A Royal Insanity: Act I - A Metal Gear Christmas

by Fluttersnake31

Ch 1. Liquid Luna - Rewrite of Chapter 1, Part 1

Liquid Luna

An old, war-hardened man walked through the busy streets of a city he cared not to remember the name of. His grey mustache rustled with the constant blow of the wind. December wasn't his favorite season, but he was quite used to the cold. Living in Alaska when he was still young made him used to winter weather and below-zero temperatures. People bustled to and fro to various shops on desperate races to pick up last minute Christmas gifts. Cars were lined up at traffic lights and complimented the buzz of conversation with their impatient honking. "It's only a matter of time before this place just becomes another war zone. Liquid may be gone, but I know that things won't get better. War doesn't just stop for holidays." he thought grimly to himself, stopping for a cigarette.

A little girl's voice rang through his mind, "Snake, you know those aren't good for you! Next time I catch you, I'll take them away from you. Got it?" Sunny, a young lass he and Dr. Hal "Otacon" Emmerich had saved from the Big Shell incident, always would nag Snake about his smoking habits, saying it was very unhealthy.

Sighing to himself, he put the unlit cigarette back in his pack. It had been half an hour since he left for his walk, so now he figured it was time to head home. Zipping up his jacket a bit more, he started back the way he came. Soon enough, he arrived at the house Otacon had purchased a few years after the incident with Liquid Ocelot and Outer Haven. The house was nothing spectacular, but was quite cozy looking with Christmas lights strung out across a walkway and the building itself. He walked into the door, taking off his jacket. Hal was reading a book in the living room while Sunny sat next to him on the couch watching TV. Snake sat onto a chair slowly, feeling a little sore from exercising the previous day.

"Sunny, you're watching this again? You watched it yesterday. The same episode even. May I watch something?" Snake voiced, not too worried about her response, but he hadn't watched TV at his own leisure in a few days.

Sunny sighed, "All you ever want to watch is the news, Snake. You actually learn life lessons from this, and it's a christmas related episode. Hearths Warming Eve."

"I'll pass. I'm going to bed anyways." Snake stood up and went towards his room. Before he could get there though, Hal got up and stopped him.

"Campbell called. He wanted to check up on you. I figured I should tell you, since we rarely ever hear from him anyways. Did you already eat? We had some sandwiches while you were gone. There's stuff in the fridge if you'd like one."

Snake replied quickly, slightly confused as to why Campbell was calling him. "I'm not hungry. I'll see if my codec still works and call him on there. See you in the morning." Hal looked at him concernedly as Snake went straight to his room and shut the door. He opened up a locked cabinet in his closet that contained a few weapons and other various gear and grabbed his codec and powered it on. It beeped, notifying it was on and quickly Snake punched in the numbers to the ex-Colonel. It rang for a minute or so before he got a response as Campbell's face appeared on the screen.

"Snake, i'm glad you got our call. You must've figured it'd be important to have gotten back to us." Roy Campbell said seriously.

"Colonel, you know I'm retired and unfit for any more missions. What's this about?" Snake replied coldly.

"We just want you to check something out for us. It'd be a short trip, but you're the only one we know that can verify if what we have is real. I've arranged for you to be picked up in five minutes. Wait outside." Campbell commanded promptly.

"I'm not taking orders from you anymore!" Snake said angrily into the codec but the call was already disconnected. This is too strange, I'm not going to take any chances. he thought to himself as he opened his cabinet back up. He took his OctoCamo suit off of a hanger and put it on quickly, taking a silenced tranquilizer gun, a smoke grenade, and infrared goggles. Surprising Hal and Sunny, he walked straight for the back door.

"Snake, what are you doing? Is it even legal for you to have those still?" Hal exclaimed, motioning for Sunny to leave the room.

Snake grunted a reply, "Something's going on. Campbell's not himself and I think the Patriots are making a move. They're still out there, I know it."

"Are you sure? Where are you going? Do you need me to come with?" The worried doctor questioned.

Snake opened the door as a helicopter appeared in the air, beginning to land. "Stay here and I'll contact you when I meet with Campbell by codec." Hal nodded and stood in the doorway. The helicopter landed and Campbell could be seen as the door opened. After nodding to Hal, Snake quickly hopped inside. Once inside, he angrily questioned Roy. "How'd you get here so quick? What's this all about?"

"It's quite simple Snake, we knew where you were and waited for your call. It was quite predictable." he replied calmly. "We need you to destroy a certain object that's in the way of keeping the harmony of our population. You are our only hope."

Snake pondered for a moment. "What is it I have to destroy? I'm really not in the best physical state to be going on these kind of missions anymore." Looking closely at the ex-Colonel's face, he noticed something strange. The entirety of his eyes were blue. Snake stood up quickly. "What the hell, you're not the Colonel. Who are you?" He yelled, pulling out his gun.

The impostor's voice was now a cross between a feminine voice and that of Roy Campbell. "I'm an ally. Don't worry about your physical state, we can fix that. As for who I am, it is quite unimportant right now. Your goal is to destroy the sun princess's machine of destruction so that my world can have peace. Now if you could sit down, we'll make the process easier." A short armored guard with a syringe with some fluid in it came out of the cockpit of the helicopter.

Snake didn't move from his stance one bit, focusing on both people now. "Why should I trust you? What do you think this is? Some sci-fi or something? Are you with the Patriots?"

The impostor laughed. "We are true and loyal to our homeland, but not the group you speak of. Now, if you can't cooperate, We'll just have to do this the hard way. Snips, he's all yours." While the impostor walked away, the guard named Snips came closer to snake, smiling through his helmet that covered his face. Snake was frozen to the spot and couldn't move a muscle though. Completely bewildered, he was suffered to watch the syringe be injected into him. Snips backed away as Snake fell to the ground, released from the strange immobilizing grip.

"What the hell did you do to me?" Snake said tiredly as he felt his body losing feeling and his head becoming dizzy. He soon blacked out, the last thing he heard being the impostor's voice saying 'Face your fears, Snake'.

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When Snake woke up, it was the middle of the night in the middle of an apple orchard. Wondering where he was he quickly leaned up against a tree and punched in Hal 'Otacon' Emmerich's number.

"Snake? I'm so glad you're alive! Where are you? The helicoper was all over the news, it crashed with no-one in it. The stranger thing is that it was not even fifty miles away. I can't locate you with my computer, and there's a lot of static on your end. I can't even see you on the screen." Otacon said quite relieved.

"I don't know Otacon. This might sound insane but I could be in some other world. It looks like an apple orchard though. The Colonel was an impostor, they froze me somehow and injected something into me. I'm going to figure out where I am after I find a safe place to rest for the night. I'll contact you in the morning." Snake closed out the call without allowing Otacon the chance to reply. Taking in his surroundings, he noticed it was also the middle of winter here. The orchard he stood in had about a foot of snow on the ground, so any tracks he made would be easily visible. With clear skies overhead, there'd be no possible way for snow to cover his tracks. One major puzzling thing about the situation however, is that there were no tracks of Snake being taken there, as if he just appeared there while unconscious. Not worrying about how he got here now, as finding shelter was more important, Snake quickly started wandering towards the faint glow of a village about a half mile away.

As Snake came closer to the village, he could hear multiple voices towards the center of the village, seeming to argue. Quietly, he hid behind a large bale of hay to listen.

The first voice had a somewhat of a southern accent, but luckily for Snake, she happened to speak English. "Look here, ya'll gotta postpone the parade tomorrow. The towns-ponies are goin' ta' be in more of a panic when they notice we're not at the parade. Especially since the new rumor about Nightmare Moon's return."

Another female replied quickly, cutting off what seemed like an older voice before she replied. "Applejack, we can't postpone a holiday parade. Everypony can use the morale boost. I'm quite positive nothing worse can happen. We'll go to visit Celestia as fast as we can to figure out what really is going on. She didn't say if it really is Nightmare Moon causing night for the past three days, so I think there's something else at work here. We should really get some sleep though. Standard sunrise time is in four hours, that's when we'll all meet at the train station."

Applejack sighed, "Ah' just hope that we can figure it out quickly. Everypony's been more nervous than a filly at a final exam. See ya' later then Twilight. Sorry for wakin' ya'll up, Mayor Mare." The three had begun to disperse.

"What's up with the horse puns? Kinda reminds me of that show Sunny was watching. Snake thought to himself as he sat there, waiting for the sound of the people talking to leave. One of them started going in the direction he came from. Quickly, Snake pressed a button on the neck of his OctoCamo to blend into the bale of hay and hid his exposed head inside the hay, scratching him a little. Something about his own body felt different however. His facial hair was gone and he felt as healthy as he was at Shadow Moses. "What did they inject me with? And why did they shave my face?" he thought awkwardly to himself as the figure came past the bale of hay.

Applejack would've kept walking, until she noticed strange prints on the ground that led from the bale of hay back towards her house. "What in tarnation? Somepony, or something, has been spyin' on our conversation!" Worriedly, she ran back towards her house, following the prints.

Once the orange pony was far away enough, Snake pulled his head out, gasping heavily. "Damn, that was close-"
As he looked up, he saw the silhouette of a pony running off in the distance. "What the hell? It's- that's- I must be hallucinating! These can't be those ponies from that show. I just need to find somewhere to sleep all these effects off." He thought aloud, hoping that what he saw wasn't real. Slowly, he stood up and looked around the town. Across the road was a building with a sign of a cupcake hanging in front of it. The lights were on inside, so he continued to look around. Most of the buildings looked occupied except a taller looking one down the road. Carefully, Snake hurried over to the building. A note was on the front door.

Sweetie Belle,
I'm staying at Fluttershy's tonight. If you and your friends can't stay at Applejack's, you can stay here. The window is unlocked upstairs. Make sure to shut it if you're home before me.

Rarity

"Maybe I really am in some strange pony world. Wait, what the hell am I thinking? I still haven't completely seen one, so I doubt that what I saw was what was talking. he thought to himself as he started to carefully climb up the house to the unlocked window, which was actually just barely open enough to indicate it was the right window. After nearly slipping once or twice, he managed to make it inside. The window opened to a short hallway with stairs leading down in the middle and two bedrooms opposite each other at the ends of the hallway. Quietly, he shut the window and went to the door on the left. To his disappointment, the door was locked, so he tried the other door. Luckily, this door was unlocked and opened into what looked like a teen's room, however it had a quite short ceiling. Ducking into the room, he shut the door and locked it. I'll try to make this nap short. I want to find whoever it was that is going to be at the train station tomorrow. I might be able to find answers then. Laying down onto the bed, he fell asleep in exhaustion.