//------------------------------// // Haven No Longer // Story: Metal Gear Spark: Peace Zero // by GreenS21 //------------------------------// With a pop, everyone found themselves back in the dining hall back where they had been sitting. After a few moments of almost everyone needing to get their bearings, they all looked at Twilight, who still had her eyes scrunched shut and was sitting hunched over slightly, seemingly undisturbed by the shift back to the present. After a few moments, Spike asked, “Uh, Twilight?” The alicorn’s eyes immediately opened wide at the sound of her name and she turned to look straight at the dragon. He was a bit creeped out, but before he could say anything else, her eyes returned to normal as she gained an anguished expression. She then put her head on the table and covered her eyes with her hooves. “Twily?” Shining asked. “It never stops hurting,” she uttered, some of the ponies having to lean closer to hear her. “I’ve replayed it so many times during the day and when I’m asleep, but it’s always the same feeling. I could’ve saved her. I shouldn’t have listened to Miller; I should’ve tried to save her,” she moaned. Rainbow spoke, “Hey, I know you two were friends and all, Twilight, but that was all part of the act, right? You shouldn’t feel bad about not saving someone who outright betrayed you.” Twilight’s eyes widened at Rainbow’s words and she dropped her hooves on the table as she turned her head to give the pegasus an unusually angry glare. An uneasy silence hung in the air for several long seconds before Twilight’s glare eased off a little and she sat up straight and said, “She didn’t betray us, Rainbow. She tried to act based on the circumstances and it blew up in her face.” Discord piped up, “Quite literally it did, I must say!” He grinned a bit, but nobody could feel the humor. Not even Fluttershy or Pinkie Pie could manage more than a halfhearted smile. Applejack turned back to Twilight and asked, “What was that girl thinkin’, and what was she goin’ on about? ‘Cipher’? What’s that?” Twilight replied, “Well, naturally, it’s the name of the group that Paz worked for. It’s also a code word that means ‘empty’ as well as ‘zero’, the latter meaning being the more important one here.” Rainbow asked, “What does a number have to do with anything, Twilight?” Twilight explained, “Back when Snake was still allied with America and was a part of his old FOX unit, there was a man he answered to, a man named Major Zero. He was Snake’s superior, his friend, and the other one who idolized The Boss like Paz mentioned. Snake and Miller came to one conclusion based on the Cipher name.” Celestia asked, “Zero was the literal Cipher in his organization, which sent Paz to infiltrate the MSF and try to force Big Boss to accept Cipher’s offer?” Twilight nodded in reply. “Why would he go to all the trouble of bringing Snake back just to guard his precious system until it’s ready? I mean, did he really need protection? You guys didn’t know about Cipher until Paz mentioned it, right? Couldn’t it be kept hidden from the rest of the world as well?” Rainbow asked. Twilight replied, “Yeah, I have no idea. I kind of have to wonder if what Paz said wasn’t the whole story.” Shining sighed and spoke, “I can’t believe Cipher would take a little girl and train her for the sole purpose of that. Wasn’t Paz about the same age as you, Twilight? How long did it take her to learn… whatever she had to learn before she was dispatched?” Twilight said, “I don’t know that or how much of an age gap there was between us. As Paz, yes, we looked to be roughly the same age, but she was actually older, according to her diary.” Pinkie immediately sat up straight with a perturbed expression at that. “What?!” she exclaimed before popping under the table and popping back up next to Twilight, surprising her as she grabbed her by the Sneaking Suit. “You looked in her diary, Twilight?! How could you?! Diaries are super-secret books that no one but the owner can look at! You can’t just look at someone else’s diary!” she nearly shouted. Twilight relaxed a bit and gave her friend a flat look as Rainbow spoke up, “Uh, Pinkie? We’re talking about Paz here, a spy? She also got thrown into the ocean; I’m pretty sure there’s no chance she ever came back for her diary.” Twilight added, catching Pinkie’s attention again, “There’s also the fact that she seemingly wanted us to find her diary.” Luna asked, “What do you mean?” Twilight gently got Pinkie’s hooves off of her, the pink pony settling down next to her as she began, “The tape I found on Paz’s dress was actually her final diary entry. She didn’t have to leave it behind; she had to have known just leaving her dress behind would’ve been enough to catch my attention, but she did anyway. And when the staff searched her room afterwards, they found the remaining diary entries and all of her spy logs. I wasn’t part of the search, but they said they weren’t hidden very well. Again, it’s like she wanted us to find them.” Cadance asked, “Why do you think she’d want that?” Twilight shrugged, “I don’t know. Maybe she wanted to leave a way for us to know the truth in case she failed her mission. Not just how she really felt about what she experienced at Mother Base, but that she didn’t entirely want to carry out her mission at the end.” Pinkie put on a pensive look, “Then why did she do it?” Twilight explained, “According to her final entry, Cipher somehow found out how far along Paz was in modifying ZEKE for manual control and ordered her to carry out the operation. She suspected Cipher had put another spy in Mother Base.” Rainbow asked, “You guys had another spy among you?!” Twilight replied, “I can neither confirm nor deny Paz’s suspicion. I talked to Miller about it afterwards and he said he’d look into it, but he also said the same thing he told Snake about finding out who was letting Zadornov out of his cell: finding a mole in Mother Base’s ranks would require a lot of time and searching. I did ask him about it a few times afterwards, but he told me he had nothing conclusive.” Spike spoke up, “Okay, so… what happened with Paz?” Twilight continued, “Well, according to her, she’d gotten used to living at Mother Base and she really wanted to spend Peace Day with us before she hijacked ZEKE, but since Cipher knew about her progress, she was expected to carry out the order right away. The only way she could have one day of peace was if ZEKE couldn’t be used.” Applejack said, “Well, ZEKE sure seemed to be workin’ fine when y’all fought it. Ah take it there was no delayin’ it.” Twilight replied, “No, but she did try to. She did try to sabotage ZEKE.” Rarity asked, “She what?” Twilight explained, “You may have noticed during the fight that ZEKE occasionally had trouble moving around or standing upright. That’s because Paz snuck into the hanger the night before and tried to warp one of the legs’ main drive system’s load-bearing parts. That definitely would’ve put ZEKE out of commission for a while, but she said she had to do it in such a way that it didn’t look like sabotage. Unfortunately, Chico walked into the hanger before she could finish.” Cadance asked, “Chico? Is that what he was trying to tell you about before, that he saw her messing with ZEKE?” Twilight said, “I don’t know what he saw, but Paz said he saw her and ran off. He might’ve run because he saw what she was doing like you said, or it could be because she had a gun. At any rate, Paz panicked because someone knew she wasn’t who she said she was and was afraid Chico would tell someone.” Spike commented, “Well, he tried to tell you.” Twilight nodded softly, “Yeah… If he managed to say what he was trying to and I didn’t assume what he was getting at, I’m not sure I would’ve believed him either. Aside from Cécile being suspicious of her because the story about the tape didn’t add up and some other minor slip-ups, she played us like a cello…” Discord perked up at that. “Oh? Why a cello, Twilight?” he asked. Twilight gave him a flat look, “Because it seems like it fits better than a fiddle or a piano.” Rainbow shook her head and asked, “So she was afraid that Chico was going to tattle on her? That’s why she tried to steal ZEKE?” Twilight replied, “She was afraid of being found out, but more than that, she was afraid of Cipher, of what would happen if she disobeyed Zero.” Shining asked, “Why would she want to work for someone like that? How could she agree with all the things she said he was going to do?” Twilight said, “She mentioned in another entry that Cipher took her in when she was very young. Because of that, she referred to her devotion as a debt she could never repay. At the time, it was enough to help her make her decision.” Luna sighed, “I suppose I could see that…” Fluttershy spoke up softly, “So, um… what happened to ZEKE, Twilight?” Twilight replied, “Ah, ZEKE was fine after some repairs, and Strangelove was able to get the AI working again, so we were still able to use it.” She paused for a moment before saying, “I guess one good thing that came out of it was that some of the staff were spreading rumors that she was considering giving Huey a chance when he approached her when she was working.” Celestia smiled, “Really? I’m sure that made him happy.” Twilight smiled a bit, “Yeah. His crush was never hidden that well.” Pinkie piped up, “Ooh! What about the Peace Day celebration, Twilight?! Did you get to sing for everybody?!” And just like that, the smile disappeared off of Twilight’s muzzle. “No, Pinkie. The celebration was cancelled. It’s just as well; our peace got thrown into the sea. What was there to celebrate?” she stated flatly. Pinkie blinked and tried to think of something that they could’ve celebrated. “Well, you could’ve celebrated what remained of your peacefulness after you got rid of that betraying, spying meanie!” she said after a moment, Twilight moving her eyes to glare in her direction, making her a little nervous. Cadance asked, “So, the entire festival was just cancelled, Twilight?” Twilight replied, “Well, we did still get the day off, but that was it. Nobody was feeling very festive after what happened to Paz. Everyone was somber, tense, suspicious… That’s kind of how things were from that point on. There was still some fun here and there, but it was definitely nothing like before.” Celestia asked, “So nothing really happened that day?” Twilight admitted, “Well… the Boss did make a speech…” ________________________________________ Twilight stood with the rest of Mother Base’s staff outside on one of the decks, her broken wing set out at her side with a cast around it. A stage with a podium on it had been set up at the front of the gathering. Miller had just finished addressing everyone and stepped away from the podium to let Snake take it. Snake approached it and tapped the microphone to check it before he began his speech. “We will forsake our countries. We will leave our motherlands behind us and become one with this earth. We have no nation, no philosophy, no ideology. We go where we're needed, fighting, not for government, but for ourselves. We need no reason to fight. We fight because we are needed. We will be the deterrent for those with no other recourse. We are soldiers without borders, our purpose defined by the era we live in. …We will sometimes have to sell ourselves and our services. If the times demand it, we'll be revolutionaries, criminals, terrorists. And yes, we may all be headed straight to hell. But what better place for us than this? It's our only home. Our heaven and our hell. This… is Outer Heaven.” As he came to the end of his speech, the staff erupted into cheers. Twilight glanced around at them. She wanted to join in with them, but couldn’t bring herself to and not just because she was worrying about her broken wing. She also couldn’t help but worry that this was going to be the beginning of some major changes around Mother Base.