Chain 148: Metal Gear Rising

Chain 148: Metal Gear Rising

Location: Free Choice, 2015 (Washington DC)
Age: 39
Identity: Drop-In
Drawbacks: None

[100/1000]  Cut At Will
[400/1000]  CQC
[1000/1000] Master Swordsman

And now for something completely different:

With the Patriots' AI destroyed, it was child's play to program an expert system to take advantage of the role that it had, if only to fix the problems that I'd had by running afoul of its plans before. And to defuse a few other things. Beyond that, however, I simply let the chips fall where they may, and decided the best course of action was just to completely fuck with everyone's head.

The Snakes were less than amused when I announced my campaign for president, having constructed a nonexistent background as an obscure and forgotten child film star turned PhD student. Really, it wasn't as hard as you'd think; create two fake movies for me to have taken part in as a young child, write the background where parents decided it wasn't the best way to go, move to Texas, and get a degree from University of Texas, thus giving me an opportunity to meet Steven Armstrong - a senator at the time who had higher ambitions. Though to fabricate the past properly, I had to meet him in person.

Him, though, I brought into the circle. I told him who I really was, what I was doing, and why. That the Conspiracy had well-placed positions as a conspiracy of highly ranked financeers and angel investors, among other things, that they'd built up since our arrival. (They'd had so very much practice doing this; for many it was a hobby for fun, for others it was a way of life that they dedicated to me, as weird as that seems.) Demona showed him her true face and .. well, they fought for a while, but as it turns out they both enjoyed the workout. And so he signed on with me as Vice President and we came out of nowhere as a dark horse candidate, utterly hijacking the 2016 election. I became the 45th President of the United States, succeeding James Johnson. Who did not die during the Big Shell incident, I might add.

In the early days of it all, we had a couple members of the Conspiracy who'd infiltrated Hollywood treat my campaign as an ongoing reality series of sorts, a mockumentary that made people think it was a publicity stunt to get me the expose that it would take to go back into acting, only to actually turn out to be a window into the back room and get massive support from both sides of the aisle.

Of course, Armstrong did much of the same as he'd done before, but that's not much of a surprise and in fact was welcomed as a part of the plan. War as a business was a fact of life for America even in the wake of the Patriots' destruction. Metal Gear was everywhere, and there was no avoiding it. And so instead of trying for global peace and ending war as a business... we upped the ante. America was brought into brushfire conflicts, but PMCs were used as the head of the spear with the more traditional military forces brought in behind. Of course, a great deal was invested into the military to bring them a bit more up to date, rather than letting it stagnate.

And Raiden, of course, ran afoul of everything happening as one might have expected in 2018. Except the plan that Raiden was working to derail wasn't what he expected. Of course, I didn't expect him to be bringing backup either - thanks to Anderson hijacking a Metal Gear derivative, we had a veritable reunion with Big Boss, Solid Snake, Liquid Snake, Solidus, and Revolver Ocelot all showing up. Psycho Mantis even joined them, too - apparently, occlumency training had done him a world of good, and he didn't feel the need to wear a hat lined with telekill alloy any longer, but he seemed to be lurking ominously more than fighting. Armstrong and his nanomachines, son, beat the tar out of Raiden. The others fought myself and Demona, all amongst the former base and the wrecked military platform. After all, hadn't we ended the Patriots in order to settle everything, rather than creating new conflict?

But the truth was, conflict was a part of human nature. If mankind had the tools to fight with, they would use them. Whether swords, guns, bombs, or Metal Gear. The only way to deal with conflict was to manage it, keep it from being massively destructive, and try to reshape society to better deal with the pressure. And we were doing that - the medical field had seen breakthrough after breakthrough after the Patriots were gone. When Raiden mouthed off and asked what I had to do with that, I gave him a flat look, the four Snakes all audibly facepalmed, and I opened a portal to the warehouse and started throwing things at him through it. Medi-gel. Medical exoskeletons. Advanced civilian-grade implants that had a lifespan of decades. Replacement eyes, hearts, lungs, kidneys. He got the point after I chucked a Sierra Madre vending machine at him and knocked him on his ass in the pile of high-grade medical parts, some of which were still in the prototype phase.

"Conflict is a part of human nature," I repeated, as the fight transitioned to a lull. "Changing the rules of nature can't be done without nature becoming altered, and one can't excise conflict without changing humanity into something else entirely. It takes time to find better ways to channel that instinctive crave for conflict. If you want to change mankind... fine, and good luck to you. But for now? We don't have massive wars anymore. No more Vietnams and Koreas, the PMCs fight wars with few casualties - our contracts deduct pay for civilian deaths these days, and we have eyes in the sky to hold them accountable, because money is the only language a corporation can understand. Soldiers aren't neglected and left to rot, we've got programs to ease them back into civilian life if they've been in a warzone."

Anderson picked up what I was putting down, and continued. "But America is diseased, rotten to the core, and you all damn well know it. We're pulling it all out by the roots - you won't see soldiers fighting for oil, or for what they're told is right by some desk jockey. No one in this conflict is fighting for anything but what they believe! Everyone is free to fight their own wars - and if they don't want to, they're free to stay home and leave it to those who will."

I motioned toward him, continuing where he left off. "This man's likely to be president when my second term's up. You want to know what America's going to look like in fifteen years? Ask him. He's the architect behind it - I'm just the vehicle bringing it to the world, and showing him it doesn't have to be needlessly cutthroat. You expect to see the weak versus the strong? We're going to give EVERYONE the tools to become strong, let the chips fall where they may, and good luck oppressing people when anyone can be brought up to the same level. You expect the so-called land of the free to crush everyone within? It'll be reforged into a land of the TRULY free. Technology. Clean energy. Augmentations. Medi-gel. Matter transformation! In fifty years, you won't recognize this world."

Anderson grinned at me, before turning his head back to Raiden. The Snakes had withdrawn - they knew how my speeches tended to go, and Demona had passed them a brief about my actual plans, which amounted to slowly stepping down the war economy and uniting humanity without conflict. "Fifty states isn't enough," said the vice-president. "America's got a ton of fifty-first states - Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, Samoa. But what about the places we have military bases? What about our allies? NATO? Japan? Hell, what about anywhere we've exported our culture? Anywhere in the world, you can walk in and buy a Big Mac for a sawbuck. What's to say that America can't be found in Sydney, New Delhi? Hell, Moscow? America is the world, Jack, and the world is America."

Raiden stared between the two of us for a few moments. "Maybe I was wrong about you..."

Armstrong did a double-take. "Are we finally getting through? We'll rid this world of pointless wars, Jack," he added, offering him a hand to shake.

"I was wrong," he repeated, voice low, grasping the offered hand and stepping close. "You're not greedy... you're bat-shit insane." To his credit, Raiden didn't flinch at the clap of the four Snakes simultaneously facepalming again, though his subsequent attempt to throw Anderson could have gone better. As it was, he found that trying to throw someone twice your mass would logically result in a lack of results, especially when their strength was superior. Ocelot and Mantis found the whole thing quite hilarious, if their laughter was anything to judge by, but I suspect Mantis played around a bit with his telekinesis.

"Aw, I don't want to smite him," I complained from the sidelines at Anderson. "I like him when he isn't busy being an edgelord."

Anderson chuckled, watching Raiden stagger back to his feet, and replied, "Making the mother of all omelettes here, Crux. Can't fret over every egg."

I shook my head a bit. "Have your fun, mister vice-president. I'm off to see a dog about a man. Make sure there's enough left of him for these fine gentlemen to drag back stateside, would you?"

At least I borrowed a nice sword as a souvenier of the fight. And once the dust settled... Raiden was given a geas so that he'd go get some therapy.

Fucking edgelord.