All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire…

–Aristotle

CHAPTER TWO

Slamming his feet up the stairs, the FOXHOUND operative was relentless in his attempt to get to the top of the building. Perhaps, she had been observing them all along. And now she was making her escape.

"You clear the crowd, so we can get a better chance of finding her. Go!" Boss had shouted to Ocelot, he wanted for him to get outside and make space. That's the time before Boss had made his headway up the stairs.

A burst of energy saw him rush up the last flight of stairs, and all of a sudden, a bullet connected with the wall on his left. He looked up and observed a shadow speed across the floorboards above him. There were large footsteps following that. The beat of his legs on the stairs could break the wood beneath him. But he didn't care, as long as he could get to his assailant.

-

Ocelot ran onto the main dance floor and took out his two SAAs. He began to fire at the ceiling, bursting loud noises all around the building. The alert was sounded and the alarm bells rang, battering the ears of those around him. Suddenly, the corner of Ocelot's eye caught several guards. They ascended their assault rifles and began to fire on the floor beneath him. The crowd began to disperse and ran screaming out of the building. He soon dived into a forward roll behind an amplifier screwed to the grating in front of him. Twisting his head around the back of the music conductor, he brought his two handguns with him, and fired three bullets that simply hit the walls either side of the room. Chilling clicks of his handguns' lack of ammunition followed the ear-splitting shots. Dipping his hand into his inner pocket, he pulled out a hand full of bullets. He was undoubtedly surrounded. Something had to give.

-

The night sky became clearer to Boss once again, and the urban scents dazzled his sinuses with a huge whiff of cold air after a long hike up the stairway. His breath was held for a second, and then released in a sharp cough. His surroundings came clearer to him as he pulled a MK-22-T (Tranquilliser handgun) from his sidearm holder. A clear, flat scenario brushed his stinging eye as the wind snatched the breath right out of him. Larger buildings surrounded his rooftop scenario, looming over it in a tranquil shadow. She could be anywhere. Anywhere…

Pulling his legs forward cautiously, his eyes darted from left to right, piercing the shadow. A gunshot echo alerted his brain, and he diffused it as a distant memory of earlier missions. He couldn't walk any further, and his head bounced from side to side in confusion. The pain moved down to his side, and his clothes were soon dampened with a badge of red. Dropping his head toward the ground, his eyes focused, as the cold floor was cursed with droplets of blood.

"Sniper bullets…" He growled, in his haze of dizziness. He was losing himself gradually, mind, body and soul. The footsteps approaching him simply passed him by. Light was becoming dark.

"I have been waiting for this moment for seven years…Now you will feel the pain my master felt as you made his end a nightmare." A sniper rifle was pressed to his skull, adding more of suppression to his consciousness.

"N…Nightmare?" Big Boss spluttered, as this mind reminded him of Ocelot's words. She was the End's protégé, but he had never killed the End as if it were a nightmare.

-

Adamska's handguns were soon loaded with six bullets each. The handguns were like two lifelines for him, held close to his chest, he stood up with a long, daunting breath. Like it was his last. The chilling feel of steel against skin was brought upon him soon afterwards and heavy breathing could be heard beside him.

"Get your hands up, and throw your weapons to the floor!" One of the guards had spat spitefully, holding the assault rifle toward Ocelot. The steel was pressed even harder into his temple, and Ocelot dropped his weapon.

"Okay, now the other one!"

'Might as well…'

Ocelot's eyes darted back and forth from his handgun to the guard. In a sudden sense of misjudgement, he tossed his weapon into the air and thundered a right hand blow into the solar plexus of the man in front of him. Another blow saw the guard spinning, and Ocelot ripped the man's neck toward him, holding him in a choking position. The soaring weapon fell into the grasp of Ocelot, and his finger pressed instinctively three times on the trigger of his weapon, firing down three assailants in a split second. His use for the hostage had expired, and his enemy was soon dragged over the balcony.

-

"You have assassinated my master, so now you will suffer the consequences!"

The adrenaline was the only thing keeping him going, and his rush became stronger and stronger as he kneeled up and gritted his teeth. Dark became light once again.

Boss span around and connected his right-boot with Vixen's stomach. Her body became limp for a second and she landed harshly with the cold concrete. A heartbeat later, she leapt to her feet and rushed toward him. Her right hand connected sharply with Boss' inside leg and jumped up to knee him in the face. He stumbled back clumsily as the blood rushed to his head. She went for a right hand blow to his abdomen, but failed undoubtedly costly as Boss numbed her face with a cold thud to her cheek. His powerful biceps pulled her forward and threw her back on to the floor with a trip on her ankle.

"I haven't come to fight you, but you've made it clear…" She pulled herself up from the ground furiously as she threw her fist toward his face, which was swept out of the way by Boss' back hand. "…That we have to go through with this…" Vixen was soon taken down with a leg sweep.

Another attack ceased to harm Boss in any way, as he took her arm, twisted it violently and snapped it up to her back. He held his knife to her throat as she screamed.

"Listen to me!"

-

Ocelot's handgun was all out of bullets save one, as he scoured the plain anxioisly. No one could be seen to his view. Little did he know that one guard sat ready behind another amplifier in the room.

Ocelot thought it was over, and all was done except for the capture of Black Vixen. But, with a sudden outburst of sound and energy, the guard pulled his assault rifle to the ready and began to fire blindly around Ocelot's area. His instincts told him to roll out the way, but he stood rooted to the spot, blind with surprise and confusion. Bullets pierced his clothes only once, with a bullet to the arm; which alerted him to react with a gunshot of his own. The bullet dug deep into the guard's face, with a spray of blood swerving away from his head.

-

"The End and I were never friends or allies, and I took his life on the battlefield. But I had never made it such a nightmare. His last request before dying was for me to fight him to the end." Big Boss threw his attacker to the floor and holstered his knife. As she began to stand up, he saw her face. She was of Japanese origin and had her hair tied back in a kind of bow. Wearing a silhouette of translucent silk over her delicate face. The clothes she wore were a black, leather body suit that glowed in the reflection of the full moon. Illuminating her in awe.

"What do you want from me?" She braced her twisted arm with her right hand

"I want you to join FOXHOUND. It's a special unit for top-secret government missions."

Vixen looked up into his one eye and across to his eye-patch. His face made her realising a history of war and pain in his soul. She for one knew about war and sacrifices. War had been her life.

"What would I get from this?" She began to question, staring up at the large, bearded man in front of her.

"You get to walk away from all of this. No imprisonment for your murder cases. A new life you can lead. There's no catch from there." He looked down to the sniper rifle lay across the ground and heaved it up with his large arms. The grip of the rifle was nothing he had felt before and the scope had been advanced to three different views. A forgery of military weapons, but a good one at that. He still preferred original craftsmanship.

"…What do I call you?" She looked back up to his face. It started to spasm clearly because of the pain he suffered.

"For now it's John, if you decide to join me it's…Big Boss."

Dropping the rifle, he walked over to the balcony and looked toward his side and cringed as his view became distorted.

"You're hurt…" She began, rooted to the spot and staring into the wound in his side.

"It's nothing I can't handle…" He looked away and laughed as he remembered this hadn't been the worst shape he'd been in. A cigar was the best medicine he had, so he placed one between his lips and lit it with a match.

"What did my master say when he died?"

"He said something about the spirits in the forest." Boss blew a lining of smoke through his lips and held his side. It hurt too much. "It was his time to go. Everyone gets sick of life at some time. But I have to admit, he pulled off one hell of a fight."

Vixen said nothing.

"Anyway, the FBI will be here any minute guns blazing. They'll give you ten seconds to come out and then they get to do what they want." He puffed hard at the eroding cigar and threw it over the balcony. His face cringed as the pain screamed through his veins. "You'd better give yourself up because the way you fight is not going to help you against these guys."

Vixen said nothing.

Boss turned away and held his side. It wasn't so much as a stinging pain, rather a rush of blood that seemed to pulse it through his body. He couldn't explain it.

As Boss walked into the main hall of the nightclub, he looked to Ocelot and stared at the spatters of blood stained across his face. This had been a massacre. Ocelot was reloading his SAAs once more. He spun them around his fingers and holstered the weapons quickly.

"We've got our next recruit." Boss hesitated breathing even more rapidly; blood rushed to his head and his walk was degraded to a stumble. With a slight lift of his arm, Ocelot realised the thick blood washing away from a dirty wound. He walked in front of him as he went for the door and looked down to his chest.

"How do you know?" Ocelot panted.

"She'll come round. No one can take on the FBI without an arm." Boss' breaths were as good as an asthma attack to him. The bullet was blocking his circulation. Lead was seeping into his blood, he couldn't respire.

"Boss?" Ocelot enquired, bowing his head to look into his eye, focused on the concrete.

Boss ripped his shirt from his torso and threw it into the litterbin beside him. Government vehicles came screeching onto the scene, just like Boss said. The officials held their guns pointed toward the building's entrance and exit. Wherever Vixen was, she was surrounded whatever the cost.

"Come out of the building on the count of ten. One! Two! Three-" 'Black Vixen came walking out of the building entrance. Hands held high, but her left arm was shaking with the pain. Her eyes met Boss' as she was forced into a police car. They looked into each other liked they knew each other for a millennium. Paramedics came rushing to Boss, and scoured his body for the wound.

"We're going to have to remove the bullet in your side, or you will die of blood poisoning or a significant loss of blood. We have to operate, sir." Boss looked up and shook his head from side to side. Signalling 'no' and confusing the doctors aiding him. The loss of blood made him confused and unaware. He was drowning.

Boss's eye rolled into his head and a mix of blood and vomit spewed from his mouth.

"How are you doing, Boss? I told you that you should have only looked for people on the file." Jackson chuckled, in spite of the fact that Boss had been injured doing things his way. One of the doctors took a bandage and wrapped it round his waist, to keep the circulation live while they transported him to a hospital.

The paramedics lay him down on a stretcher, and wrapped his quivering body with an itchy blanket. Soon afterwards they rolled him into the back of the ambulance and fed him to a morphine tank.

"What's the recruitment situation, Sir?" Ocelot took the Secretary to the side and held his shoulder with one hand.

"Striker and Campbell have been briefed, and you will be able to be on your mission in a week's time." He looked over to the police car Vixen had been sat into. She simply looked on as she sat quietly in the back of the police vehicle. Boss had been hurt badly, and she knew that.

Author's Note: Thanks for the feedback, you'll be pleased to know I've taken that weapons intro out of the prologue. Please stay tuned, more chapters coming your way!