Jump 156: Metal Gear Solid

Jump 156: Metal Gear Solid

Location: San Hieronymo, 1970
Age: 14
Identity: R&D Unit
Drawbacks: [+700] Wetwork, Pacifist Run

[600/1700]  CQC
[Free]      I've Got Science
[700/1700]  Omni-Keyed
[900/1700]  Box-Tech
[1200/1700] A New Age Of Warfare
[Free]      Global Operations
[1500/1700] Legendary Soldier
[1700/1700] You Will Forget What Hollywood Taught You
[Free]      Signature Weapon: Legendary Soldier (Service Weapon)
[Free]      Outfit: Civilian Clothes
[Free]      The Box
[Free]      What Was That Noise?

Ah, sunny San Hieronymo. Time to throw a spanner in the works roughly the size of fuckin' Jupiter.

If you know what you're doing, if you have the right skills, you can do a great many things. You can brazenly walk across a military base as long as you can tell when no one is looking. Ghost after someone walking through a door, if you're light enough on your feet. Watch from the right distance while events play out. Stow away when the time comes for everyone to leave the peninsula. Have a very frank discussion with a few... patriots.

And so we have a very frank discussion. Is my goal to eliminate the Patriots? No, not at all. After all, they laid the groundwork for my future presidency. Oh, certainly I'm barely a teenager now, but... well. Project Starbright was completed in 2027, and thanks to that, I'm just about six decades older than I look. Proof? If I could bring back proof, I would have brought back my original body, wrinkles and all, to say nothing of future technologies so that I could bootstrap things. Fortunately, I have plenty of those blueprints in my head - after my presidential run, I had a lot of time to study. And an eidetic memory.

But you know what I miss the most about the future? NANOMACHINES, SON. They were really great. Kept my septuagenarian ass from being TOO wrinkly, too.

Oh, of course there are those who had their issues with this. For instance, when I told Jack that the reason his mentor got killed was because he survived a suicide mission and they'd intended to pin the blame on a rogue with his skill set rather than lose her, except that he actually managed to carry out his mission. For that matter, that was among the many reasons that there was a shooter on the grassy knoll AND one planted in JFK's staff. Why else would he want to disband a certain agency that was responsible for so many things, including his sons David and Eli? For that matter, where do you think they got their names? Subjects D and E were the fourth and fifth to survive to birth... though science being what it was, not all of them actually lived long enough to get names.

Many people objected to my pointing out the obvious. And the fact that several prominent individuals had disappeared since my arrival. And the fact that every time they sent any sort of hit squad after me, they disappeared without a trace, no matter where or when - even if I were in public, somehow I would be in just the wrong position, somehow a bullet would just slightly miss or a mugger would trip, and no one could get quite close enough. Where did they go? It was a mystery to them, not that it stopped them from sending more. And I just kept right on introducing technologies that were decades ahead of the current era. Even got my nanomachines back.

Of course, that became a more notable problem when, in late 1974, Militaires Sans Frontières were given a contract against me. I found myself, now only just a legal adult, facing off against Snake himself. I'll not bore you with the details of the dialog between us - other than his amusement in telling him that I'd been unlucky enough to have rated a code name too, in my days before politics - but I may have somewhat spoiled what was to come while we exchanged blows. Enough that he finally conceded that I was in fact telling the truth instead of being some sort of savant or fooled by some sort of precognition or clairvoyance. It's a strange world, after all.

Though he still tried to kill me immediately after that comment.

I don't think he expected me to avoid the knife, nor to comment, "Who said I didn't have precogniton? How else would I have known that travelling back in time would actually work?" Before triggering explosives, bringing the vacated building down around us. He, of course, survived. But this changed things quite a bit, with MSF not actually facing destruction and instead being ready for the inevitable sneak attack by XOF. Setting things in motion to destroy my enemies is, of course, always a delightful thing. Doubly so when information was leaked to MSF about an uncharted island with a prison on it, filled with all of those who had tried to kill me. Ripe for recruitment, even if MSF had purposefully faded from the headlines at that point after certain public figures also disappeared, with their rumored involvement.

After that, it seemed the attacks against me died down for the most part, though there were still a few. And advanced technology still kept rolling out.

You remember Alt-1977? That's what much of the technology released looked like, even if the capabilities weren't THAT advanced. But other technologies were still released. Primitive cybernetics and prosthetics, cheap enough for anyone to own but advanced enough to actually be usable in daily life. OILIX. Material science. Space-based technologies. Advancements in nuclear fusion that made it viable for power production, even.

And all it cost was the leaders of the nations of the world agreeing that, in the event that some extraterrestrial empire encircled the Earth, they would cede control to it so that humanity might continue. (It also cost the Philosophers' Legacy, but they never did figure out my involvement in that little escapade.)

I made sure that we had cameras in place to get the looks on their face when, in 1979, the dyson shell decloaked and they found themselves encircled by an empire that was not on Earth, by definition extraterrestrial.

I hear MSF's selling their services to the Inner Sphere worldlets, distant as they are from this world inside the shell. Twelve hundred years later and they're STILL fighting each other.