Chapter 10 – Recruitment.

The Internet had been out all over the city for an entire day. For the first eight hours, Otacon had gone through MMORPG withdrawal. There were plenty of other video games available to play, but none of them could satisfy him as much as playing Warcraft naked did. Taking Chun-Li through Street Fighter Alpha 3 without wearing at least a pair of boxers was immensely embarrassing. She could see him. She could judge him. Jennifer, his poorly named blood elf, would never judge him like everybody else did. She needed him to guide her through numerous raids in search of better loot. She understood the pain in his heart that he hid so well from his real friends. In exchange for his guidance, Jennifer offered him comfort. He had suspected that this was a problem when the bond began forming, but now he could see how much it had affected him.

An Azumanga Daioh marathon was helping him remember how much time he had wasted playing that game. While Tomoko and Osaka set off to buy a cake, Otacon checked to see if he managed to solve the Rubik's cube he had been fiddling with. Though he had only glanced at it twice, he had beaten the infernal device. Otacon scrambled it and started another round. A part of him hoped that the Internet would never come back on. That would make stepping away from the game much easier.

Mantis could certainly help him now that he actually wanted somebody to help him, but he wasn't in the office and he wasn't answering his phone. None of his friends were. This had to be how Raiden felt. Otacon would never screen Raiden's calls again.

Some tires screeched nearby, but he thought nothing of it until his front door was kicked open. Snake came in holding a M4 shotgun. As this did not differ too extremely from their usual hijinks, Otacon barely flinched.

"Morning," Otacon greeted. "There's some sushi in the kitchen. Help yourself."

Snake grabbed Otacon by the scruff of his neck and forced him to his feet.

"Run!" Snake ordered, pushing him towards his backdoor.

Otacon rushed outside with Snake, immensely confused. An abrupt explosion knocked them both down into the snow. Snake went sailing headfirst into the small igloo Otacon had built an hour ago. Otacon pulled himself to his feet and turned around to see his home in ruins.

"My house!" he screamed. "My porn!"

"You can get it all back later!" Snake said as he pulled a strange device out of his backpack.

"I beg your pardon!" Otacon said. "Not all of it!"

An unmarked black van screeched to a halt in the alley. Snake grabbed Otacon, pulled him to his feet, and hauled him towards the van. The back doors opened. Meryl stepped out.

"Hey, Hal," Meryl said.

"What's going on?" Otacon demanded.

"You are now working for Big Boss. We need you to watch an AI for us," Snake said.

"I guess I could do that."

"We thought so."

Snake shoved him in the back of the van with Meryl and got in with them. They were moving before he knew it. Somewhere in the midst of all the confusion and the pain he felt over losing his rare hentai manga's, Otacon had a feeling that he wouldn't be playing Warcraft again for a very long time.

Note : This story was finished when I originally uploaded the first chapter on 6/16/07. There were 23 chapters and the final one was uploaded on 12/15/07. Much later, I decided to edit this story and all the other stories I have done in this particular fandom. I removed so much fluff that I had to cut some chapters. When I was ready to post the edits, I deleted the chapters I needed to remove. To my surprise, this updated the story. I had previously checked to make sure this wouldn't happen by running my own test with something else, but fanfiction . net must have recently changed their system. This is unfortunate because I would have preferred to have done all this quietly.