#peacewalkcr

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@peacewalkcr from x

"They don't have to play nice, they just need to play."

Ocelot would talk his ear off about keeping a dialogue open, and burning bridges, but he resists the urge. Big Boss expected cooperation, and bullets were already flying. Miller was already injured, and now they had wasted their time. That PMC would remain an enemy force until they were disbanded, firebombed, or torn apart by political sentiment.

Kaz struck him as a venture capitalist more than he did as a soldier, despite his experience. Ocelot was born holding a gun. Kaz went to college. Two different lives. Two ways of thinking.

That's why he was here. Politics. Officially, he was in the area working for the GRU. Unofficially, he was allied with MSF, building the army that would fall in line under Big Boss's command.

Ocelot looked over at Kaz, then at the bullet wound, and then somewhere else, looking aloof rather than angry. Kaz isn't an enemy. In fact, he means so much to Snake that Ocelot has to consider Kaz's well-being and Snake's intertwined.

"I wouldn't let 'em kill you." he asserts, "The gun's not just for show. Six bullets are more than enough to get out of a tight spot."

He spins his revolver around his finger once to amuse himself.

"... He's not going to like this."

He. Snake. He won't be angry, either - no, he'll smile and say something passive, but he won't like it. It'll just be another thing for him to handle.

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@peacewalkcr

Snake has his toes and his shorts in the sand, idle for the time being.

"Ever been to Hawai'i, Kaz?"

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@peacewalkcr

"All these years and you finally take a call from me."

It was astounding how quickly these bastard sons of Big Boss had become young men. Ocelot had essentially watched them as long as they'd been alive - his 'other' job demanded it from him. He didn't know them, but he knew where they were, and about how old they'd be. He knew David was Miller's acolyte, and he didn't envy him for that.

He was going to be a dead ringer for Big Boss. It was inevitable. Kaz would have to look into those clear, young eyes and show no resentment or remorse. Ocelot at least had about ten years of learning how to deal with Eli.

There were more pressing matters. Ocelot had been working for the Patriots, Foxhound, Outer Heaven, and hell, he still played GRU every so often. He knew what people needed to hear, wanted to hear, and deserved to hear.

Kaz deserved to hear this. Or maybe Ocelot just needed him to, as someone who had known just the kind of little monsters that Cipher had put into the world. What they were capable of.

"There's a third son, Kazuhira. It's gone beyond gene therapy, or gene editing - if you thought the world was crowded before, it's sure as Hell going to be a tight squeeze now."

Dead air.

"In other words, David and Eli have a little brother, courtesy of the same bastards that made them. Something else is rearing its head, and this whole back-and-forth we have might just change again.

... You should know what's out there, and what's out there isn't on either of our sides."

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💋

"Well? Nice, huh?"

Kaz was never going to understand what was so - comfy about the box. It was like a little portable dark, quiet place to think. Things were predictable inside the box. There was nothing to see. No watching, no scrutinizing, no second guessing or analyzing.

Sure, it's a tight fit for two guys, but isn't that the fun part? Maybe someone with higher standards might not think so, but to Snake, this is very enjoyable, even if Kaz has kicked him a few times in the process.

"It's dark. Quieter, too."

He thinks he's somewhere around Kaz's shoulder, so if he moves his nose a little more this way---

- no, or up? - to where he can feel Kaz breathing. He must have seemed like some nocturnal creature, like a pit viper - at home in the uncanny darkness. Snake's arm brushed against - he figured it had to be - Kaz's knee.

"It's like being blindfolded - dark in every direction. You could be next to me or a hundred miles away. Except I can hear you breathing, and you're really warm..."

Snake's beard, his nose, and his lips brush against his cheek - at first he kisses Kaz's nose, which is not his mouth, but close. Then he finally grasps Kaz's chin, and presses a kiss to his lips.

"There you are."

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wait a minute... are you jealous? (bb!)

"Jealous? Of you? Hardly. You have some of our best snipers pretty pissed off at you for your... uh, relationship problems. Those girls... they can get into position and stay there for days, you know?"

Snake moved away from the window by an inch. Just to be completely safe.

He was putting on a bit of an act, sure. It wasn't entirely a lie, the women Kaz typically pissed off weren't exactly civilians, were they? Snipers, demolition specialists, weapon experts - many people on Mother Base pulled some type of double-duty, sometimes working in research or supplying tactical support. Wherever they fit in best, Snake put them there.

He was currently wondering if Kaz might just fit in best at the bottom of the ocean.

"Not eating, not sleeping - they've got total control of their bodies. You'd notice things like that if you weren't dead set on treating my soldiers so poorly. It reflects on me, Kaz - and I won't have them say I did nothing while women were being mistreated by my XO.

If I have to hear it from someone else, or worse - hear you bragging about it - I'll bury you on that beach so that when the tide comes in, you'll either beg me to forgive you or drown."

He expects to see changes!

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04. tackles the other in a sudden and joyful hug. (bb)

"Kaz - ? I thought you'd be angry."

Snake admits, after holding him there for a moment - maybe it's not the reaction he expected, but after a full scale nuclear threat, after nearly experiencing Mutually Assured Destruction from a front row seat - he can't blame him. Snake has always lived with nuclear power, a nuclear test strike that had overshadowed his life even before The Boss.

The tactical nuke in Russia, and the way it tore the very bark from the trees sat in his heart and mind even now, rotting into something diseased and caustic inside him.

He remembered Para-Medic telling him about Godzilla. Radioactive and pissed off. He had felt a sudden kinship with the mutated monster.

The pain of carrying America's wicked karma in his bloodstream - even if he hadn't been hurt like the others, even if he'd been spared the cancer and the disintegrating wounds, it was in him. It was in him forever.

Snake wondered if Kaz ever felt it. Around him, in him, driving him.

El Che's words about Hiroshima and Nagasaki rang in his head like a migraine. He heard them in Kaz's voice over and over again.

'America did a terrible thing. Aren’t you Japanese angry about the atrocity that was perpetrated on you?'

Aren't you angry?

For Snake, it had very little to do with being Japanese or by what metric these things were measured, and everything to do with being alive in a world that had been built this way. Men, women, and children dying for the sake of those who did not know war.

Aren't you angry?

Snake was.

Getting so close to that nightmare, watching the Boss die for a country that would never see her sacrifices or her selfless mentorship. Pulling it all back out of her AI had made him feel like a trapped animal. Jack? Is that you?

Wasn't she angry?

No, she wasn't. Not angry enough. They had poisoned her, ripped her child from her, and used Snake to kill her. Then her AI did the same.

Snake held onto Kaz until his fingers started to curl into his back, but there wasn't any relief.

"You're always telling me to be careful, and I think this has been the opposite of being careful in every way. Without you on comms, I would have lost my mind."

His hands finally touch Kaz's face. He's good, he's there, and so is Snake. Thank God.

"I don't care what happens or what we have to do from here. It's never happening again. If they put a gun to our heads, we will break it. "

He tucks a strand of Kaz's blonde hair away from his face. His fingers are sticky with blood and sweat.

"And I get to see your face again."

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@peacewalkcr

"Cécile is pretty good looking, huh? I got a little bit of a thing for blondes, myself."

Snake reaches over to touch Kaz's hair a bit.

"I wish you'd let me see your eyes more often, though."

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"do you know how much i gave up for you? for us?" (bb. of course)

"And how much have you gained, Kaz? You were ready to blow us both away just so you could have one final victory, and I wouldn't let you.

Your business model changed the landscape of the battlefield. You commanded those men and women that you trained on mission after mission, and when that wasn't filling your pockets fast enough, you turned to keeping secrets for Cipher."

Smoke billows from a neglected cigar.

"You can't do what we did and walk away. You can't do what you did and expect to keep it all. War doesn't work like that."