Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriot

by Project Itoh

  PATR10T. This was a joke, but not the funny kind.

  Apologetically, Drebin said, “You got played like a violin.”

  “But … why?”

  If we were fighting the System, why had the Patriots lent support to pests like us?

  “Obviously,” Drebin said, “Liquid’s plot was a threat to the Patriots. So they planned to have you guys take care of it.”

  Drebin spoke like he hadn’t had anything to do with it. I guess to him, he really hadn’t. He was green collar, enjoying the profits of war without ever participating in combat operations. He had watched our battle as a pawn of the Patriots, receiving orders that came down from a vague and nebulous above; a simple courier, a delivery man assigned to the principal players who would determine the world’s course.

  “Only I guess it didn’t quite turn out how they planned, with you crashing their System and wiping them out and all.”

  “Does that mean you’re out of a job?” I asked.

  “Are you kiddin’?” Drebin faced me, arms open wide, legs entirely unsteady now, and touched his champagne hand to the stencil on the Stryker’s side. “I got the Drebins. All of the Drebins in the world are in on it. From now on, we’re in business for ourselves. We are pawns no more.”

  I suggested he might want to take it easy on the champagne, but he ignored me and launched into a speech.

  “The White House might’ve lost its taste for unilateralism and started to rebuild. But there’s a lot of failed states out there that went bankrupt from their PMC habits, and they owe a shitload of money. Now the only question is, who’s going to pick up the tab? I’m sure these new governments will try to keep it under control with PMC corporate reform laws, but it ain’t gonna be good enough. They’re all sunk up to their eyeballs in the war economy. It might not be a New World Order, but the old order under the war economy’s gone for good.”

  Drebin was always a talker, but the alcohol sent him to a whole new level. For a moment, I considered that the nanomachines’ control hadn’t been entirely bad.

  Drebin, who seemed to have forgotten I was even there, continued his monologue.

  “I’m guessin’ the UN is gonna be more important than ever, what with multilateralism and all. Then again, the UN itself ’s just an old twentieth-century relic. And if you think about it, it ain’t that different from the Philosophers who went on to become the Patriots.

  “A new war. New chaos.

  “Then at the end, a new order. Whether it’s the UN, or some new power altogether, I don’t know. But it won’t be anything more than a new context for the world in place of the Patriots. Crush, mix, burn, repeat.”

  I looked away from Drebin, who continued to expound to his own satisfaction, and turned my head in Sunny’s direction. She had handed the Mk. III’s controls to the island boy who had been watching the ceremony.

  Yes, that was when you met Sunny. I can remember it now.

  You were chasing around the Metal Gear, pulling Sunny after you by the hand. Nowadays, you take Sunny’s lead, but back then, you were the one who stood in front of her and ushered her into the outside world, even if at the time you didn’t know it.

  I wonder what happened to the Mk. III after Sunny gave it to you. I don’t know if you can imagine my surprise when Sunny asked if she could give the Metal Gear to you, as new friends who couldn’t even understand each other’s language.

  All right, I was a little—to be honest, a lot—taken aback, in part because the Mk. III was, despite being handmade, an assemblage of costly and detailed machinery built at considerable expense. But that was only one small part of my surprise. And if you want to know why, Sunny said it best when she told me, “I made a new friend.”

  She smiled, truly happy, and said that you were getting along. Struck by the radiance of her smile, I didn’t notice at first that her stutter was gone completely.

  You were Sunny’s first brush with the outside world. You opened the door to a world that could be both overwhelming and weary, sometimes cruel and lonesome, but real, and where we would have to build our happiness.

  And now, I’m surprised by how right she was about you. You have a power—the wonderful ability to gently lead others to greater things and greater understanding.

  A power entirely unlike that of the Patriots, who used the human subconscious to bring about the reality they sought. You hold your fellow man in respect and possess the sense to awaken people, with a slight and gentle touch, to their inner strength and beauty.

  “I like it outside,” Sunny said.

  That was the moment Sunny first started living her own life—a life where she stood on her own feet, saw with her own eyes, and from out of the vast sea of information called reality, picked out only that which she truly needed.

  So when Sunny asked me when Snake was coming back, I felt a little relieved. I had known I would have to face that question from her, but now she didn’t need Snake or me any longer.

  Inside myself, I told Snake, who I thought was likely to be in the potter’s field at that time, Snake, at least Sunny will be fine now. He had always been telling me I needed to let her go into the outside world, so I figured I probably wasn’t the only one who worried about her.

  “Snake is sick,” I said. “So he went on a trip to get better.”

  I didn’t tell her he was on a trip to kill himself. And not because I was worried the truth would hurt her. I didn’t want to bring her tears, but I did want her to understand what Snake’s choice signified, and how dreadful the terror was that he faced at that very moment.

  For that, she’d need to grow up just a little more. She needed a deeper understanding of what it meant for a person to die, and how much value life held. Without that, I didn’t think she could truly comprehend the battle Snake faced.

  Sunny looked into my eyes and asked, “We’re not going with him?”

  I shook my head. “No. We’d … just get in the way.”

  “I wonder if I’ll ever see him again.”

  She seemed to have some understanding.

  I turned my gaze to the ocean, far away at the end of the runway. Beyond the edges of the airport, grasses swayed in the gentle ocean breeze, their leaves making noise as they brushed together. A single white rose swayed in Sunny’s hair.

  “Snake had a hard life,” I said. “He needs some time to rest.”

  Though I wrote above that I wanted Sunny to understand, and not to cry, I have to admit that tears filled my eyes.

  I can’t. I can’t let Sunny see me cry.

  Acting like nothing was wrong, I turned my back to Sunny. But Sunny’s sharp eyes didn’t miss the trembling of my shoulders as I held back the sobbing.

  “Are you crying, Uncle Hal?”

  Somehow, I managed, “No,” but in my emotional state, the answer came out curt. I smoothed it over by turning back to her and forcing a smile, adding, “I’m not crying.”

  Sunny pushed her index finger against the bridge of her nose. For a moment, I didn’t know what she meant, but soon I realized my glasses had slid down out of place. I’d brushed them aside when I went to wipe my tears.

  Sunny giggled.

  Now she was the one comforting me. Perhaps she understood Snake’s absence even more deeply than I. Perhaps she held back her tears to keep from making me feel sad. The possibility was considerable. After all, she had a far stronger and more caring and tender heart than I.

  Of course, I don’t need to tell you that.

  You chose Sunny, and Sunny chose you.

  DEBRIEFING: NAKED SON

  INSIDE THE CHAMBER, the metal pin struck the primer at the base of the cartridge.

  The primer burst and ignited the powder charge, triggering an explosion inside the metal cylinder.

  The explosive energy filled the cartridge and pressed against the rear of the bullet.

  The projectile struck by the pin gained spin from the barrel’s rifling, and therefore aerodynamic stability, and flew straight toward the mu
zzle.

  The pistol, having fulfilled its purpose, slipped from Snake’s hand and fell to the earth. The bullet, not hitting anything, not smashing anything, disappeared into the graveyard sky. Snake slumped forward onto his hands, feeble wheezes escaping from his worn-out body.

  He couldn’t do it. When the gun fired, it had been outside his mouth, the muzzle flash barely singing his cheek.

  “Shit. How many times am I going to have to do this before I can finally die? How much practice does it take for a man to off himself?”

  Exposed to this much fear, even old, dry, leathery skin formed beads of sweat. Cold sweat formed on his forehead and ran down in icy trails.

  “Can I die?”

  Snake never thought he would ask the same question that had plagued Vamp, even if the meaning behind it was different.

  Snake was ashamed at the part of himself that felt relief now that the fear had lifted.

  “What did I come here for today? If I can’t pull the trigger now, when will I? If I put it off until tomorrow, then the next day, and the next, then one moment, my procrastination will bring me across the threshold, and my body will strew the deadly virus. The unpreventable, untreatable, heart-stopping virus. I suppose I’d be dead by then, but it would be a selfish death too late for the rest of the world.

  “Life’s more than just a game of win or lose, didn’t you say, Otacon? Now I understand. Trying to compare yourself with someone else, competing for a victory like squawking myna birds is foolish. But in your inner struggle, victory and defeat do exist.

  “And right now, I’m losing. I’m yielding to the terror that comes flooding from within.

  “I don’t believe in God, Otacon, so you’re the only one to whom I can pray. Give me strength to do this now. Give me the resolve to protect the paths you and Sunny will take through life, and the world Meryl and the rest will build.”

  Battling the relentless, overpowering fear that beset his determination, Snake reached for the dropped pistol, when he sensed someone standing behind him and lifted his head.

  “That’s right,” the man said. “Good. No need for you to go just yet.”

  For a second Snake thought he was seeing himself. The man’s face was identical to his own aged countenance.

  I know this man.

  Ever since I was sent into Outer Heaven as a rookie in FOXHOUND nearly twenty years ago, my brothers and I fought within his gravitational field. Running from the fate left to them by his genes, Liquid and Solidus had been reduced to live grotesque existences.

  “It’s been a long time … Snake,” the old soldier said.

  But he was missing his iconic eye patch. He had lost his right eye during a mission in Soviet territory, yet here that eye was, right in place, and staring Snake down. His arms and legs and right ear, which had been lost in his battle to the death with Snake in Outer Heaven, were all firmly attached. I saw it all through the Solid Eye’s feed later, as though it weren’t a vision or a delusion, but a simple reality. And it was.

  Maybe this man wasn’t Big Boss but another clone hitherto kept secret—and who had been sent to kill Snake. But the Patriots had been wiped from the global information networks—what point would there be for the assassin to come out now?

  Big Boss wore the long coat of the FOXHOUND unit he’d once commanded. The stars-of-Bethlehem parting at his feet like the Red Sea before Moses, he approached Snake with slow, deliberate steps. From neither his eye that shouldn’t exist nor his shoulders that should have lost their arms could any malice be sensed.

  But Snake saw the outlandish gun dangling from Big Boss’s right hand. The man hadn’t raised the weapon at Snake, but Snake sprang to his feet and reflexively aimed his pistol at Big Boss—the same pistol he had meant to use on himself only minutes before.

  Big Boss, seemingly unconcerned with the muzzle pointed in his direction, drew in on Snake without faltering. He took one step, then another. Snake replaced his weapon’s magazine. Then, just inside CQC distance, Big Boss stopped.

  Snake’s reason told him that Big Boss’s eyes held no sign of violent intent. Even his unconventional weapon remained down at his side and pointing at the ground, utterly unthreatening.

  Yet Snake was unable to lower his gun.

  No matter what story Big Boss’s lack of apparent aggression told, a former foe approaching, weapon in hand, posed threat enough. Odd for a man who had just been agonizing over his inability to die to find himself pointing a gun at his enemy. But such were the instincts of a man who had lived his life as a warrior and now approached his death as warrior.

  Then Big Boss’s gun fell to the sea of flowers.

  Unable to comprehend Big Boss’s intentions, Snake was confused. But before he had time to ask himself why Big Boss had dropped his weapon, the man who had created CQC alongside The Boss had his hands around Snake’s pistol. Taken by surprise, Snake attempted to counter the maneuver, but Big Boss pulled Snake’s arm, drawing him close.

  Big Boss hugged Snake tight, his strength far greater than Snake’s despite their bodies being genetically identical, save for the telomeres and marker genes.

  “Let it go, my son,” Big Boss said. “I’m not here to fight.”

  Snake was dumbfounded. First the man showed up armed before the son who had supposedly killed him, and next he discarded his weapon and gave him a fatherly embrace. Still not understanding what Big Boss was after, Snake tried to resist, but Big Boss’s arms were like metal hoops around a barrel and permitted no escape.

  “Or should I call you brother.”

  “What?”

  “It’s over,” Big Boss said softly. “Time for you to put aside the gun and live.”

  With that, Snake too let go of his gun. Now that both were unarmed, Snake finally accepted he had no reason to resist.

  Big Boss hadn’t come to fight. He hadn’t come here to kill Snake.

  Though the world had changed greatly with the destruction of the Patriots, Snake hadn’t been able to escape the sins of the past. He pointed my gun at his former enemy, even though the causes that forced us into opposition were in that past.

  As if sensing Snake’s feelings, Big Boss patted Snake on the back, as if to say, It’s over. This was all the fault of us old fools anyway.

  “The old leaders have all passed away,” Big Boss said. “Their era of folly is over.”

  Big Boss released Snake and looked at a gravestone that stood behind his brother—Big Boss’s gravestone. The grave that should have held his bones.

  “I’m the only one left,” he said, “and soon … I’ll be gone too.”

  His consciousness imprisoned by the Patriots, Big Boss’s brain-dead body was supposed to have been incinerated by Liquid in Eastern Europe. We had secretly transported the charred corpse to America and buried it next to The Boss’s resting place. With Mei Ling, Meryl, and Campbell’s help, we had no trouble hiding his body among the coffins of the other victims and flew it from airport to airport beyond the reach of customs.

  But this meant that those cinders hadn’t really been Big Boss.

  “How can you still be alive?” Snake asked.

  “That body Liquid burned on the Volta wasn’t mine.”

  The body was that of a clone—Solidus.

  Solidus had been created as the perfect clone of Big Boss. Unlike Solid and Liquid, who had been given various customizations, he was created to be exactly the same as Big Boss. Zero and the proxy AIs that rewrote the world for him were convinced that Solidus’s remains were those of Big Boss.

  As for Big Boss, JD had implanted him with nanomachines and kept him in a state of eternal sleep. He was completely sealed away in both body and mind. Until the System was destroyed, he had been unable to wake. Ocelot and EVA wanted two things: to bring Big Boss back to life, and to end the Patriots.

  EVA stole Big Boss’s body from the Patriots and reconstructed it by replacing the missing parts from Liquid, who had died at Shadow Moses, and Solidus. With the limbs and orga
ns essentially sharing the identical genetic code, the transplants weren’t rejected by the immune response, as if they were happily returning to their former body.

  But though Big Boss had been physically restored, his consciousness remained locked away. Then Ocelot, EVA, and Naomi put into motion a grand and complex scheme to free the world—and Big Boss—from their prisons.

  First, Ocelot set about ceasing to be Ocelot.

  His was a grotesque and woeful decision.

  In order to revive Big Boss, Ocelot chose to sacrifice himself; to stop being Revolver Ocelot and become Liquid Snake. This was his ingenious ploy to deceive the System and hide his activities from the AIs.

  Ocelot used nanomachines and psychotherapy to gradually transplant Liquid’s personality onto his own. Each day, he became less and less sure of who he was. Eventually, he lost himself. One might say that his fate was akin to death. With a smile on his face, he destroyed himself for Big Boss’s sake, believing, If giving up my insignificant personality will obliterate Zero’s repulsive world, the world I helped bring about, I will do so happily.

  Into Ocelot’s vacant mind a fiction was planted. You are Liquid Snake, a clone born from Big Boss’s genes.

  The psychodesigners overwrote Ocelot’s being with their version of Liquid Snake, created from a wide collection of bits and fragments; Gulf War reports on his interrogation by the AMN in Baghdad, the psychological test results from when he joined FOXHOUND, surveillance footage stolen from the Patriots, and, more than anything else, Ocelot’s personal impressions of Liquid from their time together in FOXHOUND.

  From the Patriots, EVA had stolen the technique, a prototype of the system to control human will that was later completed in Manhattan under the S3 Project; the protocol Jack—as Raiden—had been the prototype of, using environment and role to alter the personality of a specific person. Through that ghastly technique, Ocelot became Liquid’s doppelgänger.

  He became the son of that great warrior.

  He had been born an ocelot but was now—even if only in fiction—a snake.