MGS: untitled
Aug. 4th, 2010 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
what_we_dreamTitle: Untitled
Series: MGS
Pairing: none; previous Snake/Meryl alluded to
Rating: G
Notes: This is UNFINISHED, and will remain so.
Summary: Snake and Otacon agree to do Meryl a favour. Never has school life been so fraught.
The east lecture room chairs, popular legend had it, were built of unpadded wood with straight backs and no armrests to keep students from falling asleep in the middle of three-hour stats and econ classes, the bane of the College's first years. This was untrue: their modest nature found its explanation in fiscal conservatism, but the rumours persisted.
The east lecture room, built to accommodate fifty at full capacity, was currently less than half full, although the occasional student was still slipping in. Most had taken seats near the front, having learned early on that fear of participation was not an encouraged trait. Only a couple, secure in their skills or at least their confidence of them, continued to lurk in the back corners where the best sight lines were to be found. An old plastic analogue clock mounted on the front wall behind the flat presentation floor clicked loudly as its minute hand rocked into an upright position.
Someone had dragged a folding chair and table to a corner of the usually empty presentation floor, the kind most often used for holding the coffee urn and dried-out biscuits at fundraisers. Seated there was a dark-haired man in glasses, tapping away quietly at a laptop. He was dressed in light jeans and a lab coat, and was immediately assessed by many of the students as harmless. He paid no attention to the clock, the settling students, or the other man on the open floor.
The second man was leaning against the front wall just under a rolled-up projection screen, arms crossed loosely. His clothes were dark where the other’s were light, dark jeans and a navy woollen cable sweater. Thick chestnut brown hair shadowed sharp eyes. He had the tense feel of a predator, refraining from springing for a reason not yet divulged. The students classified him as dangerous.
At the clock’s tick, the standing man pushed back his left sleeve slightly to check the watch there, and then looked up at the students. The two doors had swung shut, and they had all seated themselves. Amongst the twenty-some students there was a strong male-bias, and that bias tended further towards the large, both in height and muscle. The five women, who were not notably large, were not sitting together. Neither were the men; each student had chosen his or her seat to allow one empty chair on either side.
All in one movement, the man at the front of the room stepped forward and cleared his throat. The one at the computer stopped typing and folded his hands on the table in front of him.
“I’m sure you all know who I am, but since introductions are generally expected: you can call me Snake. It’s not my name. Get used to it. If you become soldiers, you’ll be called plenty of things. Names have no meaning to grunts like me – like us – although they might mean a hell of a lot to your COs. I’ve met plenty of cocky bastards who thought a name – their name – meant something. It didn’t. In battle, your name is not who you are, it’s just what you’re called.”
He paused and looked around the room. “I'm not here to teach you about battle. I’m not here to teach you how to fight, and I'm not here to teach you how to sneak, so don't ask me.” He paused again, grey-green eyes sweeping across the audience. In the sharp silence, a woman in the second row with a tight dark pony-tail raised her hand. The general attitude of the other students seemed to indicate that this was not unusual. Snake shrugged and motioned to her. “Yeah?”
“Then what are you here for, sir?” She had a voice that could cut glass and snapped out her question with a trace of sarcasm.
Snake grinned, eyes glinting. “I’m here to teach you what it means to be soldiers, or rather, what it means to you,” he scanned the audience again, more closely this time so as to catch each pair of eyes, “to be a soldier.”
Having apparently finished his introduction, he dropped out of the slightly formal stance he had assumed, allowing his shoulders to relax and crossing his arms again.
“This exercise isn’t for marks. You won’t pass or fail it, and how well I or anyone else thinks you did won’t affect your grades. It is also not a competition. How quickly or competently you do what I ask of you is not being judged or compared to your classmates.” He paused, demeanour sharpening.
“That being said, I will expel from this exercise anyone who I find to have acted inappropriately, either by acting outside specific guidelines I have set or in overall terms of acceptable behaviour. And although I don’t have any defined power to penalize you outside of this exercise, you can take it for granted that I have the ear of your CO who does have that power.
“This,” he added, motioning to the man sitting at the desk, “is my partner and tech back-up, Otacon. It’s not his real name either, but you can still call him that. He’ll be recording your data through this exercise, so once I’m done go over and give him what he needs. He has the same powers as me in this exercise, which means he can kick your ass out of it if you mess with him. He also has your CO’s ear. If you have a problem, you can come to either of us, it doesn’t matter which. Understood?”
There was a chorus of yes sirs. Snake nodded. “Fine. Here’s your first assignment. You can use any source or means available to you – outside any that could endanger life – to find the answer. That includes books, interviews, the internet, whatever. What I want you to tell me, either in words or a written report, is what the COBRA unit, disbanded in 1964, has to do with what I’ve told you I’m here to teach you about. And I’ll give you a hint: neither myself nor Otacon will answer this question for you. Dismissed.” He nodded to them, and then drew back to stand in a corner, watching as the students stood and began filing up to register their data with Otacon.
----------------------------------------
Outside the east lecture room, the chattier students were already milling.
"No way this isn't all a test. It's gotta be some kind of trick..."
"I heard Snake and Silverburg used to be tight."
"No way..."
"What the hell kind of methods could he be thinking we'd be using that would endanger life?"
"Wonder what they're paying him..."
"Maybe in rookies to use for target practice. Heh."
"Barker said he heard Snake doesn't believe in VR training, at all. How can you not believe in VR? You'd have to be nuts."
"Why are you so sure he's not? I heard he was starting to go right after Shadow Moses. That's why he fucked up the Tanker thing. That lab rat's more his babysitter than his techie."
"No way, man."
"Seriously, is this really not a competition?"
"If it is, you're all selling yourselves out right now."
The chattering stopped instantly as all heads swivelled to the form that had appeared out of the lecture room's second doorway, the one further from Otacon's table. Snake smiled, and disappeared back into the room.
"Shit, how much do you think he heard?"
"Shut up, man."
"But-"
"Shut it."
----------------------------------------
Otacon was powering down his laptop when Snake reappeared, grinning.
"Been scaring the kids?"
"They need it. You ever seen such a bunch of rookies? Meryl must be crazy, 'the new Foxhound.’ The new 'About To Get Our Asses Kicked', more like it."
"They looked pretty normal to me. A bit outspoken, maybe."
Snake snorted. "You should have heard them outside. They think I'm a raving lunatic and you're my keeper."
Otacon adjusted his glasses, looked up at Snake. "It's not true?"
"Ha ha," said Snake dryly. "They also still think it's a test."
"And I'm sure you completely reassured them." Otacon stood, slipped his laptop into its carrying case and threw the case's strap over his shoulder.
"What would be the fun in that? ... You've taken care of the internet?"
"I've locked down the few sites that referenced the COBRAs. I've also put out trackers on the few military sites that the kids might think to hack, assuming any of them know how."
Snake began walking up the stairs to the top of the lecture hall. "Good. Send them all an email. They have until the day after tomorrow at noon."
"Isn't tomorrow a full day of classes?"
"Yep." Snake paused half way up the stairs, looked back. "Meryl's not paying us by the hour here. If she thinks I'm hanging around for more than a couple of weeks, tops, she's even crazier than I figured her for. The kids can learn on the fly. Best way, really."
"Right," drawled Otacon behind him.
"Shut up. And get me a beer."
"I'm your nursemaid, not your servant. But if you're good at dinner, I'll heat you up some milk afterwards."
"That's just disturbing, Hal."
----------------------------------------
The Boss' squad, the COBRAs, were mentioned in only one book in the college. That book was currently at the bottom of Snake and Otacon's temporary office's desk drawer. The internet angle had been taken care of by Otacon. Sequestered in the middle of Minnesota, the College's location was itself a deterrent; there was nowhere students could get to and back from in the time they had allotted which might provide them the answers they needed.
"So it is a test," said Meryl Silverburg, commander of the solders-in-training who might someday, if they were good enough, become members of her new Foxhound. She was sitting in her office, one of the largest in the college, behind a walnut desk her uncle had found for her. Meryl, soldier before administrator, was not much at home behind a desk, and not willing to put in the effort to respectably furnish an office. This had led her few friends to make the effort for her. Mei Ling had given her a bonsai tree and a worn pottery statue to fill empty shelf space. Snake, always the expert at fitting in, had dug up a flag on a flagpole wired to create a wind-caught impression. Otacon had contributed an impressive set of leather bound volumes whose backs were so worn that the gold-leaf writing was illegible. They turned out on inspection to be a set of old engineering encyclopaedias from Otacon's grandfather's father's day, many softly mouldering on the insides.
These ornaments, aided by the occasional gift from Meryl's few other acquaintances, were all that adorned her office. In front of the wide desk two straight-backed wooden chairs had been provided, neither of which were very comfortable. Meryl had no intention of wasting the little time she was forced to spend in her office being bothered by longwinded guests.
Snake was currently sprawled in one of these chairs, while Otacon wandered behind her desk, inspecting the bonsai.
"Of course it's a test. A test to force them to think outside the box. Figuratively." Snake leaned back and plunked his feet up on the desk, dull and scarred from lack of care.
"Do you expect any of them to pass it?"
"Not at the rate they're going."
"Meryl, you realize you need to water this thing, right?" Otacon tapped a tiny withered branch with his finger, and a shower of brown needles rained down.
Meryl swivelled her chair around to glare at him without turning far enough around to take her eyes off Snake completely. "It looks better that way. Artistic. Besides, last time I watered it I ended up with a puddle on my shelf."
"How much water did you give it?"
"A pitcher-full." Her answer was bland and straightforward; potted plants are not of concern.
"Ah. Um, yes." Otacon pulled his hand away from the tiny dead tree with care and moved over to inspect his encyclopaedias, running a finger down A-Br's spine. Meryl rolled her eyes and turned back to Snake.
"So, is there actually a way to pass this test?"
"Sure. Tough but fair's my motto." He grinned easily.
"Really?" Asked Meryl, with a devious glint in her eye, leaning forwards over her desk, "Because I seem to remember something about licking-"
"My professional motto," interposed Snake. Behind them, Otacon cleared his throat.
"You'll be glad to know, Meryl," he began, dropping the volume he had been examining back into its snug space and returning to the other side of the desk, "that three of your students show promising signs as hackers."
"Which ones?" She transferred her gaze to him with apparent interest.
He smiled slightly, apologetically. "Sorry, but I've been instructed to work on a fee-per-service basis."
Meryl's eyes narrowed as Snake broke out in a dry chuckle. "I am paying you for your time here. So tell me." She tapped impatiently on the dull surface of her desk.
"You're paying us to educate your students in developing a self philosophy. Not evaluate their computer skills. That costs extra." Snake pulled his feet off the desk and sat up, preparatory to leaving.
"If you're so worried about money, teach the kids how to fight. You know I could raise a decent amount for that kind of training."
"No. That's non-negotiable. Besides, I'm sure you can find plenty of spry young idiots to teach them to drop their targets. I'll teach them what I agreed to – under duress. But no more." He stood and walked out of the room, years of military training burned inexorably into his stride. The door closed behind him on nearly silent springs.
Meryl turned to Otacon. "What the hell was that about?"
Otacon shrugged, still smiling slightly although his expression had shifted from one of amusement to sadness. "He's not doing this for the money, Meryl. And he's not doing it as a favour either, I don't think. I think... I think he wants to pass something on to the next generation, something that's not about killing as much as reasons." Otacon paused, pushed his glasses up on his nose.
"So he's taking an interest in the new generation of soldiers?" Meryl leaned back, expression thoughtful.
"No, I don't really think he cares about them at all. I just think... he wants soldiers to know what they're fighting for. Because he never did, until Shadow Moses, and if it hadn't been for Grey Fox he would have ended up dead or worse, just a thoughtless killing tool." Otacon paused, cocked his head slightly. "But what do I know? Maybe he just wants to screw with them- and you." He gave another grin, this one without a trace of his previous sorrow, and followed his partner out of the room.
Meryl sighed and, leaning back in her chair, crossed her arms over her face. "Men."
----------------------------------------
Otacon sat on the one desk in their shared office, from which the codes and cryptography instructor had been summarily ousted, leaning back against the wall. Snake sat in their one chair, feet propped up on the old desk.
“I don’t think this office is technically big enough for two people,” said Otacon, kicking a leg out to the side to rest against the door while typing one-handed on his laptop.
“It’s certainly not if it has to house both you, me and your truck-full of crap,” said Snake, glancing at the two duffel bags sitting against the wall next to him. The desk was already covered with computer components, cables and paper.
“But just think how upset you’d have been if I had left it at home and wasn’t been able to build you a false identity on the fly.”
“Yeah, that’s a pressing concern of mine,” said Snake blandly, pulling out a cigarette. “Although, on the bright side, there aren’t any smoke detectors in here.”
“Snake!” scolded Otacon, making to knock the cigarette out of Snake’s hand. Snake, being Snake, avoided it easily, although he tucked the cig back into its packet with a glare. “Besides the fact that smoking is horrible for your health, you shouldn’t try to benefit from a fundamental design flaw. Well, not in a building you’re allied with,” added Otacon, international terrorist, after a second of thought.
Snake snorted. “I wouldn’t be allied with this bunch for a hill of beans.” He dropped his head back to rest on the on the back of the chair, closed his eyes. “What’s the idiot count?”
“Well, I think not-idiot count would be a better term. Somewhat. Anyway. Three of them came to ask me about the question. Meryl told me another one went to her, and she spilled everything since we didn’t tell her not to.”
“I had four, but only two of them asked about the assignment,” said Snake in a suspiciously dull tone.
“And the other two?”
“Wanted tips,” said the soldier with the same dullness.
“You knew it would happen.” Otacon sighed and exited out of his windows, told the laptop to shut down. “They probably won’t be the last, either.”
“Probably not,” agreed Snake.
They sat in silence for a minute. After a minute, Otacon turned to his partner, face taking on an expression of vague concern.
“You didn’t kill them, did you?”
----------------------------------------
The minute hand was once again struggling its way towards verticality. Cadets were trickling in, more slowly this time, and sitting in silence, some reviewing short typed reports.
The two Philanthropists were in the same positions as before, Otacon seated at the folding table typing, Snake standing under the clock, watching with shadowed eyes. The clock struck twelve with a relieved, shuddering tick, as the last cadet sprinted in and slid into a back-row seat. Snake looked up, face expressionless.
“You’ve all had forty-five hours to complete this assignment; hopefully you all managed to bullshit something, or you’re going to find your careers in a military organization extremely short. I don’t want speeches, or essays. You should be able to answer the question I asked you in a sentence, but I’m willing to listen to three since it’s hard to be concise when you’re trying to cover your ignorance.” He paused.
“Of the twenty-three of you, only six took the obvious route to completing this assignment. I’m sure most of you tried the library and the internet, and found nothing, and subsequently tried to make something up. Three of you tried to hack into government files, and I commend your efforts, although having failed you should have sought out the more obvious answer. A pair of you in what I can only assume was either a fit of insanity or avarice decided to drive to Chicago and back in thirty-six hours, skipping all your classes, and I’ll be interested to find out what you came up with, and how much you charged to share that information.” Snake paused, eyes sweeping across the room. A hand went up, belonging to the one he had already categorized as Annoying Brunette. “Yeah?” he asked languidly.
“You’re implying that there was a correct route we should have chosen to find this information, sir?” asked Annoying Brunette, voice sharp with anger.
“I’m implying,” replied Snake, “that there was an easy first step which you all could have taken, but only six of you actually took. I told you that neither Otacon nor I would tell you the answer to your question. I did not tell you that we wouldn’t tell you where to find that information, or in fact who the COBRAs were.”
“So it was a word game,” said Brunette in something like disgust.
“No,” said Snake sharply enough that half the room started and Brunette shrunk back slightly. “It was common sense. If you’re given an order you don’t understand, or don’t know how to fulfil, you don’t take your best guess at what it means; you ask for clarification.” He paused, and then spoke again in a more moderated tone. “Enough of that. You know what you should have done. I want to know if you know the answer to the question. Everyone to the right of Barker,” Snake indicated one of the cadets, who paled slightly, “you’re with Otacon. Barker and the rest of you, you’re with me. Come up one at a time and give us your answer.”
Snake strode over to stand in the corner opposite from Otacon, leaning against the wall, and waited, arms crossed. After a second, a cadet stood and began making his way towards the engineer. Almost immediately afterwards, another stood and moved towards Snake.
The answering did not take long. Snake was true to his word, and cut off any speeches longer than three sentences. He only accepted reports which were a page or shorter, forcing those who attempted to submit longer ones to summarize their point verbally instead. And his face gave away none of his thoughts. Otacon was slightly more accommodating, allowing students to prattle for a while before fending them off and sending them back to sit down, accepting papers two pages or shorter. He too, though, gave away nothing in his attitude, although it was apparently considerably more relaxed than Snake’s.
When the last student, one of the back-row lurkers, had returned to his seat after reporting to Snake, Snake gathered up the three assignments he had accepted and returned to his place in the centre of the floor. “Well, that was about what I had expected, although if you were planning to send someone to Chicago you might have sent a better researcher,” he said gruffly. “In any case, hopefully some of you learned something from this exercise, whether it was the set lesson or not. For those of you who are still in the dark about that, I’ll summarize the importance of the COBRAs: an elite combat unit under the famous American soldier the Boss, they abandoned their names when they found an emotion to carry into battle and became known as the Fear, the Sorrow and so on. Every soldier is affected by battle differently, but most come to associate it with at least one emotion, and that helps to define who they are. You should be thinking about that, since most of you will someday find yourselves in battle.” He paused and looked around the room again with a piecing gaze. Those cadets who met it glanced away quickly.
“Now I bet you’re all wondering what your next assignment is,” he continued in a vague tone of false enthusiasm. “This one’s easier. I want you to pick one person in this room. You don’t have to tell anyone who you’re picking, including the one you pick. I just want you to write a report, a short report, one paragraph is fine, and tell me what their most treasured thing is, and why you think so. Doesn’t have to be material, but it could be. You have until Friday – that’s the day after tomorrow – at noon to hand your sheet in to my office. If you don’t know where that is, consider finding out an extra lesson. Dismissed.”
This time, unlike the last, the students filed out silently, and did not linker to gossip in the hallway.
Snake waited until they had all disappeared to stride over to Otacon, who was already almost finished packing away his computer. “How were yours?” he asked, glancing at the small pile of papers on the desk next to the leather carrying case.
“Not too bad. Well, for a given value of bad. They all had something to say at least, although three of them had no idea what they were talking about. I think I had several of the Chicago schemers. They knew who the COBRAs were, at least, but the best they could figure out was that teamwork was important, or loyalty or, in one case, not to turn traitor.”
“Who was that?” asked Snake with a growl.
“What will you do to them if I tell you?” Otacon zipped up the carrying case, stood. “How were yours?”
“Couldn’t find their asses with both hands. At least there wasn’t any drivel about the importance of friendship.”
“They’ve survived nearly three years in a military academy. I think that’s probably been beaten out of them.”
Snake turned to look at him, expression disbelieving. “Next to scientists, rookies are probably about the most idealistic idiots I’ve ever met.”
“Hey. I grew out of it.” Otacon glared without heat.
“Maybe, but look what came of it before I got to you. Who’s going to knock them out of it before they do serious damage?”
“This is the part where I’m supposed to say you, right?” Otacon smiled wryly.
“This is the part where you’re supposed to start worrying about the fate of humanity.”
----------------------------------------
“What the hell is this?” groaned Barker, sitting on the floor of the men’s washroom down the hall, staring in dismay at the sleek black box on the tiled floor in front of him. While basically useless with electronics, he had enough charisma to pull together a small group of other cadets who were technically minded and, more importantly, strongly motivated to succeed.
“I told you they wouldn’t discuss the exercise in the lecture room,” put in Andrews gloomily, a tall cadet with a persistent streak of pessimism and a steady hand when it came to wiring.
“We should have bugged their office,” said the third of the quartet, Mitchell, one of the five women in the program and generally acknowledged to be the most promising in communications of the entire squad.
“And who would you have suckered into breaking in? Kruzek?” asked Barker sarcastically. Most people were usually just sharp enough to cut themselves, but Kruzek could and did extend that skill to cutting others, and was generally left well alone.
“Well, at least this assignment isn’t as hard as the other one. It’s not like they can hide information on us,” said Mitchell.
“That’s what you think,” said Andrews.
The fourth member of the group, Willis, was one of the squad’s three resident hackers. He was also one of the back row lurkers, and now sat with his back to against a corner without saying anything. Mostly silent by nature, the quartet had long stopped noticing it.
----------------------------------------
On the other side of the college, sitting in the lunch room which was allocated to them for another half an hour, sat a larger group of cadets.
“So what, we get no credit for the information? I barely made up the gas money!”
“I wouldn’t count on it. Snake’s a tough old bastard from what I hear.”
“I had the engineer. He seems pretty soft.”
“Except for the fact that he designed one of the most deadly threats in the world.”
“I don’t believe that. He probably just took credit for it. With the rest of the scientists dead, who’d know?”
“And I’ve got old MacIntyre chasing me about skipping his lesson. Like I don’t fucking know how to defuse a claymore.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you had something planned? I had to bullshit some crap about codenames from his introduction speech.”
“It’s not like you were far wrong.”
“And how they were meaningless.”
“Ouch.”
“Well, at least the next assignment’s easier. Right?”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
Series: MGS
Pairing: none; previous Snake/Meryl alluded to
Rating: G
Notes: This is UNFINISHED, and will remain so.
Summary: Snake and Otacon agree to do Meryl a favour. Never has school life been so fraught.
The east lecture room chairs, popular legend had it, were built of unpadded wood with straight backs and no armrests to keep students from falling asleep in the middle of three-hour stats and econ classes, the bane of the College's first years. This was untrue: their modest nature found its explanation in fiscal conservatism, but the rumours persisted.
The east lecture room, built to accommodate fifty at full capacity, was currently less than half full, although the occasional student was still slipping in. Most had taken seats near the front, having learned early on that fear of participation was not an encouraged trait. Only a couple, secure in their skills or at least their confidence of them, continued to lurk in the back corners where the best sight lines were to be found. An old plastic analogue clock mounted on the front wall behind the flat presentation floor clicked loudly as its minute hand rocked into an upright position.
Someone had dragged a folding chair and table to a corner of the usually empty presentation floor, the kind most often used for holding the coffee urn and dried-out biscuits at fundraisers. Seated there was a dark-haired man in glasses, tapping away quietly at a laptop. He was dressed in light jeans and a lab coat, and was immediately assessed by many of the students as harmless. He paid no attention to the clock, the settling students, or the other man on the open floor.
The second man was leaning against the front wall just under a rolled-up projection screen, arms crossed loosely. His clothes were dark where the other’s were light, dark jeans and a navy woollen cable sweater. Thick chestnut brown hair shadowed sharp eyes. He had the tense feel of a predator, refraining from springing for a reason not yet divulged. The students classified him as dangerous.
At the clock’s tick, the standing man pushed back his left sleeve slightly to check the watch there, and then looked up at the students. The two doors had swung shut, and they had all seated themselves. Amongst the twenty-some students there was a strong male-bias, and that bias tended further towards the large, both in height and muscle. The five women, who were not notably large, were not sitting together. Neither were the men; each student had chosen his or her seat to allow one empty chair on either side.
All in one movement, the man at the front of the room stepped forward and cleared his throat. The one at the computer stopped typing and folded his hands on the table in front of him.
“I’m sure you all know who I am, but since introductions are generally expected: you can call me Snake. It’s not my name. Get used to it. If you become soldiers, you’ll be called plenty of things. Names have no meaning to grunts like me – like us – although they might mean a hell of a lot to your COs. I’ve met plenty of cocky bastards who thought a name – their name – meant something. It didn’t. In battle, your name is not who you are, it’s just what you’re called.”
He paused and looked around the room. “I'm not here to teach you about battle. I’m not here to teach you how to fight, and I'm not here to teach you how to sneak, so don't ask me.” He paused again, grey-green eyes sweeping across the audience. In the sharp silence, a woman in the second row with a tight dark pony-tail raised her hand. The general attitude of the other students seemed to indicate that this was not unusual. Snake shrugged and motioned to her. “Yeah?”
“Then what are you here for, sir?” She had a voice that could cut glass and snapped out her question with a trace of sarcasm.
Snake grinned, eyes glinting. “I’m here to teach you what it means to be soldiers, or rather, what it means to you,” he scanned the audience again, more closely this time so as to catch each pair of eyes, “to be a soldier.”
Having apparently finished his introduction, he dropped out of the slightly formal stance he had assumed, allowing his shoulders to relax and crossing his arms again.
“This exercise isn’t for marks. You won’t pass or fail it, and how well I or anyone else thinks you did won’t affect your grades. It is also not a competition. How quickly or competently you do what I ask of you is not being judged or compared to your classmates.” He paused, demeanour sharpening.
“That being said, I will expel from this exercise anyone who I find to have acted inappropriately, either by acting outside specific guidelines I have set or in overall terms of acceptable behaviour. And although I don’t have any defined power to penalize you outside of this exercise, you can take it for granted that I have the ear of your CO who does have that power.
“This,” he added, motioning to the man sitting at the desk, “is my partner and tech back-up, Otacon. It’s not his real name either, but you can still call him that. He’ll be recording your data through this exercise, so once I’m done go over and give him what he needs. He has the same powers as me in this exercise, which means he can kick your ass out of it if you mess with him. He also has your CO’s ear. If you have a problem, you can come to either of us, it doesn’t matter which. Understood?”
There was a chorus of yes sirs. Snake nodded. “Fine. Here’s your first assignment. You can use any source or means available to you – outside any that could endanger life – to find the answer. That includes books, interviews, the internet, whatever. What I want you to tell me, either in words or a written report, is what the COBRA unit, disbanded in 1964, has to do with what I’ve told you I’m here to teach you about. And I’ll give you a hint: neither myself nor Otacon will answer this question for you. Dismissed.” He nodded to them, and then drew back to stand in a corner, watching as the students stood and began filing up to register their data with Otacon.
----------------------------------------
Outside the east lecture room, the chattier students were already milling.
"No way this isn't all a test. It's gotta be some kind of trick..."
"I heard Snake and Silverburg used to be tight."
"No way..."
"What the hell kind of methods could he be thinking we'd be using that would endanger life?"
"Wonder what they're paying him..."
"Maybe in rookies to use for target practice. Heh."
"Barker said he heard Snake doesn't believe in VR training, at all. How can you not believe in VR? You'd have to be nuts."
"Why are you so sure he's not? I heard he was starting to go right after Shadow Moses. That's why he fucked up the Tanker thing. That lab rat's more his babysitter than his techie."
"No way, man."
"Seriously, is this really not a competition?"
"If it is, you're all selling yourselves out right now."
The chattering stopped instantly as all heads swivelled to the form that had appeared out of the lecture room's second doorway, the one further from Otacon's table. Snake smiled, and disappeared back into the room.
"Shit, how much do you think he heard?"
"Shut up, man."
"But-"
"Shut it."
----------------------------------------
Otacon was powering down his laptop when Snake reappeared, grinning.
"Been scaring the kids?"
"They need it. You ever seen such a bunch of rookies? Meryl must be crazy, 'the new Foxhound.’ The new 'About To Get Our Asses Kicked', more like it."
"They looked pretty normal to me. A bit outspoken, maybe."
Snake snorted. "You should have heard them outside. They think I'm a raving lunatic and you're my keeper."
Otacon adjusted his glasses, looked up at Snake. "It's not true?"
"Ha ha," said Snake dryly. "They also still think it's a test."
"And I'm sure you completely reassured them." Otacon stood, slipped his laptop into its carrying case and threw the case's strap over his shoulder.
"What would be the fun in that? ... You've taken care of the internet?"
"I've locked down the few sites that referenced the COBRAs. I've also put out trackers on the few military sites that the kids might think to hack, assuming any of them know how."
Snake began walking up the stairs to the top of the lecture hall. "Good. Send them all an email. They have until the day after tomorrow at noon."
"Isn't tomorrow a full day of classes?"
"Yep." Snake paused half way up the stairs, looked back. "Meryl's not paying us by the hour here. If she thinks I'm hanging around for more than a couple of weeks, tops, she's even crazier than I figured her for. The kids can learn on the fly. Best way, really."
"Right," drawled Otacon behind him.
"Shut up. And get me a beer."
"I'm your nursemaid, not your servant. But if you're good at dinner, I'll heat you up some milk afterwards."
"That's just disturbing, Hal."
----------------------------------------
The Boss' squad, the COBRAs, were mentioned in only one book in the college. That book was currently at the bottom of Snake and Otacon's temporary office's desk drawer. The internet angle had been taken care of by Otacon. Sequestered in the middle of Minnesota, the College's location was itself a deterrent; there was nowhere students could get to and back from in the time they had allotted which might provide them the answers they needed.
"So it is a test," said Meryl Silverburg, commander of the solders-in-training who might someday, if they were good enough, become members of her new Foxhound. She was sitting in her office, one of the largest in the college, behind a walnut desk her uncle had found for her. Meryl, soldier before administrator, was not much at home behind a desk, and not willing to put in the effort to respectably furnish an office. This had led her few friends to make the effort for her. Mei Ling had given her a bonsai tree and a worn pottery statue to fill empty shelf space. Snake, always the expert at fitting in, had dug up a flag on a flagpole wired to create a wind-caught impression. Otacon had contributed an impressive set of leather bound volumes whose backs were so worn that the gold-leaf writing was illegible. They turned out on inspection to be a set of old engineering encyclopaedias from Otacon's grandfather's father's day, many softly mouldering on the insides.
These ornaments, aided by the occasional gift from Meryl's few other acquaintances, were all that adorned her office. In front of the wide desk two straight-backed wooden chairs had been provided, neither of which were very comfortable. Meryl had no intention of wasting the little time she was forced to spend in her office being bothered by longwinded guests.
Snake was currently sprawled in one of these chairs, while Otacon wandered behind her desk, inspecting the bonsai.
"Of course it's a test. A test to force them to think outside the box. Figuratively." Snake leaned back and plunked his feet up on the desk, dull and scarred from lack of care.
"Do you expect any of them to pass it?"
"Not at the rate they're going."
"Meryl, you realize you need to water this thing, right?" Otacon tapped a tiny withered branch with his finger, and a shower of brown needles rained down.
Meryl swivelled her chair around to glare at him without turning far enough around to take her eyes off Snake completely. "It looks better that way. Artistic. Besides, last time I watered it I ended up with a puddle on my shelf."
"How much water did you give it?"
"A pitcher-full." Her answer was bland and straightforward; potted plants are not of concern.
"Ah. Um, yes." Otacon pulled his hand away from the tiny dead tree with care and moved over to inspect his encyclopaedias, running a finger down A-Br's spine. Meryl rolled her eyes and turned back to Snake.
"So, is there actually a way to pass this test?"
"Sure. Tough but fair's my motto." He grinned easily.
"Really?" Asked Meryl, with a devious glint in her eye, leaning forwards over her desk, "Because I seem to remember something about licking-"
"My professional motto," interposed Snake. Behind them, Otacon cleared his throat.
"You'll be glad to know, Meryl," he began, dropping the volume he had been examining back into its snug space and returning to the other side of the desk, "that three of your students show promising signs as hackers."
"Which ones?" She transferred her gaze to him with apparent interest.
He smiled slightly, apologetically. "Sorry, but I've been instructed to work on a fee-per-service basis."
Meryl's eyes narrowed as Snake broke out in a dry chuckle. "I am paying you for your time here. So tell me." She tapped impatiently on the dull surface of her desk.
"You're paying us to educate your students in developing a self philosophy. Not evaluate their computer skills. That costs extra." Snake pulled his feet off the desk and sat up, preparatory to leaving.
"If you're so worried about money, teach the kids how to fight. You know I could raise a decent amount for that kind of training."
"No. That's non-negotiable. Besides, I'm sure you can find plenty of spry young idiots to teach them to drop their targets. I'll teach them what I agreed to – under duress. But no more." He stood and walked out of the room, years of military training burned inexorably into his stride. The door closed behind him on nearly silent springs.
Meryl turned to Otacon. "What the hell was that about?"
Otacon shrugged, still smiling slightly although his expression had shifted from one of amusement to sadness. "He's not doing this for the money, Meryl. And he's not doing it as a favour either, I don't think. I think... I think he wants to pass something on to the next generation, something that's not about killing as much as reasons." Otacon paused, pushed his glasses up on his nose.
"So he's taking an interest in the new generation of soldiers?" Meryl leaned back, expression thoughtful.
"No, I don't really think he cares about them at all. I just think... he wants soldiers to know what they're fighting for. Because he never did, until Shadow Moses, and if it hadn't been for Grey Fox he would have ended up dead or worse, just a thoughtless killing tool." Otacon paused, cocked his head slightly. "But what do I know? Maybe he just wants to screw with them- and you." He gave another grin, this one without a trace of his previous sorrow, and followed his partner out of the room.
Meryl sighed and, leaning back in her chair, crossed her arms over her face. "Men."
----------------------------------------
Otacon sat on the one desk in their shared office, from which the codes and cryptography instructor had been summarily ousted, leaning back against the wall. Snake sat in their one chair, feet propped up on the old desk.
“I don’t think this office is technically big enough for two people,” said Otacon, kicking a leg out to the side to rest against the door while typing one-handed on his laptop.
“It’s certainly not if it has to house both you, me and your truck-full of crap,” said Snake, glancing at the two duffel bags sitting against the wall next to him. The desk was already covered with computer components, cables and paper.
“But just think how upset you’d have been if I had left it at home and wasn’t been able to build you a false identity on the fly.”
“Yeah, that’s a pressing concern of mine,” said Snake blandly, pulling out a cigarette. “Although, on the bright side, there aren’t any smoke detectors in here.”
“Snake!” scolded Otacon, making to knock the cigarette out of Snake’s hand. Snake, being Snake, avoided it easily, although he tucked the cig back into its packet with a glare. “Besides the fact that smoking is horrible for your health, you shouldn’t try to benefit from a fundamental design flaw. Well, not in a building you’re allied with,” added Otacon, international terrorist, after a second of thought.
Snake snorted. “I wouldn’t be allied with this bunch for a hill of beans.” He dropped his head back to rest on the on the back of the chair, closed his eyes. “What’s the idiot count?”
“Well, I think not-idiot count would be a better term. Somewhat. Anyway. Three of them came to ask me about the question. Meryl told me another one went to her, and she spilled everything since we didn’t tell her not to.”
“I had four, but only two of them asked about the assignment,” said Snake in a suspiciously dull tone.
“And the other two?”
“Wanted tips,” said the soldier with the same dullness.
“You knew it would happen.” Otacon sighed and exited out of his windows, told the laptop to shut down. “They probably won’t be the last, either.”
“Probably not,” agreed Snake.
They sat in silence for a minute. After a minute, Otacon turned to his partner, face taking on an expression of vague concern.
“You didn’t kill them, did you?”
----------------------------------------
The minute hand was once again struggling its way towards verticality. Cadets were trickling in, more slowly this time, and sitting in silence, some reviewing short typed reports.
The two Philanthropists were in the same positions as before, Otacon seated at the folding table typing, Snake standing under the clock, watching with shadowed eyes. The clock struck twelve with a relieved, shuddering tick, as the last cadet sprinted in and slid into a back-row seat. Snake looked up, face expressionless.
“You’ve all had forty-five hours to complete this assignment; hopefully you all managed to bullshit something, or you’re going to find your careers in a military organization extremely short. I don’t want speeches, or essays. You should be able to answer the question I asked you in a sentence, but I’m willing to listen to three since it’s hard to be concise when you’re trying to cover your ignorance.” He paused.
“Of the twenty-three of you, only six took the obvious route to completing this assignment. I’m sure most of you tried the library and the internet, and found nothing, and subsequently tried to make something up. Three of you tried to hack into government files, and I commend your efforts, although having failed you should have sought out the more obvious answer. A pair of you in what I can only assume was either a fit of insanity or avarice decided to drive to Chicago and back in thirty-six hours, skipping all your classes, and I’ll be interested to find out what you came up with, and how much you charged to share that information.” Snake paused, eyes sweeping across the room. A hand went up, belonging to the one he had already categorized as Annoying Brunette. “Yeah?” he asked languidly.
“You’re implying that there was a correct route we should have chosen to find this information, sir?” asked Annoying Brunette, voice sharp with anger.
“I’m implying,” replied Snake, “that there was an easy first step which you all could have taken, but only six of you actually took. I told you that neither Otacon nor I would tell you the answer to your question. I did not tell you that we wouldn’t tell you where to find that information, or in fact who the COBRAs were.”
“So it was a word game,” said Brunette in something like disgust.
“No,” said Snake sharply enough that half the room started and Brunette shrunk back slightly. “It was common sense. If you’re given an order you don’t understand, or don’t know how to fulfil, you don’t take your best guess at what it means; you ask for clarification.” He paused, and then spoke again in a more moderated tone. “Enough of that. You know what you should have done. I want to know if you know the answer to the question. Everyone to the right of Barker,” Snake indicated one of the cadets, who paled slightly, “you’re with Otacon. Barker and the rest of you, you’re with me. Come up one at a time and give us your answer.”
Snake strode over to stand in the corner opposite from Otacon, leaning against the wall, and waited, arms crossed. After a second, a cadet stood and began making his way towards the engineer. Almost immediately afterwards, another stood and moved towards Snake.
The answering did not take long. Snake was true to his word, and cut off any speeches longer than three sentences. He only accepted reports which were a page or shorter, forcing those who attempted to submit longer ones to summarize their point verbally instead. And his face gave away none of his thoughts. Otacon was slightly more accommodating, allowing students to prattle for a while before fending them off and sending them back to sit down, accepting papers two pages or shorter. He too, though, gave away nothing in his attitude, although it was apparently considerably more relaxed than Snake’s.
When the last student, one of the back-row lurkers, had returned to his seat after reporting to Snake, Snake gathered up the three assignments he had accepted and returned to his place in the centre of the floor. “Well, that was about what I had expected, although if you were planning to send someone to Chicago you might have sent a better researcher,” he said gruffly. “In any case, hopefully some of you learned something from this exercise, whether it was the set lesson or not. For those of you who are still in the dark about that, I’ll summarize the importance of the COBRAs: an elite combat unit under the famous American soldier the Boss, they abandoned their names when they found an emotion to carry into battle and became known as the Fear, the Sorrow and so on. Every soldier is affected by battle differently, but most come to associate it with at least one emotion, and that helps to define who they are. You should be thinking about that, since most of you will someday find yourselves in battle.” He paused and looked around the room again with a piecing gaze. Those cadets who met it glanced away quickly.
“Now I bet you’re all wondering what your next assignment is,” he continued in a vague tone of false enthusiasm. “This one’s easier. I want you to pick one person in this room. You don’t have to tell anyone who you’re picking, including the one you pick. I just want you to write a report, a short report, one paragraph is fine, and tell me what their most treasured thing is, and why you think so. Doesn’t have to be material, but it could be. You have until Friday – that’s the day after tomorrow – at noon to hand your sheet in to my office. If you don’t know where that is, consider finding out an extra lesson. Dismissed.”
This time, unlike the last, the students filed out silently, and did not linker to gossip in the hallway.
Snake waited until they had all disappeared to stride over to Otacon, who was already almost finished packing away his computer. “How were yours?” he asked, glancing at the small pile of papers on the desk next to the leather carrying case.
“Not too bad. Well, for a given value of bad. They all had something to say at least, although three of them had no idea what they were talking about. I think I had several of the Chicago schemers. They knew who the COBRAs were, at least, but the best they could figure out was that teamwork was important, or loyalty or, in one case, not to turn traitor.”
“Who was that?” asked Snake with a growl.
“What will you do to them if I tell you?” Otacon zipped up the carrying case, stood. “How were yours?”
“Couldn’t find their asses with both hands. At least there wasn’t any drivel about the importance of friendship.”
“They’ve survived nearly three years in a military academy. I think that’s probably been beaten out of them.”
Snake turned to look at him, expression disbelieving. “Next to scientists, rookies are probably about the most idealistic idiots I’ve ever met.”
“Hey. I grew out of it.” Otacon glared without heat.
“Maybe, but look what came of it before I got to you. Who’s going to knock them out of it before they do serious damage?”
“This is the part where I’m supposed to say you, right?” Otacon smiled wryly.
“This is the part where you’re supposed to start worrying about the fate of humanity.”
----------------------------------------
“What the hell is this?” groaned Barker, sitting on the floor of the men’s washroom down the hall, staring in dismay at the sleek black box on the tiled floor in front of him. While basically useless with electronics, he had enough charisma to pull together a small group of other cadets who were technically minded and, more importantly, strongly motivated to succeed.
“I told you they wouldn’t discuss the exercise in the lecture room,” put in Andrews gloomily, a tall cadet with a persistent streak of pessimism and a steady hand when it came to wiring.
“We should have bugged their office,” said the third of the quartet, Mitchell, one of the five women in the program and generally acknowledged to be the most promising in communications of the entire squad.
“And who would you have suckered into breaking in? Kruzek?” asked Barker sarcastically. Most people were usually just sharp enough to cut themselves, but Kruzek could and did extend that skill to cutting others, and was generally left well alone.
“Well, at least this assignment isn’t as hard as the other one. It’s not like they can hide information on us,” said Mitchell.
“That’s what you think,” said Andrews.
The fourth member of the group, Willis, was one of the squad’s three resident hackers. He was also one of the back row lurkers, and now sat with his back to against a corner without saying anything. Mostly silent by nature, the quartet had long stopped noticing it.
----------------------------------------
On the other side of the college, sitting in the lunch room which was allocated to them for another half an hour, sat a larger group of cadets.
“So what, we get no credit for the information? I barely made up the gas money!”
“I wouldn’t count on it. Snake’s a tough old bastard from what I hear.”
“I had the engineer. He seems pretty soft.”
“Except for the fact that he designed one of the most deadly threats in the world.”
“I don’t believe that. He probably just took credit for it. With the rest of the scientists dead, who’d know?”
“And I’ve got old MacIntyre chasing me about skipping his lesson. Like I don’t fucking know how to defuse a claymore.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you had something planned? I had to bullshit some crap about codenames from his introduction speech.”
“It’s not like you were far wrong.”
“And how they were meaningless.”
“Ouch.”
“Well, at least the next assignment’s easier. Right?”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
