V has come to.
A single blue eye opened.
He saw sand—and no shortage of it, either.
Wouldn't be the first time, he thought.
Groaning, Snake pushed himself off the ground with both hands; one human, one mechanical. With no memory of how he got here, his survival instincts kicked in as he did an immediate check of his surroundings, looking for any information he could gather.
His then arms moved to his waist and legs. If he were stuck in the middle of nowhere, he'd at least make sure he had a weapon. Lucky for him, he had better—two of them. A rifle across his chest, and a handgun strapped to his hip. He did ammunition checks for both, and was pleased to find that there was still enough ammo left for both. His extra magazines, however, were all empty. Damn. At least he had one grenade. It was a start.
Looking around, Snake found that he was in a desert. That much was obvious, at least. Afghanistan, maybe? It was nighttime, too; at least the start of it. That meant that it was going to get really cold, really fast.
He needed to find shelter.
The soldier reached for his iDroid to use his map, which was fortunately still on him. Activating it, the light flickered for a few moments—then died out completely. He smacked the device lightly a few times, to no avail.
Snake sighed. Things couldn't ever be easy, could they?
That meant that he needed to use the old-fashioned way. He looked up, trying to find his direction from the moon and constellations.
Except, there was something wrong.
Something very, very wrong.
"I've got the strangest feeling that I'm not in Afghanistan anymore…"
Snake found the moon completely shattered.
-/-
Despite the completely destroyed moon, it had still given Snake some semblance of direction. It didn't help that the constellations were all wrong, either. He'd instead just followed the direction that the moon was dipping in, assuming that was west.
The soldier kept walking, taking a sip out of the water canteen that had been attached to his hip. He considered that a blessing too, that he never forgot to bring it in case something like this happened.
Snake had found earlier that his fatigues didn't have a single speck of red of red on them. He'd thanked whatever thing was looking out for him that he didn't have injuries he needed to tend to, or his walk would have been extremely uncomfortable. But no injuries meant that he didn't arrive here left for dead, nor after a fight—which left him at square one again regarding how he got here.
Wherever here was, anyway.
Before he knew it, he'd found a light, just at the edge of the horizon. Torches, from what he could make of it.
Maybe I'll finally find some answers, he hoped.
Snake quickened up his pace, feeling his optimism flow through his veins. It wasn't much, but it was hell of a lot better than aimlessly wandering around in the desert.
Unfortunately for him, that optimism would leave him faster than it came.
He felt a rumbling in the ground beneath him.
Snake knew danger when he saw it, and this was no exception. He quickly dove to the side, and readied his weapon, preparing himself for whatever ambush he might find himself in.
He never would have expected what had burst out of the ground at that very moment.
A scorpion—larger than anything he'd thought possible. It had blood-red eyes and was black, with white bone covering parts of its body. It had a gigantic stinger too, which would probably kill him if he'd let himself get hit, poison or not.
He tried not to notice all the dried blood on its claws, too.
A faint memory in his head played. "Yeah, but how does it taste?"
Snake shook his head—now wasn't the time to reminisce memories that weren't his. He always knew he was going to die, but he refused for it to be here, in some desert in the middle of God-knows-where, and definitely not to some ridiculously oversized scorpion.
If there was anything he learned from experiencing two fights with Metal Gears in his lifetime, it was that everything had a weakness. He needed to move fast, target weak points, and try to catch this monstrosity off guard. Unlike the two machines he fought before, this was something biological—meaning that it would definitely be able to outmaneuver him if he let up.
Snake quickly glanced to the torchlight he was originally heading towards. There was a chance that there were village guards to protect against this sort of thing, but the fact that the scorpion could burrow probably meant it could outpace him if he tried to make a run for it.
He had no choice but to stand his ground and hope that the settlement heard the gunfire.
The soldier slowly paced around the scorpion, rifle in hand. He couldn't afford to fire off shots indiscriminately, not with the limited ammo he had.
An opening, that's what he needed.
A moment where the creature was vulnerable, perhaps back turned to him—now!
Snake swore under his breath, and rolled in the opposite direction the scorpion charged and swiped its massive claw. He'd immediately recovered, and squeezed off a few rounds into the back of the scorpion's arm, just where the joint was. With any luck, that would be a softer area than the rest of its body.
The shots landed, of course; but it didn't seem to do much more than make the creature angry. It seems Snake's foe knew this too, as it readied for another pass at the unfortunate soldier.
Bullets are useless, Snake concluded. Not against thick skin like that.
He thumbed the lone grenade on his belt. At the moment, it was probably the only thing that stood between him and the sweet embrace of death. If he used it wrong, then it would all be over.
Snake gave the creature another good look, analyzing it, before settling on its red eyes. The creature has armor top of its abdomen—but not below. I can lead the damn thing on top of the explosive.
It was a risky gamble.
But between potentially leading a threat to a civilian settlement and getting killed, he knew what he'd rather take.
He didn't need to be even more of a demon that he already was.
Snake began to aggressively fire shots to make the scorpion charge at him. His rounds bounced off uselessly off bone armor, annoying the scorpion further—exactly what Snake wanted.
"Come on, you bastard," muttered the soldier. "Let's dance."
Snake had intended to dodge the second the creature charged, to roll out of the way and into safety.
But that's not what happened.
The creature surged into the soldier's line of fire faster than he could predict. His single eye wide, Snake knew he'd made a mistake. It swiped its massive claw into his guard, slicing Snake's abdomen and knocking him back from the momentum.
The scorpion thought it had won.
Right up until the ground underneath it had exploded.
A short distance away, lied Snake—his handgun smoking from his single well-placed shot.
He was bleeding—he knew that much. Gripping his abdomen with one hand, he used the other to try and push himself up, only to fall to his knees again. There went his any chance of reaching that settlement.
Damn, he thought through grit teeth. It still got me good…
His conscious began to fade. Snake knew he was going to shock with no one there to get him medical assistance. After all, he was supposed to be the medic.
He chuckled at this cruel irony. Dying in an unknown land, to an unknown creature—he'd admit, there were a lot better ways to die. But at least he was able to some degree, keep that giant scorpion from going to the settlement.
Snake coughed once, twice.
At that moment, he wondered how Big Boss, the real one, was doing. Probably off building his own version of Outer Heaven, too. Something about Zanzibar Land? It didn't matter now. The memory of Big Boss would live on, with or without him. He'd lived wearing someone else's face, and he died doing the same. Was it worth it? Venom Snake had no idea.
His life flashed before his eyes. MSF, then Diamond Dogs. Kaz, Ocelot, Quiet, DD, and D-Horse. Each and every staff member on Mother Base.
He silently swore to greet them once they all met again somewhere in hell. Or, maybe somewhere just outside of heaven, if disabling all those nukes meant anything. Somewhere that really was called Outer Heaven.
Snake quietly chuckled. He almost forgot about Pequod. He could almost hear the blades of the chopper now.
"I'm afraid, this is one LZ you won't be arriving at, Pequod…"
Snake didn't expect a response.
But for some reason, he got one.
"Hang on, we're almost there!"
The dying soldier tilted his view best he could to see where it came from.
The approaching aircraft was the last thing he saw before he lost consciousness completely.
Hi, I'm Pontius and this is technically my first story. I hope you guys liked it! I wanted to focus on the story of Venom Snake, because his character is just so full of potential. Someone who was loyal until the bitter end, living his life with someone else's face. The poor man deserves a second chance, and where better than the fairy-tale world of Remnant? It'll be fun to see the gray worldview of Snake clash with how colorful RWBY is :I actually only found the Metal Gear series recently, but I'm completely hooked. Hope I can provide more chapters soon! 3