Chapter Four

"Y'know, I like a gal in uniform."

The gruff voice surprised Miasma. She turned her head from her position, looking out at the desert on the base's roof, towards her addresser. She grinned, bringing the edges of her purple-painted lips into a seductive, if not teeth exposing, smile.

"You're supposed to be on the roof of the South Wing" she told Shark, trying to sound unimpressed. "You'll get us both killed."

Shark encircled her, taking in her entrancing aura. She was not beautiful in a supermodel sense; and though she was physically attractive, it was her movements that enticed men the most. Graceful like a fluently receited poem, Miasma was the complete opposite of her colleague. If Shark could still dream, he knew he'd dream of her.

"Nice try" he guffawed. "But Sharks can smell the blood of their prey."

"Does that line work on anyone" Miasma enquired playfully as she looked upon his chest... his large pectorals that were not fully covered by his heavy coat. He was like a well-oiled machine, beyond what should pass for man's prime. He pulled a sneering smile, revealing a mouth of sharpened fangs, each one indistinguishable from the last.

"Maybe" he replied, quieter than usual. He halted his repeated stroll around her figure when he reached her back once more, and advanced behind her. Without a second thought, he boldly put his hand on her hip as gently as he could manage. She shivered pleasurably at the combination of the building wind and his rough touch, allowing the brief gust to blow her hair back and brush across his face. He closed his eyes, and felt the strands of natural and silky fabric stroke his stubble.

"I can smell your blood" he said. It was true: copper-like stenches flowed through his sinuses, so much so that he could almost taste her blood plasma in his mouth.

"What else can you smell" she inquired, consciously triggering a chemical reaction in her body. Suddenly, Shark could smell sweet perfumes in place of blood; minted aromas ensnared his senses and alerted his tastebuds. He closed his eyes again, and came as close as he could to imagining something truly beautiful. For a second, a vision of the shade beneath a tree on a Summer's day seemed to be conjured by his mind, only to be lost amongst a sea of depraved thoughts and dark pictures.

"I can smell your cunt" he whispered.

Almost instantly, his hand ceased to grip anything solid. He grabbed for her waist again, only to grasp vainly through a human-shaped cloud that stood in Miasma's stead. She began to laugh: a taunting, sinister exclaimation that could arouse a man and make him shiver with fear at once.

Shark did neither; standing back, he saw her begin to dissapparate before his eyes. In an instant, she was a barely recognisable whisp of purple fog, though her laugh remained. The cloud moved towards him, and enshrouded him like a lover. Shark felt her touch, and longed for it to be flesh. He saw both the danger and the eroticism in his situation, and held his breath while all oxygen was forced away from around his body. He saw the smoke in front of him contort into a familiar smile. Grinning right back, he smiled in the face of death, silently daring her to kill him, knowing that she wouldn't.

Indeed, she did release him. Misama's formless body withdrew from the air around him, stopping a few feet away and gradually becoming solid, still retaining the dangerous smile on her face. Shark pulled from his inside coat pocket half a pack of cigarettes and tapped the box to make one of them jump away from the rest. He took it between his index finger and middle finger on his right hand and placed it in his mouth. Before lighting the cigarette, he held the box out to Miasma, offering her one.

"No thanks" she said, waving his offer away. "I don't smoke."

-

The two figures stood hauntingly over their fallen foe, the fatigue of battle betraying their magnificent auras. It had been a fight they were ill-prepared for; too often had both the Janus Collective been reliant on a lack of will on behalf of any enemy in order to ensnare them or secure victory.

The fight in question had been as glorious as it had been unwanted, incomprehensively being waged in countless interchanging battlefields, many simultaneously. The minds of others, linked on the astral plane that so few had walked, had been inadvertedly invaded and perferated by the attacks and sounds of the battle.

But there had been no winner.

The battle had stopped abruptly: the enemy of the Janus Collective, Alyssia Markova, had fallen from consciousness with the outcome still indecisive. Her astral form, which had been ironically brought and anchored to the intangible plane by the Collective, had been felled as her body succumbed to tranquilising drugs, and so the Collective now stood alone in a place that nothing can physically exist.

Their mentor, Nicholas, had always refered to their recent battlefield as the Astral Plane. But it was a place indescribable by vocal utterances by mere humans. It had to be seen to be believed, though none could ever hope to look upon or comprehend it with visual receptors as basic as the eyes of a man. It could only be seen and travelled by the projection of one's mind: an "Astral form" that could only be projected by those blessed with telepathic or precognitive abilities.

The Plane was, and is, a reality different from that in which we live. It is the ability to cross between our dimension and the Astral Plane which defines a telepath or a precog, as it is from the Plane that all activities of that kind are carried out. A telekinetic - that is, a being able to move solid objects with the power of its mind alone - has a vague understanding of it. The telekinetic touches upon the Plane whenever he or she exercises their power, but cannot operate on it without the use of telepathic means. A telepath can visit the Plane for as long as his will holds out, and from there he can access the astral forms of other humans, and even bring them onto the Plane itself.

A precognitive also uses the Astral Plane, and it is these types of superhumans who know it so, as time-travel has never, nor is likely to be accomplished in the three dimensional best. As there is no dimensional limit to someone on the Plane, he or she can in theory travel in as many dimensions as they want. By contrast, the world we live in is limited to three dimensions, often refered to as height, length and width. The fourth dimension is labelled by writers such as H. G. Wells as "time", and the ability to move in this direction is refered to as "time-travel". 19th Century paraphysicists such as Charles Howard Hinton have theorised that time is just a homo-sapien invention, an illusion created by a paranoid section of the brain. This may be existance we know. A multi-dimensional place like the Astral Plane, however, holds no such limitations. A skilled precognitive can in fact travel into the future of the Astral Plane, and thus view the parallel future of our three dimensional world.

As entrance to the Astral Plane (and therefore telekinetic, telepathic and precognitive powers) are all gifted by the same area of the brain, it is possible for someone in possession of one of these powers to learn to use one or both of the other two. Nicholas Ling knew this, and over time taught Charity and Faith, of the Collective, to develop basic precognitive abilities, whereas when he met them they had merely a telepathic understanding of the Plane. Telekinesis they easily discovered on their own.

Now the two concentrated, trying to move in a fourth dimensional way as instructed by their master. They were both wondering about their future after the battle, doubting their own abilities. Intrigued like a child who fears his Christmas present is redundant, they attempted to unwrap the future before the right time. After an hour-long minute that lasted a millionth of a second, they succeeded.

Visions came to them of a bald man with a gun, crying over an old man for whom he had no love. They "saw" and "smelled" death; whether their own or anothers, they knew not. They witnessed death being overturned and drowned by water for a lifeless body to function again. Fear surrounded others, sand buried them, air gave them life.

"Charity."

A voice called through the mists and confusion of time, interrupting the vision and alerting half the Collective.

"Faith".

Again it called, with a substance that could only be found in the Physical Plane. The minds of the two powerful telepaths returned swiftly to their bodies, surprised to find themselves lying prostrate, inches above the floor of Ling's office. Unconscious levitation was one of their most basic skills, learned to avoid death by height. It had not abandoned them.

"I take it Markova was even more resiliant to psychic control than we had anticipated" Ling mused, just as much to himself as his proteges. He rose to his full height as they stood in unison. "You realise that every person within a one-hundred foot radius has been killed due to the feedback"

The Collective did not answer at first, avoiding Ling's intent stare. But after a minute, they began to speak at once, perfectly united:

"We saw death" they revealed. "And resurrection."

This statement washed over Ling's face like gentle waves on the rocks, wearing it not in the slightest. Though inside, he pondered its meaning. Could it be that his resurrection was at hand?

"A riddle for another time" Ling toled them, eventually. "Don't let it distract you from the task at hand."

"It has begun" questioned the Collective.

"Yes. The rookie, VII, the Clone and the vampire have all arrived. Once we've dealt with them, we'll retrieve Doctor Emmerich and Mei Ling. They've yet to discover that they're well within the range of our senses."

Ling was fully confident, and with good reason: everything was going to plan. His goals were so close to his grasp, he was almost frightened to reach out to them. He cast his mind back to years ago, when he was first tricked into the Patriot's service. Since that day, he'd spent every living second planning, researching and preparing for the aim that was now within touching distance.

"Alert Shark and Miasma..." the Chinaman began.

"Wait" the Collective interrupted. "There's something else..."

While Ling had been talking, Charity and Faith had been telepathically scanning the base for any anomolies. It would be an understatement to say they'd found one. Ling looked inquistively at them, desperately wanting to know what they'd seen. Words would be too slow, and penetrating through his artificial defences to transmit their thoughts was impossible. Moving quickly, the Doctor grabbed a large glass picture frame from his wall, which displayed a Van Gough-inspired painting he'd created himself. He proceeded to raise it above his head, before bringing it swiftly down towards the ground. The glass shattered on impact, dispersing into thousands of tiny shards all over the metal floor. Like a flash, he swept his hand along the floor, picking up a copious amount of miniscule crystals, and in a fluid motion cast them through the air towards the Collective.

WIth reactions like quicksilver, the Collective froze the shards no more than a foot from their bodies with a telekinetic field. Tiring hours of mental training paid off as the Collective used their combined expertise to bring the shards together, forming shapes in mid air. A complex three dimensional sculpture formed in milliseconds: a shaved man with soldier uniform holding a smaller, plump man in a doctor's coat by his lapels. The soldier's mouth moved, and Charity began to narrate.

""I'll try to guess the Patriot's plan" she mimicked. ""And you can let me know if I'm right.""

Ling cursed in Mandarin. "Dawson, you charlaton. If you tell him anything, I'll have your lungs." He remembered frustratedly that all Area 51 personnell had been equipped with nanomachines that disabled any psychic attack. He could not order the Collective to shut down Dawson's mind.

"Alert Shark and Miasma" he said finally. "Shark can deal with Dawson and Snake, while Miasma holds off the new arrivals."

The room was silent for a few seconds while The Collective carried out Ling's instructions. While Faith kept the small scale reinactment of Snake's interrogation of Dawson running, Charirty asked their master a question"What if Miasma is unable to defeat the attackers"

Ling pondered this for a second, before a look of heavy realisation passed over his face. Because he'd underestimated Snake's resourcefulness, it might be necessary to play his trump card before he'd originally intended.

"Activate Metal Gear."

-

A spray of railgun fire errupted towards the three figures on the desert ground, sending yellow clouds into the surrounding air. Raiden expertly dived out of its path, executing a well-practiced cartwheel and landing crouched in the sand. He looked across, and saw that VII had not been hit. Almost too late, he once again dodged out of the way of the bullets from the formidable Metal Gear RAY unit, the former roaring past him and almost drowning out the laughs that shot from the controller of the latter. He found himself knelt again, the jeep seperating the RAY from him. He was mere feet away from Vamp's stationary body.

Daring to peer over, Raiden saw a small explosion from RAY, and recognised it as the trademark of the launching of a stinger missile. It was then that he remembered the exposed fuel tanks in the jeep.

"Raiden" VII shouted, temporarily betraying his characteristic stoicism. But Raiden was already moving as fast as hours of military training could take him, away from the jeep.

His heart skipped a beat as the resultant explosion that had seemed to take forever to come about ripped through the jeep behind him, picking him off his feet and throwing him through the night air. Raiden rolled, taking some of the bite out of the landing, and turned just in time to see what had to be Vamp's corpse tumbling like a rag doll through space towards the ground. Raiden could only look on in despair as his chance for revenge was torn away from him.

"Liquid, you bastard" Raiden shouted, vainly attempting to make his voice heard over his enemy's PA-enhanced laughter. He picked his FA-MAS that the explosion had caused him to drop from the floor and fired furiously at RAY's head, his anger increasing with every bullet that ricocheted uselessly off the titanium alloy that encased the bi-pedal tank.

"Raiden" VII repeated, his voice now emitting mere inches from Raiden. He grabbed Raiden's left arm, and wrenched it out of aim. Infuriated, Raiden swung a right fist at VII, who ducked and used his attacker's own momentum to throw him judo-style to the floor and put a knee across his throat.

"Calm down" VII ordered him. "You're no use to me dead."

"Then get the fuck off me" Raiden shouted, as another barrage of missiles flew towards them. VII complied, leaping swiftly out of the missiles' paths. Raiden again unsheathed his HF blade, and twirled away from the incoming missile, before bringing the sword down and slicing through it. Without it's guidance chip, the remanants of the stinger twirled uncontrollably away, before exploding about one-hundred feet safe of Raiden and VII.

"You're being annoyingly alive" Liquid said calmly, his voice slightly skewed by irritation. "Luckily, I have the antidote for..."

The man in the RAY trailed off mid-sentence, stunned at what was occuring before him. A whiff of purple smog, barely visible in the limited light provided by the base's spotlight, had begun to form inches in front of RAY's visor. The semi-solid strands moved simultaneuosly, co-ordinated by some unseen force, until they were brought together into the grinning face of a woman, composed of liliac gas.

"Miasma" VII said quietly beneath his mask, her reputation arousing respect in his voice.

"What..." Liquid was audibly amazed. He armed the laser under the mouth of RAY, and fired it uselessly through the Miasma's gas form. Now it was her turn to laugh.

"What the hell is going on" Raiden shouted at VII, his eyes fixed on the gas that danced unnaturally around RAY's head.

"It's Miasma, a genetically-engineered Patriot soldier" VII answered. "We're in trouble."

"Did you know it'd be here" Raiden demanded, turning towards VII. He took the following silence as a reply in the positive. "Why didn't you tell me about it? We could've prepared..."

"You couldn't have prepared shit" VII interrupted. He knew that Miasma was too good; even before the genetic tampering, VII would've thought twice about crossing her. He had hoped that they could avoid her through careful infiltration. For the first time in a while, VII was filled with a sence of dread.

"She's heading this way."

Miasma, apparently finished with taunting Liquid, was travelling as a dispersing gas swiftly through the cold atmosphere. She reached VII and Raiden within seconds, encircling the pair.

"VII" she stated, her voice a gentle whisper. The cloud that was her pressurised, and in a moment her body was as solid as the men who stood in front of her. Raiden raised his FA-MAS, bringing a smile to her face. "You'll be dead before you can pull the trigger, boy."

"We'll see" the blonde operative answered confidently, firing at the speed of thought. The bullets passed harmlessly through her body, and he was not fast enough to react to the coloumn of gas that moved at an incredible speed towards him, solidifying an inch from his face. The impact kncoked him clean off his feet, and almost out of consciousness.

Liquid, who had been engrossed in watching this development, suddenly regained his composure. He put the RAY into first gear as quickly as he could manage, making the unit charge at Miasma and Raiden. He brought the massive hoof of Metal Gear upwards, hoping to crush his new adversary. The jolt ran through his seat as the unit stomped heavily into the sand, but nothing else. He heard a hiss of fumes entering through the air vent to his head, and almost immedietely smelled the pungent odor of carbon monoxide. Holding his breath, Liquid typed into RAY's control system the "open cockpit" command, followed a second later by its "eject" counterpart. His vision began to blur, but not a moment too soon he was saved by the escape seat that jetisoned out of the Metal Gear. A parachute shot out of the back, slowing Liquid's decent towards the desert earth, but he dropped the best part of the way down on his own, rolling once in the sand to reduce the impact. Coughing, the cloned mercenary pulled an MP5 from his leg holster and shot it upwards towards the cockpit of the now-stationary RAY he had just escaped from, but hit nothing apart from the cockpit itself.

VII watched as more miasmic fog surrounded Liquid, attempting to force him into asphyxiation. Liquid was firing blindly, in all directions. VII saw his movements become less extreme, even sluggish, as the flow of oxygen to his brain was slowed. And with Raiden down, VII knew that he was next.

-

Author's Note

I'm sorry for any mistakes made in this chapter. My lack of a spellchecker or word-counter for the forseeable future will probably retard my work on various levels that I'd rather avoid.

Also, I shall now be responding to all reviews on my Xanga, a link to which you can find on my profile.