30 minutes before the assault on the Temple…
Snake crouched low amongst the rubble of DC as he, Thane, and Sev exited the metro station. The underground tunnels served their purpose well. The super mutants had no idea that a squad of highly elite commandos had just infiltrated their territory, and were now within striking distance of the Capitol Building.
Fireteam Fox laid within a ruined office building, giving them a decent view of the wide open National Mall and the layers of defenses built upon it. The open park and landscape was ruined, once by the nuclear bombs and again by the super mutants. The mutants had torn apart the park into a warzone; trenches, bunkers, and barbed wire fortifying the area.
Lying prone on the ground Sev peered through the scope of his Widow sniper rifle. The Capitol Building itself was a wide, white marble building with a tall, decorated dome in the center. Sev didn't know of the architectural or historical importance of the building, but its design made it stick out against the relatively plain surrounding structures. There didn't seem to be any ground level entrance, as the only way into the building was a divided staircase that led up to an upper terrace where the main entrance was. The problem there however, was the series of defensive trenches and a makeshift wall that protected the stairs.
Along the wall, he could see both Super Mutants and their centaur hounds patrolling. If there was anything he wished he could erase from his memories it would be those damned centaurs. Instead of being half human, half horse creatures like Earth's old myths described, they were instead disgusting mounds of flesh, almost like human ants, propelled by twisted limbs that it used to skitter about like an insect. One of the few remnants of its human origin were the human heads atop them that sprouted tentacles out of their mouths. Even Sev shuddered at the sight of that near eldritch abomination, but iron discipline shoved those feelings down.
"What do you think, Boss?" Sev asked his one-eyed commander, who was next to him aiming his sniper as well. "Too well fortified for head on assault. Not our style anyway."
Big Boss simply grunted a reply as he examined the defenses as well. As per usual with super mutant construction, they were shoddy and done without much thought, but annoyingly effective. The strongest defenses were concrete walls, former traffic barriers, or solid chunks of buildings propped up, while other fortifications were piles of scrap metal. However amongst the crudely constructed barricade, the Boss spotted one section on the left edge that seemed to be made of poorly nailed together wood.
"There." Snake pinged the point on with his I-droid marking it on Thane and Sev's HUDs. "Seems to be the weakest point of the defenses."
"Indeed." Thane replied. "However the approach is too open." The relatively open no-man's land in front of the wall only had trenches, some piles of rubble, and a few sandbag barricades. If it was night they might be able to sneak it, but right now it was too obvious.
"Don't worry, I brought along one of the most important tactical espionage tools ever created." The Boss replied as he reached into his utility belt to start pulling something out.
Sev turned to his leader, more attentive than normal. Working with the boss for so long, he knew he was a master of stealth. So if he had a tool that he considered essential to infiltration, he wanted to see it. To his disappointment however, the Boss seemed to pull out 3 cardboard boxes that seemed like they were too big to have fit in his belt.
"Really? Cardboard boxes?" Sev deadpanned.
"Don't underestimate the effectiveness of something like a simple box, Sev." Surprisingly it was Thane that was defending the idea. "I once infiltrated a space station by spending a week within a food storage crate. I survived off the supplies until I reached my destination."
"How did you go to… you know what never mind." Sev shook his head.
"Regardless, we all know super mutant perception and intelligence is mediocre at best." Snake cut back in. "They'll be on the lookout for humanoids to attack, so they won't notice a few boxes slowly moving through the terrain."
"If you say so Boss." Sev replied as he pulled open a cardboard box and got inside, dropping any arguments.
Did he think this was a strange and relatively ineffective tactic? Yes. But would he still follow this order? Also yes. Sev wasn't blindly loyal like some of the regular clone troopers, following orders without question, but he held the Boss's opinions on stealth and warfare in high regard. If the Boss said this was a good idea, he'd trust it.
Thane and Snake swiftly followed suit, propping the cardboard boxes up and sneaking underneath. The trio began to make their way over the no man's land, slowly creeping forward. They had to go slow, pausing every now and then so the occasional glance from a super mutant wouldn't notice them moving. It had taken them all of 30 minutes to cross a stretch of land only a few hundred feet long.
However Thane believed that Amonkira, the drell Lord of Hunters was on their side, as their advance was unnoticed by the horde of frankensteins above them. Once they reached their destinations, they shed their disguises, handing them back to Snake and pressed themselves against the wall. Snake motioned Sev forward, who got to work on the wall.
Extending his knuckle-punch vibroblade, the wrist mounted knife began to vibrate at extremely high frequencies, exponentially enhancing its cutting power. The vibroblade cut through the wood like it was butter, and in less than a minute he cut a mansized hole for them to sneak through.
Meanwhile Thane and Snake kept watch for patrols. Luckily for them, the mutants weren't exactly coordinated in their patrols, moving around sporadically when they wanted rather than on a schedule. When there was a large enough gap in the patrol, Fireteam Fox moved in.
Now within the super mutant base, Fireteam Fox had to figure out how to get inside. Waiting for another gap in the patrols, the squad was able to push up the stairs and get to the main entrance undetected. Protecting the main door were two super mutant sentries, lightly armored brutes wielding hunting rifles.
Hiding by the staircase, Snake drew his suppressed SMG and gestured to Thane who drew his own carnifex pistol and attached a suppressor to it.
"You take the one on the left, I get the one on the right. On my mark." Snake ordered.
"Ready." Thane simply replied as he leveled his pistol.
"Three, two, one, fire." Snake whispered out as both of their guns fired. The suppressed guns barely made a noise as the two mutants dropped instantly.
Swiftly the squad moved forward, grabbing the bodies and hiding them behind a pile of rubble. With the guards dead and no one alerted, the squad continued on, entering the Capitol Building.
They moved silently through the hallway, their footfalls not making any noise. Eventually, the fireteam made their way to the rotunda, a large, circular room underneath the Capitol Building's dome, with a series of scaffoldings placed against the wall creating a faux-watchtower. There were stacks of sandbags placed at odd angles throughout the room, which could provide cover for the legionnaires to hide behind.
The fireteam froze as they heard footfalls and confused ramblings from the rotunda. Snake waved Thane forward, silently telling him to scout ahead. Thane vanished into the shadows, and both Snake and Sev stood unmoving in the hallway until he returned a minute later.
"Three patrolling the ground level in a group, one in the rafters on overwatch." the assassin reported.
"Get rid of the sentry in the tower." Snake ordered Thane. "Sev and I will line up shots on two on the ground, while you take the last one."
"Affirmative Boss." Thane then once again vanished.
Boss raised his suppressed SMG while Sev raised his DC-17m blaster, modified with a flash and noise suppressor attachment. They pushed forward, crouched low behind the sandbags as they advanced. In position behind the super mutants, Snake tagged them all with his iDroid, a virtual 1, 2, and 3 appear in their HUDs.
"Target one, in sight." Snake said as his gun aimed for the respective mutant's head.
"Target two, in sight." Sev matched.
Above them, Snake did not hear a thud, or even a gurgle or groan, as Thane executed the mutant on the scaffolding. He wouldn't have even known that the sentry was dead until Thane spoke over comms as well.
"Target three, in sight." Thane whispered.
"On my mark." The Boss ordered. "Three, two, one, fire."
Immediately three triggers depressed and just as immediately three hulking, yellow bodies fell to the floor. Despite having killed their targets, no one moved. They held their positions, eyes wide for any contact that could have possibly heard the commotion. After 10 seconds of silence, Sev was the first to relax.
"Looks all clear Boss." he rasped.
The squad then regrouped to continue their way forward. Pulling out his iDroid once more, Snake activated a holographic geiger counter, which was able to detect the direction of any nearby sources of radiation. After a few seconds of scanning, it detected a source a few stories below them.
"Why is it everyone always stores their superweapons in the basement?" Sev quipped.
No one answered as they moved to look for a stairwell.
Disgusting. That was the one word that came to Snake's mind as he and his squadmates moved further down the underground complex beneath the Capitol Building. Snake had thought he had seen it all. Hundreds of comrades dying in surprise ambushes, torture houses filled with experimented corpses, parasitic diseases that ravaged his mens' insides, causing them to drown in their own blood.
But even with all of the horrors he's witnessed, he never thought he'd see such an eldritch terror the likes that he was currently walking through. After they had gone down a full story, the walls of the environment shifted.
Where before they were surrounded by concrete and reinforced steel railing, now the walls were coated with flesh. Pinkish, human-like flesh that squished as he walked on it, bled as they stabbed it, and constantly undulated as whatever foul substance coursing within pumped its way through. That didn't even get into the smell. It was as if all of fireteam fox just walked into the body of a titanic being.
Snake shoved down his feelings of revulsion and horror, and instead replaced them with those of discipline and contempt. More so than the Covenant and their fanatical genocidal zeal, more so than the Sith and their sadistic creed, more so than the grimm and their bestial nature, these mutants were an affront to mankind and all things living. Snake would see them burn in nuclear fire.
Soon enough, the winding intestinal hallways came to an end as the fireteam found a larger, open room. The walls were still covered with flesh and gore like the rest of the godforsaken level, but some technology could still be seen as well. On the far side of the room there were several large supercomputers, massive constructs that took up the entire wall. In the center of the room was a cylindrical machine, with pipes and hoses as well as intestines connecting it to the ground. On the top of the cylinder, was a blocky CRT computer monitor, above which was a single head.
As the Legion entered the room, the CRT monitor came to life, giving a dark, dull green glow as what looked like audio patterns began to display. Out of the skull's eye socket, a single tentacle extended, at the end of which was a lidded eyeball that blinked and looked the Legion over.
"What in God's name..." was all Snake could grumble at the grotesque display.
"It is not God that you must invoke in my presence." A smooth, male voice spoke out, the source of which was the cylindrical computer in front of them. "For he did not make us. No, we are the byproduct of Man. And where God may have formed man from clay, it is I who perfected the human form. I am the Master, leader of the Super Mutants."
"You must really be fucked in the head if you think your mutants are perfection." Sev growled out, his blaster leveled on the computer monitor.
"And what would you consider perfection, my white and red friend?" The voice spoke again, but the voice was distorted, a combination of different voices. The word "you" was yelled out by an aggressive male voice, while "Perfection" and "friend" were spoken with a sultry, female one. "The humans? Despite their technology they'll burn and die! The brutish aliens that throw themselves against my borders? Slaves, nothing more. The machines? Please. I will not trust the world to a toaster."
"And you think you're better?" Snake rhetorically asked.
"I know I am." The sultry voice responded. "You should join us! I have watched your progress- progress!- through the wasteland. You are smart, capable, and powerful! Join me in evolution. That is the only way for you to survive. Humanity alone is not strong enough to fight against the horrors of this world."
"The only horror I see is the one in front of me, abomination." Thane coldly replied.
"And I for one would rather not lose my rugged good looks." Sev remarked.
"Then there is nothing more to speak of. Joining me is inevitable. Inevitable! The only variable, shall be the condition of your bodies when you do." The Master flatly spoke as negotiations broke down.
Any hopes Snake was having that this was going to be an easy fight were dashed when out of the sides of the Master's cylindrical body, two gatling lasers unfolded and immediately began firing. From a door behind, two more super mutant overlords, both wielding gatling lasers as well plodded in, spewing a torrent of nuclear lasers.
The Legion immediately dove backwards to the cover of the hallway, as fighting four gatling lasers in CQC was a death sentence. Snake pulled out a smoke grenade and threw it on the ground, breaking line of sight with the enemy. No longer having targets in view the mutants sprayed wildly, suppressing the hallways hoping to hit something out of pure luck. But the Legion was too quick, and were able to exit and get behind fleshy-cover. As the smoke filled the air, the mutants stopped firing, keeping eyes peeled for any movement that they could destroy.
Thane, extending his aura, was actually able to get a sense of where the super mutants were. This wasn't anything as obvious or powerful as a thermal sight, more of a feeling if anything, but it was more than enough for him to fire a round into the smoke, and through the brain of a super mutant.
The remaining mutant and the Master turned to Thane's general direction and fired wildly, looking to score a retaliatory kill. However one of the main downsides of using laser weaponry was the amount of visual evidence it left. Red hot beams sprayed across, sticking out amongst the smoke, giving away the position of both the Master and the remaining super mutant. Sev, not under threat of getting shot, raised his Widow anti-material rifle, and with a pull of the trigger blew open a bowling ball sized hole into the chest of the super mutant.
With the two super mutants dead, and the smoke from the grenade dissipating, Snake pushed up, holding down the trigger of his SMG. Sixty .197 caliber rounds slammed into the metallic-meat covered surface of the master at a rate of 15 rounds a second as Snake emptied his entire magazine. As the gatling lasers turned to incinerate the Boss, a high explosive round detonated across the Master's body as Sev hit it with an anti-tank round.
As Snake reloaded and continued shooting, this time joined by Thane, the Master cried out with all of its voices combined, "ENOUGH!"
Suddenly, an invisible wave of psychic energy exploded from the Master, slamming into Fireteam Fox and knocking all of them to the ground. Snake gripped his head as he felt immeasurable pain coursing through, like his blood had become acid. Noticing spots of crimson dripping onto the ground, he touched his face and saw that his eyes and nose were bleeding. That was the last thing he saw before he passed out.
Sev groaned, his vision blurry, hearing muffled, he had no idea what was going on. Suddenly a fist hit his face and he snapped to attention, years of training kicking in. There was a hostile nearby, and he needed to kill it. That's all that mattered. Raising his blaster, Sev pulled the trigger, killing whatever dark green blob was in front of him. Something hit his left arm with what felt like a sword or machete, digging into his duraplast armor. Swiftly Sev spun, slicing the assailants throat with his vibro knife.
Green-yellow blood splattered over his visor, his armor automatically cleaning off the viscera. That's when his vision began to clear. He was outdoors, natural sunlight shining through a dense forest canopy. He was standing on a platform made of wood, and surrounding him were dead bodies of trandoshan mercenaries.
Sev squinted, confused, taking a step back and bumping into something. He turned and saw a massive AA-Turret, and in the sky a CIS destroyer exploded and fell to the ground. Then Sev remembered. He was on Kashyyyk, he and Delta Squad were tasked with taking down the CIS destroyer, to keep it from landing reinforcements into the tree-city.
A series of roars and battle cries instantly caught his attention. Turning back to the treeline and wooden walkways, more trandoshan slavers and mercenaries ran at him, firing wildly. Sev retreated, ducking behind the AA-turret, firing bursts of plasma from his blaster rifle. But he knew it was pointless. There were just too many of them. For every lizard he killed, 10 took their place. If he had all of Delta Squad here, maybe he could fight them off, but by himself? No chance.
Sev pulled the trigger of his gun again, blowing the brains out of another trandoshan's head. They were going to take his life, but he was going to make it damn expensive. As lizard after lizard dropped, the trandoshans eventually started using their own allies as cover, grabbing bodies as meat shields to stop the projectiles.
As the trandoshans approached, inching ever closer, Sev prepared himself for a gruesome end as he extended his vibroblade. As the first trandoshan made it into melee, Sev lunged, only for the trandoshan to be torn apart by blue plasma. Sev turned his head to the source, as a hail of plasma fire cut down all of the trandoshans in front of him. Out of the canopy, Sev saw his team, Delta squad. Boss and Scorch, the orange and black and yellow themed commandos, pushed up, blasting lizards left and right while the green armored Fixer hung back, providing cover fire. Within moments, the wave of alien slavers were dead, and Sev's squad came to meet him.
"Sev, we heard your distress call and came as fast as we could." Boss led with.
"Yeah, imagine my shock when I heard Sev actually called out for help." Scorch quipped as he double tapped a twitching alien.
"I uhh… yeah, yeah right I remember sending out the call." Sev mumbled out, confused at what was happening.
"You doing ok there Oh-Seven?" Fixer, the team's medic and slicer asked, approaching the hunter.
"Yeah, I'm green. I think I got knocked in the head back there, everything went blurry for a bit." Sev conjectured.
"Do you need bacta?"
"No… No I'm good." Sev shook his head before turning to Boss. "So what's our next move Boss? I'm excited to kill more lizards"
"We have new orders coming from General Yoda himself. We're to evac the area and meet up with the 41st. Clear out an LZ commandos, we have work to do!" Boss barked out.
Fixer and Scorch immediately got to work, making sure all avenues of attacks were covered. Sev, couldn't help but feel like he was forgetting something, but shook his head. He had an enemy in front of him and a job to do. He wouldn't let his brothers down.
Thane woke up to the sounds of crashing waves. He could feel coarse, granular sand in his fingers, and a bright sun shone down on his face. Thane's eyes shot open and he immediately stood up, examining his surroundings.
As he thought, he was on a beach. It was not a beach he recognized, but he recognized the sky, the smell of the atmosphere itself. He was on Kahje, the Hanhar-Drell homeworld where he grew up. Strange that he was outside though. The humid climate of Kahje was at best uncomfortable and at worst deadly to arid-adapted Drell.
"Thane!" A voice called out from behind him.
The former assassin spun around, and immediately recognized who it was, recognizing her light green-yellow skin, her sunset colored eyes, it was Irikah, his wife, long since deceased.
"Irikah…" Thane gasped out. "I.. what…"
"Thane, has being outside for all of fifteen minutes already scrambled your brain?" Irikah chastised, slightly annoyed. "Come on, I know you enjoy the view, but we can't say out here for too long, it's not safe for Kolyat."
Thane saw his 10 year old son, the more aquatic-green drell, waved to him with a big smile. Thane then felt his head hurt. Kolyat… Kolyat was already a grown man, wasn't he? But that's impossible, as his own child was right in front of him.
A hand on his arm snapped Thane out of his confusion. His wife Irikah began pulling him from his spot. "Come on, Thane, we have to go."
"I… yes of course." Thane couldn't help but feel off as his body automatically began to walk forward.
"Left! Left! Left, right, left!" The drill sergeants' voices rang out as they marched recruits over the walkways of the offshore oil rig converted to secret headquarters known as Mother Base.
It wasn't often that Big Boss/Venom Snake came to watch the recruits train, but he didn't have a mission right now, and his presence amongst the men was always good for morale.
Snake watched as two Diamond Dog soldiers ran through CQC drills, one holding onto a plastic training knife while the other had empty hands, waiting to deflect and counter the knife strikes. Snake nodded in approval as the empty handed soldier parried his partner's knife thrust, slipping passed the blade and throwing him with a leg sweep.
"These new recruits are good." A gruff voice behind him spoke. It was Snake's best friend, Kazuhira "Kaz" Miller, the half American half Japanese subcommander. "More than ready to be sent on missions."
Kaz hobbled forward on his crutch. Despite having lost both his left foot and right arm in the battle against the XOF, Kaz was proud and defiant, not letting his injuries slow him down. Even his eyes, currently hidden behind a large pair of aviator glasses, were ruined from his years of warfare and torture. But despite the physical maiming the man went through, he would not let his spirit break like his body did.
"Hmm." Snake grunted.
Ever since defeating Skull Face and XOF, as well as recovering Sahelanthropus from Eli, Snake and Miller were busy continuing to expand the operations of Diamond Dogs. The original Big Boss needed them and their army soon for when he made his move against the Patriots.
Suddenly he felt a new hand on his right shoulder. Snake turned and saw the smaller, hand covered in a leather glove, was attached to a familiar, scantily clad woman, Quiet. Quiet and Snake had grown exceptionally close, especially after she ran away to Afghanistan, and the two of them fought off an entire Soviet armored division. After defeating the Soviets, both Snake and Quiet returned to Mother Base together, for better or for worse.
While Snake was never one for romance, he knew Quiet meant a lot to him, and he meant a lot to her. Despite originally being a spy and assassin for Skull Face, Quiet became loyal to the Boss like so many of the other soldiers brought to the platform. Quiet flashed Boss a smile and gave a musical hum that replaced her normal language.
"Boss." Another voice called out from behind him.
Snake turned and saw this time it was the Western-themed Russian gunslinger Revolver Ocelot.
"We have a new mission Boss." Ocelot continued. "A rival PMC is starting to make moves in the Middle East, probably capitalizing on rising tensions between Saddam and the US. The Stars and Stripes want us to get rid of them."
Kaz shook his head. "Another day, another mission, right Boss?"
Snake gave a small smile, and nodded his head. Turning around Snake made his way towards the helicopter pad with Quiet in tow. One day the Boss will call on him, for them to realize their dream. To create a better world, a new heaven that they can call their own. But for now, he had a mission.
In the fleshy underground that was the Master's lair, Fireteam Fox stood unmoving, dumbstruck as they were trapped within their own minds. While they were ready for a hard firefight, something that none of them could have prepared for was the awe-inspiring psychic might of the Master.
As the fight was as good as over, the Master called in another super mutant, who dumbly followed its orders to the letter.
"Take them to the FEV pit! Despite how much of a pain they've been, they shall be POWERFUL mutants." The Master barked.
The super mutant dumbly nodded, grabbing Thane by the wrist, dragging him forward. The drell, still caught up in the Master's psychic illusion, walked forward without resistance.
Back in the dream version of Kahje, Thane walked with his family, despite the continual feelings of discontentment he was experiencing. Thane looked at his wife Irikah. She was beautiful. As beautiful as the day they first met and she stood defiantly in front of his crosshairs. As beautiful as the days her body she died, when Thane cremated her body and spread her ashes to the see of Kahje.
Thane froze, memories flooding back into him, his photographic memory taking control. "I stand in the morgue, next to a hanar and drell officer. The drell flips the bedsheet. I see her body, sunset eyes now dull. Multiple gunshot wounds, bruising around the face. Amateur hit, but successful. Tears fall down my face. 'It's her.' I say."
Thane's head snapped back as he pulled out of his solipsistic trance. Thane had a perfect memory, and he knew his wife Irikah was dead. He knew he was dead. Then the flood of other memories rushed in as well. The Collectors, Shepard's suicide mission, the Reaper Invasion, the Final Destination, and the Master.
"You're not real." Thane whispered out, as much as an accusation as it was him trying to convince himself.
Irikah smiled sadly at him. "No, I'm not."
"This is all an illusion. A psychic attack by the Master."
"Yes, it is. None of this is real." Irikah nodded.
Now in control of the dream, Thane willed his pistol to appear in his hands, and it did. Looking down at the gun, he then resolved himself and aimed it at the spectre of his wife.
"However brief it was, I was happy to have seen you, one last time." Thane quietly spoke, pistol leveled at Irikah's head.
Irikah's smile shifted from one tinged by sadness, to one of genuine happiness. "Go save your friends."
As the super mutant grabbed the stupefied Thane's left arm, Thane's head snapped up, surprising the monster. Without giving the mutant a second to realize what's going on, Thane's right arm reached for his side, drawing his pistol and painted the walls with its brains.
"WHAT!? HOW!?" The Master roared out as Thane's alien biology must have helped him resist the psychic attack.
But Thane would not stop. Before the Master had a chance to rev up its gatling lasers, Thane used his biotics to shove both Sev and Snake, slamming them against the wall. The impacts of their heads against the wall reset their cognitive processes, waking them up from whatever illusion they were under as well.
Sev took half a second to shake his head, before he recognized where he was. Snarling, Sev immediately drew his Widow sniper rifle and fired. The mass effect round flew forward tearing into the Master's outer hull, and knocking one of the gatling lasers off of it.
Like a well oiled machine, Thane followed up without hesitation. Using his biotics he pulled the gatling laser and threw it to Snake, who deftly caught it and began to spin the barrels. Before the Master could retaliate, Sev continued his attack, drawing an EMP grenade and throwing it at the organic mutant supercomputer.
"AHHHHHHH" The Master's various voices cried out, stunned by the electricity coursing through it.
As it screamed, both Sev and Thane dove for the gatling lasers used by the super mutants they killed previously. With all of Fireteam Fox aiming down their sights, 3 torrents of laser bolts sprayed forward, overwhelming the Master, destroying its form and sending it to oblivion.
The smell of ozone, smoke, and charred meat filled the air as Fireteam Fox dropped their gatling lasers, spent of all electron charge packs. The three commandos slowly approached the scorched pile of meat and electronics as the monitor which displayed the Master's vocals died.
"So… I vote we purge the memory of this entire place from our memories and this world." Sev grumbled as he kicked the head that used to belong to the master.
"I agree with such a sentiment." Thane replied as Snake only grunted.
As Sev moved the wreckage of the Master out of the way, the roars and screams of mutants could be heard above them. Gun fire erupted as they began to slaughter one another.
It didn't take long for Thane to conjecture what was happening "Seems that killing the Master has disrupted his psychic control over the mutants, causing them to go berserk."
"Legion, find a way out." Snake barked. It was too dangerous to try and escape the way they came, and in his experience, bases such as these tended to have a hidden emergency exit after killing whoever is in charge.
As Sev dug through the carcass of the Master, he saw that there was an additional hatch beneath the super computer that went further down.
"Found it!" Sev called out as he popped open the hatch. It was a simple metallic ladder that went deeper into the facility.
Without knowing where the hatch actually went, it was a leap of faith for them to go down and simply hope there was a way out. But Boss didn't become the Big Boss by taking it safe. Taking point, Snake grabbed onto the ladder and began to slide down. The secret passageway down took them far below where they were, the height being at least a few stories. The ladder deposited them into an empty, thankfully non-organic concrete hallway, that extended forward into a set of blast doors.
Reaching the door, he had Sev set a det-charge pack on it, and they stood on the sides, waiting to breach. Sev clicked a switch and his thermite charge sparked as it cut through the steel door, blowing it open and giving them access to the room ahead.
Entering through the doors, Fireteam Fox slowly walked into the new room, ready for anything. It was pitch black, but their entrance seemed to trigger some automatic lighting revealing what was inside. The room itself was massive, easily hundreds of feet in length, width, and height. There were several metallic scaffolds and walkways along the wall, and even a crane, but what drew all of their attention was Metal Gear Zeke, standing in the center of the room.
"I assume this is the target, boss?" Thane asked while Sev gave a low whistle of appreciation for the mech.
"It is. Last I recall, the AI pod in the top should have been converted into a cockpit. It's meant for only one, but we can squeeze in." Boss answered.
The legionnaires moved to the scaffolding, climbing up into the mecha. It was cramped, like Snake said it would be, but the Legion could deal with the discomfort. Flicking a few switches, Metal Gear Zeke activated, electronic switches and dials coming to life. Two handles extended, allowing Snake to grab hold of them, shifting the mech as he did.
"Glad you know how to pilot this thing Boss, but you know we got a couple hundred feet of concrete above us?" Sev commented as Boss unhooked the safety and power couplings.
Wordlessly, Snake flipped another two switches, and a grumbling roar shook the roof of the hangar. Above them, a circular door spiraled open, revealing a secret exit to the outside. Above them in the rotunda, the floor opened up, spiraling open as the hidden hanger beneath the Capitol Building revealed itself. Above that, the famous dome of the Capitol Building retracted into the body of the building, giving Fireteam Fox a direct exit out of the sub levels.
"I'm not even going to question why that was there or how that all worked." Sev shook his head, not looking the gift horse in the mouth.
Activating Metal Gear Zeke's jet packs, the mecha rocketed up out of the hanger. Super mutants on the ground level fired their rifles at the metal gear, small caliber rounds bouncing off of its armor.
Flying into the air, Venom Snake took Zeke to a safe distance, and activated the metal gear's weapon systems. He promised to purge this place in nuclear fire, and he was going to do so. Aiming Zeke's railgun right for the capitol building and pulled the trigger. Snake turned Zeke around and began flying back South, not bothering to look at the explosion as the Capitol Building was consumed by the birth of a new star.
A/N 5/4/20: This one took a while to get out, I'd like to apologize for that. There were a few reasons for the delay, but I'll stick to the ones relevant to this story and my other one. First, I decided to rewrite some of the stuff I had planned for this story in its outline. While you guys may never know what I've changed, it did take some time for me to figure out the plot changes and edit all my notes.
The other reason, and one that took up pretty much all my time, was that I was bit by an inspiration bug and wrote multiple story outlines for multiple new long fics. The inspiration was enough that I was able to write out pretty much the whole outlines and summaries, going over the stories from beginning to end. The one I got the most work done for is a RWBY + Elder Scrolls Xover, which I am currently writing the first chapter of.
While I know there is literally no way for me to write a third fic along with two ongoing long fics and maintain my sanity and any semblance of free time, I felt like I had to write down these ideas. Not sure how I'll post it, maybe when I reach the mid points of both Legion of the Damned and Jaune Arc, Lord of Hunger in a few weeks I'll take a hiatus and switch to my new story, then switch back later. Or maybe I'll write this new fic on the side, and only post sporadically or when the whole thing is done. Who knows what the future holds. Main thing though is I am committed to finishing both of my current stories, regardless of how many new ideas I have.
Anyway, focusing on this story again, the Master was actually my first choice for a main bad guy from the Fallout universe. While I've never actually played Fallout 1, I am aware of its story, and felt that the Master has always been one of the strongest individual villains of the series, both physically and as a character.
Review Responses:
Ptl: I still remember the first time I encountered one in Fallout 3 and didn't know about the Fatman. It was terror.
Arcanis7274: Oh Vesemir is a good one I didn't think of. One or two of the others you mentioned I have planned to join soon.
Brother Bov: Some of the changes I made to the story were partly to get more Warhammer characters into this story actually.
Slim A Lou Prime: Thanks!
Draekaaru: Thanks. Bonds of Steel is one of my favorite semblance ideas I've had. I mostly can't wait till we get to the point in the story where other semblances of the Legion are revealed. And Vax is a good idea that I didn't think of.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter once again. Make sure you keep staying inside, and I'll see you in the next one.