.
A few rooms and an H&K MP5, some plastic explosives, and several grenades later, Snake figured he was suitably stocked up for whatever lay ahead - although if you had Card 1 and Card 2, there was a good chance you also had Card 3, so he still needed to keep looking into the pointless extra rooms. Hey, maybe one of them would contain an abandoned pack of cigarettes. Not this room, though. This room contained the conceptual opposite of a pack of cigarettes: an oxygen tank. Judging by the attached mask, it was meant for scuba diving.
As random as it was, and as unwilling as Snake was to actually carry this thing around (even if it did look optimized for weight), something told him he was going to need it later. Reluctantly, he stepped forward to grab it… and became aware that his eyes and nose were burning. Shit, was this room filled with poison gas? He didn't stick around to see how bad it really was.
Hoping that either there was no more gas in the entire base or else he would find a gas mask somewhere, Snake made his way to elevator. So far so good. This one also went down. (Why couldn't the first one just have gone all the way down to the second floor basement? Why have two different elevators?) This elevator opened up in a large room - still with the ugly gray wall and uglier blue floor - containing nothing but a few guards. They all had their backs to him.
Since there was no cover, Snake just went ahead and shot the closest one in the back of the head. Thanks to the silencer, the guard's companion only noticed him collapsing. As he turned, Snake shot him right through the temple.
The third guard, standing by the exit to the room, hadn't noticed a thing. A fatal mistake on the battlefield. One punch-punch-kick combo later, he was down and Snake was out.
Beyond the door was a hallway. A long, narrow hallway. With - well, technically it could be called stairs, but it was more like certain sections of the floor were elevated in huge 'steps' for no apparent reason. (At least the floor wasn't bright blue anymore.) From what section of the hallway he could see, there was just one guard - although there may have been more beyond the almost non-Euclidean corner. Snake went ahead and shot him and ran down the hallway, quickly and quietly.
He peeked around the corner. (Seriously, who designed this place…) He wondered if the hallway were flooded for some reason, or if that was intentional, and looked up slightly.
"A security camera?!" he mumbled to himself.
It was a good bet, though, that the camera wouldn't be able to discern his shape in the dark water. Preemptively regretting the fact that his tank top was going to be clinging to him like a silver-haired Russian toddler (wait, what?) for the rest of the mission, he slipped into the water while the camera was rotated away and swam along the bottom of the corridor for as long as he could.
Emerging from the water at the end of the pool, Snake saw another guard. He was close enough that all Snake had to do was grab his ankles and yank - the guard went down and hit his head on the floor with a nasty whack! If there were any other soldiers around, they should come- yes, here was one. Snake shot him between the eyes as soon as he laid them on his unconscious comrade.
It was a clear shot to the end of the admittedly extremely fucking strange hallway. However, upon entering the back-at-it-again-with-the-blue-tiles-are-you-serious t-shaped room, Snake was confronted with five… big beefy cyborgs…?
"NO ONE CAN AVOID OUR ATTACK," the one at the front of the v-shaped formation bellowed at him. They all immediately rushed towards him like a football team consisting entirely of quarterbacks.
Snake jumped out of the way of the closest one and pulled out a grenade. The cyborgs(? they certainly looked very metallic) run back towards the center of the room, although Snake wasn't sure if it was in response to his threat or just part of their strategy. Either way, Snake pulled the pin and tossed the grenade into their midst, and immediately followed up with another one. The explosion took out the one who had previously shouted at him.
The other football cyborgs didn't seem to notice the loss of their comrade and possible leader. They continued charging at Snake, then falling back, then charging. Snake continued nimbly dodging them and throwing grenades. Hopefully this fortress was as strong as it was unsightly. A collapse would not be ideal here.
One down, then another. Two left. Snake was out of grenades, so he pulled out the submachine gun he'd picked up earlier and ran to the other side of the room. The cyborg quarterbacks seemed almost confused and turned stupidly around, just in time for the one slightly closer to Snake to take a bunch of hot lead to the face. He went down. The remaining one charged at Snake and met the same fate. He fell without saying a word.
Ears still ringing, Snake surveyed the damage. Who the hell were these guys? Had they known he was coming, or did he just manage to walk into their party room?
With extra care, he nudged open the door at the back of the room. The room beyond had a handful of soldiers patrolling, but if they'd noticed all the explosions and gunfire just now, they didn't care. Maybe Snake really did manage to walk into their party room. Anyway, this room saw the return of the perennial mysterious crates and convenient barrels, so Snake just used them as cover to reach the elevator.
This one went up, although it was hard to tell if Snake had returned to the upper level of the basement or the first floor. Wherever he was, there sure were a lot of crates in this room.
Something moving in the corner of his eye caught his attention: as soon as he had entered the room, two flattish orange blocks had mechanically slid across the floor to rest side-by-side in front of the only door out of the room.
Some kind of security mechanism? Snake wondered. There weren't any guards in the room, so he was free to use his knife to pry them off their tracks and grant him access to the door. A waste of time, and a waste of resources on the enemy's end.
The elevator must have taken him up to the first floor after all, because now he was in a paved interior courtyard that sort of resembled a parking lot, although there weren't any vehicles he could see at the moment. Just large shipping containers that blocked the patrolling guards' line of sight.
His radio beeped. "Lieutenant! It appears that John is a hostage on the ship." It was Myer.
"Where is the ship?" Snake asked him, although he didn't answer. Sighing, Snake headed away from what he presumed was the center of the building. That officer earlier had mentioned a port… if it was part of this facility, chances were good that it was on the outskirts of it.
He was closer than he thought. After only a minute of sneaking, the sound of a large body of water reached his ears. Moving closer, dodging sentries, Snake eventually came in sight of a large docked freighter. Some straggling soldiers were just boarding it. Snake briefly wondered about the geography of this area - this boat was clearly too big for a river, but he didn't smell salt, so maybe this was a particularly large lake - and dashed up the boarding ramp. He immediately took cover behind some barrels. One of the guards he had followed on looked around a few times in suspicion, but shrugged it off. Snake breathed a silent sigh of relief.
He looked around as the ship lurched out towards relatively open waters. It seemed to be a perfectly sensible ship, or at least a perfectly sensible deck, apart from the awful pea-yellow color. Hopefully he wouldn't encounter the same incomprehensible interior planning as the fortress… anyway, he had to start his search immediately. That officer had mentioned shipping out weapons, so it was very possible that the suspected Metal Gear was on this very boat. Oh yeah, and Turner might be too.
The soldiers on this ship weren't too easy to avoid, since any incidental noise Snake made was covered by the sound of the water. That was especially good, because Snake was at a slight disadvantage due to the fact that he was getting slightly seasick. He thought of pentazemin for some reason.
In one of the rooms he searched, Snake found a hostage who told him "John has moved to another place. It looks like there's something important at the bottom of the ship" as soon as Snake removed his gag.
Something important? Snake thought. "Do you know how to get to the bottom of the ship?" The hostage just shrugged awkwardly.
One of these doors had to lead below deck… Snake tried another one. He found an officer in it and - did all of these officers just spend their time staring at the wall with their hands in their pockets? Were they even officers? Maybe they were just guys who dressed like officers and were told to stand quietly in empty rooms so they would be well out of the way.
"Metal Gear has no weak spot," the officer told Snake, raising his hands in surrender.
"Metal Gear…" repeated Snake, "so it really was a Metal Gear after all."
"Let's destroy the ship and ammo dump," the officer said.
There was a long pause.
"What?" Snake said.
"Metal Gear has no weak spot. Let's destroy the ship and ammo dump."
…whatever he was saying, it was probably lost in translation. Snake knocked him out just to be sure. He wondered what language they actually spoke here, and why he hadn't been told in the first place.
The next room he looked into had some kind of platform elevator. It looked fairly unsafe (no handrails), but that didn't really matter; what did matter was the fact that Snake needed to investigate the bottom of the ship, and this was how he was going to get there.
On the way down, he wondered if Metal Gear was really on this ship. If it was, he would probably have to destroy it, which would most likely mean sinking the ship. He… really didn't want to do that.
Below-deck was marginally easier on the eyes, although there were still too many patrolling soldiers for Snake's liking. Just once he'd like to see an enemy holding where they had faith in the guards on the perimeter and left the interior unsurveilled… his radio beeped again. He clapped a hand over the speaker as the soldier nearest to his position looked idly around. If he'd heard Snake's radio, he didn't seem too interested or concerned. Good.
"Hey, Snake. Are you OK? I'll see you soon," came over the radio, muffled under Snake's fingers. Sounded like the helicopter pilot. Was there any good reason for him to randomly call in like this? And what did he mean by "I'll see you soon"?
As vaguely ominous as that was, Snake didn't have the time to worry about it. As soon as the guard near him stopped glancing around and continued on his patrol path, Snake resumed carefully and methodically searching the small rooms that dotted the ship. (Apparently the freighter had been designed by the same genius mind behind that fortress.) He picked up a flare gun, flares to go with it, more grenades, and even claymores, but had yet to see or hear anything more about Metal Gear or find another elevator.
One room actually had stuff in it: three cement-bag barricades. Snake didn't lower his gun - odds were, something was behind at least one of the piles, and that something could very well be an enemy soldier. He carefully advanced.
"HERE ARE THREE GRAVES FOR YOU! HA, HA, HA!"
Three fat, shirtless men with closely shaved heads popped up over the barricades (which incidentally weren't very tall, so these guys were either very flexible or standing in holes). One of them lobbed a grenade. Snake leapt to the side. Two more grenades detonated where he had just been standing.
He hurried to grab his own grenade and threw it at the nearest one (the one on the left), who ducked behind his bag barrier - not that it helped him. Snake had thrown the grenade over the cement bags and, judging by the brief clattering before the explosion, into the hole. Two remaining - hopefully no one was about to accidentally blast a hole in the side of the ship. Snake decided to run up close and take them out with his handgun, but as soon as he started advancing towards the middle barricade, a well-thrown grenade forced him to retreat back towards the wall.
He threw another grenade. It was a good thing that these were fairly weak - as long as Snake could dodge them, the only real damage was to his hearing. And so far the freighter seemed to be taking the beating just fine.
The grenade bounced off the cement-bag barricade and into the hole of the man behind the next barrier on the right. The man in the middle looked away from Snake to his comrade for a brief second. Snake took this opportunity to time his throw so that the grenade would detonate right as he beaned the middle guy in his head. Which it did. Instantaneous death - something that might not have happened for the other two. Their legs had been blown off; if they were already dead, it was due to blood loss.
No time to feel bad about that. Snake headed through the other door in the room and was disappointed to find that it was empty apart from Card 3.
"All that for a keycard…" he muttered.
He grabbed it and headed back out into the hallway. He was on high alert himself - the ringing in his ears was lasting longer this time, and he might not be able to hear someone walking up behind him - and he fully expected the soldiers to be also. Surely they wouldn't just dismiss all those explosions.
Or maybe they would. There were exactly as many guards walking around as there had been before Snake had gone into that room, and they hardly seemed concerned about anything. Snake ducked into a side room, wishing he had some cigarettes. This was getting rather… surreal, and he needed a smoke. Unfortunately, there were no cigarettes in this room - just a mine detector. He added it to his ever-expanding inventory anyway.
He stayed in there until his hearing had more or less returned to normal, then headed back into the hall, snuck around a guard, and located the elevator. He rode it down another level and exited into a room containing a row of barrels and a singular guard on the other side of the room. The guard's attention was caught by the elevator doors opening, but he didn't initially see Snake because Snake was crouching behind the barrels. The guard walked over - a bad move, since as soon as he rounded the barrels, Snake swept his leg right into the back of the guard's ankles, sending him crashing to the floor. He hit his head hard on the rim of one of the barrels on the way down, ensuring that he would be out for a good while. Snake advanced to the next room.
It was dark.
Which was honestly the best-looking thing he'd seen since he'd left the helicopter.
Snake pressed up against the wall and waited silently, listening for footsteps or breathing or anything else to indicate that there were soldiers in here. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he became aware of several large shapes looming in the dark before him. Was this cargo hold? Could one of these shapes possibly be… Metal Gear?!
Hoping he was correct in his assessment that there was no on else in here, he drew his flare gun and lit up the room. The dim, flickering orange light revealed what weapons were being shipped:
Not just Metal Gear.
Four Metal Gears.
"No…" Snake whispered.
He approached one. Four Metal Gears? He felt like he should be more surprised at the prospect of someone mass-producing them. But… he wasn't. He felt strangely unimpressed and, looking closer, found reason to be: these Metal Gears were completely nonfunctional. They appeared to just be empty shells of Metal Gear's armor plating, or maybe models. No, definitely models. They looked to be about half the size of a real Metal Gear - less, even. A child couldn't fit in these cockpits.
Relieved at the fact that they weren't real Metal Gears but also confused as to why these were down here (or even existed at all - one made sense, he supposed, but not four, unless there were small details changed that he hadn't been able to discern in the flare's light), he continued to the other side of the cargo hold and entered a hallway. Still no enemy soldiers…
At the end of the hallway was a large pile of munitions. Snake pulled out some plastic explosives and looked at them. Sure, blowing up the ammo dump seemed like a good idea, but it would also sink the ship. Snake didn't want to be caught on a sinking ship ag- for the first time.
And a lot of people would die.
That hostage from earlier was still on the ship and would have no way to get off.
Turner may still be on the ship, too.
Snake attached the plastic explosives to the carefully stacked ammunition boxes, set the timer, and walked back out into the dark hallway. The explosion rumbled behind him and the ship jarred. Wait, hadn't he set the timer for longer than that? Much, much longer than that? Welp. Time to go back up to the deck and steal a lifeboat. This had been an almost completely pointless detour…
He radio beeped as he was hurrying past the Metal Gear models. "I set the transmitter," the chopper pilot said, "Climb up the deck and use the radar. Hurry up!"
"You want me to do what?" Snake said as he entered the non-OSHA-compliant elevator. The pilot didn't respond. "Hello? Do you copy?"
As he exited the elevator, he realized that all the guards had suddenly disappeared. Probably not a good sign, but convenient for now. Snake pressed forward, wary but not slowing.
He reached the deck. Still no sign of guards. The freighter was tilting dangerously now - maybe thy had all evacuated ahead of him? There weren't any lifeboats that he could see; that would explain it. Then again, he wouldn't entirely be surprised if he found that there had been no lifeboats to begin with.
Remembering the chopper pilot's slightly incoherent instructions, he checked his miniature radar. Sure enough, there was a little flashing blip from (presumably) the transmitter. So the pilot was here, after all?
The radar screen didn't contain anything fantastically useful, such as, say, a little map of his area, but Snake did his best to follow the transmitter's signal. Perplexingly enough, it lead him inside the structure of the ship, where you would most certainly not find a helicopter. He had reached the room where he had held up the crazy officer earlier when there was another explosion - blasting a hole in the wall of this room. He looked through it.
So apparently there was a helipad on this completely inaccessible part of the ship. That settled it. The architect responsible for that stupid base he had just infiltrated had also had a hand in this freighter's design.
Could be worse, though. Could be an elevator in a women's bathroom.
…that would be worse. Why did that occur to him, anyway?
Hovering just over the tilting, rocking helipad was a FOXHOUND helicopter. Snake sprinted over to it and had to leap in order to actually get into it. He was unsurprised but not particularly let down to see that the chopper was conspicuously devoid of one John Turner.
"Congratulations!" the pilot yelled at him.
"…what?" Snake said over the roar of the blades as the copter rose into the air.
"Metal Gear is destroyed."
"No it isn't. The Metal Gears that they were transporting on this ship were actually-"
The pilot cut him off. "But," he said, "we have confirmed the existence of Metal Gear 2."
"Metal Gear 2?!" Snake said, "look, the only thing I've destroyed tonight was-"
"Now Nick is missing. Contact your person at the enemy's base."
Snake fell silent. Metal Gear 2? Person at the enemy's base? What was the pilot talking about? Also, Myer was missing? Polished grenades aside, Snake had assumed Myer to be the more competent one. Well, he supposed he still was, in the sense that it had taken him a few hours longer to get captured. Why didn't they just let him go in alone again…?
The helicopter headed off in a seemingly arbitrary direction. Off to part two of this mission… it had already been a long night, and it was just getting longer.
And Snake was still in his wet clothes.
He really needed a smoke right now.