Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.

Challenge #17

Phrase: "I never leave my home without it."
Word Count: 711
Rating: G

Title: Stalking and Stealth
Author: Rydia Highwind
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.
Summary: Realized halfway through this that this was supposed to be rated G, and had to edit all of Dave's foul language out. XD; So when Dave talks, just imagine that every other word is "fuck" or something. This drabble features angry Snake, vindictive Meryl, and caught-in-the-middle Otacon.
Warning: A few very angry characters, and a slight breach of the fourth wall.

Dave was very angry, and Hal brought him out for supper to cheer him up, hopefully get his mind off of the matters of the day. The distraction had been quite welcome, and Dave had humored Hal by breaking out of his deadly little storm cloud of death while they were at the restaurant. But the walk back to the apartment where Dave now stationed his entire duffel bag full of belongings, as well as a television set he'd smuggled out when he found out that Hal didn't have his own, brought them past a certain set of apartments, and suddenly, Dave was very angry once more.

"I hate her," he hissed, glaring at the door to the building. "She's a lying, manipulative little witch, you know that? And she still has /my sneaking suit/."

Hal sighed as Dave started his rant once more. Apparently when the infiltrator had packed his bags and walked out on Meryl, he'd somehow missed his sneaking suit in the fray and, upon this discovery, he was even more terribly vexed than he had been when he had come knocking on Hal's apartment door in the first place. And since that point in time, periodic rants about how much Dave hated Meryl had become quite commonplace.

Arguments between the two of them were neither infrequent nor unobtrusive. Hal once decided that if Dave and Meryl were fighting, that the entire city block was aware of such. But this clash, it seemed, had been particularly vicious and had ended with Dave not only storming out of the apartment building to go and complain about her to Hal, but he had taken his belongings with him this time. Despite constant threats that he was going to leave her, this was the first time he'd ever actually attempted to move out. Hal, of course, didn't mind having a roommate, especially since Dave stayed over there half the time anyway, and so he had welcomed the miserable looking infiltrator without a word.

"Why don't I go ask her for it?" Hal suggested diplomatically, since they were outside her apartment anyway. "She isn't angry at me, after all. Maybe she'll listen to me." He knew the likelihood of such was minimal. Right now, he was Meryl's enemy, simply because he was standing next to Dave at this current moment. To ask her for something of Dave's would be making himself into great target practice for her catty retorts and fierce temper.

"Forget it," Dave growled, casting contemptuous glares at the building and probably seriously frightening some people near it. "She'll throw you out the window and pray she hits me. You know that." He muttered something that sounded pretty close to something that doesn't belong in a G-rated drabble before continuing. "I wish I could sneak in there and get it or something...of course, that sort of defeats the purpose, since she has my /sneaking/ suit."

Something occurred to Hal very suddenly, and he reached into his coat pocket and dug around for a moment, searching for a small piece of machinery he always carried with him. One couldn't be too careful these days, especially while living in New York City, he reminded himself. True, he hadn't used the thing once in the four months since Shadow Moses, but really, it was just a comfort having it there in case he might need to. Finding the object, he pulled it out of his pocket and proffered it toward his companion. "You could use this instead."

Dave gave him a blank look while it took him a moment to process exactly what the little engineer was offering to him. A look of sudden dawning appeared on his features as he realized what the machine did. He blinked a few times in obvious surprise that Hal still held on to such a thing, but then, it wasn't that odd really. He took the object in his hands and looked it over once or twice. "You have your stealth camouflage with you?" he asked, his anger seeming to dissipate it something that Hal found even more scary, really--mischievousness.

"I never leave my home without it," he offered a little nervously.

Dave attached the item to his coat, smiled, and promptly disappeared from sight.