to let the world be.

spent the whole night in the backrooms searching for the flayed corpse of god.

to a degree all mgs figures are nos figures except mgsvs because it's relatively recent. please chime in with your nos figures my current one really is sweet snake she is $500.

He snaps awake, sweat dripping down his face, one hand at his own throat. Fox. His heart is racing; he can feel his pulse under his palm, slamming up against the skin like it's trying to break free. More, more! That's it, Snake! Flailing, he grabs the cord for the lamp and yanks, nearly upending the entire thing onto the bed. Yellow light floods the room, and he sits up and buries his face in his hands. He knows how to deal with this. He's a master at moving past nightmares. In for four, hold, out for eight. It's a dream he hasn't had in years -- not since arriving at the Mansion, at the very least. Where did that come from...?

( The rationale being, as a man who doesn't often have time to sit and drink at his own pace, if he's going to have anything other than beer from a can on his couch, it has to be efficient. A Long Island iced tea isn't a drink, it's a vehicle for depositing alcohol into your body as quickly as possble. Pure magic. If time's your currency, it's the cheapest date out there for the most value. )

"Espionage? We can't-- we can't spy on the government! They're our bosses! They-- fund us and whatever-- hey, Boss!" He makes sure to keep his voice quiet, even as he complains, but he can't stop his pitch from spiking at the end as he watches his mentor sidle down a hall they'e definitely not allowed in. "Boss-- don't make me-- Boss!" Of course he goes after him. Of course he does. What else is he going to do?

"You know that's disgusting, right?" He really didn't need to see this. He'd gotten the gist at Shadow Moses. The government wouldn't have spent all that time and money and risked nuclear war for something that didn't exist. Ergo, Big Boss was on ice somewhere. He had felt no desire to know where then, and feels no satisfaction knowing now. It's not even really a corpse -- just a melty... gooey... mess. A mess with cells the government are obsessed with. A mess of cells they poked and prodded to make him ( and Liquid, but genuinely, who gives a shit about Liquid ). And, now, George. He wonders if they can just keep going, plumbing the depths of that gelatinous torso and popping out little Big Bosses whenever they feel like it. The thought makes him want to throw the thing in an incinerator. He turns away. "I'm out of here."

"Hal." His hand clamps down on the back of the other man's neck, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to steer him back around and keep him from leaving. His thumb settles on the jut of bone where Otacon's neck meets his back, and he rubs in slow circles as he speaks. "You don't have to tell me anything. Partners doesn't mean you've gotta bare your soul to me when you don't want to. You can tell me anything, but I don't need to know everything. Anything you wanna keep to yourself, or things you think are too painful to share... it's fine. I'm not your therapist or your priest. You don't have to confess to me. You're your own man. You wanna skim over your past? That's fine by me." He pulls him in, pressing their foreheads together. "I don't hate you. So shut up."

That strange and slippery feeling in his throat asserts itself, and the pressure behind his eyes that never yields anything other than a touch of redness. He's never cried in his life. He can't cry. Instead, he doubles over, bracing himself on his knees as his psyche schisms. The part of him that is a screaming, overwhelmed child is punted unceremoniously to the black depths of his mind as the part of him that clocked that shark-like look in Big Boss's eye seizes control. You're not fucking safe here. Get ready to move.

okay all ic asks in my inbox have been queued. the ooc ones ( headcanons and such ) i'll get to... whenever.

"This is where you grew up?" The flourescents are giving him a headache. The way they bounce of the white walls nearly makes him snowblind. He peers through the reinforced glass at the series of rooms ( boxes, really ): a bed here, a gurney there; monitors for every major and minor bodily function; an electrical stimulation machine dripping with trailing electrode pads like some sort of sea monster. It's the sort of thing you'd imagine, hearing about raising a clone to become a government puppet. For some reason, he'd convinced himself that that just couldn't be true. Yet here it is, every inch as bad as sci-fi novels had made it out to be. Knowing he himself oozed to life somewhere in this very facility makes his skin crawl. In comparison, foster neglect doesn't seem nearly as bad.

I can't tell you how much I hate this -- you carting me around to doctors, fussing over me... you stay up all night, and I hear you walking around; I know you're not sleeping. It's not your job to figure out what's wrong with me. You shouldn't be figuring out if we can get a dialysis machine on the Nomad. You shouldn't be researching loss of tendon elasticity. It's not who you are. I never wanted this for you. I never wanted to be a burden. I was supposed to make your dreams come true, and now I'm just dragging you down with me. I don't want you to watch this. I don't want you to watch me fall apart. I'm going to get old. I won't be able to keep up with what Philanthropy needs. I'll be a gun that can't fire, and no good to you. All while you're worrying yourself sick over me. Will you still think I'm a superhero? Will you still think I'm hot? When I've totally collapsed, and I'm stuck in a chair hooked up to oxygen having my kidneys pumped and being fed through a tube, will that overshadow everything else you and I have been through? I don't want you to remember me this way. I don't want you to see me like this. I want to live forever in your mind as the Snake you helped me become. I've never been a hero, but just for a second, with you, I thought maybe I could be. Please don't look at me like that. Don't pity me. It's killing me, Hal.