A/N: I own nothing except the laptop I wrote this story on.
He licked the corner of his lips. He was getting thirsty. That was never fun, and awfully distracting when he was in the middle of delicate work such as this. Pequod had a little iDroid out sitting on the floor of the ACC of Baby, and every now and then it would pleasantly intone information for him.
"Acknowledged. Gun-rotation sensitivity calibrated to 45% sensitivity."
He shook his head, and kept tinkering with the wires under the bed of the helicopter. It had taken a while for him to unscrew the armored plates that covered Baby's underbelly, and he knew that this was the last bit of work he was going to get in before the weekly inspections.
"Whatcha doin'?"
He wasn't expecting company, and so when he lurched upright from his supine position he banged his head against the belly of the helicopter.
"Acknowledged. Gun-rotation sensitivity calibrated to 35% sensitivity."
He growled in annoyance both at the smarting pain in his forehead as well as the fact that his calibrations had just been set back, and rolled out from underneath the helicopter to see who was the heathen that had interrupted his calibrations.
It was that new girl. Spitting Dragon. She was cleaned up from the last time he'd seen her. Short dark hair in a rather boyish cut and olive skin, as well as piercing blue eyes. She was dressed in what looked like mechanic's clothing, or whatever it was that the R&D assigned to their new grunts.
"Busy." Pequod grunted, rubbing his forehead. "And you interrupting me didn't help."
"Oh. Sorry." Dragon's Welsh accent managed to make that sound both adorably and irritatingly pleasant all at the same time. She winced, but there was a sense that she wasn't being sincere with it.
"Don't patronize me." Pequod said, his eyes narrowed both in annoyance and the fact that the sun was right in his eyes. The way that Dragon was standing over him, she was just out of the way of shielding him from the sun. If he didn't know any better, he'd say that she was doing it on purpose. But there was no way that this girl was that petty…was there?
"You're looking a little squinty there, skip. You feelin' alright?"
Yep. She was definitely petty enough.
"I'm. fine." Pequod growled. "Now is there a reason that you stopped by to bother me? Because as much as I'd love to chat…I have-"
"Calibrations on Baby's gun as well as her radar." Dragon said. "They tend to take you most of the day whenever you're out here working on them."
"…How do you know this?" Pequod asked, sitting upright on the sliding board he'd been lying down on. Spitting Dragon chuckled.
"Commander Ocelot told me. He said that you work awfully hard on Baby, and that you might need some relief."
"Don't…don't call her Baby. Only I get to call her Baby." Pequod said. But then he realized something as he processed the rest of what she'd said. "Did…did you say relief?"
"Yup! Commander Ocelot assigned me to be Baby's mechanic."
Pequod fell backwards on the sliding board. However, in doing so, he forgot that he hadn't slid out far enough to avoid hitting his head on the way down.
"Ow, FUCK!"
There was a whooshing sound.
"Goddamn it, Quiet, if you have a camera I swear I will shoot you. I don't care if you can dodge it."
…
WHACK.
"Try again."
THUD.
"That's incorrect."
BANG.
"OWWWWWWW!"
"Son, that's what happens when you rush."
"Well how am I supposed to do anything else?" Wounded Fox popped up from the ground. He was sweating heavily, and his white tee shirt that he wore under his usual on-base fatigues was drenched in sweat. Meanwhile, Komodo Dragon was wearing the standard reg uniform of the Diamond Dogs and hadn't even broken a sweat. The older soldier raised an eyebrow.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that you're so goddamn fast that I don't have the time to work on the fundamentals because you'll hit me with another-AUGH!" Fox just barely managed to slap the ground to catch his fall as Komodo swept his leg. "THAT'S NOT HELPING!" Fox roared, drawing some sympathetic glances from the guards on duty on that wing of the combat platform.
"Well, just talking and talking isn't going to help you." Komodo said. "I could have taken you down at least ten different times while you were grousing but I decided to wait to let you catch your breath. But when you kept going…well, I had to do something."
"Asshole." Fox muttered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Komodo Dragon shrugged, and got into a relaxed fighting stance.
"Get it out of your system now, kiddo. We're gonna be here for a while otherwise."
…
"Have a seat, son."
Rabbit took a seat across from the man at the desk. He never liked these meetings, even though he knew that he was one of the best in the department at them. They were usually in and out in a few minutes, because Commander Ocelot never needed any clarification for Rabbit's reports and detailing. The young man pushed his glasses up on the brim of his nose, and blinked a few times.
"Y-yes, sir." He said. Ocelot had a friendly smile as he shuffled the stack of papers on the desk in front of him, and started to neatly sort them in front of him. He looked at the guard at the door, and nodded pleasantly.
"Close the door. This is level four clearance."
Rabbit gulped, and felt the back of his throat go dry. There were four levels of clearance that he knew of. Level one was general knowledge. Anyone in Mother Base was privy to level one. Level two was a bit more protected information. You needed permission from your unit leader (usually one of the lieutenants) to access the information involved, and you had to keep it tight to the lip. Level three was really tough stuff. The commanders of the various platforms were privy to this info, and you weren't unless it was an emergency.
But level four? That was for the highest ranking members of Mother Base to be privy to. If there was a level four clearance, then that meant that this meeting was going to take a lot longer than just a few minutes.
"Son, you realize what this means, right?" Ocelot asked, leaning forward slightly over the desk. "This could be some sensitive information that you've got here."
Rabbit gulped, but he nodded.
"Yes. Yes sir, I understand that only you and I are to discuss this information unless it gets declassified."
Ocelot smiled.
"Good. Because now this is level five clearance."
"L-level five?" Rabbit asked.
"That means that it's for my eyes only."
Snake stepped out of the shadows, and the way that he'd silently done so nearly made Rabbit wet himself with fear. The Boss might be the man that he worked for and the young analyst trusted him completely, but damn if he wasn't the most terrifying human being that he'd ever seen.
Snake stood over the table, off to the side. He tapped one of the manila folders.
"Tell me what you've found out about Cipher and Africa."
… …
"You wanted to see me, honey?"
"Don't call me that."
"All right, all right. Just a little term of endearment, you know."
"I don't think anyone's ever come up with a term of endearment for me…in I don't know how long."
"I can imagine. You don't look like someone who'd let anyone get away with it."
"So why do I let you get away with it?"
"Probably because I'm better than you at CQC."
"That might be stretching it. But equal? I'd say that's a fair assessment."
"Whatever you say, honey."
"You're mocking me."
"Not at all! Here, gimme a light."
"Sure. C'mere."
"…"
"…"
"How long have you know the Boss?"
"Since he recruited me. It had to have been, what, almost fifteen years ago? Just after the fall of Saigon. I was done with my term in the regular troops and was about to quit military life in general. But then the Boss found me and Miller offered me triple of what my regular pay in the army was."
"I retired after a very long and healthy career with the RAAF…and then I realized that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life quietly waiting for Death to pick me up off of my porch. I just figured that I was a soldier and a fighter, and that I should go out on my shield. And so far, I've been fighting ever since I was recruited by the Boss here. He's a good man. Kind of quiet, though."
"That did surprise me when I came back. Nine years ago and even earlier than that, you couldn't get Boss to shut up…especially about some of his hobbies and personal favorites. These days it's difficult to get more than a sentence or two out of him. I guess it makes sense, though. He's gone through a lot."
"Favorite things? You wouldn't happen to know, would you?"
"Well, I do know that he believes in Santa Claus."
"Oh hohoho-*snort*, for real? Honey, tell me you're joking. Does he really?"
"Yes. He got into a fight with Emmerich over it. Said that NORAD was tracking Santa that year…and that crippled prick Emmerich just laughed at the Boss."
"Well, if he makes the same mistake you know what to do."
"Right. Crumple his throat and then throw him out to sea."
"Honey, you hit them in the back of the head first. They won't feel the next shot."
"…You're pretty good."
"Decades of fighting and being Australian will do that to you, honey."
"Heh. You're alright Badger."
"You're okay too, Komodo."
… …
"So, this thing can just program Baby with a few pushes of a button?"
"That's a rough translation, yeah. I mean, I still have to tweak a few wires here and there. But the heavy lifting gets done by the iDroid."
"This thing is a miracle." Dragon said, taking care not to bump into the little device and upset the calculations it was running. The two were sitting outside of the ACC, on little crates that Pequod had brought out with him. He'd managed to bring a pair of bottled Coca Colas, and they were currently enjoying the cool drink in the stiff Seychelle heat.
"Don't get too attached." Pequod said. "I doubt they'll ever go mainstream. They're fucking expensive, and even the boys in R&D are in awe of how much GMP it consumes just to make the things, let alone program them." He looked over at Dragon. "Aren't you one of them?"
"Sort of." Dragon said. "I qualify as a mechanical tech, but I'm also pretty good at helping run base operations, so I guess I alternate between some of the R&D stuff and some Base Development. All in all, it's not a bad way. Not a bit."
"Yeah?" Pequod asked, taking a pull from his drink. "I'm even more specialized than that. Shit at development, shit at medicine. Okay at R&D, and pretty good at intel and combat. But I've got my own category by being a flyboy. And baby, there is no one that can beat me."
"Is that so?" Dragon asked, raising an eyebrow and smirking. "Are you telling me that you're the best pilot on Mother Base?"
"If not the world." Pequod said, ignoring Dragon's snorting laughter. "It's the damn truth. There's not a thing I can't get the Boss in or out of, and I chew up anti-air emplacements and SAM sites like a woodchipper. Half the time, it's like I'm not even there." He said, smiling a little bit as he said it.
"What drove you to want to be a pilot?"
"My dad worked as a chopper gunner and then a pilot for a while." Pequod said. "He always made it sound so majestic, the way you could soar through the air and yet cut around and dart about left and right. And in the end, he made me believe that I could fly."
"Was it everything he said it would be?" Dragon asked. Pequod took another sip, and sighed.
"Everything and more."
"I'm sure your father would be proud of you, Pequod."
She saw his eyes grow a little misty, but just as soon as it had happened they were back to normal.
A/N: Just another day in the Seychelles.