"Operation: Babysit"
Somebody was knocking at the door.
I raised myself just high enough off my sofa to glare witheringly at it and lie back, hoping that whoever was on the outside would feel my scorn burning through the wood and go away.
Knock! Knock!
"Don't want any," I mumbled. I'd just been dozing off into a pleasant reverie when the annoying bastard had come to intrude upon my privacy.
Knock! Knock!
I groaned, got up and opened the door. "Whaddyawant?"
"Is Mister Hal in?" said a little voice.
It took a minute for my semi-conscious brain to realise that the voice was not coming from the same height as my eyes. I looked down.
A little girl stood at the door, her brown hair in pigtails that stuck out from either side of her head like bristles, clutching a patient-looking, smiling doll by its leg and beaming at me.
"Hang on," I said, and turned back toward the apartment. "Otacon! You have a visitor!"
"Who is it?" he called in reply.
"What's your name?" I asked of the sprite.
"Jessica," it told me. I conveyed this information to Otacon.
"Invite her in – I'll be out in a minute!" he shouted.
"D'you want to come in?" I asked.
The sprite nodded. "Wanna see Mister Hal," it informed me, following me into the apartment.
"Um...want to sit down?" I said.
It did so, and sat sucking its thumb and resolutely staring at me.
I stared back.
We sat like that until Otacon came out.
"Mister Hal!" said the sprite joyfully.
"Hey Jessica," he replied, "Want a drink of juice?"
A firm nodding. He went into the kitchen. I followed him. "What the hell is that?!"
"It's a child, Snake," he replied placidly.
"Well, what the hell is it doing in our apartment?!"
"She's Mr Fuller's daughter." Mr Fuller being our miserly landlord. "I said I would babysit her."
"Um...why?!"
"Why d'you think he gave us that extension on the rent?"
"Otacon...!"
"Who Ocaton?" said Jessica, appearing suddenly in our doorway.
Otacon smiled at her. "I am."
"Who dat?" she asked, pointed a chubby finger at me. I felt unpleasantly singled out.
"That's Dave, Jessica," Otacon told her. He handed her a cup of juice. "Be careful with it."
She went back into the living room, mollified.
"Otacon?"
"Yeah?"
"Have you ever considered just how un-child friendly this apartment is? With all the sharp things and explosive things, not to mention highly-technical things?"
"It'll be fine, Snake. You worry too much." He headed back into the living room, calling "Jess? Would you like to watch a movie?"
I stayed in the kitchen a while longer, smoking half a packet of Marlboro and biting my lips to pieces. When I came out, Jessica and Dolly were curled up on the couch watching some anime video.
"Snake?" called Otacon from his room. "Come here, will you?"
I went in. He was sitting at his PC. "I need your help."
"You do?!" I said in surprise. As far as technology went, if it couldn't kill people I knew nothing about it.
"Yeah...listen, Mei Ling just emailed me. She said she'll help with Anonymous (the working title of our organization). She sent me the design specs of the latest optic camouflaging technique. Looking at it, I think we might be able to make something along those lines."
"Stealth camo, huh?" I said.
"Well, it'll come in handy for sneaking past Fuller on rent day, if nothing else. Do you remember that stealth camo I made myself back in Shadow Moses?"
I nodded. "Yeah."
"Well, I still have that. I think it would be easier to update it than to start over...but it's designed for me, not you. You're bigger than me, it might not work...I need you to try it on."
"Where is it?"
"No...um, you need to be wearing your Sneaking Suit."
I sighed. "Is that really necessary?"
He nodded. "'Fraid so. I have to bond the optic device to your exact measurements, so the complex neural..."
I left the room and went to put on my sneaking suit.
Jessica watched me go, sucking her thumb and holding Dolly's hand.
I came back, managing to sneak across the room without her noticing, which I felt proud of; then ashamed for feeling proud of myself. Solid Snake, legendary mercenary, on Operation: Babysit?!
Didn't have quite the right ring to it.
Otacon was fiddling with some wires when I went back in. "Oh, crap!" he yelped, before turning to look at me. "Snake, I need to pop out – I just smashed the linking cable – try it on anyway. It'll work for a bit but it's running from an expendable power source, so be careful."
"Take Jessica," I said.
He shook his head. "She'll be fine here for half an hour. I'm not buying a new cable; I'm just going to my friend Charlie's, he'll have one."
"Friend?" I realised a second too late how jealous I sounded.
"More like acquaintance," he clarified. "But he doesn't live far away. You try this on and keep an eye on her. She's curled up on the sofa, she'll probably be asleep in five minutes. You're a living legend, Snake. You can deal with a three year old!"
"Otacon, I'm not good with children..."
"Save it, Snake. I'm going."
He walked out.
I sighed, looked around the room I don't know if you can imagine what Otacon's room was like; I'd barely ever been in without Otacon. It was basically a mess. Trailing wires everywhere; a couple of tattered anime posters hung dog-eared on the wall and there were a few action figured by the bed, which was unmade, sheets crumpled and the duvet strewn across the floor. A few empty cups were dotted about, there were a couple of screwed-up pieces of paper on the floor: they looked as though they had been flung against the wall in a tantrum.
I smiled to myself, vaguely amused by the idea of Otacon having a tantrum. He always seemed so calm, rational, collected...
I bent down, picked up one of the balls of paper and unfolded it. It was mostly blank, but in the centre there was a crude drawing of someone that I think was supposed to represent me, dressed in what I think was supposed to represent my sneaking suit.
Next to it was written 'find measurements' and a lot of squiggles. I wasn't entirely sure if they were words I didn't know or I just couldn't read Otacon's handwriting.
I screwed it up again, feeling slightly disappointed and also slightly guilty.
I wandered over to his bed and lay on it looking at the ceiling. This was Otacon's view when he was going to sleep, I thought to myself. Nothing much, really. A few square metres of crumbling plaster. A bare light bulb. A few cobwebs.
I got off the bed, feeling somewhat miserable, and went over to the computer. I prodded a button and was rewarded by seeing the screen light up green with the word "Password."
I thought for a minute. Hacking wasn't exactly my thing; not as technologically retarded as I am.
But this was Otacon's computer. It couldn't be too hard, right? I thought for another couple of minutes, then typed, slowly and deliberately, "Otaku".
The computer beeped. "Password," flashed insistently.
I sighed. Didn't think he would be that obvious.
I thought again. "Kunichowar," I typed. Spelt dreadfully, the only word of Japanese I knew – but Otacon was quite good at it.
The computer beeped again and continued to flash the word "Password."
I decided to go for broke. "Metal Gear".
The computer began to beep and blink red distress signals.
"Otacon's going to kill me!" I wailed, clicking the mouse frantically. Nothing.
Suddenly, a voice spoke. Otacon's. It sounded as though it was coming from behind me; I jumped about three feet in the air and turned around before I realised it was coming from the computer, some sort of finely digitised voice modular technology that he'd been raving about a couple of weeks ago.
"Snake," it said, "stop it."
And that was that. The computer returned to its placid green-ity, my heart rate slowed and my blood pressure lowered at an alarming rate.
The next second, another voice sent it flying through the roof once more. "Dabe?" it said. It took me a minute to realise it was attempting to engage my attention.
"Dabe?" it said again. "I'm bored, Dabe."
"Jessica?" I said. "I thought you were watching a cartoon?"
"It's boring," she informed me. I was quite shocked to find that there was an area on which we agreed.
"Well...uh...do you want to play a game?" I asked, looking guiltily at the stealth suit I was meant to be trying on.
She nodded firmly. "Yes."
"What do you want to play?" I asked, gulping.
"Hideanseek."
"What?"
"Hideanseek." She stuck her thumb back in her mouth, indicating that her decision was final.
"Oh, Hide and Seek! Well, uh...do you want to tell me how you play that?"
She looked at me as if to say 'Really?!' but then said, "Well...you go an' hide an' I'll come and look for you."
"Um...OK." That sounded reasonably easy. "Shall I go now?"
She nodded again. "I'm gonna count to t'enty," she told me.
I nodded. She stood in the centre of the room and squeezed her eyes tightly shut, her small hands balled into fists by her side. "One!" she pronounced, to the room at large.
I crept past her – hey, this was what I was good at, was it not? – and went into the living room, accompanied by a forceful, "Two!"
I looked around, for places to hide. Our apartment was definitely not meant for this sort of thing.
"Three!"
Behind the sofa? No, too easy. In the cabinet?
"Four!"
I attempted to jam myself into the cabinet, heard something break, and stepped out quickly.
"Five! Six! Seven!"
The kitchen...On top of the cupboards? In the cupboards? Under the table?
No, none of them seemed quite right somehow, and meanwhile Jessica was on "Fourteen!"
I ran into my bedroom. In the wardrobe? No, too obvious.
"Nineteen, t'enty, comin'-ready-or-not!" Jessica yelled.
Damn! Out of time! I jammed myself underneath my bed, finding a stale cookie and a lighter I thought I'd lost long ago in the process, and waited.
I heard her go into the living room; the opening and shutting of the cabinet, followed by, "Dabe?"
She came in. I could see her feet walking across the room, the all-too-familiar adrenaline rush causing my heart to beat faster than usual. The feet stopped in front of the bed – then suddenly knees appeared, and a body, and a head – "Dabe! Found you!"
I was shocked. A child thought to look where Russian terrorists did not. "Gurlukovich could sure use you," I muttered, crawling out and dusting myself off, my recently-discovered lighter clutched in my hand.
"Who Gukofis?" she asked.
"Never mind," I said absently. I looked at her sitting on my bed, sucking her thumb, her head angelically to one side and bright eyes half-closed, and thought to myself that maybe kids weren't too bad after all.
"Tired, Dabe," she informed me.
"D'you want to go to sleep?" I asked.
She nodded.
"'K. You can sleep on my bed if you want," I said.
She slid under the duvet. Her eyes were already closed.
"I'm just next door, if you want me," I told her. She did not respond.
I went next door and tried on the stealth camo. On the whole, it worked, but odd parts of me kept showing, like feet and hands, and I didn't know if it was because I was too big for it or if the technology was just old and worn-out.
I looked at my watch. Otacon was late; he should have been back fifteen minutes ago.
"Dabe, what dis?" A voice floated through the door.
"C'mere with it," I called.
Jessica came in. Clutched tightly in both her little hands was the gun I kept under my pillow. It was only a Beretta tranq gun, an M9 to be exact, but I did not feel that her father would take this into consideration should he find out.
"Don't touch that!" I gasped. I snatched it off her and ran into my room with it, replacing it in its rightful position beneath my pillow. I spent a couple of minutes composing myself, clicking my lighter in agitation of the fact that I couldn't have a fag, and went back into Otacon's room, to find Jessica – gone.
"Jessica?" I said, circling widely like a confused sheep. "Jess?"
I looked under the bed. No Jessica. The wardrobe. Nothing but clothes – surprisingly.
"Jessica? You come out now, you hear me? Joke's over!"
I went into the living room – and was greeted with possibly the strangest, scariest sight I have ever seen.
The doll was levitating.
A sudden flashback of memories – Chucky, The Shining, The Exorcist – flooded my mind as the doll floated eerily towards me, its blonde curls bobbing, the lids of its painted-on eyes opening and closing erratically.
"Argh!" I ran past it – and felt my legs connect with something that wasn't there; a muffled groan of pain escaped it as I hit the floor.
It was only then that I figured it out. "The stealth suit! Oh, no!"
A normal kid was a nuisance. An invisible kid? Disaster!
"Come here, Mrs!" I squawked, grabbing at mid air. She had dropped the doll and I had no further clues as to her whereabouts.
I was doing a strange sort of dance, snatching at the air, when Otacon walked in a couple of seconds later.
"Snake, what the hell are you doing?"
"Uh..." My brain did a couple of backflips. "Uh...catching a...uh...a fly!" I swatted at the air a couple of times for good measure.
"Do you have to do it so...weirdly?" Otacon looked about. "Where's Jessica?"
"Uh...um...she's asleep! Yes...she's sleeping...on my bed..."
"Oh." Otacon made a move toward my room but I sharply stepped in front of him. "Get on well with her?" he asked, attempting to walk around me.
"Yes," I replied, blocking him swiftly.
"Snake, let me past, would you?"
"Why?"
"I want to go and see her."
"You can't."
"Why?"
"Uh...she's a...a light sleeper."
"I'm surprised she's not awake, all the racket you were making in here."
I shrugged. "Don't disturb her."
"Alright," he said. "I'll go and see if I can fix that cable and get the camouflaging linked up to the main power source. Once I've done that I can install this app I wrote that'll..."
I stepped in front of him again.
"Dave, what's going on?" he asked suspiciously.
"Uh...nothing," I lied. "Just...uh, just...why don't you come and have a cup of tea?"
"Um, OK," he said, a little dubious. He came into the kitchen, I clicked the kettle on and we sat at the table. Otacon started telling me some funny story that his friend Charlie had told him. I nodded, smiled, and tried not to let the sheen of sweat on my forehead become too obvious.
It was then that I noticed it. Behind Otacon. Above his head. Floating. A cup of water. The little – ugh! She must have been standing up on the cupboard. I was transfixed on the cup as it bobbed slowly toward Otacon, my eyes glued on it, unable to tear myself away.
"Snake? What is it?" said Otacon, beginning to turn around, just as the cup began to slowly but irreversibly tip.
"OTACON!!" I shouted desperately.
"Huh?" He turned back to me and I watched with an air of depressed finality as the contents of the cup poured themselves over Otacon's head.
He made a confused noise of the sort that would have, in any other situation, caused me to go into hysterics and looked up to where the cup was still hovering.
I brought up my skewed imagination. "My God, Otacon, we've got a poltergeist!"
It could've worked, I know it, had a child's snicker not suddenly cut through the air.
Otacon suddenly put two and two together,
"Snake! You didn't!"
"Course I didn't," I replied innocently.
"The sneaking suit?! Jessica? Oh my God!"
"S'not my fault" I said quickly. "She had...oh, she was asleep...and I was.. and the gun...and..."
"Snake, you don't mean to tell me she's got a gun as well, do you?!" he said.
"No, no...least, she HAD – but just a tranquillizer – but I took it off her."
"But she got the stealth suit."
"Yeah, but you can fix it, can't you?"
"I could - if I had a few hours – and her co-operation," he said. "Neither of which we have."
"Oh, crap," I moaned. "We have to catch her, Otacon!"
Otacon suddenly yelled, "DUCK!"
I did so, not a moment too soon, as a piece of wood came flying at me. I caught it. It was a doorstop. "That kid is a menace!"
Otacon nodded in agreement.
A sudden idea came to me and I got up and blindly rushed the thin air where the doorstop had come from.
Nothing.
"Otacon, are you sure there's nothing you can do about this?" I asked.
He thought long and hard. "Well, I was running it from an expendable power source, like I said...it'll run out eventually. But not yet, I'm afraid. It could last up to a couple of hours."
I sighed. "There's nothing for it then; we'll have to catch her ourselves."
I don't want to recount the next couple of hours. Suffice to say, we spent most of it dancing about the various rooms of our apartment in the same manner I had been earlier, dodging flying objects and alternately coaxing and yelling at Jessica.
Eventually, Otacon looked at his watch. "Oh my God! Fuller's due in about two minutes!"
I dodged a floppy disk and sank down on the sofa. "We are finished."
There was a loud knocking at the door.
Otacon gulped. "That'll...that'll be him." He went nervously over to the door and opened it.
I heard him say, "Mr Fuller..."
"Dr. Emmerich," said Mr Fuller, respectfully. He liked Otacon, since Otacon had letters after his name and could be polite.
He didn't like me. I was never polite; and I didn't even have a name.
"Where's Jessica?" he asked, looking around as I greeted him with a perfunctory nod.
"She's...uh...asleep," said Otacon. He was sweating, I noticed.
"Where?" he asked.
"In my room," I volunteered. "We thought it would be...uh...quieter."
He nodded. "Can I go and see her?"
"Um...do you really want to wake her?" Otacon asked, nervously.
"I have to take her back," he told us, "her dinner's ready."
He stood up and wandered toward my room.
"I...I don't think that's a good idea," said Otacon frantically.
He stopped. His eyes narrowed suspiciously, and he turned round on us. "I am going," he spat, "to see my daughter, and if you two have done anything to her...I've heard about the things you gays do to kids."
"We're not – "Otacon started, but bit his lip as the enraged father barged into my room.
I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the outburst. Only it didn't come.
I opened one eye gingerly, then the other. Otacon and I went through, wondering why we hadn't yet been evicted.
Jessica was lying on the bed, eyes shut, looking as though she'd been there all the time. As we watched, she opened her eyes and said, "Daddy?"
Her dad smiled at her. "Are you ready to go home, honey?"
She nodded and he picked her up and turned to us, looking embarrassed. "Sorry about that...I didn't mean anything by it. I'm not homophobic or anything, it was only just that I was worried about Jessica."
"That's OK," Otacon said.
I piped up. "And anyway, we aren't actually..." but he cut me off.
"I'd be glad for you to babysit again, if you'd like to, some time."
We both nodded, with big, fake smiles.
"Right. I'd better go...say goodbye, Jess."
"Bye Dabe, bye, Mister Hal," said the child, once again a wide-eyed, innocent cherub.
And the two of them left.
Otacon and I stood and looked at each for several minutes, speechless with relief. Finally I said – "Well, you know what we need now, don't you?"
"What?" Otacon replied.
"A drink." I pulled out my wallet. "They're on me."