LEGAL DISLAIMER: I don't own 'em. Konami does.
THEMATIC DISCLAIMER: I make no pretense that this isn't a horrible misrepresentation of Jack's character. It is. On the other hand, when he's being controlled by someone like me, he suddenly becomes the kind of person who really likes to shoot seagulls, beat up hostages, and spend long stretches of time offing Ms. Emmerich in as many ways as he can think of. This is the closest I could come to an in-game justification for the hilarity of using remote-detonated C4, among other things, to seriously inconvenience everyone's favorite girl genius. Enjoy!
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What a great time Raiden was having. Really. A great time.
This whole mission had been nothing but a pain, right from the start. He should have known things were going straight to hell the first time a foot caught that patch of bird dung wrong and he ended up flat on his ass. It had been an omen. No doubt about it.
And then the Stillman thing had gone colosally wrong. Sure, that had been Snake's fault more than his, but still. The so-called legend in the flesh had nearly blown up Shell 2. Then he'd met Fatman. What the hell had been up with him? Really? Had the poor ugly bastard honestly thought a pair of skates was going to keep him from being shot to death?
The inanity of it irritated the hell out of him. It was bad enough not being briefed in the first place, but going in blind was supposed to be a challenge in quick thinking and strategy. The challenge of it could be fun in its way. From the bare minimum the Colonel had told him, these people were supposed to know what they were doing, and instead what did he get? Rose on comms, bird crap and a morbidly obese jerk on skates. He'd been the White Devil, damn it. This was an insult.
It was enough to make somebody take a SOCOM to a few seagulls. He'd done that, actually. It had been oddly soothing. He'd got through close to a dozen of the damn things before Rose fired up the CODEC and nearly damaged his hearing permanently. You'd think there was something to like about seagulls, from the way she carried on. Rats of the air, they were. Completely unappealing in every way, and yet suddenly they were Rose's favorite animal. God. That conversation had made him tense up again something fierce, but there was really nothing for it except to stick with the mission and find another outlet for his bad mood. It wasn't as though there was a shortage of people to shoot, anyway. Eventually there had even been a whole room full of hostages to kick around, and that had just about done the trick before Rose got back on the damned CODEC and wrecked any hint of catharsis he might have had. For someone who had insisted twice that she no longer wanted anything to do with him, she was still acting pretty clingy.
And then there had been that godawful experience with the President. Would the indignities never cease? Part of him hoped that it had actually been his finger on the trigger for the killing shot. His ears burned, now, just thinking about it.
"Something wrong?"
Even his encounter with Vamp had been ruined. The fight itself had almost been a pleasure—a genuine challenge against a skilled opponent. Who knew they were so hard to come by? He'd felt real pride when the eerie man had sunk for good. Little did he know how brief his time to enjoy the glow would be.
"Raiden?"
Emma. He'd found Emma, just like he was supposed to. She'd even been kind of cute, hiding in that locker. And then she'd gone and opened her mouth. Whoever had injected her with the stuff that kept her legs from working properly must have had some left over and given her a shot in the head as well. The girl was obsessed with her stepbrother, terrified of some perfectly innocent seawater despite a demonstrated capacity to manage just fine when he'd triggered one of the underwater mines, and had very nearly strangled him on the way back here. As promised, they were taking a break.
"Your ears are red, and you look really tense. Everything's okay, right?"
"I'm fine," he answered finally. "You did good." She hadn't.
He left her hunched agaist the outer railing with her skinny knees wobbling as he made a quick circuit of the walkway over the purification pool. There were spots of blood here and there, and a few smeared footprints. Some of both were his, but some of the prints had the treads of Vamp's heavier boots. He couldn't help but sneak a look into the pool. No, Vamp would not be coming back any time soon. Obviously he hadn't been equipped with a complement of respawn nanos. Neither had Fatman. Fortune was a slightly tougher call, but he doubted it. Who, after all, would be willing to make a group of lunatics like Dead Cell functionally immortal?
Snake almost certainly had them. He'd be willing to bet a good deal of money that the old bastard hadn't initially survived the destruction of Strut H. Raiden himself had been given a dose of them just prior to the mission, and put them to good use a couple of times. They worked with the CODEC, somehow—he didn't understand it, really, but he wasn't an engineer. Not like Ms. Sticks-In-Her-Head over there. Provided that a commsman was able to save your mission data, the respawners could more or less bring you back from the grisliest of ends with no harm done. The Colonel during his explanation had specifically mentioned being blown up and being shot in the head. So far he was one for two. He hated those claymore mines.
The thought of it did give him a wonderful idea for blowing off some steam, however. He really needed it. Emma had nanos, and a CODEC. The President had had them too, but a quick post-mortem inspection had shown that his bullet had made a shrapnel mess out of at least one CODEC component. And who knew what kind of data the President would be permitted to save? He had intended to foil his respawners, if he'd had them. He probably had—he had been valuable. And so was Emma. If she didn't have respawn nanos, he was a twelve-speed bicycle.
Nonchalantly, he tugged out his SOCOM. Emma was paying him no attention whatsoever—especially after that swim, she seemed to place implicit trust in him. She'd slipped into a sitting position, in fact, and looked as though she might be taking a quick nap. He checked that a bullet was in the chamber, and drew a bead directly between her sleepy eyes. If he was wrong, and the United States government hadn't seen fit to protect the delicate brain of one of their most skilled engineers, there was going to be hell to pay. But what were the chances of that?
Spak.
She let out a brief shriek which echoed through the room, and collapsed onto her back. There was a tiny hole in her forehead, just above the crosspiece of her glasses, and a more impressive spread of blood and what was probably a bit of brain tissue on the support beam behind her.
Snake's voice over the CODEC buzzed fiercely at the bones of his inner ear. "Emma? Emma! Raiden, you son of a…"
Obviously Snake couldn't quite work up the nerve to finish the phrase. Raiden smirked.
There was a brief twist to his field of vision, somehow, and when it cleared Emma was where he'd left her. Head intact. She showed no sign of being aware of the recent violence—indeed, as he watched her eyelids started to flicker wearily closed again. The thin tendons in her neck strung up briefly as she stifled a yawn. He stowed his SOCOM. She still seemed only dimly aware of him.
Oh, this was choice indeed. Already he felt much more relaxed. But what to try next? Might as well start at the small end and work up from there.
Light as she was, apparently she was immune to the effects of tranquilizer overdose—she went down with one shot from the M9, but the fifteen subsequent shots he scattered around various major pulse points failed to have any further influence. After the tenth one she'd sighed in her sleep and said "Hal." Truly embarassing. Eventually he'd had to spray coolant in her face to bring her around. He'd have to use actual ballistic weaponry.
The FA-MAS took maybe a second and a half to kill her. By the time she actually fell over, her torso had been perforated perhaps half a dozen times. Still—despite lungs punctured in several places—she managed that shriek again. And again, his inner ear buzzed. Otacon this time.
"E.E? E.E? Raiden, you didn't!"
This was more fun than he'd had in months.
He actually had to lead her by the hand over to a corner of the room so he could get far enough away that the scope on his PGS-1 would focus on her. With that kind of magnification he could have counted her eyelashes. Instead he managed a picture-perfect shot directly into her right ear canal. It was absolutely magnificent—so magnificent, in fact, that after the twist set her back where she'd been, he did it again. And once more. Just because.
"Emma?Jack, how could you?" That was Rose. He was rather surprised that she didn't threaten a third time to leave him, but apparently Emma didn't rate as high as seagulls. Women.
Grenades proved amusing, if inaccurate. He landed two in the water before one got close enough to send a few chunks of shrapnel through her chest and visceral cavity. That shriek, again. Some of the rough metal must have hit something vital—usually it took at least a minute or two to die from wounds like that.
Twist. Stinger missile to the torso. Very satisfying.
Twist. Nikita. That didn't work so well. The damn thing apparently refused to change altitude unless its sonar detected something directly above it. His shot went straight over her head and made a respectable crater in the wall, but in the end he'd had to resort to the SOCOM again.
When all was said and done, he had to admit that his favorite was the C4. There was just something about setting several charges in a tidy semicircle—while Emma sat there, obliviously dozing—and then detonating them while safely out of range and with a really excellent vantage point. He wondered if he'd ever get tired of the spectacle. Why, he could watch it from as many different angles as he wanted. He had to dodge what was probably a kidney, once.
Twist.
Even Otacon bawling incessantly in his ear couldn't spoil his mood, now. A profound sense of mellow gratification flowed in great slow waves through him. He could almost feel his intestines glowing with it. Yes, this had been just what he needed. But it really was about time to get on with things. He'd been here experimenting with Emma for almost half an hour. Much longer and Snake would probably blow something else up.
He sighed, and approached the napping girl. As long as she wasn't talking, she wasn't bad. Unfortunately, he'd have to wake her up to get her moving again.
He reached down to tug at her hand. "Time to go, Emma."
The girl stirred, and wobbled to her feet. Her hand, in his, was warm. He couldn't even bring himself to dislocate a finger. He was feeling that good. Good enough to go save the world.
…except those damn seagulls.