Naked Snake 1.0

"Raiden." Snake repeated, almost expecting some kind of answer, but did not find one in the next minute.

Sighing, he picked himself and stared at the destruction, breathing heavily as he squinted through blackened eyes. Sighing he walked forward slowly, his image wavy in the heavy fire, wondering why the wind was blowing so fiercely and the rain beating down so heavily on his bare back. His memory cycled back and he remembered, the rules of Raiden's combat…humiliate Snake…leave him naked. Snake felt cold now, feeling somewhat shameful for allowing Raiden to strip him down to his bare essences after their ferocious battle. He felt the wind rush through his hair as rain washed away the burnt dirt from his eyes. What was he to do next…Raiden wasn't responding and the wind was getting fiercer, the rain colder, and the fire whiter. He felt the earth beneath his toes and was not comforted by it, as he noticed it had somehow been formed into hills, burying things in its wake. To Snake it looked like a type of earth bending, if it were possible. The fires seemed to be thriving in the torrential rain, and the rain was getting so heavy Snake felt hail and driving drops sting his back. He wondered how this could be happening, what could be bending these things to pound so fiercely into his body. Cuts and wounds succumbed to the beating, as his whole body collapsed, his mouth partially open, sobbing for the first time in many, many years…since he was a child. Snake felt tears slowly roll down his earth stained face through the rain as his mind shut down, his body lost all feeling, and he fell into a deep sleep.

Snake awoke that evening and felt the pain pounding dully through his body, no longer searing or throbbing, just the dull waves of a bone fracture, and the dull waves of pain from blackened eyes and various cuts and bruises. Damn, was the only word that echoed in his mind as he slowly rose holding his throbbing leg, realizing that this was more than a normal bone break. His hand showed blood as he slowly moved it up from his leg and looked down and saw a bone protruding from his thigh. Snake sighed and felt scorched skin on his side, and looked at the dried blood that had once flowed down his ribs. Sighing he walked forward, limping with the utmost dignity that he could carry, the flames dying behind him, and the rain tinkling softly on leaves and trees, he made his way softly towards some brush, hoping to find some answers somewhere ahead of him, rather than behind. The wake of destruction had hit Snake harder than he could ever imagine, he had never experienced such destruction, such chaos…innocents had died, so many innocents…it was a simple mission…a simple mission to bring life.

What had turned into a simple training mission had cost the lives of hundreds of innocent officers and their subordinates… as well as hundreds more innocent civilian workers…Snake could only imagine what was going to become of the tragedy. He wondered if it would grace the nightly news, and then shook his head and spit blood on the ground at the thought of the news traipsing the story all over a TV screen. He squinted trying to focus in on something and began to walk more quickly as he saw a figure moving around in the bushes ahead of him. He squinted harder and thought he could make out the long blonde hair and blue eyes of Raiden standing one hundred yards ahead of him. Snake sighed a long deep sign, never feeling so weak in his life, as he only wanted to collapse on dry ground and sleep his memory away some more. As he grew closer he discovered it was Raiden, and he began to run swiftly the rest of the way, falling toward the ground in front of Raiden, as he rushed to gather Snake and drag him over to a small tent he had pitched beside a large tree. Snake sighed and felt everything around him drift away, as he felt his memory slip away and the weakness consume his body. Clone sickness, he thought, damn clone sickness infecting his body again. He could feel himself vomiting as Raiden watched over him carefully, making sure that Snake didn't show any signs of fatal problems. Snake rolled back in the tent, his eyes heavy, throat burning from the vomit, fingers, toes, and limbs throbbing now. Sickness had infested his body more than ever before, and until then Snake hadn't known that something could ever do that to him. Raiden sat before him, fiddling with a few instruments in front of him, as Snake drowsily watched Raiden take out a long needle.

"Try to hold still Snake." Raiden said calmly.

Snake was perfectly still as Raiden stuck a needle into his arm filled with God knows what. Snake sighed and felt a soothing wave come over him, softly relaxing his muscles, organs, and breath. His eyes softened, and a smile came to his face, the first in years. He felt like beating anything that came to odds with him. He felt no pain, no weakness, no stinging muscle aches, no broken bones.

"Morphine…" Snake whispered drowsily.

Snake's blue eyes had turned a brilliant cerulean blue, as they gazed up at Raiden with a new hope. Raiden looked at him forlornly, honestly not expecting him to make it through the night for the first time since they had teamed up five years ago. Snake closed his eyes and the hope faded away from Raiden, as he tended to each one of Snake's wounds individually, hoping that the few supplies he had might help Snake make it through the night in one piece. He held his wrist against Snake's head and felt a fever like he had never felt in his life, the heat passing into his upper arm like a fire. He recoiled quickly, the heat more intense than any normal high degree fever.

"How are you alive…" Raiden asked.

Snake breathed in heavily, his eyes turning a darker blue as he succumbed to exhaustion and looked up at Raiden.

"Why…Why did you do this to me?" Snake asked weakly.

Raiden looked at him strangely and asked, "What do you mean?"

Snake swallowed hard as the glow in his eyes returned slightly, returning more like an angry fire than a sign of slight hope.

"Hurt me like this." Snake choked out, as he gulped back a bit of saliva and blood from his bleeding mouth.

Snake looked perplexed as he removed a sedation needle from a backpack he had found in the rubble, and softly injected Snake in the arm. Snake's fire disappeared as his eyes glazed back and his lids softly closed.

"Why…" Snake whispered from blood stained lips, "Why Raiden…why…"

The sun flashed in Snake's eyes as he woke up, his body feeling light and fragile, wispier and more air like than ever before. It was then that Snake realized that the light wasn't the sun, but an on going radiance that was emitting from different areas around him. His body was a incandescent white as he looked up toward the sky and saw forms moving around him, beckoning him…calling him forth to a world which he had never known…peace.

"Eden…" Snake whispered.

"No." A voice said from behind him, just as wispy and hollow as his own.

He turned to see someone his mind hadn't see in over forty years…and his body had never seen before.

"Boss." He muttered, not believing the words that were coming out of his mouth.

She nodded, her hair white and glowing, flowing around her like a constant wave softly hitting pearly sands. Snake's eyes glowed a sapphire blue as the light hit them softly, as it bored deeply into his mind, reminding of those years so long ago, reminding him of who he really was. He was Solid Snake…and only Solid Snake. Boss moved slowly towards him, her fingers delicate, her gaze peaceful, and reached out to him, her arms more open than they had ever been before in the living world and embraced him in a short hug.

"You are dead Snake…" Boss said quietly, "But only for a short while…and in this short while there are many things I need to tell you."

Snake's face turned from shock to sudden understanding – he had been here before…in his memories so long ago. The images of the Sorrow flashed through his mind, giving him a brief look into the past which he had barely known, and had hardly ever believed to not be his…to be a…lie.

"Snake you have died to come to me, so I can tell you what massacred your camp, and why." Boss said softly, her pink lips moving beautifully in the white light that was surrounding them.

Snake looked down and realized for the first time that he was standing, more like hovering in his own thoughts, over his dead body. He looked to his left and saw Raiden with his head bent down in exhausted sleep, trying to stay awake to tend to Snake as best he could. Snake looked off in the distance for a moment, his brow just as tense and deep as it had been in life, until suddenly he unlocked his tense gaze, his eyes opening above narrow slits, and his brow line arching upwards. Boss smiled, this was a side of Snake she had never seen before, at least in her own memories of Snake…but he was different, the same somehow….not so similar. Either way she couldn't quite explain it. Solid Snake had a different manner of behaving that was so different from Naked Snake…yet so similar. He was an entanglement of a dead legend, and a separate human being…suffering and frustrated with what he could have been in birth…instead of being someone else who's shoes he could never fill. Either way anyone looked at it, clone Snake was never going to be the Snake that Boss had once trained and confided so deeply in…the Snake that had killed her.

"Snake…what attacked those innocents at the encampment, was not a mere man, but a somewhat super human." She said.

Snake nodded, his thoughts slightly drifting to what this being could possibly be…and most importantly what it could possibly do.

"It is a being, once a man of high importance, who somehow in his younger years discovered how to control the four elements of the earth: fire, water, wind, and earth." Boss continued, her eyes getting darker by the minute, along with the area surrounding.

Boss paused and said, "Time is drawing near for you to return, but let me say this to you Snake: his weakness is something that will take the better part of your knowledge, as well as the knowledge of your…past….to discover. Remember who you are modeled after Snake, remember that, and don't forget it, because no matter who he was when he died…he was someone more knowing than you could imagine then, and while his right mind was not always in place…somewhere in his heart he knew the answers…and what was always right."

Snake's pupils narrowed into thin slits as Boss disappeared and behind her stood a mirror image of himself, staring back at him with one eye…a patch neatly placed over the other.

"Go." Naked Snake said, "Dig within your mind to find the answers, I will be there to unlock them."

Naked Snake slowly moved towards a shocked Solid Snake and placed a wispy to his forehead, giving him a salute. Solid's faced slowly returned to that same concentrated stare and returned the salute. Naked Snake slowly faded, until the only thing that remained for a short while were his eyes, which now revealed his gouged eye with a shining blue eye, that stared intensely back at Solid Snake, until it disappeared and everything around Snake became dark.

Snake could feel himself shivering, his body slowly devouring his soul that had poured out with such warmth and light. He felt the cold, the hunger, the fatigue crawling over him like a pestilence again, making him almost want to claw at the white light that still hovered over his head like a ball of incandescent joy. Snake's furrowed brow reappeared as he suddenly woke up, his throat feeling like burning fire, and his body feeling like one big ball of pain. As he looked to Raiden, all he could do was continued to cough until his chest finally released and he sat up straight, looking around him, making sure that no one was watching. Raiden smirked and looked at Snake calmly.

"What?" Snake asked hoarsely.

"You seem more like yourself today Snake." Raiden said calmly, glad to have his friend back to his normal anti social self.