This story is my NaNoWriMo project for the year (2024), but due to the nature of the setting, I felt the need to bring up a certain spoiler before starting the story proper.

You know how MGS V has a character list at the start and end of every mission, and lists 'Venom' Snake rather than 'Naked' Snake? Rather than playing as the real Big Boss, you play as his 'Phantom'.

This fact will of course be involved in the story, which should receive a (possibly short) chapter every day for the rest of the month.

Snake observed the camp from a distance.

This wasn't a normal contract, one that the Diamond Dogs would usually take on, but after running into the Skull unit, Ocelot had convinced him to find a nice and calming job.

Something more low-key.

A bit like the ongoing contract with the conservationist group, but not a 'pickup and drop whenever' deal.

Normally it would have been given to a member of the combat team, if they even accepted at all, but…

Well, at least Ocelot hadn't tried to get him to relax by taking time off.

Snake finished his sweep of the camp.

It was time to do this.

]

"When do you think they'll get here?"

Doctor Nielson glanced up at his post-grad students words.

"Sorry?"

"The security people we hired, the… uh…"

"The mercenaries? Shouldn't be too long. Hopefully long enough I can memorise the maps, but we should get plenty of warning, with the work crews on lookout."

"Are they really on lookout? It didn't look that way to me."

The archaeologists jumped at the words from an unexpected third person in the tent.

"Who are..?"

"Call me Snake, I'm the mercenary you contracted."

Seeing that the stranger wasn't making any hostile moves, and was in fact willing to introduce himself (even just with an alias), seemed to relax the doctor somewhat, even if his student was still cowering at the back of the tent.

"Of course. I am doctor Samuel Nielson, the leader of this expedition. This is my student, mister Jonas Mitchell. Um, is… is it just the one of you?"

"Your group clearly isn't armed, you won't be getting much attention on the way in. It's on the way out that it might be a problem. We could call in more men, but you would have to pay by the head for each day."

"Ah, I get it. That seems very reasonable of your group, mister Snake, keeping our costs down instead of running them up."

"There are a lot of jobs open to us," Snake pointed out. "Some of them higher paying. Now, what exactly is this job? I have read the contract already," he assured, "I just want to be sure we're on the same page."

"Right. Well, a bit of background. My, our, university has been conducting archaeological digs, expeditions, for decades. Problem is, I'm certain that we keep getting there after certain relics, ones that seem to hold great importance, have gone missing."

"Grave robbers?"

"Not likely," the doctor shook his head. "Many of the surviving relics are gold or other such conventionally valuable materials, any normal grave robber would take them as well. No, whoever is taking them is after these specific relics."

"If they even exist."

It seemed Mitchell was finally up to speaking in Snakes presence.

"There's too much evidence for them not to! I mean, a queen always shown wearing a specific amulet, buried with all her finery, only for no such amulet to be found in her tomb? No, someone is stealing this history, hiding it away."

"Why not send us to find who is responsible, retrieve the relics?"

"Because then we still lose the context! No, we need to find and secure the site first. Which brings us to my next point. There are certain groups sent to each of these sites, the same doctors and assistants, even if someone else tracked down the sites location."

"I still say you're jealous that it was someone else who got to investigate the tomb first," Mitchell muttered.

"I will admit I was keen to explore the site, but there are too many questions about this whole situation. In any case, I uncovered the map to a long lost Buddhist temple that was meant to go to one of these groups, and… um… liberated it," he finished hesitantly.

Snake sighed.

"Doctor, I'm hardly in any place to judge you for a little theft. I was in the army, they paid me to kill people. Taking a map with the intent to protect history from being destroyed hardly compares."

"You… have a point. So, I have the map to the temple, and left the map to a different site for them to follow, one that shouldn't have any of the relics they're interested in. We should have a bit of a headstart, but the university has the originals for the maps, so sooner or later they'll realise what I've done, and they'll be coming after us. By that point we need to find the temple, secure the site and preferably extract the relics before they can find us."

"And I'm here as security while you travel through sn active warzone," Snake finished.

"Yes, exactly! Not that we would say no to any help in the dig, but we should be fine on that end."

"Sounds simple enough. When are we moving?"

"As soon as we strike camp. Will you need to ride up front with us?"

"I brought my own transport."

]

The group proceeded somewhat slower than Snake would have appreciated, one of the costs of moving so many people at the same time.

Granted, much of his distaste at the speed came down to how often he seemed to run into enemy (meaning armed) patrols when travelling in this general region of Afghanistan.

But they weren't anywhere near anything the locals should consider worth fighting over, and it would take time for rumours to spread about the potential hostages.

He finished his sweep down the column, and headed back up to the doctors jeep.

"How much further?"

"Not too long until we leave the road," Nielson answered. "Assuming I read the map right at least. The terrain can change quite dramatically over hundreds of years. And I must say, when you mentioned transport, I wasn't expecting you to ride a horse."

"No need to rely on expensive fuels," Snake pointed out. "With a horse you can spent as long as you like in the wilderness without needing to head back to… civilisation… to refuel. And D-horse has been a valuable partner in my work."

"Anything you can tell us about it? Your work?"

Apparently Mitchell felt a lot safer about Snake when separated from the man by being inside a vehicle.

Snake considered.

"We take contracts from various groups," he told them. "Some what might be considered 'bad guys', others who definitely don't qualify. In fact I have a running contract about collecting animals for a conservationist group."

"Why take contracts from bad guys?"

"Everyone needs money to live these days," Snake pointed out. "You can't just set up with a farm and live off it or whatever. And the so called 'good guys' don't exactly go round hiring mercenaries. But our skills aren't really useful in any other line of work."

"You mentioned the army though, why not go back and reenlist?"

Snake went silent for a moment, trying to find a way to speak without snapping at the kid.

"Our group is not from one country," he finally spoke. "We recruit from all groups willing to do the work." Not always willingly, he admitted to himself. "Some are local, and don't have the one army to sign up with. Instead they have the local warlords, each of whom qualify as 'bad guys' in their own way. So, do they join up with the lesser of the evils? Rise up as a warlord themself? Or join up with us, where they can try and make a real difference. Granted, we may sometimes work for a warlord, but we always vet the specific contract, hold to our own morality. Something that a military wouldn't appreciate."

"But… what about you?"

"I'm not about to abandon my brothers-in-arms."

"But you could have stayed in the army, rather than leaving and signing up with a mercenary group."

"Not after what they did," Snake stated, ending the discussion and starting to fall back.

He was in no mood to talk about what had happened with the Boss, about why he could never trust the American military again.

He kept an eye out for any approaching patrols, any opportunity to distract himself, to no avail.

Typical.

Whenever he was trying to quietly empty an outpost, along would come a patrol to wake them up and replenish their numbers, but now, when he wanted a run in with them, nothing.

"Should have killed them," Snake muttered to himself, too distant from the vehicles to be overheard.

A jeeps horn was hardly up to waking a dead man.

But since running into the Sorrow, and the countless ghosts holding him back, he had tried to avoid killing his enemies.

In fact, since waking up in the hospital, the only people he had killed rather than render unconscious (and usually recruit) were from the Skull unit.

If it even counted as killing them.

Were they even alive when he ran into them?

Snake shook himself and glanced around, in case thinking about the Skulls had somehow summoned them.

They had enough impossible abilities not to consider the possibility.

But no, there was no sign of the unnatural fog that heralded their presence, he hadn't accidentally doomed the rest of the expedition.

"Making me superstitious," he muttered to himself.

Shaking it off he continued his patrol, making sure that they didn't lose anyone or pick up any followers.

And then, as he was patrolling back towards the front, the jeep turned off the road, heading towards some distant cliffs.

"Could be an ambush site," he mused aloud.

Times like this a scout would be really useful, like that pup he had brought back to base. Once he'd had time to grow up a bit.

But right now, it was down to Snake to make sure it was safe.

Time to confirm they weren't about to turn off again, and ride ahead.

If nothing else, it would give him a good view of the whole expedition, and let him make sure that they weren't about to lose anyone or come under attack.