Nightlight: Metal Gear Solid

Chapter Twenty Five: Solidus Snake

March 10th, 1975, 0250 hrs.

Top Secret CIA Facility, Codename DYE-2, Greenland

WARNING! WARNING!

NUCLEAR WARHEAD IS ARMED! NO CANCELATION CODES REGISTERED!

WARNING! WARNING!

TWENTY FIVE MUNITES REMAINING UNTIL DETONATION!

It took longer than Mongoose had hoped for Nightlight to climb its way up to the surface, but the good news was that now that the alarms were going off all over the base, the guards were sure to be in a panic. However, to the young man's surprise, the guards were not panicking and running around, instead they started shooting at the repurposed Peace Walker. There wasn't really much that they could do, since the only damage the unit had taken was from Domina's pistol, so although some of the guards had enough sense to run for their lives in whatever vehicles were available, a large number of them didn't.

Piloting Nightlight was so much better than being on the other side of the battle, like Big Boss had always seemed to be whenever a new death machine had been created, and whereas he had to go through so much planning and carefulness to sneak into DYE-2, Mongoose couldn't help but smile as this machine… this Metal Gear… his Metal Gear… simply stomped through as if he owned the place.

"I'm on the surface, Tsarina." He said into the radio. "Where are you?"

"I'm just past the front gate." Her voice replied. "I can see the Nightlight machine… I'm waving to you, can you see me?"

Zooming in with the viewing screen, he smiled again once he saw her partially hiding behind a snowbank. This meant that he had to change course, and thankfully it didn't take much more than the base's alarm announcing that there were twenty minutes left before detonation, for them to finally start using their brains. The front gate was trampled under Nightlight's feet as the last of the guards went running off into the snow, and after a brief stop to allow Tsarina to climb into the cockpit… as well as trying to find room for her, which ended with her just sitting on Mongoose's lap, they headed for safety as well.

Nightlight's top speed was better than he had hoped, but nowhere near as good as a truck would have been, topping out at about 32 kph, leaving both of them sweating profusely as the timer continued counting down. However, it was enough to get them out of the blast radius, although the shockwaves were still felt when the explosion finally happened. The machine had no problem handling the shockwaves, and was undamaged by the EMP that followed, but now there was the lingering question of...

"Okay… what do we do now?" Tsarina asked as Nightlight came to a stop. "We would have been fine, but that nuke is going to show up on every early warning system in the northern hemisphere, and this thing isn't fast enough to get us out of here before recon planes show up."

"Then we need to hide." Mongoose replied. "Can this thing even hide?"

Another of the brain-mounts started glowing, and there was a large electrical disturbance registered along the machine's hull, before the control panel indicated that they were now in stealth mode. It had been mentioned before that the secret project had a camouflaging ability similar to the Valkyries, and apparently that hadn't been an exaggeration. Of course, now that they were hidden from any spy planes that came by, there was something else that Mongoose had to do.

"MSF Mother Base, this is Empty Mongoose." He said, tuning Nightlight's radio to the frequency. "Boss, this is Mongoose, come in… Huey, can you hear me? Commander Miller? Is anyone monitoring? Big Boss, this is Empty Mongoose; mission accomplished… I have some bad news about our people, but I'm bringing something back that'll put old ZEKE to shame… Boss?"

Getting frustrated, the young man now started passing the radio through every signal that there was, both secured and civilian, and apparently Nightlight had the ability to pick up everything, since there was a lot to go through. There was a lot of music, some weather reports, some news in languages he understood, some that he didn't, but so far there was nothing on…

"Reports are still coming in." A male voice said on the next frequency. "But what we can confirm, is that a few hours ago, an explosion rocked the base of the independent military corporation known as Militaires Sans Frontieres. At this point it is not known whether or not the explosion was nuclear, since the IAEA was reportedly denied permission by the group to conduct any kind of investigation, but what is clear is that the fires from what remains of this facility can still be seen distantly burning from the shores of Costa Rica. So far there have been…

"Mongoose!" An anxious voice cut in on another frequency. "Mongoose, is that you I just heard?! It's Mosquito!"

"Oh, thank God, Mosquito." Mongoose sighed with relief. "For a second I thought everyone was gone… what happened?"

But the relief was to be short lived, as his fellow MSF operative recounted what happened just as Big Boss was returning with Chico and Paz. Apparently the IAEA inspection team was actually a strike squad that attacked the moment they entered the control tower. The explosions, Mosquito claimed, were from C4 that the squad placed on the struts, and ZEKE was under the base when it happened, so it had probably been destroyed as well.

"What about Big Boss?!" Mongoose demanded. "And Miller… what happened to them, Mosquito?!"

"Everyone's dead, Mongoose!" He yelled back. "Everyone except you and me… you didn't see that strike squad… there were hundreds of them… they're gonna come back to finish us off, I know it! Hide, Mongoose! Hide, and don't ever use these frequencies again!"

With that, the transmission was cut off, leaving Mongoose and Tsarina to just look at each other in confusion. So, from what he gathered, Saunders had been telling the truth about, well… everything that he had tried to confirm so far. Big Boss was dead… MSF was destroyed… so was he really the Boss's clone? If the CIA agent had been telling the truth about everything else, why would she lie about that?

"So, what do we do, Mongoose?" Tsarina asked, trying to hide her growing fear.

What would they do? Well, there was only one thing that they could do, and that was to start over. Not like Big Boss had done, no, nothing that obvious… nothing that independent… at least, nothing that seemed independent. What they needed to do was start an organization that had the official backing of someone big, like the Americans. And look at that, they had just the thing that was needed to buy their favor.

"I'm going to make whoever was responsible pay for this." He explained. "Here's the plan… you are the sole survivor of the Valkyrie Special Forces, and Big Boss spent the night blowing up your base, right before he got blown up in Costa Rica. I, on the other hand, am Captain George Sears aka Baker 7, the only survivor of Baker Team."

The rest of his plan involved contacting the CIA, and returning Nightlight to them, in exchange for both heavy compensation, and permission to create a new kind of Special Forces, specifically designed for dealing with threats like Big Boss and his MSF. Who knows, with hard work and an impressive success rate, this force… this… Dead Cell of MSF would gain full autonomy, and then the real work would begin.

"I'm going to play nice until I figure everything out." Mongoose continued. "But I won't be able to be Empty Mongoose anymore… from now on my name within the group will be Snake… Solidus Snake."