Chapter 2 – Mercenaries Need Not Apply.
The next morning, Snake found himself hiding underneath his own bed the second he came to his senses. It took him a minute to remember how he had gotten there. He'd been having another one of his reoccurring nightmares. Big Boss' charred corpse had somehow infiltrated his home and chased him around every room in his house. Acid puddles and little crawl spaces had been everywhere. All of his guns had gone missing and he couldn't find the lighter to go along with the aerosol can he had started the dream with. Big Boss had finally cornered him in his room and had been trying to get through the locked door. That's when Snake had noticed that the duck from Ocelot's dinner party was somehow in the room with him. It was still shrieking in pain as electricity coursed through it even though it wasn't on a torture rack this time.
Snake crawled out from under his bed and discovered that he had made quite a mess of his sheets even though the dream hadn't been that terrifying. He fixed them and wandered into his living room. Meryl had left a note attached to the television. Snake had asked her to take a bag of money to a local contractor that wouldn't ask too many questions so that they could fix the damage that Ocelot had done to his property. Since she was taking care of that, there was only one other thing Snake wanted to do that day. With some hesitation, he sat down in his recliner and dialed the number to the Praying Mantis.
"Praying Mantis, Naomi speaking."
He sat up straight in his chair and could think of nothing to say at first until he finally managed to force some words out of his mouth.
"Uhh. . .hi."
"Hello. May I have your name?"
"Can I speak directly to Mantis?"
There was a pause on the line as Naomi began to realize who she was speaking with.
"David?"
They both heard a click as another person connected to their conversation.
"Snake, what's happening?" Mantis asked, enthused at the possibility of speaking with his friend. "We haven't spoken since Ocelot lost the cherries on his cheesecake. I was starting to think that you were avoiding me."
"I'll let both of you talk," Naomi said before she released the line.
"How did you know it was me?" Snake asked.
"I was poking around in Naomi's noggin. The second she was fairly certain it was you I was convinced that it was you."
"Swell. So do you know why I called?"
"You're too far away. What can I do for you?"
"I was hoping to get a job."
Mantis found this positively hysterical. Snake expected this type of reaction waited for Mantis to get it out of his system.
"Do you have three references?" Mantis asked once he managed to stop laughing. "What's your highest level of education? Where were you before you took interest in the Praying Mantis?"
Snake didn't reply.
"Just kidding, I know you're overqualified for every position I could offer you. Wanna come defend the front desk and give some second opinions to individualized life plans for eleven Debt Credits an hour?"
"Do you offer any benefits?"
"The usual. Health insurance with an outrageous deductible, ten minutes of sick leave, and a cup of ramen that you can't open until you retire. You'll also be the first person I call when somebody can't be bothered to work their shift."
"That figures."
It seemed like Mantis was being sarcastic about everything but the health insurance. Snake didn't need any of the perks, but it was nice to know that they were there.
"Hey, can you come in for your interview today? If not, that's cool. This isn't a trick question, I swear."
"I have to go through an interview with you?"
"Yeah, I need to make sure you can handle the crazy and all of that. People in this town are nuts, Snake. If I don't think that this will work out for you, I'll refer you to some place that will and I'll rig the interview there. How does that sound?"
"Agreeable."
"All right. When can you come in?"
"Now."
"Okay, come right on over. I'm about to start meditating, but I should be finished by the time you get into town. See you then!"
Snake ended the call and noticed that he had a text waiting for him from Otacon. He brought up the message and read it.
Somebody glitter bombed Ocelot. Can you believe it? Check out these photos I took when I was in his neighborhood.
In the first picture, Ocelot's car was in his driveway. Ocelot was walking out of his garage while carrying a large vacuum. It was as if a rainbow had exploded into dust inside his Tornado. Glitter was absolutely everywhere. Two other pictures caught Ocelot trying to clean his car. Snake could see that a great deal of glitter was still stuck to the clothes he was wearing. These precious images made being attacked by a drone totally worth it. He forwarded them to Meryl.
Snake wrote a quick note and briefly considered wearing a tuxedo before settling on something less formal. He clipped a holstered M9 loaded with tranquilizer darts to his side, checked the tarps covering the broken windows, and left the house. On his way into town, he passed Meryl and started to have second thoughts about working with Mantis. He would know where Snake planned to run to if he got spooked and decided to stop betting his life on the fact that he was needed alive. Mantis seemed polite enough to keep such information to himself, but that's why truth gas was used during interrogations.
He reminded himself that Mantis could have gotten this information at some point in the past and decided that his venture back into the daily grind was worth the risk. Snake felt that he might even remember just how little he thought of the brain dead sheep that he protected and never bother with working among them again. He eventually made it to the clinic and took up a spot next to Naomi's Audi TT. He was parking in a spot reserved for a staff member, but he didn't care. There was a metallic red DeLorean among the luxury vehicles owned by the more affluent employees and somehow Snake knew that it belonged to Mantis. A pretty penny had been spent on landscaping. There were plenty of trees and a few flower gardens around the front of the building. Snake wondered if they had the opposite effect on visitors during the winter when they were all dead.
An enormous salt-water fish tank was in the lobby. A few people were waiting to be assisted, but Snake ignored them and immediately focused on the man dressed as a ninja trying to pay for his session with a credit card. Naomi was working with the man. A blonde girl perked up at the sight of him and waited for him to come over to her. Before she told him to take a seat, Snake spotted a kiosk full of pamphlets. A majority of them stressed the importance of purchasing a water filter. There were a couple that dealt with maintaining an ideal state of mental health, but they didn't seem to be the focus of the kiosk. Snake picked up a pamphlet on filtered water and approached the front desk.
"Can I help you?" the blonde girl asked.
"I'm here for an interview with Mantis," Snake replied.
"What's your name?" she asked as she held up a tablet computer and began looking through the list of expected visitors.
Snake paused for a moment, unsure of how to respond. What name had they used? He winced and stood in place, hoping for a miracle.
"David Pliskin," Naomi said.
"Here it is. Dr. Mantis is currently meditating and is already aware that you are here. Please have a seat and wait until he is ready to see you," Terra said.
Snake turned around and faced the patients awaiting attention. One man was dressed in clothing from the twenties and was holding a book that resembled the Necronomicon. A woman in her thirties had brought a stack of folders about three inches thick and kept rubbing the back of her neck nervously. Somebody had actually worn a wolf fur suit to the office and another woman was playing Reversi with her alter ego. They were all bunched in together due to how the seating was arranged. Snake didn't want to sit by any of them, but he decided to take a chance with the sexless figure in the corner dressed in a heavy dark robe that came with a hood that whoever was wearing the robes took full advantage of. He watched the ninja leave and saw him perform one cartwheel in the parking lot before he dove into a Plymouth Cuda like he was auditioning for a role in a Dukes of Hazard reboot.
He focused on the fish tank while he waited for Mantis to call for him. This had to be some kind of test. If all their customers were this insane, he'd never get bored and working with them might actually be amusing. The bell for the front door chimed and four cosplayers stepped into the building. They were the serious sort that went to incredible lengths to ensure that their costumes were perfect. One lone female was in the group and she was dressed as Rikku from Final Fantasy X. She had the form and face to accompany this decision. The other three visitors were men. One of them was dressed as Iron Man from the Marvel franchise of the same name. His outfit was so convincing that Snake felt his PTSD itch. The second guy was Link. His costume was incredibly accurate except for the fact that he lacked elf ears. He was probably allergic to the rubber. The final member of the entourage was posing as an Ohmu from Nausicca. His costume looked extremely uncomfortable and required him to crawl around on the floor like the insect he was pretending to be.
Snake only recognized them because he was friends with Otacon. Naomi joined the blonde girl as the two women planned to take the entire group on together. By the look of contempt on Naomi's face and the nervous smile on the younger blonde girl, they were very familiar with this group of misfits. In one barely noticeable movement, Naomi passed a taser to the other woman, which she hid behind her back.
"Hello again, Terra," the man dressed as Iron Man said to the blonde girl.
"Welcome back, Lucas. I thought you were finished with your treatment here," Terra said.
"I am, but I'm the only person in my little group who knows how to drive."
"Why are you still in costume?"
"Because, I don't have enough money to buy regular clothes at the moment."
"I must save the land!" the individual dressed up as Link shouted.
"Greechnit!" the bug guy screeched, trying to imitate some kind of bug noise.
A female doctor suddenly emerged from one of the hallways carrying three notebooks in the crook of her arm. Snake recognized her. It was Nanako from the Boo-Boo Fixie Hospital. Snake avoided making eye contact with her. If necessary, he could easily deny that he knew her. He still hoped she wouldn't notice him as he watched the drama unfold in front of him.
"Hey! You said we were going to find Yunie!" Rikku shouted at Iron Man.
"That's right. We're still looking for her. I bet she's somewhere in Dr. Nanako's office."
"He's right, you know. Let's go," Nanako replied.
"Zelda!" Link declared.
Link had finally snapped out of his stupor and was looking right at Terra, who brandished the taser that Naomi had given her. This only brought him back to reality for a brief second before he leapt over the counter and tried to grab Terra. She hit him right underneath his left man boob with the taser. Everyone but the person Snake was sitting next to hid their face when Link started screaming. He went down instantly and the Ohmu's eyes turned red, but all it did was shake in fear.
"Andrew, you are getting dangerously close to being committed," Nanako warned the man dressed as Link. "Everyone, let's go to my office."
Iron Man dragged Link by his boot while Rikku pranced ahead of Nanako. The Ohmu brought up the rear, but it wasn't very fast.
"Get out of that costume, Eric!" Nanako shouted from down the hallway.
The Ohmu rolled over. A dude popped out of it.
"Yes, ma'am." he said sheepishly.
Eric carried his costume along with him and disappeared into the hallway behind Nanako. Terra and Naomi sighed in relief. After that, they went back to work, trying to act as if nothing had happened. Snake wondered if Otacon had ever been here in secret.
Snake!
A voice originating in the middle of his skull that resonated outward tore through his mind. He was greatly perplexed and couldn't figure out where it had come from.
"Excuse me, did you say something?" Snake asked the druid.
The figure shook its head and pointed at Naomi.
"Did you hear your name get called inside your head?" Naomi asked.
"No, I just thought somebody said something," Snake replied, trying to maintain his dignity.
Liar!
"Mantis told me to tell you that he just called you a liar. In your head," Terra said. "He kind of does stuff like that."
"We're trying to make it a new form of harassment, but nobody believes that our boss is reading our minds," Naomi added.
"Or telling us stuff telepathically."
Voracious laughter echoed through one of the hallways.
"See, that's him now." Terra said. "He thinks it's funny."
Get your butt into my office, Snake. Oh, and bring me a stapler while you're at it.
Snake stood up.
"I'll be on my way," Snake informed the two women.
Don't forget the stapler!
"He says he wants his stapler."
Terra took out a stapler from a nearby drawer that had been decorated to resemble the flag of the Soviet Union.
"His office is down the central hallway clear at the end. You'll know it when you see it." Naomi explained. "Good luck."
"I must save the laaaaaaaand!" the man cosplaying as Link screamed from somewhere inside the building.
Naomi and Terra snickered and shook their heads. Snake made a mental note to buy a water filter before he went home. Each office he passed had a bronze plaque off to the side that displayed who the room belonged to. The hallway was longer than he had initially estimated and as he continued forward he began to hear the mood music Mantis had blasted all over the first floor basement of the nuclear warhead storage facility. The lights dimmed and the color of the carpet changed from white to blood red.
He did not find this very amusing and all the concerns about working for Mantis that he had resolved earlier came back to him at once. FedEx would be a much better place to work even if he would actually have to work and would not be around people he knew. Snake turned to leave and bumped into a wall that had suddenly popped out of nowhere to block his retreat. A portrait of the Mona Lisa that looked just like the original he had seen in the Louvre hung above where he had just planted his face and leered down at him in the snarky manner so characteristic of the painting.
When Snake turned around again, he was directly in front of an office. The color of the carpet and the quality of the lighting had returned to normal, but the mood music was louder than ever. Snake noticed that the plaque next to the door was platinum instead of bronze. It simply read 'Mantis'. He reached for the door handle, but the door opened on its own. Snake stepped inside. Psycho Mantis was hanging upside down in midair above his desk with his back to Snake. He didn't appear to be wearing his gas mask.
"You'd be a lot better off running a fun house," Snake said.
"But I do run a fun house," Mantis insisted.
Mantis spun so that he was no longer floating upside down and landed on his feet in front of his desk with his back still facing Snake. He turned around. Once their eyes met, Snake gasped in surprise. Mantis' face was completely normal.
"What happened to your face?" Snake asked.
"Reconstructive surgery," Mantis explained.
"You should get your money back," Snake joked.
"Pretty big talk for a guy who has a mullet," Mantis said.
Snake tossed the stapler at Mantis, who caught it with his mental powers and floated it safely to his desk. After that brief exchange, he motioned for Snake to sit down on a chaise lounge sofa.
"Go ahead and lie down there, we'll get started in a minute." he instructed.
Mantis snapped his fingers and the mood music stopped. It was an unnecessary gesture, but Mantis liked to show off. A notebook and a pen floated into his hands and he levitated over to the recliner next to the sofa. Judging by the grin on his face, Mantis was clearly enjoying himself. The curtains closed themselves and the lights dimmed again. Snake spotted a giant globe that spun when he noticed it and a large plant in the corner that waved at him. All the books on the bookcase immediately became various erogame titles he had seen in Otacon's private collection. Snake sighed and looked up at the ceiling only to see the Mona Lisa up there, smiling at him as if he had his zipper open. In fact, he did have his zipper open. Snake zipped up and looked over at Mantis, who tried to appear innocent.
"And you wonder why nobody calls you," Snake said.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Mantis said. "Tell me about a time you disagreed with your supervisor and what you did to resolve the problem."
In Snake's limited experience, that question typically came much later during an interview. Mantis was trying to trip him up.
"I didn't like the fact that he had appropriated a military vehicle capable of launching nuclear weapons for private use, so I burned him alive." Snake replied.
Though Snake was just joking, Mantis scribbled something in his notebook for a full minute before speaking again. He needed to take this seriously and pretend that he didn't know Mantis very well.
"Name one aspect of yourself that you wish you could fix."
"My heart condition."
"Have you ever been fired?"
"Three times."
"What did you learn from those experiences?"
"That nobody is interested in your side of the story. Why are you asking me these questions? Can't you just pick them out of my brain?"
"I could, but I'm trying to be polite."
He was starting to worry about his chances of acing the interview. Failing to get this job would be embarrassing, but it might actually be for the best if Mantis was a stuck-up prude underneath his mischievous exterior.
"You're in a desert. You look down and you see a turtle. You flip the turtle over. The turtle is now at the mercy of the sun. Why aren't you helping the turtle?"
"Because I'm a replicant and I couldn't care less."
"You're a watermelon. How do you taste?"
"Absolutely delicious."
"The people we get here can be a bit unhinged. How would you deal with an angry customer?"
"I would repeat what I just told them in as many variations as possible while maintaining an upbeat smile."
"What did you dislike about your previous job and what did you do to improve it?"
"Getting shot at. I shot back, typically with better accuracy."
"You are having a disagreement with a coworker. Why?"
"They aren't a Bears fan."
"Seriously?"
"It depends on whether or not they have a huge amount of unwarranted self-importance."
Snake thought that the job would have a greater sense of independence and personal responsibility, but it was beginning to sound like a fickle environment full of drama and bloated office politics.
"What is your greatest weakness?" Mantis asked.
"Cardboard."
"Why do you want this job?"
This was his one chance at redemption if he hadn't completely failed. Snake had to choose his words carefully or he would blow this opportunity.
"Not everyone can be content with counting how much money they have and managing their investments from their couch."
"Fantastic. What can you bring to the Praying Mantis?"
"Labor. I'll leave everything else at home."
Mantis looked over all the notes he made while Snake remained where he was. He thought of Edgar Alan Poe and imagined being at the bottom of a pit while a sharp pendulum slowly made its way from the ceiling to his stomach.
"Check this out," Mantis finally said.
He showed Snake the notebook. The page Mantis had been working on contained a picture of Snake fighting a Tyrannosaurus Rex in a flying bathysphere that was equipped with two laser cannons. It was quite impressive given how little time Mantis had spent working on it. Snake wasn't sure what to make of the drawing. Mantis tossed the notebook behind his shoulder, not caring where it fell.
"Game over. That was awful. You were far too abrasive and you didn't suck up to me enough," Mantis said. "You don't respect how sensitive your coworkers might be to your opinions, you wouldn't take a bullet for a customer, and you like the Chicago Bears, who haven't won a Super Bowl since 1985. Go Steelers! Anyway, you're hired. Congratulations."
An immense weight was lifted from Snake's chest as he realized that he didn't have to float through an interview with a stranger who was being manipulated by Mantis.
"Thanks," was all Snake could think to say.
"You can start this coming Monday at nine in the morning, unless you have something different in mind."
"What am I doing again?"
"Desk maid junk with the girls out front. Are you sure you wouldn't rather be around a bunch of cardboard boxes instead?"
"It would be like an alcoholic at a beer factory."
"I could fix that for you. I could dive into your mind and put your blocks back where they need to be."
"Because that sounds completely safe. What happened to you the last time you tried something like that?"
"I wasn't going to mention the waiver unless you were interested, but yes, there are some risks involved with that procedure. I only dive when there's no other way to treat the client and it's an extremely involved process so don't think I'll be able to do it while you're out front surfing the web."
"Forget it."
Snake instantly had second thoughts about refusing that service. The only thing he would want completely changed was how he felt about the incident with the duck at Ocelot's buffet, but he didn't trust Mantis enough to let him wander that deep into his mind. Snake tried thinking about something else, but now that he had brought up the duck, he couldn't stop remembering how awful it made him feel.
"Any other questions?" Mantis asked, bringing Snake out of his funk.
"What's the deal with all these fliers?" Snake asked, showing Mantis the one about water filters that he had pocketed.
"I think somebody has poisoned our water," Mantis replied. "Did you miss any of the people waiting in the lobby when you arrived?"
"No."
"Tell me what you saw."
"A bunch of nerds who can't wait for Halloween."
"And all of them are suffering from dissociative identity disorder. There's about a hundred of them in this city and they all do the same thing. They dress up as a character from something they like or put on a fursuit and wander into public. Sometimes they don't bother anyone, but a few of them are pretty messed up. The police have started to arrest them on site. Eventually they wind up here."
"It can't be the water. Meryl drinks water by the gallon and she hasn't dressed up as Yoko yet."
"Yoko? From Gurren Lagann? She watches that show?"
"Yeah. Otacon drops anime off when I have him over and then says he'll pick it up the next time he swings by. At first I kind of ignored it, but eventually I gave in. I can't stand that show, but Meryl likes it."
"Not a mecha fan, are you?"
"Did you seriously just ask me that question?"
"It was rhetorical. Anyway, maybe the poison in the water only affects certain people that are on a watch list who have donated blood to the Red Cross. Nanomachines are already advanced enough to where they only target certain people and having the DNA of the chump you're after makes the process much easier."
"You're actually telling me that the Red Cross sends an ampule of blood to the feds when a new donor walks in so that they can add that information to their database?"
"Of course!"
"I take it that all those cosplayers are donors?"
"Every last one."
"Is this why you have Naomi working for you?"
"Yeah, she just started a few days ago. It was tough to get some of our clients to part with a vial of their blood, but we managed to do so. You'll never guess what Naomi found in their blood."
"I have a pretty good idea. What a waste of time. They already want to knock down the population of our planet by more than fifty percent, so they should just program their blood bots to make people suicidal."
"That might be the next step. If you can get a theoretical physicist to dress up as Akari Mizunashi and try to row his little red Corvette down the street, you can pretty much do anything to anybody."
Akari was a character from an overwhelmingly optimistic show called Aria the Natural in which Mars had been terraformed. The capital city resembled Venice and contained several businesses staffed with gondoliers. Akari was an apprentice of a gondolier so talented that she ran her own shop by herself. It had put Snake and Meryl to sleep within fifth-teen minutes.
"Even if we did develop something to counter their strain, it wouldn't be much help," Snake said. "The Patriots will probably hide it in weight loss plans and injections designed to completely cure chronic pain once they've ironed out all the kinks."
"Yes, but the formula for immunization will be of great value to people like us."
"What would be of even greater value would be a way to use their own blood bots against them."
"Now you're talking! Viva la résistance, Snake."
"This is all just speculation. Has Ocelot said anything about it?" Snake asked.
"Other than finding the situation amusing, he has no comment on the matter and told me to spend my time worrying about absolutely anything else."
"When were you going to get around to telling me about this?"
"Eventually, but now is a good time, too."
Snake stood to leave, fetching his car keys from his pocket.
"Keep me and Otacon informed. We might be able to help. I'll see you on Monday morning."
"Likewise. Here, let me walk you out to your vehicle."
As they were about to begin their thrilling adventure through the troubled halls of the Praying Mantis, the door to Mantis' office was kicked open and the man pretending to be Link stepped in holding a live chicken above his head. With a high-pitched scream, he threw it at Mantis, who stopped it right before it hit his face and let it fall to the ground. The chicken looked visibly confused and decided to remain where it was in hopes that if it did not move the strange man dressed in a green tunic would fail to notice it and never bother it again. Link then pulled a poorly constructed homemade blue bomb out of his right pocket and tried lighting it with a match he took from his boot. Snake almost sprang into action, but Mantis gestured for him to stay put.
Both the match and the bomb flew out of Link's hands the moment he was tackled by the figure in black robes that Snake had sat next to earlier. The individual posing as what Snake assumed was a druid produced a pair of handcuffs and restrained Link before he could do any further damage.
"Is that a security officer?" Snake asked.
"Yeah, it's just some grunt I borrowed from the League due to all that's been going on lately."
"It looks like he takes his job very seriously."
"You have no idea."
The man in the robes hauled Link to his feet and dragged him out of the room. Snake followed with the same curiosity present in people who looked up videos of horrible traffic accidents on YouTube at three in the morning for no real reason. The people in the lobby were fidgeting nervously. Terra snorted and ran off to laugh somewhere in private. An ambulance was waiting in the parking lot and the druid handed Link off to the paramedics while Mantis and Snake watched from the lobby. Snake found himself wishing that Mantis had told him about this position earlier as it was more suited to his skillset. The man in the robes then approached a black '68 Chevy van, unlocked the back door, and slipped inside.
"He'll be gone for a while," Mantis said to Snake since they were both watching the druid. "He's changing his costume to hide his identity."
"What exactly just happened?"
"Somebody's meds wore off, they freaked out, and they tried to throw a blue ball with a fuse glued to it at us. I think Nanako was working with that guy. I'd better go make sure she's okay."
Before leaving the building, Snake thought about confronting Naomi and asking her how the private med lab he had purchased for her was working out, but thought better of it. If Naomi had a breakthrough, she would tell him. Snake walked out into the parking lot. It was better to ignore the whole thing. He'd give himself two weeks. If he still felt ugly when he was around Naomi, he'd quit.
