Fox was dead, and Snake knew that. He knew because he had been close enough both times he'd died – close enough the first time to feel the blast of heat from the mines, close enough the second to hear every bone snap and crunch, the squeal of metal as the exoskeleton gave way. And so he had no idea why he was searching for him now, years later, on this cover-up clean-up facility.
It had been one thing in Shadow Moses. Fox had known where he was, and had met him there because of that. He knew that Fox couldn't possibly be here, because he hadn't been sent into the Big Shell; he'd arrived of his own – and Otacon's – accord, which meant that there wasn't even anything to leak. Of course, if he was here, the only leak could be that the tipster was rubbing shoulders with Fox – or that Fox was the tipster himself. That sounded plausible. The tipster was one of only two anonymous tipsters Otacon ever listened to – he called himself Snake's Number One Fan.
But of course it wasn't plausible, he knew, because Fox was dead, and not even this half-hearted little fetch quest across the Shell when he had bigger things to worry about was going to bring him back for the third time. Otacon had been busy. Raiden had been otherwise employed. He'd had nothing of any use to contribute, and that was why he was here, forcing open the wire-mesh doors on the roof of Strut A. He jarred them open, and took a careful step onto the roof, boots oiled along the floor by what he vaguely hoped didn't used to be the contents of some seagull's intestines but knew was.
He stood on the roof for a whole minute, staring across at the rest of the Shell, struts joined by thin, narrow bridges like a ring molecule. Every part of him screamed that this was a total waste of time, that no matter who that Mr. X was he couldn't be Fox, because Fox was finally too dead to be brought back again. He lifted his head, and turned to leave.
That was when he saw the ninja, drawn out against the low evening sun like a living shadow – brilliant sunspots burned around the metallic edges of the exoskeleton. At once heavy and graceful, beautiful and painful to look at, it stood suspended on powerful, augmented legs on top of the lurid orange guard rail, gazing down at Snake like a statue. He was almost rendered speechless by its sheer majesty, but instead found words like sparks, hot with rage at this sick and twisted parody of a dead man.
"I've found you, then," he snarled up at it. "I don't know who you are, but I know you're wearing a dead man's skin."
"I'm flattered you were looking for me," the ninja replied, voice slurred heavily by a voice changer. Bitterly, Snake resented the person in the shell who wasn't just hiding their face, but their voice as well; painfully, he realised that if it was using a voice changer, it could be Fox's voice being metamorphosed, Fox's half-blinded dead-milk eyes passing over his face. It took him slightly too long to remember how brutally Fox had been crushed, how he was dead and he'd already returned from the dead once and that was enough for anyone and he was therefore not about to turn up on Snake's doorstep one morning, demanding to see his friend. He was getting too irrational, he thought.
It leapt down from the rail with impossible, liquid grace, and approached him – he was able to detect the slightest squeal of metallic joints back in his teeth as the ninja moved. Fox had never made a sound, even without the suit.
"I was searching for you as well," the ninja continued, the faintest smile in its garbled voice. "But I'm glad you wanted me. I like to feel chased."
He wasn't sure what disturbed him more – the fact that this crazed man in a mask was pastiching a dead friend just to provoke Snake, or the fact that it almost seemed to be flirting with him.