Chapter 9 – Treasure Island.

Raiden came back with one extra battery. According to the manual, the railgun could charge up to three times. A bullet fired at the highest level would immediately drain 25% of the battery. The manual advised to save a full charge for insurmountable odds. A charge at the first level was usually more than enough to get the point across. The gun could be set to have a bullet ready at the first level of charge, but the battery would be drained while it waited for the trigger to be pulled. Standby mode was not available passed the first level of charge. As expected, the bullets were proprietary and came six to a clip. Snake became quite familiar with the railgun on the ride out of Antarctica. Replacing the battery wasn't that difficult, although it presented an additional challenge during a fight.

A set of detours was in store for them. Eva left the team at the first checkpoint since she had other duties to fulfill. Big Boss kept sending brief messages ensuring all of them that he was still alive and since the Mark Two didn't go crazy and take out both of their pilots, everybody felt like they were really from him. They rode a helicopter back to the island. When it finally came into view, it wasn't a smoldering crater. Everyone was eager to be back since they had been bored out of their minds during the trip.

Big Boss was there to meet them on the helipad. As he approached, Snake had a fantastic idea. He made a gun with his fingers and pretended to shoot him. Snake killed Meryl and Raiden before they could react. Solidus aimed, fired, missed, and was taken down by Snake. Using Solidus as a shield, Snake shot Anna and Chill Penguin. Mantis laughed at all of them. Snake hadn't intended to target him. He knew that in advance. Snake abruptly aimed his fingers at Mantis and pulled the trigger.

"Once again. . ." Snake said, letting his words hang. "You're all dead."

They all groaned. Mantis was particularly upset with himself.

"I always knew you were the special one," Big Boss said. "Hand over the railgun. I'm going to put it in a safe until we need to use it again."

Snake did as he was asked. Big Boss' eyebrows raised and he nodded in approval when he got a feel for the gun.

"What's next?" Meryl asked.

"To be honest, we are at an impasse. We have to rely on Nanami to get the information we need to get to the next part of my plan. Until then, you are all free to do as you please. Don't get too comfortable, though. Nanami could have already found what I'm looking for."

"How are her temperatures?" Snake asked.

Big Boss sighed.

"You're not going to like this. While all of you were racking up your frequent flier miles, Nanami had a case with the exact specifications to her liking loaded into a crate along with a weaker neural hard drive and put onto a drone that dropped them off and then crashed into the ocean a thousand miles from here," Big Boss said.

"What?!" Meryl roared.

"She adamantly maintains that this did not reveal our location to anybody," Big Boss said. "Otacon and Sunny tended to her needs. By the way, she keeps insisting that this island has treasure on it. I'd go look for it myself, but I have a world to conquer. I've got a map, if any of you are interested."

That offer didn't set well with Snake.

"Snake, what's wrong?" Raiden asked. "You're making the Cliffhanger face."

"The what?" Snake asked.

"The face everybody makes when they're remembering Cliffhanger with Sylvester Stallone. See, you're all making it now."

"That was a bad movie," Mantis said.

"I didn't see it," Big Boss said. "Anyway, what's the matter, Snake?"

"I don't like having nothing to do in a situation where a battleship could sail by and attempt to flip this island over with its guns."

"You worry too much. Let me handle that. In case you haven't realized it yet, I'm in charge of keeping everybody safe. Am I not doing a good job?"

They all shrugged.

"I should have all of you shot," Big Boss said.

"Let me see that stupid map," Snake requested.

Big Boss reached into a pocket and pulled out a map he had printed on a regular sheet of paper and gave it to Snake. It was unreadable since it lacked guidelines. Snake swore that the island was shaped differently than what was represented on the waste of ink the printer had been forced to vomit on the paper. An X was marked on the western end of the cancerous mass and given the overall quality of the map Snake felt like he should be thankful that it was there at all even if the lack of an X would completely defeat the purpose of the treasure map.

"This is junk!" Snake said. "Did you do this in Paint?"

"No, let me explain. When I bought this island, I paid a premium to have it not show up on Google Earth or anything else. Most of the documentation isn't any better. I didn't think it would be smart to pay a topographer to spend a month wandering around my secret hideout. Nanami put this together based on historical data and what I saw the one time I flew around the island in my helicopter."

"Did you tell her that William Kidd was the only pirate known to bury treasure?" Meryl asked. "I don't think this island was anywhere near his route."

"Do you intend to argue with a computer built to manage every single government on the face of the Earth at once? If she says there's treasure on this island, I'll believe her. If you don't want to go look for it, that's fine. Snake will."

"I will?" Snake asked.

"Yes, because that's an order."

"I thought you just said that this was optional."

"I changed my mind."

Snake looked at the map again even though doing so brought on the faintest hints of an impending panic attack. He just noticed that north wasn't indicated.

"Did you ever save one of those compasses they gave away with Happy Meals in the nineties?" Snake asked.

"Don't pretend like you don't know at least five ways to tell which direction is north without a compass."

"And which direction is north, John?" Solidus asked.

"That way," Big Boss said, pointing south. "Wait. That way."

"I'd say that I'd follow you to the ends of the Earth, but we probably wouldn't even get a fourth of the way in any direction," Mantis said.

"I think with a map this poor you owe us a tool that will make navigation infinitely easier," Snake said.

"There should be one on your phone somewhere."

Snake scoffed.

"I would much rather prefer an actual compass."

"Fine! I'll go look."

"Can we come inside and eat before we do this?" Raiden asked.

"Sure," Big Boss replied, as if their need to be fed had slipped his mind. "You had better do that. Also, if it isn't too much trouble, take Sunny with you when you leave. She needs a break."

X

Once Neo-FOXHOUND had been fed, they began preparing to find the treasure. Chill Penguin had an unlimited supply of C4 and grenades that she believed would make digging that much easier. Big Boss immediately relieved her of all treasure hunting duties and told her to go watch anime with Otacon, which earned him a frightened look from the man. Chill Penguin dragged him off to go watch Excel Saga in the theater, which sounded ten times more interesting than trying to locate where exactly the X was on a map with no markings that resembled a pork chop that had been spat out by a dog.

Before setting foot outside, they gathered supplies. A few jeeps were out back, which would make getting around the island much easier. Raiden found a few shovels and some flashlights. Meryl filled canteens with purified water. Snake found a box of bandanas in Big Boss' private quarters. He also came across a compass that Big Boss had failed to give him. Mantis retrieved a first aid kit and a few bottles of alcohol. Solidus brought back a crate full of M1911's for everybody to use in case they had a random encounter.

The jeeps they were assigned didn't match the terrain of the island. One was dark green while the other was seal brown. They then needed to decide who was riding with whom in the jeeps. As was quickly becoming the new standard, all the girls rode with Solid Snake. Mantis would be riding shotgun with Raiden driving and Solidus stretching out on the backseat. While Raiden went to fetch Sunny from the security team, Meryl and Snake looked over the map together. No matter how hard both of them stared at it, gridlines wouldn't magically appear. The manor wasn't even marked on the map, but it was on the eastern half of the island. The map also didn't appear to be scaled correctly. They had to take a wild guess and hope that they were correct.

Brad stopped by briefly to see what they were doing and pointed out that he had seen a cave near where he believed the X had been marked. Nobody else had seen the cave while riding in the air, but they had no reason not to believe Brad. Snake made a mental note to have Brad fly him around the island when he had the chance because it just might save his life. They all agreed to start looking around there. Stuff was always inside of a cave in the movies. It was their best bet. Finally, Snake made sure that the CODEC still worked by calling Big Boss and hanging up abruptly three times until he finally stopped answering.

Sunny came out and greeted everyone. She was thrilled to see that they had all made it back safely. As Snake suspected, her eyes were bloodshot. He figured she would need glasses in the next few years, but then he remembered that she had been designed to work with computers and knew that the Patriots had to have written any need for corrective lenses out of her DNA. She seemed somewhat sad that she had to step away from her work, but she didn't complain.

With that, they set off towards the cave. The ride was a little bumpy in certain spots. When they arrived at the cave as the sun began setting, they parked the jeep on the beach. Snake wandered into the cave with everyone behind him. Inside, they were not surprised in the least to find the skeletal remains of an unfortunate individual. He had set himself up to die in the corner. His possessions had barely survived the test of time. Among them were a useless sword, a sextant, and a personal diary. The markings in the diary had faded. What little Snake could make out was written in Portuguese. Mantis picked up the sextant, which alone could fetch a nice price at an auction. It still worked. NE had been carved into the back, destroying the resale value. After they sat around in a circle on the beach for a few moments and discussed the find while Sunny chased some crabs, they decided to follow the cryptic message as there were no better leads. The team headed northeast. If Snake looked at the map the right way, they were going towards the X.

They eventually stumbled into a clearing where a circle of eight stones had been made. The structure was not natural. Somebody had placed them there. In the middle of the circle of stones was a large black pebble. Snake picked it up. Nothing happened. For some reason, he thought something should have. It was a very odd sensation and suddenly he couldn't stop thinking back to his fight with Shadow Raccoon.

"I think this is where we're supposed to start digging," Snake said as he continued to examine the stone.

"You think?" Solidus asked. "You had better be sure. I don't know about you, but I'm not going to dig more than one hole for that creep. He chased us out of that house and sent us off on this fool's errand to stop us from snooping around. I wonder what he's hiding from us."

"Care to make a hypothesis?" Meryl asked.

"You saw that report I made for him that Ocelot gave to your boyfriend. I wonder if he ever got around to getting that aerial Metal Gear off the ground."

Solidus laughed at his own bad joke for a moment.

"To be completely honest, I'm also slightly worried about the Illuminati."

"So they really do exist?" Anna asked.

"Yes. They think they are really in charge, but they take all their orders from the Patriots. Ocelot thinks that they might be wising up. It certainly has taken them long enough."

"Then I guess we'll have to murder all of them," Snake said. "You don't seem to have a problem with that sort of thing, do you?"

"No, not at all. It would be fairly difficult, though."

"Yeah, right!" Raiden said with a slight chuckle. "The Patriots have to have their DNA on file. Just write a virus that turns them all into furries."

"I would never have expected you to come up with an idea that good," Solidus said.

Snake took out the map and looked at it again. It was like popping open the fridge and hoping that something tasty magically appeared so that he didn't have to go shopping. He shook his head. Snake folded the map in half and began to tear it to pieces.

"Hey, I think you just dropped the map," Anna said.

"I can be such a klutz sometimes. Solidus, did you happen to see where it fell?" Snake asked.

"I was looking at Anna's butt. What just happened?"

"He didn't drop it," Sunny said. "He tore it up."

"It's a good thing you're not competent enough to testify in court," Solidus said.

"What does that mean?" Sunny asked.

"That Snake dropped the map."

"Let's dig down five feet," Snake said. "If we don't find anything, Big Boss can come out here and do it himself."

"I think I just threw out my back," Solidus said.

"I think you just lost your share of the treasure," Anna said.

Solidus grabbed a shovel. They all started digging while Sunny wandered around nearby. Three feet later, Raiden's shovel struck something. He had hit a large wrought iron chest. Raiden joined hands with Sunny and began dancing around in a circle. Mantis used his psychic powers to pull the chest out of the earth. Raiden took another peek at the hole they had made and spotted another container, shattering the astronomical odds of such an occurrence. Mantis managed to pull out the second chest and then had to sit down in the jeep for a while where he proceeded to take no less than four Lortab's from the overly generous first aid kit he had found.

In the first chest was an absolutely beautiful assortment of plundered booty. Among the treasures were a crown, a scepter, Aztec gold, and a few beautiful medallions. An assortment of coins buried more items. The second chest contained a bunch of old bottles filled with liquid. Snake popped the cork of one of them and took a whiff. Rum. He could not say for certain how old the booze was, but it was very smooth.

"How are we going to split this?" Raiden asked.

"I think that will be up to Big Boss," Anna replied.

"Yeah, no. This half is mine," Snake replied, patting the chest full of booze.

"This is just downright baffling," Solidus said. "How are we even supposed to date this? Is this stuff even real?"

"Is there chocolate?" Sunny asked.

"No," Meryl replied. "Sorry."

"Look at this!" Solidus exclaimed.

Solidus reached in with both hands and moved some gold aside that was covering the item he had seen. He pulled out a diamond skull. The hunk of rock immediately floated out of his hand. Mantis caught it and examined it thoughtfully. Whoever had carved the skull had been very talented.

"This is mine," Mantis said.

"Can't you use your voodoo to determine what exactly happened here?" Solidus asked.

Mantis was caught in the hypnotic lock of the empty eye sockets. Solidus grimaced, pulled out his gun, and shot the ground, causing Mantis to jump out of his stupor.

"I asked you a question!" Solidus said.

With an exasperated sigh, Mantis set the skull down on the seat next to him and wandered over to the treasure chest. Knowing exactly where to look, he plunged his hand into the container and pulled out a smooth, black stone.

"Snake, toss that pebble you picked up," Mantis said. "It's just a rock. This is the real deal. The skeleton we found belonged to a thief who found a way to travel between different levels of reality to acquire truly unique items."

Mantis picked up a gold coin and flicked it at Solidus, who caught it before it struck him in the nose.

"If you brought that to the most experienced appraiser in the world, they wouldn't be able to pinpoint where it came from, but you would at least be guaranteed the current price of gold if you traded it in," Mantis explained.

"You're suggesting that interdimensional travel is possible?" Sunny asked.

Snake raised an eyebrow. Meryl smirked. Mantis nodded.

"This from the girl with no knowledge of the judicial system," Solidus mused aloud.

Mantis showed all of them the mysterious black pebble.

"This can't be destroyed, so we should probably hide it in the last place anybody would think to look just to be safe," Mantis said. "We should also send Chill Penguin out here to blow this spot up so nobody else knows that this is the perfect place to plan a trip."

"No need," Solidus said. "She stuffed like twenty pounds of C4 in our glove box before we set off on this trip."

Solidus popped the glove box of the jeep he had been in and pulled out two ten pound bricks of C4 and a detonator.

"Is that clay?" Sunny asked.

"Sure!" Solidus replied. "How about you go put this brick on the rock in the circle at twelve o' clock? Be careful, it's heavy!"

"I cannot believe you two are related," Anna said, looking at Solidus and then at Snake.

"That is not a toy!" Meryl said.

"If she's going to hang out with us, she's going to need to learn these things," Solidus said. "Speaking of which. . ."

Solidus set the explosives down and took his M1911 out. He ejected the clip, flicked the safety on, and popped out the round in the chamber. Solidus handed it to Sunny grip first. She recoiled in disgust.

"Show me how you aim this thing," Solidus said.

Raiden started sweating as repressed memories began to resurface. Snake intervened and took the gun from Solidus in an impressive display of CQC. He shoved Solidus out of the way and grabbed the explosives. Snake lobbed a brick at Meryl.

"Six o' clock," Snake instructed.

Meryl nodded and set up the C4 with him. While they were busy, Raiden and Solidus put the chest containing gold in the jeep Raiden was driving. It was a lot heavier than they expected. The bottom creaked. Raiden expected the loot to fall out through the bottom. Snake tagged Meryl and started drinking from the bottle he had opened while she drove. When they were far enough away to safely detonate the C4 placed inside the circle of stones, Snake squoze the detonator. The resulting explosion was quite impressive. Snake's CODEC buzzed three seconds later. Big Boss was calling. He briefly entertained the thought of not bothering to answer the call just to see what Big Boss would do.

"What are you doing now?" Big Boss demanded.

"Mantis told us to blow something up, so we did," Snake replied.

"Why didn't you ask me first?"

"It was pretty important. I thought you would agree."

"I paid for every grain of sand on this island. Why are you destroying it?"

"You had a rift in reality near the cave. We got rid of it just to be safe."

"Fantastic. You took my very own Bermuda Triangle away from me."

"Don't cry too hard about it. We got your treasure."

"That's right. My treasure. Get back here on the double."

Before they started driving back to the manor, Snake hid the chest containing the booze in the cave next to the skeleton. Mantis didn't bother stashing his skull in Snake's hiding spot. If it came down to it, he could persuade Big Boss to let him keep it. Ten minutes later, they arrived at the manor. Big Boss was waiting for them with five soldiers. Each of them had a M9 loaded with darts in hand, but not actually aimed at anyone. Olga appeared and whisked a very confused Sunny away.

"So that's how the world ends," Mantis muttered so low that they could barely hear him, leering into the eyes of the diamond skull while stroking his chin thoughtfully.

Big Boss pulled out his own M9 and approached the jeep with the chest. Nobody moved. This was clearly a search and seizure operation. Big Boss looked over the wooden container thoughtfully and nodded his head in approval. He then wandered over to Snake's jeep and took a peek at the payload as if he was shopping for lettuce in the supermarket.

"Where's the other one?" Big Boss asked, tapping the barrel of his M9 against the metal of the jeep.

"There isn't another one. That's just dirt from driving an open jeep around," Snake said.

He walked right up to Snake and put his face very close to his. Snake didn't even twitch. Big Boss inhaled deeply.

"You smell like pirate liquor," Big Boss said.

Snake didn't say anything.

"You hid it in that cave you mentioned, didn't you?" Big Boss asked.

Snake's poker face was unreadable.

"Anna, it's time for you to undermine a canon character for no discernible reason," Big Boss said. "Earn your codename, Mary Sue."

Anna chuckled and remained silent.

"I don't know why you make that sound like it's a bad thing," Raiden said. "You see, to me, Mary Sue's do all the work for the canon characters. That's a good deal. If we had more of them, we could sit around your manor all day and do nothing like. It would actually be pretty nice."

"Why would you even be concerned about a chest of booze when somebody has taken a diamond skull that weighs about six pounds?" Solidus asked.

"That?" Big Boss replied, pointing at the skull just as Mantis bared his teeth at it to imitate its sardonic leer. "That thing is creepy. He can have that, I don't care. Anna, go to the cave and bring me back my alcohol. We can all share it."

"Do you have our next mission ready for us?" Meryl asked.

"Nope!" Big Boss replied. "I know it will be difficult, but try to enjoy the rest of the evening. If you absolutely have to be shot at in order to be happy, I'm sure one of my guards would entertain your twisted fetish."

X

Big Boss began heading back to the command center to see if anybody had any new information for him. Ocelot was waiting for him at the top of the steps leading down into the basement.

"Boss," Ocelot said. "I need to speak with you in private. Immediately."

Big Boss followed Ocelot up into his private quarters. Ocelot flicked the light on, locked the door, and drew the blinds. While he was busy, Big Boss sat down in his reading chair. A table was next to it that held an empty highball glass, a box of cigars, and a Kindle. Big Boss took out a cigar and lit it up with the lighter Snake had killed him with while Ocelot finished making sure that they were alone.

"ENIAC found Zero," Ocelot said.

If retaining his composure wasn't necessary, Big Boss would have started doing cartwheels.

"Where?"

"Brahms, Pennsylvania. He's in the Purgatory Retirement Home."

Ocelot retrieved a manila envelope he had hidden in Big Boss' closet and pulled out a picture that he handed to Big Boss.

"Otacon advanced Zero's age using some software he stole from the FBI at Nanami's request so she could free up a core and focus on her other duties. Here's what he came up with."

Big Boss took the photo. The Zero he remembered was on the left. A much older man was on the right. Zero hadn't aged the way Big Boss imagined he would.

"Purgatory isn't quite as exclusive as you would expect, although living there is rather expensive. Nanami pulled a single photograph from their page and ran some tests to make sure that she wasn't mistaken. She is ninety-nine percent sure that this is Zero. You might find this next picture a little upsetting."

Ocelot handed Big Boss another photograph. In the picture, three old men were gathered in the community room. They were all laughing. Zero was the focus of the picture. Just by this alone it was easy to tell that there was something wrong with him by the way his eyes looked. He didn't appear to be all there.

"That's a cached image. They took it down shortly after it went up," Ocelot said. "Zero is going by the name Watson Pierce and I regret to inform you that he is suffering from dementia. Though it might seem foolish, I think we should remain cautiously optimistic. That information could not be entirely correct. We won't know until we have a look at him ourselves. What do you want to do?"

"I still want to grab him," Big Boss replied. "We don't really have much of a choice. If it comes down to it, we can remove the implants he has in his brain so Mantis can dive him and see if he can find anything. We can talk more about this during the briefing. Let's go round everybody up."

"No. Forget about them. They don't need to know what's going on. I'd like to go on this mission myself with Mantis."

"Do you want anybody else?"

"Absolutely not."

"Why just Mantis?"

"He's the most useful out of all of them. A psychic soldier is a rare commodity and one that should be exploited heavily."

"Will he be able to read Zero's mind?"

"No, Zero has implants. By the way, Eva called. The Phoenix has been finished."

Big Boss smiled. Today was going quite well for him. The Phoenix was the codename that had been given to the first aerial Metal Gear, which would give him quite an edge on the market. It had been based of a design Otacon had done using the super computers at Shadow Moses Island. Most of the technology in the Phoenix had been unavailable at the time. Ocelot had stolen it during the uprising and kept it hidden for a while. Big Boss imagined that Otacon would be quite amused to see that something he had played around with in his spare time had been taken seriously.

"In the event of a jam, how long would it take for that thing to fly over here?" Big Boss asked.

"One hour."

"I was hoping you would say ten minutes, but even that would be too long. Have it on standby. Does Nanami know about it?"

"I'm pretty sure she does. She would also be capable of controlling it, if needed. I'm going to go brief Mantis. When I'm done with that, we will be able to leave immediately."