6: The Mathematician's answer.
Timeline E: (x-y)=0.001 (life:4/11) (N:corrupt)
Liquid smiled an easy smile.
"Ah, yes- I sadly, am not the practical type." He stretched lazily, causing the other man to shudder violently.
"No," he said sweetly, "I was raised to the finer things, you know. Cold showers. Constant beatings. The threat of imminent, miserable death around every corner. You know; the typical English boarding school life. I have spent my whole life learning, in exquisite ways, how to kill people. Now that is a useful skill, yes; but not a practical one."
He leaned backwards in his chair, and glared thoughtfully at the ceiling.
"For example, when one is sent to pick up a pint of milk, it is never necessary to kill anyone."
He frowned at an innocent ceiling tile.
"They never let me back in that corner shop."
The shadow in the corner said nothing.
"So you! You were raised to be practical."
He spun in his chair, flashing a toothpaste-advertisement-grade smile at the figure in the corner. "Isn't that right?"
"That's right," came the voice.
"So what, dear, dear engineer, would you have me do about this annoying intruder here?" he said, tapping at the dome of the radar screen in front of him.
Dr Emmerich emerged from the shadows, leaned thoughtfully on the back of Liquid's chair.
He frowned at the blip on the radar.
"Have him killed."
He frowned again, calculating speed and direction.
"At once."
(It had not been difficult to figure that the one who called himself Liquid was… well, you know. The point had first been drawn to his attention by a co-worker, at the coffee machine.
The way most office gossip starts. The guy- what was his name?- had sidled up, mock-casual, thrown an elaborate glance over his shoulder, and said in a conspiratorial whisper:
"The boss," his fellow engineer had hissed, "I think he's… you know."
Otacon had blinked. Once. Twice.
"Well, I should think so," he said slowly, "I mean, the way he bounces around here without a shirt on and everything..."
"No, I mean," the other man continued, looking casually over his shoulder, all the subtlety of a pantomime dame, "I don't think he's entirely legit."
"legit?"
"Well… He did kidnap us."
"There's that."
"He does kinda talk an awful lot about revenge…"
"Granted."
"Keeps a lot of hired guns around the place…"
"Could be…"
"And then there's the, uh-"
"The shirt thing, yeah…"
Otacon stirred. Thought.
"Well, he did let us keep the coffee machine. There's that."
Ever the optimist. The other engineer was sweating, now, as he toying mock-casually with some non-dairy creamer. "So- so do you trust him or don't you?"
Hal thought. Gave what was technically a perfect answer.
"Yes."
And left.
A few days later that engineer had disappeared. It was never really discussed where he went to.
It was because, as he had sat at his desk, toying idly with the blueprints (trying to decide where to put the radome, but surely that wasn't so important) he had remembered, vaguely, the old adage to "judge a man by the company he keeps." Convinced that this seemed a logical proposition, he had done so.
Grenade wielding shaman, insane stalker-sniper, shape-shifting rat, and Psycho Mantis, who got crumbs everywhere. And then of course, when the call came through for REX … Well, the connection was obvious. One does not watch even half a Bond movie without figuring out where that was going. And then of course, the counter-argument; that one should know a man by his enemies. He had asked around, as casually as he could, for the one they called Liquid's story.
Wow.
Talk about sibling rivalry.
He sympathised, to a degree. And of course, wasn't this Liquid guy the only one who had been honest to him? The one had had come back, pulled up a chair, looked him in the eye and told him about the threats REX was facing from some meddling government agency? No man, after all, likes to see a good piece of work destroyed. And Rex, who had such sentimental value...
(He didn't mind the other man using the project's pet name; after all, Liquid had been present at nearly every stage of the code's completion. He certainly seemed very concerned, anyway.)
He asked his opinion on things, as time went on. The engineer had advised him on security placements, guard rotation and, later, explained a few flaws in the masterplan using a sheet of foolscap and an eighth-grade textbook on genetics. Eventually, Liquid had, as it were, popped the question. He assumed what seemed to Hal to be an overly dramatic pose, and said something like:
"Will you help me seek vengeance against the corrupt society that created me, or ruin me; turn yourself in to those laughing jackals from the military, and be damned?"
He talked like that, sometimes. There seemed to be no way of stopping it.
Hal had paused for thought, then. The- how to put it- terrifying illegality of his actions, should be he captured, would no doubt call his motivation into question. And something was telling him that it was not the best idea to pin his hopes on the illegal clone mutant with the questionable fashion sense. In response, he gave the only answer he was really comfortable with.
"Yes." He said finally.
It's good to be king.
It's good to recklessly abuse your power to the extent that everyone you employ cowers as you walk past.
In fact...
It's fabulous.
It would not be inaccurate to say that Liquid flounced down the corridor. Now, that is not a verb to be used lightly. Indeed, the flounce is a manoeuvre not to be undertaken lightly; if done, it must be done with full gusto and verve, otherwise the intended effect is lost and one looks rather silly.
Having shepherded a disparate group of mercenaries over to a remote Alaskan island that (besides having a lovely view of the freezing ocean and the best little cafe on the coast) also acted as the disarming point for a certain country's nuclear missiles, and begun on that island the breeding of a new strain of super (though not very bright) soldiers-
if he had done all that with his shirt off-
well, he felt entitled to a tiny little flounce.
Just a wee one.
And speaking of feeling entitled...
He flounced over to the door of the R&D labs; shooed away the purple and blue blur that was literally bouncing of the walls. He wrenched open the door of the locker triumphantly.
"You breath just far too loud."
The shape at the bottom of the locker said nothing.
"Leave me alone," it said, finally.
Liquid considered.
"No."
"I have... important work to get done." he said listlessly. "You know. Missiles. Gyroscopes. Getting the keys cut. That kind of thing. You'd be surprised, but creating a two-legged harbinger of nuclear death on a freezing Alaskan island is quite difficult."
"Well, with that attitude, of course it is."
The other man sighed. "I ask you once more if you think you'll be able to finish this project without your chief engineer."
"I don't need you", pouted Liquid, "I just need your brain."
"No," the other man had said flatly. "You need me."
Liquid considered.
"True", he said brightly. "I do. In fact, I need you so much that if you don't come with me now, I'm going to hurt you! Quite badly. So come on. The soldiers caught him, the intruder; he's in the interrogation room."
He had escaped, somehow. God only knows; being strapped to a table in a brightly-lit room is usually, you know, reasonably secure. Nevermind. It was another problem to be dealt with, nothing more. The fact that the problem was standing not twelve feet away holding an increasingly shaky gun was a minor detail. He kept his hands in full view as he spoke.
"Me? Pacifist? Oh, you misunderstand me, David. I'm here voluntarily." He glanced across the floor to the blonde figure semi-ensconced in the shadows. A glimmer of tooth was all that showed of a smile. He shivered; the spasm was involuntary and sudden.
"More than voluntarily."
The FOXHOUND man had betrayed disbelief, then, from under furrowed brows.
"So- so are you on this maniac's side or not?"
He frowned. Rolled the idea around in his head for a second. Wouldn't have put it like that.
So he gave what was (technically) a perfect answer.
"Oh, yes." He said brightly.
The figure in the shadows grinned all the wider, and raised a half-hidden hand.
A dozen little clicks- the kind of little clicks you will hear in your nightmares, if you have the knowing of them- indicated that a dozen or so hidden guns had swung into play.
"Very much so, yes." He said, as the noise died down.
A team of black specks scurried across the screen now, in and around the shadowy form of the walking tank, apparently unaware that they were being watched. Liquid smiled a cold, easy smile; the kind of smile cats give to Kings, presumably because they know something the monarch doesn't. He smiled too; well, his thin lips curled upwards, exposing his teeth.
"Let them see this beginning."
And pressed the button. There was a throaty rumble, growing to a roar, as Rex sprang to life.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
Because if it's Dom!Otacon...
It's a CRACKFIC (tm).
Because if the pairings has absolutely *no* search results on ...
It's a CRACKFIC (tm).
Because if you have to invent an entire parallel universe for it to happen in...
It's a CRACKFIC (tm).
This was a "challenge fic" in that I was challenged to do it and because, trust me, it was a challenge to write... The idea was that the climax of the alternate-worlds should be the world where the creator- in this case, Otacon; is shown to be completely opposite to his character in-game. That is to say, an apathetic, amoral, intentional dealer of death and destruction.
Also, I didn't mean to write Liquid Snake as a terryingly camp cross betwee Dr. Frank N'Furter and Midnight Mink from Bratpack, but it just... kept... happening.
