The base’s soldiers had seemed to taken the young Hal Emmerich under their wing after he had arrived to the base due to unforeseen actions of Cipher. Of course, they didn’t allow Huey to see the boy, who didn’t seem all too fond of his father anyway. Hal was timid, jumpy, and shy. He was frequently seen behind the leg or under the coat of Miller, shying away from any new members. Much to Kaz’s disdain he couldn’t seem to get Hal to play with the other kids. Kaz sighed as he crouched down, telling him he could carve pumpkins, and if he was good he’d get double candy when they went trick or treating.
Hal found himself standing by the pumpkins, nervous and a tad more afraid. He had spotted Eli by the pumpkins and holding one of his many knives. Hal had seen what he was capable of, always picking fights even with Snake himself. The child sat by a particularly large pumpkin, hoping not to be noticed by the other. He frowned, realizing he had never carved a pumpkin without his mother’s help, not only that but they had specific tools back home, here there seemed to be only army grade, large, sharp, and potentially dangerous. Emmerich was too scared even at the thought of picking one up. After the boy had thought about it for a few good minutes he peeked out, soeakin in a meek and shaky voice. “Um…. do you think you could help me..?”
he walked over to inspect the pumpkins with a predatory gaze, to decide just which pumpkin would be the first to fall victim to his superior carving skills. after some half-baked deliberation, he finally stopped before a particularly tall pumpkin to run a gloved hand over.
‘you,’ he thought, ‘you’re mine.’
noticeably, the carving knives set next to the pumpkins were quite dull — he had a hard time believing the pumpkin perfectly carved in example on the table was handled by the lame excuses for “knives”. likely, whoever carved the pumpkin was a staff member who cheated, and used their real knife.
no. not cheated. they had the privilege to use a knife on base, unlike him. he was never allowed to handle any weapons on base, as was made perfectly, annoyingly clear by miller and ocelot themselves. but eli didn’t care much for “rules”. eli surveyed the area for any of the more hard-headed staff, at the very least, and decided the coast was clear enough to unload his knife collection from his boots, and dared to smirk a bit to himself. even the two staff members across the cafeteria and the guard closer to watch eli didn’t have anything to say — what were they going to do, tell a kid he couldn’t have fun with the holidays?
eli eyed his pumpkin of choice — the first of many, anyways — until he found the perfect spot to begin his orange carnage, stabbing it with perhaps a bit too much vigor. from the corner of his eye, he could see the worried guards brow rise in question of eli’s capability to keep his chill, and he dragged the knife down with much less force than the initial stab.
he had to admit, it wasn’t too bad, even if he was kind of forced to do it. being able to freely destroy something at base without getting yelled at was as much of a dopamine rush as he was going to get for a good while, and he sat down to relish his time in relative silence — until it wasn’t silent anymore.
having been so distracted deep in his own thoughts, eli hadn’t initially noticed the other child who had apparently joined him in carving pumpkins, until the shy, glasses-bearing boy spoke up to him. him!!! he could almost laugh at how ironic it was that anyone, much less than the son of the delusional scientist, would ask for his help. and he was even eyeing his own knives. ha!
“i could,” eli sneered, punctuating his deep insincerity with another stab of his switchblade, “but i’m doing my own. it doesn’t take a scientist to figure out how to do this thing.”
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