A/N: I own nothing except the laptop I wrote this story on.
THWACK.
"Get up!"
THUD.
"Have to be faster than that, boys!"
SMACK.
"Good Lord, my nanna has better lateral speed than you!"
Howling Badger made her rounds through the lines of Diamond Dog soldiers, barking orders and critiques whenever she saw fit. Today was CQC training day, and all of the new recruits were being put through what the Aussie woman cheerfully called 'The Rocks': if one could survive getting dashed against them on their first day of training, then maybe they were fit to be in the Combat Unit after all.
BAM.
"Christ, sonny, you're flatter than week-old soda. GET UP!"
Today was not promising.
Standing up on one of the platforms above the training area, they watched her leading the drills. The construction of the secondary Command Platform was complete, although they had not moved much of the materials onto the platform yet, leaving a wide-open space for the recruits to be practicing. Miller watched one of the new recruits get flipped over by a more experienced Dog, and shook his head.
"These have to be the sorriest recruits I have ever seen, Boss." He turned to Snake. "I don't know why you aren't down there instructing them yourself."
"I can't be everywhere at once, Master." Snake said quietly. Ocelot was sitting down, his legs dangling over the ledge of the platform. He heard his boss' words, and chuckled.
"Tell the Soviets in Afghanistan that, Boss. They think you're a horned demon who teleports in the night."
Snake shook his head, unamused.
"Badger is a good soldier, and I trust her to train the Dogs." He said, turning to Miller. "Have patience, Master Miller."
"I would have more patience if I saw her in action." Miller said, shaking his head. "After all, I recall that you didn't recruit her so much as save her from a hovel where she was tied up by some Spetsnaz. Hardly what I would expect from someone who is as deadly as you claim she is to be."
"Looks aren't everything, Miller." Ocelot chided, taking the time to start cleaning the inside of one of his pistols. Miller snorted.
"Perhaps not, but that is some pretty damning evidence."
"I wouldn't call it a rescue." Snake said, breaking his silence. He gestured to the platform below them, as Badger had clearly reached her breaking point with some of the recruits.
"That was bloody AWFUL!" Badger roared, breaking up a pair of Dogs. "You couldn't throw a baseball, much less a man over your shoulder, you damned Yankee!" She snapped at one of the recruits, a baby-faced man who was clearly not accustomed to a woman barking at him like this.
"Ma'am, this is hard!" He said, breaking his silence. "I don't see you doing any of it yourself!"
There was a silence across the platform.
"Dead man." Ocelot muttered.
Badger's eyes narrowed to slits. She smiled.
"What did you say, sonny?" She asked.
"I said-"
He never got to finish his sentence, and Badger swung her leg forward and then back, hooking him by the calf and sending him crashing to the ground on his back. Badger had clung to his wrist, however, and while he was lying on the ground she kept her left hand grabbing his wrist while she knelt down and cupped the back of his head with her other arm. Quite roughly, she forced him back up into a standing position, while still maintaining a vicegrip on his wrist. Then, she stepped in front of him, grabbed him by the hip, and threw him over her hip like a sack of potatoes. He'd barely hit the ground before she'd scuttled around and trapped him in a rear naked chokehold, a rather ugly-looking knife pointed towards his neck.
"While you were sayin', I just carved your voice box out." Badger said. She released him from her grip, and then let him get up to his feet. She laid down on the ground flat on her back, and then kipped up without breaking a sweat. She brushed off her arm, ignoring the stunned look on the faces of the other recruits, and stared at the recruit she'd just humbled.
"Otter! Rat!" She barked.
Two of the Security Team personnel, essentially the Mother Base equivalent of the police, stepped forward.
"Ma'am?" Rat asked. He was, unlike his name, a monster of a human being. Badger gestured to the recruit.
"Take him to the brig for two hours for insubordination. I'll stop by later and work out a proper punishment for him later." She looked at the ashamed Dog, and gave him a genuine smile. "Don't feel bad, honey. I've been beating the shit out of men downtalkin' me since you were still in diapers."
Nodding glumly, the Dog was led away by Rat and Otter, who were clearly teasing him about picking a fight with Howling Badger.
Snake turned to look at Master Miller, and tried not to smile at the utterly thunderstruck look on the man's face. He cleared his throat to get Miller's attention.
"Like I was saying, I didn't really 'rescue' Badger. Pequod picked up an open-channel SOS call while we were flying back to Mother Base, and we stopped by some old ruins where she was in the middle of a gun battle with Spetsnaz. She was covered in blood – not much of her own, by the way – , but we found her surrounded by dead Soviets and the only reason I even had to fire the minigun on the remaining squad was because she was out of ammo." He looked contemplative. "Though I bet she might've tried to beat them to death with the butt of her rifle if I hadn't stepped in." He turned around and started to walk away, but not before turning around to face Master Miller.
"I know how to pick men and women in the field, Master."
…
"So you're saying that you shot between the blades of Baby's rotors…while they were spinning."
A nod.
"And the Boss told you to do this?"
Silence.
"Ok, not the Boss. Ocelot?"
A nod.
"…Of course it fucking was…and the Boss signed off on this?"
A nod.
"Quiet, I know you're on our side – I think – but the next time you're given an order that may or may not put Baby in danger…don't listen. Actually, check that: don't listen, and then shoot the person that gave you that order right in the face. Preferably with that really, really big sniper rifle you keep locked up in Baby's storage racks."
A quizzical stare.
"I don't care if it was a chance to prove your loyalty or skills, Baby scares easily! Do you have any idea how fussy she gets when something is a little bit off kilter with her rotor blades?"
A raised eyebrow.
"I am not taking this too seriously! Just…just let's move on, okay? Put in the next tape and tell me what you think. What'd you think of that last one? I personally think it was shit, but that might just be because I'm a dude. Probably isn't going to amount to anything, what do you think?"
A dismissive frown, and a shake of the head. A stuck-out tongue for good measure.
"Yeah, I thought so. Just gonna be another flash in the pan artist, I think. Besides, Like a Virgin is a shit album name."
…
"-And then she just pulled a knife on him, all fucking casual like. It was the baddest thing I've ever seen!"
Rabbit adjusted his glasses, pushing them up against the bridge of his nose a little bit tighter, and nodded.
"Sounds like it."
"Rabbit." Fox said, looking thoroughly off-put. "You could not be less interested in what I'm telling you."
"With brains like that you'd fit in with the Intel team just fine." Rabbit said, risking the playful shove to the shoulder from his friend. (Which came, as expected) "And you're right. I'm not a combat agent. I stay on Mother Base and break down the paperwork so that the field agents have the least trouble imaginable." He said. He cleared his throat. "Besides, I knew that Badger was tough. She's been in the military longer than either of us has been alive. You don't get to be her age in this profession without being made of the toughest material."
"You saying that you aren't?" Fox asked, a smirk growing on his lips. Rabbit nodded.
"Absolutely. I'm confident in my abilities as an analyst and a techie, and I am ill-equipped to handle life in the field. It won't be a bullet that kills me." He shuffled the papers he had on the desk, and made it clear that he wasn't interested in furthering the conversation. "Now leave me alone. I need to finish this report for Commander Ocelot by dinner and you here is only going to distract me."
Muttering something about pencil pushers and geeks, Fox got himself off of the desk and sauntered out of the Intel office.
…
He decided to burn off some of his anxious energy by going for a light jog. It was midday, but thankfully the sun was buried behind a scrim of grey clouds and potential rainfall, so he wasn't in danger of sweating to death. His shoulder had more or less completely healed up, but the doctor told him to take it easy with the CQC. He'd tapped out a lot sooner than normal today as a precaution, but he made a note to get his revenge the next time he faced off against Bear. This would be the time where he finally got that big Bantu bastard to tap out, instead of vice versa.
Eventually he found himself on the medical platform, and decided to call it a day. Breathing a little bit heavily, he decided to walk over to the edge of the platform and watch the cranes constructing the latest expansion to Mother Base.
As it turned out, he wasn't the only one out there.
"Angel!" Fox said, a grin forming on his face as he took a seat on the edge. "Fancy seeing you out here."
"Yeah. Lucky me." Grey Chameleon said, though she wasn't looking up at him. She was sitting a few feet away from him. "Did you come here specifically to bother me, or is this just a freaky coincidence that you planned out?"
"Why, Angel, when you put it that way you make it sound awfully cynical-like."
"My name is Chameleon." She said, turning to look at him. There was an icy stare in her eyes. Fox's smile faded.
"I don't mean any harm by it, you know. But if you want me to stop I'll stop."
There was a pause. She stared at him, her expression betraying none of her thoughts. Finally, she sighed.
"No…no it's fine. Don't worry about it, it isn't you. It's just…I'm having a rough day."
"Well, everyone has rough days, y'know." Fox said. "I might be a dumb kid from Philly, so I might not be too good at talkin' about it, but I'm a good listener."
"You a good listener? But aren't you from Philadelphia?" Chameleon asked, looking at him and trying her best to appear innocent.
"Yeah, that's real fuckin' funny. I'm trying to be supportive, here!" Fox said. But he was smiling too.
"In your own bizzare, immature way." Chameleon said. "But fine. I'm just tired. I spent all day fixing up a few of the combat soldiers that were out disrupting some supply routes in Afghanistan, which is exhausting even when no one is seriously injured…and I'm troubled."
"By what?" Fox asked. Chameleon looked around, as if wondering if someone was listening.
"I had the strangest case yesterday."
"It's Mother Base, Angel. Strange is the new normal."
"Not like that." Chameleon said. "I had to treat a soldier…from before."
"Before?"
"Before the attack nine years ago." Chameleon said. "Boss had found him wandering in Afghanistan. He brought him back to the Med Bay for an eval, and they had me take care of him." She sighed. "He looked like utter shit, Fox. He was still wearing a uniform for…MSF? I couldn't make it out, the patch was so faded. There was a skull and orange and black background, but he kept muttering something over and over. 'I knew he wasn't dead, I knew it.' I had to monitor him for an entire day and a half, just to make sure that he didn't try to harm himself or others. He was barely lucid, and went into convulsions more than a few times. We had him strung up on IVs and everything I could think of. I…I think he'd been out in the wild for years, Fox. I don't know how he was alive. But…but he is. And I think he's gonna be alive. And he even remembered his old codename: Komodo Dragon."
"That sounds like a happy ending, Angel." Fox said. "So why don't you look like it?"
"Because it isn't the pain and the worry that he caused us by nearly dying on the table." Chameleon said. "I'm a doctor; I've seen that happen before. It's awful, don't get me wrong, but it happens. No, that's not what's bugging me. What's bugging me is this: are there others like him out there?"
Fox had no ready answer for her.
...
He had no idea how much pain he'd been in until he started walking around and his head was clear. He'd been given a wheelchair until he felt more in control of his extremities, but he'd refused as soon as he knew he could put weight on his legs. He was on a shitload of painkillers, and he knew that any sudden movements could bring about a flurry of projectile vomit, but it was worth it to be in control of himself. That was something that the doctors could never take from him then, and they sure as hell weren't denying him now.
He moved deliberately and slowly through the platform, and looked around. Mother Base had never been this big back in the day, and now here it was, a sprawling nation of multiple platforms, all so much greater than the ones that he had ever stepped foot on. Christ, this was only the medical platform that he stood on. And it was already bigger than the barracks that he'd stayed on all those years before. He felt a little bit woozy at the thought of it, and ran a hand through his hair. It had grown messy and unkempt over the years. But, then again, he liked the look. He'd kept it cropped too short back in the day; now he looked like a scarred-up version of…what was the name of that Hollywood actor? James something or other. Stewart? It was the Mr. Smith Goes to Washington guy. Yeah, that was it.
He felt a presence come up behind him. He reached into his pocket, and pulled out a lighter and a carton of cigarettes.
"Those are bad for you, you know." The voice behind him said.
Komodo Dragon smiled despite himself.
"And the shit you smoke is that much better, Boss?"
There was a pause, and then a soft chuckle.
"I guess not. A little more futuristic, maybe." Venom Snake walked up next to his old soldier, and the two of them stared out over the waters of the Indian Ocean. He stared at the carton of cigarettes in Dragon's hand, and raised an eyebrow. "That carton is in pretty bad shape for one that's never been opened."
"That's because it's nine years old." Dragon said quietly.
"Why have you been keeping a nine-year-old pack of smokes, and never once cracked them open?"
"Because you gave them to me, Boss." Dragon said, looking his commander in the eye. He took the stunned silence of his commander as a sign to continue. "Nine years ago in the Caribbean, before I went off on a one-man recon op to Nicaragua to see how the Sandinistas were doing. Sort of an after-action report. You told me to wait until I got back from my mission, and you got back from yours…and we'd smoke 'em together." He paused. "That was before the 'inspection.'"
"After all this time?" Snake asked.
"What did you expect, Boss?" Dragon said. "I wasn't about to disobey a direct order, after all."
Snake felt something wet on the corner of his eye.
"Dragon…here. Let me do the honors." He took the lighter out of his soldier's hands, and with a soft flink ignited the flame. Dragon leaned forward, having selected one of the cigarettes in the carton that wasn't ruined, and let it set over the flame until it was alight.
For a moment, the two of them were silent. Dragon with his cigarette, Snake with his phantom cigar. They listened to the waves lapping against the metal support beams beneath them, and watched the stars overhead. Finally, Komodo Dragon spoke.
"Damn, that's a good light."
Snake nodded, and then turned to face his loyal soldier.
"Welcome home, Dragon."
"Thanks, Boss."
A/N: Just another day in the Seychelles.