The new guy was interesting to the President. He followed the orders and barely questioned any of their actions, and all of it seemed suspicious. Especially since he was recommended by Night Owl. The man was an enigma in itself, but they had nothing they could use to investigate him. He willingly gave up DNA, fingerprints, cell samples, everything. And yet he appeared blank on all their records.
He could speak Japanese fluently, along with several other languages. So it meant they couldn't find his country of origin. The man knew the customs of a dozen different cultures, so his ethnicity was also in question. In truth, they had nothing. Nothing except Night Owl's recommendation. So she stationed him somewhere they could keep an eye on him, Tartarus.
However, she had other things to worry about, specifically the Colombian President.
"You will give us those SAM systems Sainz, this is not up for discussion."
"This is outrageous! We need those systems, every day the cartel flies more helicopters into the region! We're already losing air superiority as it is!"
"May I remind you what happened to your predecessor, when he disobeyed an order? You will hand over those AA systems Mr. President, that's final."
She had already had it up to here with President Cristian Sainz. It all started during his election, back then he was a member of the National Police of Colombia. He used his position as General to launch himself into a mayoral candidacy, and later presidency. All on the back of a promise to eliminate the cartel. A goal the HPSC needed to be destroyed.
Ever since they had been funding the cartel in the local area, supplying them with equipment and occasional mercenaries. All to keep control over the region. Yet Sainz, wouldn't listen. She knew the third world, and parts of the second didn't hold heroes in high regard. So what if their police took the fall? Already a plan was beginning to form, it would need to be public. An event so grandiose, that she could use it to justify the need for more heroes in Colombia. But most importantly, Sainz must die.
"Man, why the hell are we doing this? We're soldiers for crying out loud!" Telepathic Ape asked his buddy. He would call it embarrassing, but Desert Eagle seemed to be relishing the moment.
"Lighten up will you, the kid asked us and you were too weak to say no," Eagle replied. If someone had asked Ape if he was going to be working with mercenaries in the middle of the ocean, he would have laughed at them. But hey, it beat catering for heroes as a butler. Especially those kidnapping bastards the HPSC assigned him with before. These guys at least had the decency to provide him a gun.
However, that may have been an understatement. He was expecting a pistol, they gave him something called an MRS assault rifle. With a dozen different attachments and everything. So yeah, a decent improvement to bodyguard work. That brought him to his newest predicament. One of the children Big Boss had brought back from Paraiso had asked for them to play.
Eagle found a soccer ball, and now they were playing soccer. The problem was that they didn't have any goalposts. So now Ape was standing off to the side, remaining as still as possible to mark where the goal was. Eagle meanwhile, got to be a referee. He had to flashback to the endurance training the MSF put him through, every time a kid missed the goal and hit him in the groin. Needless to say, it was not a fun experience, but hey, it was good to see the kids smiling.
Once all the paperwork had been signed, the rest was easy for Snake. With MSF posing as a humanitarian aid group, they would enter the country and return to Paraiso. From there, they would begin branching outwards to take more cartel territory with the assistance of Colombian volunteers. The only thing they needed, was the location of the Brothers' compound. Their final base of operations.
That would come later, as for right now Snake began looking over the weapons in his possession. He had swapped his MRS for an UN-ARC this time, with a barrel-mounted grenade launcher. The other members of MSF accompanying him also prepared their weapons. It was going to be a risky assault, but they had the capabilities. He had only a hundred soldiers with him, against an enemy of five hundred.
It couldn't have been any more unfair for the cartel. Especially as Snake looked out the window, watching as the dozens of other helicopters made their approach. Snake checked his rifle one last time, right as Pequod started the music. The first beats of Take on Me echoed around the jungle before the Soviet AA guns came to life.
The Blackfoots fired their first missiles, silencing the first guns as they bobbed and weaved through the sky. The doors on the sides would open up as two MSF members mounted the miniguns. They fired down into the treetops of the jungles, hitting anything that so much as breathed. Soon they approached the old farmhouse Snake had first found, with him hopping out of the Blackfoot.
The other helicopters would drop off the rest of their troops as well, with a few other specialized helicopters deploying MSF's Merkavas and Stouts. With their armor in tow, they approached the town focusing on the flat open fields. The cartel members would meet them in the open, trying their best to remain hidden in the coca fields. They fired everything at the approaching armor, their rounds unable to dent the modern armor.
Snake would fire a grenade into the fields, watching as it exploded. Three cartel members hiding in them fell out of it dead. He then found another member, sticking his rifle barely out of the fields. Reacting with very little time, Snake fired a three-round burst, killing the man. Eventually, the cartel was in retreat, its forces falling back into the village interior. The Merkavas soon rolled through the fields, crushing what coca had remained in the firefight.
Things seemed to be going to plan, they were moving fast, meaning the battle should hopefully only last a day. With Snake's order, Krokodil gunships moved to secure the main road of the village, cutting off the cartels' escape. The gunships cut down anything that moved, with a truck of cartel members being gutted in an instant. Some would then land, and deploy their soldiers.
In the streets of the village, it had devolved into house-to-house fighting. Soldiers would bust down the door of a building and clear out its rooms. Snipers dueled streets apart, and the Merkavas would face the cartel's T-72s. Snake watched this as one Merkava, barely shrugged off a T-72s shot. The Merkava turned over quickly and fired before the T-72 could reload. The entire top half of the tank was launched skyward, with the tank soon engulfed in flames. Snake himself moved on from the engagement, following his men into a nearby house.
They moved through the building efficiently, searching every nook and cranny until they came upon a locked door. Wasting no time, they formed up around the sides, with a soldier with a shotgun taking the front. Snake also being in the front, readied a flashbang in hand. The soldier shot out the lock of the door, before ducking back into the hallway. Bullets flew from the door, as the other soldiers took cover. Snake finding a break in the enemy fire, tossed in the flashbang.
The cartel inside panicked before the flashbang went off. Snake and the others charged into the room, finding five enemies dazed in the room, along with two civilians as hostages in the corner. Wasting no time, Snake pulled the trigger on the first man, with the other enemies trying to shoot back. They were cut down quickly by the other soldiers before one went to check on the hostages.
Then they moved to the next house, clearing them out block by block. And just as planned the remaining cartel members were in full retreat, running back to the main road. Only to find it cut off by the Krokodils and ground troops. Snake and the MSF on the rear gave chase, completely encircling the remaining combatants. The rest ended quickly, the survivors of the cartel either giving a desperate last stand or surrendering. It had taken an entire day of fighting, but everything had gone just right.
"What if we reroute our guys near Selva Pueblo, and send them down to take back Paraiso?" Alejandro suggested. It hadn't taken long for word to reach the brothers about the loss of Paraiso. Diego had expected an attack to come, after learning about Big Boss from Night Owl, but he expected it to happen much later than this. It was only by lucky coincidence that he left Paraiso to meet up with his brother.
"No, they don't have any armor with them, those tanks our scouts saw would make them mincemeat," Diego responded, continuing to write up a plan on a map.
"True, but they have Hinds with them, those should hopefully offer an edge." Alejandro countered.
"Trust me, brother, I've already thought this over a dozen times. The best option is to focus on keeping them trapped in Paraiso." Diego replied as he looked up at his brother. Truly it was their best option. This MSF they were now dealing with had a slew of modern or at least somewhat modern equipment. Compared to the outdated stuff he had, they were pretty much just fighting with sticks. They could still kill, however, which meant they could make a defensive perimeter at the least.
And hopefully, those AA systems the HPSC would give them would help against the MSF's aircraft. What they needed now though, was a plan. Looking over the map Diego found a lone prison complex they were using as a FOB. It was situated pretty close to Paraiso and was surrounded by his men.
"Alejandro, how secure is Libertad Muerta?" he asked his brother. Alejandro would then scavenge through some nearby documents looking for an exact report.
"May I ask why?" Alejandro asked, still searching for the report.
"Well, how about we pay a public visit," Diego replied, a plan already formed.
Night Owl sighed as he started up the next test, the machine yet again injected Agent Matter, and a portal was created. He groaned annoyed when the portal came back green, and a large eye was visible in the center. He closed it immediately before the reality around them could start breaking apart. Another failure. He couldn't understand why. Something had made the last test a success, bringing forth who he'll call the individual.
The individual was alive, had no sign of mutation, and even better, Night Owl knew who he was. So he did the most logical thing his plan needed and recommended him to the President. Yet every time he tried to recreate the conditions that brought the individual here, it would fail, like the previous thousand-plus tests. He really could not tell what was going wrong. He decided to call it quits for the day, as he approached the exit to his lab.
On his way out, he passed Akira's old lab. They had already cleared out all the disfigured aides and brought in more vats for his project. By the looks of it, everything seemed to be going smoothly. It was only a shame the man had to die. But again, everything was going accordingly.
Miller was not expecting this. After about a week of waiting, he called off the alert on Mother Base. There was no attack coming it seemed. It was strange but it could be reasoned away. They might have knocked out the Gold Coast's communications before they could call the HPSC. He didn't know how, but it seemed plausible. No, what he didn't expect, was Strangelove to barge into his office.
"You're pregnant?" Miller stated surprised. Why the hell was she coming to him? Did they get drunk or something, because he had stopped making attempts when he found out she was a lesbian.
"It was rather unforeseen but yes. So I came to check if MSF had the proper medical capabilities for the procedure." Strangelove replied, looking at Miller all the while.
"Well, I believe we should have the necessary equipment," Miller told her, before digging back into his desk's documents. There he found the inventory log for the medical platform.
"Yep," Miller said looking over the document, "it should have everything. Congratulations by the way, if I may ask, who's the father."
"It was… Huey, surprisingly. It's a bit of a long story really." Strangelove replied, grabbing the document from Miller's hand.
"Huey? The man you said was a whiny submissive child? That Huey?" Miller asked in shock.
"I know, it surprised me as well. But here we are." She looked over the document herself, finding Miller was correct. Carefully she folded it and handed it back to him. She was about to leave when she stopped.
"Before I go there was another thing I almost forgot about. What was that about Paz being a spy, and how you apparently knew?" Miller could already hear the malice in her voice.
"Shit."
Yeah, no, this was a mistake Snake realized, as Midoriya held down the trigger on the minigun. He had already gone through seventeen thousand dollars worth of ammo, and he wasn't stopping. The kid just had to ask if he could try some guns, and Snake, in his infinite wisdom, said yes. He was only glad he couldn't hold the gun and that it had to be mounted. Yet he could already feel it in his pocketbook.
But the kid couldn't stop smiling. He hadn't hit anything but he was just so excited about it. Soon though the minigun ran out of ammo, and the firing range became quiet, or as quiet as one could be.
"Aw, it's over already?" Midoriya said sadly, looking over at Snake. He couldn't help but chuckle before he had the kid walk away from the minigun. They would approach a new aisle, where Snake would bring out a pistol. Midoriya would step up, and Snake held out the pistol.
"Now, remember what I taught you?" he waited expectantly as the kid recited his previous lessons.
"Keep my finger off the trigger, don't aim at anyone, and always check the chamber," Midoriya replied, happy with himself that he remembered.
"Good, now this is where you'll start today, a Burkov semi-automatic pistol. It's chambered in nine-millimeter, with a standard twelve-round magazine. Now, that means it will fire one bullet, every time you pull the trigger. Got it?"
"Got it," Midoriya answered. Then with Snake's approval, he would aim at the targets. Before he fired, Snake would adjust his hold and posture only slightly. Then with Snake behind him, he went through what he'd been taught and pulled the trigger. The first shot fired and hit the left of the target. He pulled it again adjusting his aim, and it hit on the right of the target. Another adjustment, and the third hit dead center, with the rest of the rounds hitting close to the center.
He wasn't the best, some of his shots were still off, but he seemed to catch on remarkably fast. Snake couldn't help but applaud that, especially when the kid got to see where he hit. It reminded him of himself, back when he was… training… with… He shook the thoughts out of his head, now was not the time for it. And Midoriya was excitedly asking if he could go again.
This time, they swapped guns, as Snake gave him an MRS. It was a bit big for the kid's size, so he had to rest it on a bipod to keep it stable. He ran through the basics, and the kid did the rest. His first shots were yet again inaccurate, but the last ones hit the center. So they went to get another gun. Midoriya followed Snake around the armory when he saw something.
"Da- Snake?" he asked. Snake looked over at him, as Midoriya pointed at the gun.
"Can I try this one?" Looking over, Snake picked the gun up carefully. His first thought was what was it doing in the armory? Then again it seemed to be perfect for the kid to try.
"Sure," Snake replied before they walked back over to the range. There, Snake held out the gun, to break down the differences between the others.
"This," Snake began, "is a single-action Colt army revolver. It has six shots, and you have to manually pull the hammer to fire the next round."
He gave him the gun then, and Midoriya ran through the basics again. He fired, and the bullet hit dead center, along with the second and third. The final three however drifted off to the sides and hit slightly off.
"Not bad," Snake told him as Midoriya handed him the revolver. Snake thought about teaching Midoriya more about the revolver, but then a certain someone came to mind, or rather an animal call said someone would do. Yeah no on second thought it might be best to leave the revolver to him.
"Did they ever specify what this contract was?" Osprey asked Buffalo the both of them leaning on a SUV outside of an office building. With Mother Base backing away from the defensive, and it becoming apparent no attack was coming, they had begun sending combat teams back out. Now the two were out on a contract to…Otheon? Osprey didn't even think that was a country, but looking over the map they had been given, sure enough, it was there. Some random island off the coast of England, along with some other country called Klaid. He could swear there was never anything back in their dimension.
"Security detail," Buffalo replied as she took a quick smoke from her cigarette, "some guy hired us to help him escape the country. Said some cult was after him or something."
"Really? What the hell does he do for a living?" Osprey inquired. What kind of position got a cult coming after him? Did he just piss them off?
"Beats, me. But considering he contracted us, I'd say it pays well." Buffalo soon stamped the cigarette out, when a man began approaching them. He had an oddly round nose, short dark brown hair, and a briefcase in hand.
Once he got close enough Buffalo asked him, "You Soul?"
"I am," the man replied nervously, his eyes surveying the nearby area.
"Were MSF, call me Buffalo, this is Osprey," she told him, the man coming to some sense of ease, "you ready to go?"
He nodded yes, and they all went into the SUV. There they drove off, with Soul giving them the directions. Everything seemed calm so far, but the man's original sense of ease was all but gone.
"Is this car secure enough?" Sould asked them.
"It is, the windows are damn near bulletproof, and the car was reinforced for extra protection. Unless they hit this thing with a tank, well be fine." Osprey replied, keeping his eyes on the road. Looking around he noticed the road was kind of empty. Sure there were some cars, but the road was getting ever more vacant around them.
"Are you sure? What if they do get us, do you have powerful quirks?"
"No, but I've got a powerful caliber," Buffalo replied as she also started looking around. Another four cars just left the highway, all the lanes around them were empty now. It was odd, assuming Soul had just got off work when he met them, then they should be amid rush hour. Now granted this was Europe, the land of the other transport systems, but there should have been at least a few cars. Then lights appeared behind them, the red and blue of a police cruiser.
"Ah, shit," Osprey commented, as he slowly pulled the car to the side of the road. He looked back in the mirror and found Soul almost pale white now. Two officers behind them stepped out of the car and slowly made their approach. Then a second police car arrived. The first cop was now knocking on the windshield, with the second coming to the other side. Slowly Osprey lowered the window.
"Sir, I'm going to need you to step out of the vehicle." the officer replied. Already Osprey could sense something was wrong, especially when a third cop car showed up.
"May I ask why," Osprey responded, "As far as I'm aware officer, I haven't broken any laws?"
"This isn't a suggestion sir, step out of the vehicle."
"Am I being arrested?"
"Step. Out. Of. The. Vehicle." The officer ordered his hand very clearly going to his side-arm. Then a fourth car arrived, and Osprey called that the last straw. He saw Soul tightly clutching his briefcase before a third officer arrived at the back of the car. The officer took one look and immediately drew their gun. Osprey stepped on the gas, the car launching forward before the Cops could react.
The moment they did, they scrambled back into their cars before giving chase. Now speeding down the road Osprey saw a police helicopter join the chase, with more cars arriving. He took a hard right down one road, avoiding a hastily set up blockade. Buffalo meanwhile rolled down her window before turning back to Soul.
"Look behind you, there should be two cases in the back!" she told him, with Soul fearfully searching the back seat. He grabbed one before handing it to Buffalo. Opening it she pulled out her MRS assault rifle, with a grenade launcher attached. Quickly loading the rifle she angled herself out the window and fired at the first cop car approaching them. It scored a hit on the driver, causing the car to make a sharp turn as his body fell on the wheel. The car subsequently flipped over, with the other cars driving around it. Osprey then called out to Soul, as he took a sharp left.
"Where did you have us driving you to!?"
"Back to my home! I was going to pick up my kids, and have you escort us to the airport!" Soul replied, panickly tightening his seatbelt. He flinched when Buffalo lobbed a grenade at another police cruiser. Its windshield was shattered immediately and the car crashed into a partition.
Osprey, taking another quick turn, Buffalo leaned back into the car. She took out the empty magazine, before loading in a fresh one. Pulling out her Idroid she then called in a helicopter for extraction, with Soul giving her the address to his house. They were only a few blocks away luckily. With it done she, went back to shooting out the window.
The cops behind them were relentless, for every car that was destroyed or crashed, another three would take their place. It soon evolved past basic squad cars, to narrowly dodging SWAT teams trying to ram into them. Yet the house came into sight. With the police not far behind, Osprey hit the brakes quickly. The car stopped just in front of the house, with all three quickly running out.
Buffalo grabbed the second case in the back, before tossing it to Osprey. Soul meanwhile ran into his house with the two following him. Once inside Osprey and Buffalo barricaded the door with what furniture they could find. Osprey then unloaded his case, pulling out his own MRS. Checking his Idroid, Osprey found the helicopter was only a few minutes away. While this was happening Soul rounded up his family, bringing them to the upper floor of his house.
Peeking out the blinds of the window, Buffalo spotted the cops beginning to approach the house. Wasting no time, she broke the window open and fired a grenade outside. The cops that tried getting close, were torn apart by the shrapnel, with many then holding back. The SWAT teams would then take their place, with their ballistic shields providing them cover. Osprey attempted to shoot them, but the bullets wouldn't penetrate. It forced him to duck back, as they began trying to force the door open.
The door eventually crashed open, with the SWAT team soon swarming in. Being overrun, Buffalo and Osprey fell back, firing at the officers as they ran. They were pushed up the stairs as they continually returned fire. There they found Soul with his kids, the children ducking under a wooden table. Just as things looked bleak, Buffalo got a notification on her Idroid. The sound of gunfire erupted outside, with their helicopter now arriving.
Moving quickly Osprey made his way over to a small room, finding it had access to a balcony. He forced it open and found the officers outside distracted by the Blackfoot. Buffalo soon followed him with Soul in toe. One by one they climbed up to the roof, carrying the Soul kids with them. The helicopter, neared the roof of the house, getting as close as possible. It was close enough luckily, with Osprey loading the first Soul child inside, with Buffalo loading the second.
They were then all in the helicopter, with Osprey getting on the side-mounted minigun. He spent the next minute providing covering fire as the helicopter flew away. Once they escaped, he had a small sigh of relief. The helicopter, now heading back to base.