Chapter 13: The Great Escape and Raging Raven
The Escape started bad. As they moved out, one of the vans got kicked to the side by a Gekko.
“Gekko!” the driver reversed, Edward leaned out of the Window to fire his Mosin-Nagant, as he didn’t want to kill any of his comrades except for the FROGS.
He fired at the PMC soldiers, Big Mama and Snake got separated for a moment by a Gekko.
They caught up however.
In a small street, 2 Gekko blocked the way and surrounded them.
Edward putted his comrades to sleep. “Help me!” a motorcycle driver yelled before he got crushed by a Gekko.
After the way was clear, the van took a sharp left to the west of the riverside.
The driver took another left, a Humvee armed with an M2 Browning HMG .50 caliber Heavy Machine Gun of Raven Sword chased them.
Edward took the gunner out. At a bridge, a FROG jumped on the roof of the van.
“Take that!” The PMC soldier fired his Mk.17 through the roof, killing the female soldier.
The Humvee crashed into a house wall.
“Checkpoint!” The van driver made a 180 as two Humvees formed a roadblock.
However, another two blocked the other way so they were trapped. Again, the young man took the gunners out.
Big Mama used a ramp to jump over the first roadblock, Snake took the PMCs out.
“Hold on!” The driver broke through the roadblock.
Another Frog jumped on the roof, this time, Snake took care of it.
The driver drifted to maintain control in the curves, all other motorcycles were taken out until Big Mama and Snake were left.
They got to a bridge at the east of the Riverside, as Raging Raven with Broken Pony appeared above them.
“There you are, Snake! Where’s your anger?! Show me your rage!”
“Yeah, let your anger flow!” Pony fired one of her missiles, Raven her Milkor MGL-140 grenade launcher.
The explosion made Edward stumble as the van was drifting hard to the left, taking a separate way from Big Mama and Snake.
“Chase the van, I get Snake!” Raven shouted in rage.
“Will do!” Pony replied using her wings. It was fun for her to fly.
“I got bad news…The decoy vans have all bitten the dust. They will be focusing on you now.” Otacon reported to Edward.
“Incoming!” the driver warned as he saw Noi in the mirror.
He cheered as Edward destroyed the missile she was firing at them with his Mk.17. “Excellent! Nice shooting!”
A Humvee started to chase them, coming out of a Side street.
Edward managed to take the gunner out before he could fire and operated the bolt.
The SUV still chased them and tried to ram them in the side. The van took a hard right into an alleyway; the PMC driver tried to do the same but lost control and crashed with the rear into the wall.
Broken Pony fired again missiles, Edward destroyed them.
Two Humvees formed a roadblock, Edward neutralized the gunners before the van broke through.
Broken Pony fired another missile, it missed and sent two PMC Humvees that were intercepting towards the van into the air.
Edward kept his head low as the driver did a drift to evade the crash.
Everything went in slow-motion as the young man putted the gunners to sleep.
After killing some Haven Troopers, they were reunited with Snake and Big Mama.
As Big Mama drove beside the van, Edward and the driver gave a thumb up to show there were fine.
“I have you now!" Noi flew behind them and fired a missile.
It hit the street between the van and the motorcycle, causing the van to flip over and crashed into a building.
As Noi realized that she may have killed Edward, she landed on a building and sobbed. “I’m so sorry…this wasn’t supposed… to happen…” Her sorrow was replaced with joy, as her HUD showed that Edward had survived without a scratch. “Thank Celestia!” she exclaimed relieved as she joined Raging Raven.
“The van crashed inside that building.”
“Good work. Get into a sniping position, I will Lure Snake into your line of fire.”
“Yes, Ma’am! But don’t hurt Edward, okay?” She begged in fear.
“I will try not to kill him.”
Noi flew on a building where she had a perfect view of the crash side and equipped her WA2000 sniper rifle. “You won’t escape this time, Snake.”
Edward got out of the wreck, dazed, holding his head. While he survived unharmed, the driver had no such luck.
“I’m so sorry…” Big Mama sobbed.
“I’m fine.” Edward made the cross out of respect as Snake took the FN FAL from the body and gave it Big Mama.
“They’ll be coming to search the van.”
“We’ll take care of it. You stay here – keep watch.”
“I’ll contact the children. Please. Come back in one piece.”
“We will, Eva.”
The building was approximately five stories tall. Edward equipped his Mosin-Nagant. “Ready to hunt some birds?”
“Yes.” He took the stairs up with his PMC ally.
Upstairs, Edward noticed that Snake started to cough and collapsed. He rushed over to him and gave him a syringe. “Don’t’ think you can drop dead on me now.” Edward helped Snake up.
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
The wall got blown up and Raging Raven flew through. “Give me your anger, Snake! Let it boil to the surface! Let your fury flew freely! Anger begets anger! Come on, show me your rage!”
She tried to burn him with her rocket fuel from her jetpack but Snake and Edward dived to the side.
“Rage! Rage! Ready yourself! Here I come!” Raven flew to the top floor of the building.
As they moved to the top, Raven and her drones destroyed parts of the walls, giving Pony more sight to shoot Snake.
Her shot missed and her OctoCamo made her impossible to spot.
Raven crashed through another wall to fire her grenade launcher, but Edward was faster and fired a tranquilizer round on her.
In response, she covered herself with her wings as protection.
As she flew into the sky, Edward aimed down the scope and fired.
She flew down again. “Snake!”
Noi waited impatient for Snake to show up. When she saw that someone came into her view, she prepared to fire. She aborted as it was Edward. “I can’t…I just can’t…” Her hooves started to shake. Yet this accidently caused her to pull the trigger “NO!”
The filly watched, helpless, as Edward was thrown to the ground, crumpling against the floor and lying still.
The gun in her hooves fell limply as she stared.
“Edward...no...Oh Edward, I'm sorry!”
Then there was a movement.
Edward's head rose, glancing at the bullet hole poking through the brickwork inches from where his head had been, leaving a smoky trail that drifted around his face.
He sighed with relief, heart-pounding.
"Too close."
Raven attacked again, this time she got hit by Snake. “Damn it! I’m overheating!” Raven’s rockets were overheating, forcing her to make a temporary landing in order for them to cool down.
The two men got up to the top floor and went prone to avoid the Sniper Fire.
“Calm down, Calm down!” Raven’s angry voice echoed.
Edward aimed down the scope as he saw raven resting on a roof, surrounded by her Sliders, giving away her position.
After Edward had fired, Snake screamed, firing the M60E4 he acquired in South America at the drones, destroying some of them.
Enraged, Raven crashed through a wall. “Show yourself!”
The young soldier sneaked up and fired another round.
Raging Raven screamed and landed on the first floor where the fight had started.
“You bastards…I’ll never forgive you…Never!” She moaned in pain. “I can feel the anger building up inside…Eating away at me.” She covered herself with her wings as Ravens surrounded her, causing both to raise their arms as protection.
“No…No…I’ll never forgive myself. I don’t want to be angry. I don’t need anger. I’m not angry.” The woman shed her flight suit. “I’m scared!”
She started to panic. “Help me! The birds are pecking at my flesh! And my soul! Please, please make them stop! I don’t need more hate! I’ve had enough! Help!” She collapsed.
“Let me out of this cage. I don’t need these wings. I don’t need this rage.” She looked at Snake. Raven had black hair and brown eyes. “Come. Let your anger flow.” She danced towards Snake.
Both men backed up while firing tranquilizer rounds at Beauty Raven.
Sounds of screams of pain, anger and sounds of beating echoed through the building.
At the top floor, Snake collected an action figure of Raging Raven’s customized battle suit. Like with Laughing Octopus, glass shattered as Raven passed it.
After some non-lethal rounds, Raven collapsed into the fetal position, with a peaceful expression on her face.
Snake inspected her grenade launcher as Drebin called.
“Way to bring down that bird, you two.”
“Drebin…” both men spoke in union.
“And you got yourselves a souvenir, too. A grenade launcher. Nice! That’s a real user-friendly weapon. I’ll launder this one free of charge. But give it back to me once you’re done with it. A weapon with that many decades of rage stored up inside it – now that’s a collector’s item.”
“How old was she?” Snake asked.
“I'd say about 20. But she had years of soldiers' rage hidden away in that youthful body of hers.”
“Soldiers?” Edward asked.
“Yeah. The soldiers of Aceh, a place that hasn’t seen peace in a long, long time.
She was captured by one side or another, and kept caged up like an animal along with God knows how many other kids.
It’s unknown whether her captors were with the government or the rebels.
In any case, they got their kicks by abusing these helpless little kids day after day after day.
That constant barrage, that battlefield rage, slowly built up inside their bodies…Their minds.
The kids tried to keep each other’s spirits up, always clinging to the hope that someone would come to their rescue, barely surviving off scraps of food.
But those soldiers didn’t stop. They called the kids parasites and shit-eating ravens. Beat ‘em even harder.
Then one morning, the soldiers just up and left, leaving the surviving kids to be eaten alive by the birds.
Almost like one of those sky burials.
One by one, their bodies were picked apart by ravens’ beaks, until finally the flock came for her.
But by some miracle, their beaks cut their bonds instead.
And like that, she was liberated.
In that instant she was filled with an uncontrollable rage, and it smothered her soul.
She ripped the ravens pecking at her to pieces and then went after the soldiers.
And when she finally caught up with them, she waited until nightfall like a hunter awaiting its prey.
They say that when a raven cries, a man dies.
And that’s exactly what happened that night.
Screeching and cawing, she killed every last living being in the camp, both the soldiers and the civilians they’d enslaved.
In her eyes, there was no longer a difference.
The cruelty her friends had suffered, the pain and humiliation she’d endured…Hers was the distillation of the rage that decades of war had imparted on those soldiers.”
“It was her strength – and her greatest weakness.” Snake said to Drebin.
“You two are something else. You managed to cleanse Raven of her rage.”
At this point, Edward didn’t listen anymore. It scared him what Noi had experienced and if she could ever be recover from it.
Downstairs, Big Mama apologized to them as all vans were decoys. But the pyx was safe. Land and air routes were cut off but a cruiser was waiting for them at the river.
Edward assisted Big Mama, while Snake opened a Gully cover as the underground aqueduct leaded to the river. They climbed down, unware that they were watched by Broken Pony.
“They want to escape through the underground aqueduct to the river where the pyx is.”
“Excellent. Meet up with us. Then you will be witness of the Guns of the Patriots.”
“On my way.” Noi moved out, sobbing lightly. “Edward…Daddy…please don’t die…”