Time for a little Tactical Espionage, Metal Gear Style.
In a lab elsewhere, we see a group of scientists working on something while a man is waiting in tube of water.
After several minutes the tube's water empties out and the man falls out and he slowly stands up.
The scientists check as he stands and some soldiers arrive to salute the man.
"Get me my gear"
Elsewhere Hal Emmerich, AKA Otacon, is seen with a young girl named Sunny Gurlukovich, a young girl he adopted after the death of her mother Olga, they are together at a nice pond area, Sunny had made a small boat out of sticks and had it set sail.
"Good Job Sunny, you managed to create a perfect mini-boat"
"Not by myself uncle Hal, you helped me make it"
"Yeah well it was by your design, an architect has help making things but they're the ones that need to have the design laid out, otherwise people wouldn't know how it's supposed to be made, and you designed a great ship for it to float"
"Is it like how you used to design The Metal Gears?"
Something about that statement brought a little unease in Otacon, "Something like that".
Though it's been years since Metal Gear REX, something he designed, and then the issue with Metal Gear RAY, made by his sister, the whole Metal Gear thing was still of a discomfort to Otacon considering how many people were affected by the ordeal.
At this moment, they still had to worry about Metal Gear GEKKO, though most of them were destroyed thanks to the likes of Snake, Raiden and Meryl's Group, some still seemed to pop up every now and then, and lately it's gotten worse.
Snake won't be around forever, he's managed to stay alive for quite some extra time, despite his aging body, he had his own will power to thank for that, but soon Snake won't be able to be of much help, luckily Raiden has gotten much stronger lately.
A little while later, Otacon received a call from his codec.
"Dr. Emmerich? This is Roy Campbell"
"The Colonel? What is it sir?"
"We hate to bother you but there has been an issue lately, several cities have come under fire, some surviving civillians have stated it was a type of war machine, a Metal Gear"
"Metal Gear? Is it the GEKKO?"
"Perhaps"
"But...how? Who's behind this?"
"We're not sure, but this problem has gotten huge, we're gonna need all the help we can get, we've already made contact with Meryl, her crew and Raiden, there's still one person missing"
Otacon froze a bit, he knew who Campbell meant, "Snake"
"You still have some contact with him?"
"I do...but you think he's ready to come back to the battlefield?"
"I'm not sure, but we need to try and see, otherwise we'll all be doomed"
"But Campbell, I don't think he should come back, he's got nothing to prove anymore, he shoul stay retired"
"I understand your concern but we have to try"
Otacon nodded, "Right, I'll see what I can do"
Otacon called Sunny to come back with him, he had a call to make.
Snake was at his home relaxing, his body still aging but miraculously moving forward, he was simply laying down, drinking a nice tall glass of lime soda.
That's when he got a call, then answered his phone.
"Snake, it's me, Otacon"
"Hey Otacon, what is it?"
"I got a call from The Colonel"
Snake sighed, he knew what Otacon was leading to.
"Let me guess, it's about those attacks on these cities?"
"How did you know?"
"It's been reported a lot, I take it Campbell wants me to put a stop to it"
"You don't have to do this Snake, you're retired after all"
"Retirement didn't stop Campbell from sending me to Shadow Moses"
"Oh...right, you told me about that"
Snake sighed some more, "Any reason why Raiden couldn't handle this on his own if needed?"
"Raiden is ready to fight, so is Meryl, I guess Campbell was hoping you'd lead the way"
Snake rubbed his forehead a bit, "Give me some time to think about this"
"Wait, you're really gonna consider it?"
"I don't necessarily want to, but there's a good chance that Campbell might start bugging me himself, I'll at least consider it"
"That's great, I'll let Campbell know"
Snake hung up and went into thought, he wasn't too eager to go back to the battlefield, he had already done so much, not to mention even Big Boss himself told Snake his time was basically done, though it's not like he was doing much these days, besides he was getting bored.
Snake wondered if he should even retire, he is meant to be a weapon, perhaps he's better off just accepting his fate as an eternal soldier, maybe a little more to that.
The next day, a group had assembled in Otacon's Cargo Plane; Raiden, Meryl, her team of Edward, Jonathan & Johnny "Akiba" Sasaki, Mei Ling, Rosemary, Drebin & Colonel Campbell, along with Otacon himself and while he wasn't there, Drebin was also involved, having contacted Campbell via radio and is ready to arrive with weapons if need be.
Campbell took to the front of the room.
"Thank you all for coming, as you know there have been several GEKKO attacks thoughout the world, so we're going in first hand to fight them off, we need to find out a lot of Intel, who are they working for? Where else will they attack? What is the goal of our enemy? What are they trying to do?"
"You can count on us Campbell", Raiden said.
Campbell nodded and turned to Otacon, "Any luck on your part?"
Otacon shook his head, "I don't think so, I contacted him but I haven't heard a definite answer"
"Damn, well we'll make do with the group for now, Meryl you and your crew can take the east half of the city, Raiden you can handle the west, everyone else storm straight through, Mei Ling will be giving your marching orders", Campbell instructed.
Everyone saluted, "Sir, yes sir", and spread out to their area, but before that, Meryl and Raiden approached Otacon.
"Who was my father referring to?" Meryl asked.
"Is this about Snake?" Raiden asked.
Otacon nodded, "Yes, he was referring to Snake"
Meryl groaned, "Seriously? He can barely do this anymore, why is my father so keen on bringing Snake back, let him live his life, or what's left of it", Meryl said.
"I agree, Snake's done his part, now we must do ours, if we do a good enough job then maybe we can show that we don't need Snake, and he can stay retired, not that we don't appreciate him, but it's time to move on", Raiden said.
"Maybe he feels he can do more, isn't that why you came back Raiden? You could be with your family right now, can't you?" Otacon asked.
Raiden growled a bit, "I would rather not talk about that at the moment"
"Huh? But I thought you reconciled with Rosemary?"
"I don't want to talk about it right now", Raiden repeated sternly, causing Otacon to drop the subject.
"Right, sorry, anyway go on, I'll be here giving you support", Otacon said.
The troops dissipated into the city and started searching around, for survivors or enemies, their goal was to rescue any civilians they came across and find the person behind this mess.
Meryl and her group went through the streets, doing their best not to draw too much attention at the moment, after some coming they came across a few enemy soldiers rounding up some hostages.
"Take them to the others, the more hostages we have, the more leverage we'll have against the US Government"
The group snuck into the area and readied their weapons.
"On my mark...go!" Meryl shouted and her crew ran in and shot the enemies.
The enemies quickly returned fire as a few of them hurried the hostages into the truck and shot at Meryl's group.
Meryl, armed with her M4 Rifle and two handguns, Johnny armed with his handgun and tank gun, Edward armed with a handgun & M4, and Jonathan armed with a handgun & shotgun.
The enemies, all armed with M4s & AK-47s fired back at the group, but Meryl's group was able to overpower them, thanks to their enhanced training and use of nanomachines, except for Akiba, who refused nanomachines due to his dislike of needles.
After overpowering the enemies, Meryl's group freed the hostages.
"Get out of the city quickly!", Meryl shouted.
"Wait, did anyone here by chance overhear who the leader might be?" Akiba asked.
The hostages shook their heads and simply ran off as per Meryl's orders.
"Damn, so much for that", Akiba said.
"Don't worry, it was good thinking, lets keep moving", Meryl said.
Meanwhile Raiden was dealing with his own group of soldiers, but his enhanced ninja skills and experience with the high frequency blade allowed him to move through the area gracefully and attack the soldiers with his sword, cutting them and disarming others by slicing their weapons in half. Those who weren't killed simply fled in fear.
Raiden simply wiped the blood off his sword and looked around for any hostages.
Meanwhile with Meryl's group they searched around and found a base of soldiers and called in.
"Meryl Silverburgh to base, me and my team have located the enemy base of operations"
Campbell spoke, "Good work, we're gonna send our recruits through there, send the coordinates and I'll give them to Mei Ling"
"Sure thing, now we-wait hold on" they looked and noticed a man walk through the base, they didn't see his face but they noticed his hair, it was blonde, very familiar too, "I think I see their leader, not sure though"
"Any traits we should be wary of?"
"He's got blonde hair, he almost looks like-" the man turned around and Meryl got a good look at his face, "Liquid!"
"What!?"
Meryl kept her eye on the man, "It's Liquid Snake! He's alive!"
"Impossible, Snake killed him in Shadow Moses, that was about a decade ago!"
"Well he's standing right there Colonel! It's either him or damn good impersonator!"
"It can't be..."
"Wait, he's doing something", Meryl grabbed some Binoculars to make sure she had a good look, it looked like Liquid was contacting someone through a radio, "What's he-"
Mei Ling went to Campbell, "Colonel, problem, our men are being assaulted by The Gekko!"
"Damn, Meryl you need to get out of there, Liquid may send the Gekko after you!"
"Right, we have the intel anyway, we just need to warn Raiden and-"
"Meryl, look out!" Akiba shouted as a Gekko hovered over Meryl, she managed to get out of dodge quickly and ran off with her group.
"Fall back! Fall back!" Meryl shouted.
The group ran away from the Gekko as it charged after them, they fired back hoping to take it down, Akiba's tank gun actually doing some damage, the only fall back is that it made him run slower, once more Gekko came they stopped firing and just ran.
Akiba at one point tripped and dropped his tank gun, Meryl made him run without letting him get the gun back, fearing he would end up getting killed.
As they ran they were surrounded by more Gekko.
"Dammit!"
The group stood their ground as 6 Gekko surrounded them, but luckily for them a swift flash arrived and cut two oh the Gekko down to size.
The Gekko turned to the perpetrator, it was Raiden.
"Raiden, Thank God you're here", Meryl said.
"I'll take care of the rest, you four run for it"
Raiden got into a stance before another Gekko arrived with Liquid Snake riding on top.
"I don't think so"
Meryl looked up, "Ugh, Liquid Snake, you're supposed to be dead!"
"The Wonders of science my dear, can bring just about anyone back from the dead, as to who else, well you'll just have to wait and see"
Meryl and her men aimed their guns at Liquid, "We're not gonna let that happen, we shoot you now and it's all over"
"Really? Go ahead, try to shoot me", Liquid held his arms out.
Meryl opened fire but the bullets deflected away from Liquid.
"I'm sure you remember Ocelot's old device, no bullet can come my way"
"Damn you!"
Raiden aimed his sword, "I bet that's useless against my blade"
"Sorry, but you and your allies are gonna be a bit preoccupied", Liquid said and pointed to an oncoming Metal Gear RAY.
"Oh no, it's a Metal Gear!" Akiba shouted.
"Good luck with that soldiers", Liquid taunted.
RAY slammed down on the group but they ran for cover.
"Al of you fall back, I'll handle RAY!" Raiden shouted.
"You expect us to leave you behind!?" Meryl shouted.
"I can handle it, I've take these things down before I got this cyborg body!"
"It's still dangerous Raiden!" Meryl argued.
"I'll be fine, just-" the talking left Raiden distracted and he was whacked away by the RAY.
"No, Raiden!" Meryl shouted.
Edward approached her, "We need to fall back, we can't do much here, if we can contact Drebin, he can most likely give us the tools we need to fight these suckers!"
"But Edward"
"Come on, we're just distracting him, if we don't hurry-"
"Look out!" Akiba shouted, as RAY shot some machine gun bullets at them, one of them hitting Edward in the leg.
"No, Edward!"
Akiba and Jonathan went to him and assisted him up.
"Damn, we gotta get him treatment soon!" Akiba said.
RAY went to attack again but Raiden rushed in and jumped at RAY, slicing away at it.
Meryl was assisting Edward away but remembered Raiden, "All of you go, I'm gonna assist Raiden"
Akiba groaned, "Dammit Meryl, it's too dangerous, I know you're a kick-ass girl, but this is too much!"
"I can't leave in good conscious knowing Raiden's alone, if I can give him some cover fire, it could assist him in taking that machine down!"
"But Meryl...I don't want to lose you"
Meryl put her hand on his cheek, "I know that"
Akiba sighed in defeat and helped Edward, "You better come back alive!"
He helped them off and then ran at RAY shooting at it, "Take this you giant son of a bitch!"
The RAY went to focus on Meryl, the distraction allowing Raiden to run up it's arm and attack the head area easier.
RAY was a bit disoriented from the attack but then managed to move erratically enough to get Raiden off it's shoulder.
Meryl continued to attack with her machine gun fire, though it did almost no damage, it continued to be effective against RAY.
"Good thing this thing seems to be an AI, doesn't seem that intelligent either", Meryl said.
Raiden went to attack again but he had to dodge a few missiles and then quickly whacked Raiden back.
"Raiden!" Meryl went to check on him, "Come on, get up!"
Raiden struggled to get to his feet as RAY charged up a river beam.
"Meryl, move!" Raiden said.
"Not without you!" Meryl said and helped Raiden up.
"Go, you have a husband to get back to!"
"And you have a wife!"
"Barely", Raiden muttered.
RAY was gonna fire but a rocket went into the cockpit and disoriented it.
Meryl looked at the direction the rocket came from, "Was that my team? Did Drebin get here already?"
The person in question approached the site.
"No way, it's him", Meryl said.
Raiden looked as well, "Snake"
Solid Snake had arrived on the scene with a Stinger, he readied it for another attack.
RAY regained it's composure and went to attack but Snake shot another blast at it's knee, causing the mouth part to open, then Snake fired into the mouth, knocking it back.
Raiden recovered and ran toward RAY and jumped up and delivered a few slashes, damaging it more, then Snake finished off with one final blast to the head, taking the machine down.
Snake approached Raiden and Meryl, "Good to see you two"
Meryl looked very surprised, "Snake, you're actually here"
"I thought you were done?" Raiden asked.
"Eh, I was but since you're all here, and I felt pretty bored lately, I figured why not, it didn't feel right sitting this out"
"Good thing you came, nice weapon too, how'd you get it, furthermore how'd you get here?" Meryl asked.
"Both those questions have the same answer actually, Drebin"
"Ah, so you contacted Drebin?" Meryl asked.
Snake nodded, "I figured he can get me loaded up and arrive here in time"
"We're glad to see you Snake, but are you sure you really want to come back to the battlefield?" Raiden asked.
"It's what I'm meant to do, don't worry about it"
"Well, glad you've accepted your fate, brother", Liquid said, appearing behind Snake.
Snake turned around to attack with a knife but Liquid grabbed it and managed to disarm Snake and then do a leg sweep to take him down.
Snake got up and dropped the Stinger in favor of an assault rifle but Liquid grabbed that and kicked Snake back and then aimed the gun.
Raiden went to attack Liquid but Liquid aimed the assault rifle at Raiden, "Don't move! Or your allies die!"
Raiden was confused, but then Liquid pointed to some of his men who had Edward, Jonathan & Akiba at gunpoint.
"Let them go Liquid!" Meryl shouted.
"Don't worry, I have no intention of killing anymore of your allies, I've made my point, and I managed to lure out my brother, my mission here is complete", Liquid said.
"Why are you doing this Liquid!?" Snake asked.
"Cause it's what we're born for brother, the world will become a battlefield, and I will be in full control, a world at war, it's a beautiful dream"
"Dammit Liquid, are you still trying to follow Big Boss?"
"No...I'm setting my own path, now that you know what's happening, I expect a good fight, but before that, there's one thing I want to do with you", Liquid then injected Snake with something and kicked him back.
Snake struggled on the ground as he went through a transformation, skin became less wrinkled, hair went from grey to brown, he was turning younger, to around the physical age of a guy in his 30s.
Snake looked at his hands, then saw his reflection in a nearby glass, "What...what did you do?" Snake asked.
"Aren't you happy? I have made you years younger, should make you a much worthier opponent, I want no excuses when I take you down, lets go men", Liquid said and ordered his men away.
Raiden & Meryl went to Edward.
"Come on, that wound needs to be treated ASAP", Meryl said.
They assisted him away, but Raiden noticed Snake confused, so he had approached him, "You ok Snake?"
Snake was still in shock, "How is this possible?" Snake asked.
"Nanomachines maybe? They do a lot already, de-aging could be a new thing"
Snake pondered that idea, then shrugged it off, "Lets head back to HQ, I'm sure Campbell wants to see me"
"Right"
As they walked, Snake spoke, "So...how's Rose? And Little John?"
Raiden was silent a bit, "Could be better"
Snake was confused, "What's wrong?"
Raiden waved it off, "Lets talk about this later"
As they approached the group, they heard Akiba mutter, "Why is a terrible thing like war so easy to spread, yet something like kindness is so out of reach?"
Snake had to admit, pretty deep words coming from a guy who's usually an idiot with bowel issues.
Raiden scoffed at that, "Kindness is just an illusion".
As they walked some butterflies passed them by, one landing on Snake's shoulder, another on Raiden's, Snake allowed it but Raiden brushed his off, they continued making their way back to the ship.
This story was a set up to something a little bigger, see what happens when they do get smacked with a dose of kindness.