The Random Scenario Meme 3.0

[emeraldfields]

THE RANDOM SCENARIO MEME 3.0


- Post your character, name, and series in the subject. Include any preferences as well.
- Go to RNG and enter 1-6 for a scene type, and 1-20 for a scene to play out.

TYPE OF SCENE.
① Action → Gun fights, bar brawls, fights to the death are all possible scenarios.
② Angst → Characters suffer emotionally or physically from relationships breaking up, death, injury, etc. Hurt and comfort themes are included.
③ Crack → Genderswaps, super powers, sudden compulsions are all possible outcomes.
④ Fluff → Something that is devoid of angst. It's light-hearted and might have the overtone of romance.
⑤ Gen → General fun, things that didn't fit in the other categories.
⑥ Sex → First times, kinks, even dubcon are all possible themes of sex related scenarios.
⑦ Your choice → Think of your own scenario, choose one of the above or make a combo even!

ACTION.
① Zombies → It's the zombie apocalypse, lock and load!
② Bar brawl → You had one too many drinks, said something wrong, and now you're being asked to take it outside.
③ Chase → You're caught in a high speed chase.
④ Gun fight → You're caught in a big shoot-out.
⑤ Fight with a friend → You're fighting with a friend, all out.
⑥ Interrogation → You're being interrogated for some offense you've done.
⑦ Aliens → Aliens are attacking and you're not going to take your probe laying down!
⑧ Final battle → This is it. The battle that will end all the fighting for you. Will you win? Will you get that peace you want?
⑨ Training → You're not actually fighting, just training for the inevitable.
⑩ No hope → You know this fight has no hope. It's not going to end well for anyone involved, but you can't turn away.
⑪ Sneaking in → You're stealing a diamond or sneaking in to kick some bad guy butt, but whatever it is, you have to practice stealth.
⑫ Blue wire → You're faced with a bomb that needs to be disarmed.
⑬ Fight for honor → You've been disgraced or someone you care about has, so it's time to fight for honour.
⑭ Showdown → Time for a cowboy-style showdown. Whoever draws the fastest wins.
⑮ War → You're caught in the middle of a war here. Remember to keep your chin up and keeping fighting.
⑯ Apocalypse → The apocalypse finally happened and now you're left to scavenge and fight for whatever is left.
⑰ Sabotage → It's time to sabotage someone's plan! How is entirely up to you. Do you set up a bomb in their toilet? Do you double cross them at the last minute?
⑱ Big damn hero → You know you have to handle this one alone, so that means disarming or knocking unconscious the person who wants to join you.
⑲ Fight club → You know the rules... you're in an underground fighting ring and you're fighting with all you've got.
⑳ Threaten → You've just been sent here to rough them up a little, threaten them into behaving.

ANGST.
① Injury / illness → Your character has become injured or ill! To what extent is the mun's choice.
② Last moments → You character has been gravely injured and this is their last chance to say their last words.
③ Depression → Your character is depressed, what actions they take is up to the mun.
④ Betrayed → You character has been betrayed by the other. How do they react?
⑤ Tortured → Your character is being tortured and needs rescuing or at least a sympathetic ear to help him through it.
⑥ Jealousy → Your character is feeling jealous and must deal with it, how will they do it?
⑦ Breakup! → This relationship has gone as far as it can, it's time to breakup.
⑧ Broken → For whatever reason, the character is broken, mentally or or physically.
⑨ Fight → You can't even be in the same room as your friend or lover without arguing anymore.
⑩ Lost → You lost the biggest fight of your life and now all you can do is try to pick up the pieces.
⑪ Worst nightmare → Whatever you fear the most is now real or maybe you're just trapped in a dream together, but whatever it is, it feels too real.
⑫ Addicted → You're addicted to something, alcohol, drugs, sex, whatever. It's destroying your life and you can't do anything to stop it.
⑬ Hurt you → You're being forced to hurt someone you love either by betraying them or even being forced to shout things you don't mean. It's for their own good in the end though.
⑭ Separation → You were forced to leave this person for their own safety and while you've been miserable without them, you really didn't mean to run into them again... maybe it was by accident or you were watching them from afar this whole time.
⑮ Becoming a monster → You are slowly changing, becoming a monster: vampire, zombie, demon, something you can't recover from and no-one can help you.
⑯ Frozen → You are entirely helpless, frozen, to stop some kind of disaster.
⑰ Prison → You were very bad and now it's time to pay the price by turning yourself in or maybe the law just finally caught up to you.
⑱ Fear → You're not sure why, but you are suddenly terrified and you can't deal with it. You need help.
⑲ Hated → You are now hated by the person you loved the most.
⑳ Down and out → You're living on the streets, you've hit rock bottom, and you don't know what to do.

CRACK.
① Sexswap → Uh-oh, you're suddenly the opposite sex!
② Forced confessions → No matter what it is and no matter how hard you resist, you're going to be compelled to spill some deep dark secret!
③ Mind-reading → You've suddenly got the ability to read minds!
④ Animal → You're suddenly part animal or transformed into an animal!
⑤ Awkward pick-up lines → You're compelled to use bad pickup lines on whoever is closest!
⑥ Back in School / Graduated → You're suddenly back in school! Or if you were already in it, you've aged and long since graduated!
⑦ Vampires, werewolves, and zombies, oh my! → You're suddenly a vampire, werewolf, or zombie! Maybe even a demon or a devil, whatever creepy crawly you can think of. What do you do now?
⑧ Ghost → You're suddenly a ghost or at least invisible. What are you going to do with this new ability?
⑨ Awkward conversations → So did you just fart or what? Any conversation goes, as long as it's embarrassing and awkward.
⑩ Crossdressing → For whatever reason, you're suddenly dressed in clothes of the opposite sex.
⑪ Suddenly naked → Oops! Your clothes are suddenly gone.
⑫ Suddenly a kid → You're a kid again! Have fun with that second childhood.
⑬ Fortune cookie → You've suddenly received a note with something that will happen in the future, either precise or vague.
⑭ Super power → And suddenly you're like Superman! Any power goes.
⑮ Bodyswap → Somehow you've changed bodies with the other person.
⑯ Back in time → Somehow, you wound up in the past again. Do you try to correct something or just sit and wait for time to jump? Maybe it jumps to various points in your life or maybe you actually think you're back in the day. Have fun, run wild with the idea!
⑰ To the future → Is it everything you've dreamed? Is it horrible? Whatever happens, you're here to witness what happens to you in the future. Either you take the place of your future self or you're just there to watch. Might cause some confusion if people start seeing double though...
⑱ Angels, mermaids, and fairies! → You're not necessary something dark or evil. You're just something different. How do you deal?
⑲ Locked in a closet → For some reason, you're locked up in a closet with someone else. Do you make nice and try to figure your way out or what?
⑳ Finger trap → You're caught in a Chinese finger trap... with somebody else! You can't figure out how to get loose either... have fun with that.

FLUFF.
① Cuddling → For whatever reason, characters feel like being close and cuddling.
② Pillow talk → After the main event, characters are up for some pillow talk.
③ Celebration → Anniversary or some other big event is taking place and characters want to celebrate!
④ Love confession → Someone has finally decided to confess their love and today is the day!
⑤ Appreciation → You feel the need to show appreciation for that person closest to you, even if it's just a pat on the back.
⑥ Apologies → You made a mistake and now it's time to make it up in some way you know the other can't refuse!
⑦ Get back together → Why did you break up again exactly? Whatever the reason, it was a huge mistake and you both know you can work through it.
⑧ Date night → You've planned for a wonderful night together and you can't wait to get it started.
⑨ Family → You've either found out you're pregnant or you've already got that addition to your family.
⑩ Marriage → You're just about to get hitched or maybe you're enjoying your honeymoon. Maybe you've been together for years now! Whatever the case, it's time for that next big step.
⑪ Meeting again → It's time for that happy reunion finally!
⑫ Love at first sight → For whatever reason, you are now insanely in love with the first person you set eyes on.
⑬ Flirtation → You can't resist to do a little bit of harmless flirtation all of a sudden.
⑭ In the snow → Look outside! It's a winter wonderland, so why not go out and play in it?
⑮ Engagement → You've planned it all out and now it's time to finally pop the question.
⑯ Friendly games → You've set up the game station or board games for a friendly competition!
⑰ Gift → Time to give that special someone a gift just because.
⑱ Recovery → You're taking care of someone who's just recovered from some illness or injury.
⑲ Healing → Time to help mend that someone who's been through hell and back.
⑳ Better than ever → You've finally got everything you've ever wanted here. What is your ideal life and who does it include?

GEN.
① Nice meeting you → It's your first time meeting this person! You bumped into each other on the street, in a bar, at work... whatever!
② Drinks → You're out for drinks! Or just chilling at home with some beers. Wherever!
③ Lost → You're lost and you kind of need help finding your way to where you're going. A little help with directions?
④ Costume party → You're at a costume party, both of you are wearing masks. Do you keep the anonymity or take it off and see whose company you've been enjoying?
⑤ Wrong number → Oops, actually you didn't mean to call that person...
⑥ Drunk → You're already drunk! Drunk dialing, stumbling into someone, showing up unexpected... what type of drunk are you anyway? Aggressive, loving, happy? How does the other react?
⑦ Old friends → you haven't seen this person in a long time!
⑧ Rivals → you're suddenly rivals! Or maybe you have been all along...
⑨ Problems → you've got a problem with each other, just got in a huge fight, whatever. Try to work it out!
⑩ What are your intentions... → This person? They're dating a close friend, family member, etc. You need to find out if they're going to hurt them! Or you need to discuss your friend/family's dating choice.
⑪ I saw you → you saw the other person doing something bad and you need to confront them about it.
⑫ Sorry but no → the other person has feelings that you just don't share. They don't necessarily have to be romantic... maybe you just don't agree with their sudden desire to quit their job and start a business making tiny, fuzzy teddy bears.
⑬ My hero → you need to tell this person how much they mean to you. They've been your best friend or your role model your whole life and they need to know.
⑭ Enabler → you're enabling the other (or each other) to do something bad, really bad. Addiction, stealing, killing, or just any other self-destructive behavior.
⑮ Cooking → Time for an impromptu cooking lesson!
⑯ Oh, sure, I remember you... → It's that awkward moment when someone comes up and seems to know you, but you have no idea who they even are!
⑰ Rescue! → One of you was in trouble, but you came to the rescue!
⑱ Boss → One of you works under the other. Is your relationship good? Are you scheming things? Or do you hate each other?
⑲ Perfect crime → You and the other person have just pulled off the perfect crime... or you're planning to! What are you doing? The heist of the century, an assassination?
⑳ Movies → movie night! Maybe it's a sleepover. Whichever the case, it's time to eat a lot and have fun.

SEX.
① First time → it's your first time together or your first time ever! Enjoy the awkward times!
② Bondage → You and your partner decide to experiment a little with ropes or handcuffs or whatever you'd like to tie your partner up with.
③ Rough / Aggressive → Your characters want it rough.
④ Romantic → Slow and gentle, meaningful, that's how characters want it.
⑤ Dubcon → Character A wants Character B and it doesn't really matter if Character B wants it as bad or not.
⑥ In public → Characters feel like taking a risk and doing it in a public place.
⑦ Roleplay → Naughty nurse fetish? Pirate kink? You and your partner decide to try it out now!
⑧ Healing → You've both fought hard or gone through a rough time and it's time to get some R&R in.
⑨ Last time → This is the last time you're going to this because you're breaking up or maybe your lover is running off to sacrifice their lives in some heroic way. The possibilities are endless, but you better make this one count.
⑩ No strings attached → You're just friends with benefits. Nothing wrong with that, right?
⑪ Anonymous → You met in a restroom or bar, any location of your choosing, but you don't even know each other's names.
⑫ Toys → You're eager to try something new, so why not toys?
⑬ Aphrodisiacs → You've been slipped a strong aphrodisiac somehow and now you absolutely cannot control yourself.
⑭ Show → You're putting on a show by either doing it right in the club or filming it for a bunch of people.
⑮ Ménage à trois → It's time for that threesome you've always dreamed of.
⑯ Non-penetrative → Frottage, handjobs, whatever you want to try out.
⑰ Controlled → You are under mind control and must do whatever your lover asks of you.
⑱ Hate sex → It's not just rough or aggressive, you absolutely cannot stand each other.
⑲ Extreme → Fisting, knife play, whatever you can think of so long as it tests the boundaries.
⑳ Fantasy → This is just a fantasy, a dream, and you know it, but what is your ideal fantasy and how willing is your partner?

Comments

[vakna]

She closes her eyes and nods in her non-committal manner as if to say, Yes — yes, I'm just exaggerating. But is she? Venom's sensibilities dissuade him from handing her battle fatigues lest she resemble a pitiable child soldier, yet as the helicopter descends into enemy territory can the term be avoided? It seems they share an unspoken pact to let this contradiction stand, but the rules of etiquette here are ever so ambiguous. She thinks he still recognizes vestiges of childhood in her behavior and hasn't the heart to permanently cast them aside. A bittersweet realization.

Eli is a serviceable name. Like Venom Snake it is a moniker, a designation rather than a mere contraction of her birth name; there is no Elias, the boy who's village was obliterated from historical recollection, or else long forgotten, but there is Eli, a construct that breathes in the hereafter. I walk in loss, she thinks. In hand with you.

"I'll be gentle," she assures, without sarcasm. Doing otherwise will result in broken bones.

Eli takes a knee at the cabin's door and pulls it back as they near the landing zone. The wind worries the hem of her tracksuit and collar. She is unafraid of heights to the point of indifference.

"I won't lose you. I can see in the dark."

With this she steps out of the helicopter and immediately drops into the waiting blackness below. For a moment all is silent on her end, then her voice picks up evenly in his ear.

"We're not alone. Pickup on the dirt road north. The driver is missing."

The upper branches of the tree provide fair vantage of the area.

[alterplex]

Eli is supernatural. This, Venom is aware of. Her deceptive appearances are advantageous in a world where even the slightest moment of hesitation is an opening for a bullet between one's eyes, and as much as Miller disdains the thought— soft as he is underneath all of his fabricated layers— Ocelot sees it as a weapon. Her night vision sans goggles, her inhuman reflexes, they will all keep her and her charge alive.

"On the alert?"

Venom drops down from onto the ground just moments after her report, his joints less willing to accept the pressure of a fall so immediately. Vibration runs from the balls of his feet to his knees, and it's the pain of the landing that reminds him of who he is.

There's no explanation for how he feels when he spies an enemy soldier making his rounds in the nearby underbrush, for the way his mind flatlines and leave no room for anything other than the sound of his own breathing and the quiet one-two of his heart. The foreigner, scouting with distinct boredom smeared between the line of his face, only gurgles softly when a thick arm draws around his neck and constricts.

[vakna]

"Get him."

He is not, on alert, that is — is vulnerable. Her minimalist use of language is practical in that she neither stutters or feeds him irrelevant information, but unlike Snake she is unpracticed in the skill of nullifying her personality; she responds to him informally as one might to an accomplice in crime. He'll have to teach her to avoid such communication, perhaps relegate the job to Miller, or he may simply count on her powers of mimicry to correct her behaviour naturally. When she perched at the threshold of the helicopter's cabin her form bore a resemblance to his. Her aptitude for learning may be but another aspect of perpetual childhood.

Her superior springs on the man like an old friend playing a gag, almost gentle in his embrace of the enemy, but once caught the man goes down, down, down. It's completely irrevocable, she thinks; once Venom's arm makes a noose around your throat, it's over, the game is closed.

It's very exciting.

Though it is impossible to spot her fall in all that convoluted blackness a disturbance in the understory hints at her location. She creeps beside Venom, stops, regards his prey.

"I see your work through sober eyes," she says, "not like before."

She systematically rifles through the man's belongings with applauding finesse then turns to Snake, the keys to the pickup truck in her palm. "Should we?"

[alterplex]

The efficiency with which Eli relieves the soldier of his keys leads Venom to believe that there was a precedence. It could be that past experiences have made her game to finding someone's essentials when they're down— wallets, communication devices, or evidence of identification. Like a skilled criminal who cuts off the finger tips of his victims after he's done with them; she displays the same air of routine, but without the gleefulness of a sadist.

Maybe Snake is overthinking. It's possible.

Taking the twinkling item from between Eli's thin fingers, he tucks it between the many compartments of his sneaking suit. He is silent in his ministrations, and more quiet still as he hefts the prone body along his shoulder and finds a particularly thick portion of grass to deposit it in. The radio strapped to the man's hip is destroyed, his dog tag confirmed, and his firearm dismantled to be scattered in pieces along crumbling dirt.

"Not exactly glamorous, is it."

Already mud-stained, Venom manages a wry half-smile at his own expense. A spare survival knife, still sheathed and recently pilfered, is offered to her with another dry quirk of scarred lips.

"Let's go. ...I'll let you ride shotgun."

[vakna]

His impression is well founded. Like any undocumented immigrant her name is absent from the public census, then if she is not categorized within any system, is her property hers? — or is it mostly loot, purloined, burglarized from victims? Begin by moving the hands along the outer garment when scanning for blades, small caliber firearms, etc.; excavate the pockets, jackets tend to conceal hidden compartments, check the boots, and so on. It isn't despicable if they are dead. You can't bring your belongings over the great divide. It isn't.

He is good at it — thinking. Those removed from the fighting consider the mercenary a rapacious creature characterized by superficiality in idea and deed, his opinions are methodically stricken from the record, for who would wish to hear from a solider, much less a dog of war in place of pundits? She on the other hand finds Snake's restless mind to be anything but a cliche despite his perfunctory conduct on and off the base. He comprehends much of what she says with her words and subtleties, and can express it with a single look.

"It's ... bestial," she says, his crouched silhouette like that of a large carnivore biding its time. She smiles. "If we weren't in the tropics you'd be mistaken for a bear."

She secures the blade opposite of her hip pack and takes him up on the offer. She rolls down her window after they set off and surveys the night for threats. At first she feigns disinterest in the richness of her surroundings but her fortitude ebbs when spots a panther in the tree, Eli turning in her seat as they pass it by. She looks to Snake, a "did you see?" expression raising the eyebrows of a normally sullen face.

The map tells them to expect a compound situated out of the sight of the road. Her hair is caught by the wind and flows blackly behind her ear whenever he steps on the gas. Noticing this, Eli positions her hand on her nape and gives Big Boss a piercing glance, apparently imitating a model from a magazine, with some success.

"How do I look...?"

[alterplex]

Venom Snake is many things: ursine would be a good descriptor for his heft, his wild mane of hair that he hasn't the heart to cut (as if doing so would relieve him of so many years that he's already lost). He cocks his head when she assigns him with the term, and turns the ignition in lieu of a verbal reply. The vehicle growls under their feet, as if to corroborate her claim.

The journey also endorses Eli's assessment of his character. Like the Minotaur, half-human and half-beast, he wanders through the labyrinthine dirt roads of the jungle, waiting for retribution, salvation, redemption— who knows what? The world is a maze for him, and he sees fit to employ his violence until the hero comes to remove the need for his existence. Many would believe that such monsters have no use for self-reflection, but that would be false; he has the obstinacy of a bull, but the sensitivity of a bleeding heart.

Which is why Eli's impromptu imitation of a vintage pinup is reason enough for the stern set of his mission-focused jaw to soften. That, and her enthusiasm for the myriad of carnivores and omnivores that watch them, curious, from above and below.

"Like an old black-and-white."

Greta Garbo cast in pale light. It's meant to be a compliment (as much of one as he can spare), before he turns his attention back onto mud. Only minutes now until they have to stop, and then they'll have no room for levity.

[vakna]

His appraisal of her pose borrows from the old; he draws non-contemporary parallels from the myriad of images available to him, goes back in time. To extrapolate further: he is treating her as an adult, more and more it seems, but to a point. It is Eli's wish to be regarded as an equal yet she is routinely demoted to the status of a quick witted child by acquaintances and strangers alike. Surface, surface, surface, that's all that people occupy themselves with, just as Snake is an infallible hero (he survived "death"!) in everyone's eyes but his. Eli too is biased in her opinion of the man but her bias is a of a more personal nature. He is a savior. Why? Because he did precisely that.

"Not too old, I hope." Ancient. She walked the earth when he was but a boy, a thought that sits strangely in her head like an anachronism.

He redoubles his focus as the road dwindles and peters out and reappears again where the trees stoop heavily and form an arcade from bank to shaded bank. She however has retained her gaze on him and he can verify as much from his peripheral vision.

"Do you think that I look ... pretty?"

Her inauspicious timing notwithstanding she cannot help but ask for clarification. A pause. Eli puts her hand on his knee and leans over — half foreboding and half something else — to do or say something, but she is interrupted by a disembodied voice. Then another. She promptly returns to her seat and numbs her expression.

"I hear three — four. A machine muffles their voices; there are others."

apologies for the delay! rl hit me like a ton of bricks...

[alterplex]

It could be that Venom shies away from treating Eli as a child for the simple reason that he hasn't the faintest idea how to approach children. But it's more than inexperience or disillusionment from the concept of innocence that dictate the amount of gravitas that he affords his much-smaller companion; it's a reciprocal respect, given for however much Eli offers it to him.

He finds it almost a bit funny. All he's done is replaced the terms of Eli's cage for her. Changed the scenery from concrete to the vast and unforgiving sea. But she seems thankful for it, and her contentment is his fuel.

She asks him if he finds her pretty, and he knows that she would like him to feel that way, yes. The timing of her questioning is poor, or maybe it's perfect— she's interrupted, and he soothes the engines of their car to a halt instead of disappointing her. He is endlessly short on vocabulary for compliments.

(Compensation comes in the form of a hand to her shoulder, reassuring for... what? That her presence is welcome. That he sees her.)

"We're gonna have to get on higher ground."

He slips from their vehicle soundlessly, his hunter's eye darting from the dirt road to moss-covered hills extending up into jungle mist. Deferring to her observations is no trouble for him, given that her senses are far sharper than his honed but ultimately human ones. If her promise of a cadre is true, it would be unwise to go charging in without picking off at their ranks.

A soft click heralds the unclipping of a sniper's rifle from his back. They haven't much time: the heightened activity that Eli is picking up may suggest an awareness on their enemy's part. An attempt to move their 'load' before it can be pilfered.

"Which direction are the voices coming from?"

Happens to us all.

[vakna]

He does not say. Though not doing is also doing for there is a choice before the window of time shuts on a particular moment. It is of course an anticipated response; she does not condemn his reticence, rather she aspires to understand its workings and how it came to be. Is his dearth of flattery a conscious omission or is he at sea in respect to such civilian banalities? — can't rightly navigate them as opposed to the stern contours of a Carbine or a high precision sniper rifle. His tangible, knowable objects, the antithesis of emotion.

A caged bird humors interpersonal relations with its brethren, be they a cripple bird or a feline interloper, but the bond is strongest with the hand that feeds. All loyalties are questionable but his. Venom Snake is, the totality of her world. It's of no surprise that her feelings for him are not simply potent but infinitely complex.

Eli, barely visible in tall grass beside him, points blindly in a direction while eyeing the barrel of the gun. She is certain her judgement is true. Is he opting for the lethal approach? It may be wise.

"There are too many guards for compound of this size, no?"

She has weathered military occupations.

[alterplex]

"They're hiding something," is the simple assessment. Smoke, fire, ad nauseam— soldiers rarely have the autonomy to do so much as stir without a go-ahead, let alone mill about in a show of supreme indiscretion. Venom's conclusion is as dispassionate as the methodical process with which his shoulders his rifle (silenced, and curiously, nonlethal), and he barely spares Eli a glace. He's aware of how he looks now, body molded to fit the curvature of his firearm, black fibers of his suit blending seamlessly with the cold glint of ash-carbon.

Under the circumstances, being personable with her feels wrong. The operative word there is feels, which he isn't meant to do at all; even with a partner, his number one priority is to divorce his emotions from the task at hand. Every irregular beat, any subconscious ripple, will translate into a faulty shot. A misstep.

His footsteps are silent as he sifts through the jungle for an ideal vantage point, and more silent still when he crouches and lines up his first shot. The gun doesn't betray him, and it stays mum as the first tranquilizer embeds itself into the back of an exposed neck. Like a man daydreaming, the targeted soldier staggers drunkenly on his heels, turning away from the rest of his pack to sway, dance, and ultimately slump down against the nearest tree.

The others fail to notice the subtraction among their ranks, which leaves Venom with enough time and confidence to dispatch two more stragglers taking up the rear. Any more, and they'll be sounding the alarm.

"...We're going to have to get closer. This is your last chance to back out."

[vakna]

While it has been said that their methods are alike in praxis she seldom had to abide by extraneous regulations. "No quarter" was the maxim. It was reliable in its finality for it is not only that a victim is destroyed but his epistemology as well, his apprehension of his assassin. To word it abstractly and yet in plain language: killing kills itself. Staying one's hand invites retribution. That is her belief, for better, and for worse.

The rusted power generator threatens to pollute her senses with white noise if she does not activity tune out its ailing cry. Her preternatural abilities are governed by the mundane and thus can be subverted by physical forces. She looks at Snake, motionless, like his namesake or perhaps an inert feature of the landscape. A man of stone. His heartbeat a rumor in his chest, but there still. The demon breathes. He bleeds when cut. He is a secular devil.

She observes his ceremony in solemn quietude lest she interfere with art. Although he voids himself to better his aim she is witnessing a personal ritual, his private moment. The girl's shoulders tense in anticipation of the imminent scream but the man and his unit are neutralized in quick succession. They sway and fall like pins, in dumb ignorance.

"I can't back out."

She speaks the words evenly as a statement of fact rather than a plea to his emotions, but does not explain why.

"You've cleared a way."

She crawls under the shadowwork of branches without his permission, and then there is a sudden leap and the girl is swallowed by the jungle. Silence and wind. A guard leans cross armed from his tower then something pulls him into the crepuscular night and he is no more, as though a man erased. A minute goes by, two. Then she is transmitted electronically in his ear:

"I have him. By the southernmost building, behind four black vans." Another voice is heard speaking frantic Indonesian to an indifferent Eli.

The reason for the hubbub, the steady influx of fighters to the compound, the transportation trucks and vans and surface-to-air weaponry therein, is encroaching on their location from the sky. The heavy carapace of the first gunship sails over Snake's head. The narcos were preparing for war with a trade rival who possesses attack helicopters.

"Boss?"

[alterplex]

It never felt manipulative at first: it was a natural progression, the nonlethal detainment and the subsequent increase of whispers that permeated enemy camps. This was how it worked, the parasitic nature of his name, his reputation. A man crawls from the bottom of a foxhole and trembles at the thought of the death he'd narrowly avoided, and his awe is passed on through exaggerations.

It never felt manipulative. It never felt as though he were perpetuating something right beyond his reach, or adding more nails into a coffin of his own construction. When Miller congratulated him (he's never seen Kaz so emphatic, white teeth reflected in sunlight and his walls drawn down the way they used to be way back when, back in—), when Ocelot spread his arms wide in a caricature of the world just within their grasp ("Let the legend come back to life"), it'd never felt like his cause was as cyclical as the nature of war.

But even Rip Van Winkle wakes up to know the consequences of time, and he sees it here, now, as plainly as if it'd been laid out to him, word for word. Even a simple extraction mission is an echo of the fire that'd been started in 1974. Monetization of bloodshed, a mad scrabble to fortify oneself against newer, stronger forces.

'Big Boss came back from hell, and we need to do what we can to survive.'

Eventually, Eli's tinny voice over his headset wakes him from his thoughts.

"—Looks like discretion's not gonna be an option." Stealth is for people with time to spare; they haven't any. Linger for too long, and they'll be burnt to ashes by unforgiving air raids. "If you've secured the target, take him and start heading back to our original LZ. If anyone finds you—"

Uncharacteristically, his conviction wavers. There is white noise, interrupted by the thunder of motors, which prompts Venom to finish his sentence.

"—Use your judgment."

As much of a permission to kill if she must. His breaths taste like ashes from his throat, but there's no time to dawdle— he kicks off from his perch in the grass to rendezvous with his charge, engaging in combat with two frenzied soldiers who clumsily hold grenade launchers which are half the length of their bodies. They can't be more than 16, 17 years old.

They lie with their faces in the dirt when Venom is done with them, and he has a fleeting notion that they'll die here, on this day. He clamps down on the emotions that threaten to leaden his feet at the revelation.

He takes one of their weapons as a tribute, and speeds through the jungle to find his companion.

"Talk to me."

[vakna]

She heeds the urgency in her superior's gruff directive but the magnitude of the danger eludes her until the girl peers out from behind the gloss-black van and sees. If only for an instant her gaze — the eyes of the whole elicit operation stop on the gray beast dominating the sky, crowned with dual rotors, one upon the other.

"Ah."

The sound falls flat from her lips. Immediately: the darkness parts as though rent by fire and the projectile whistles through the firmament like a firework one might see on a rooftop with Snake at night. I'm having a flashback, she realizes with sober detachment, as though no longer an active participant of the scene but an objective onlooker. It's much too late to flee. After everything, does here come the death?

An off-road motorcycle is cutting a path across the compound when the driver makes a fateful turn and inadvertently intercepts the missile with the chassis. Her vision goes white and her ears deaf. A shattered clavicle slices her cheek like a razor and she is flung, riding upon the shock wave in the midst of sheet metal and eviscerated vehicle parts. When she regains consciousness mortal agony seems to be the most prevalent feature of the panorama. Her ears ringing, Eli scans the injured and shakes her own charge awake and pulls him in the general direction of the LZ.

"Helicopter," she breathes over the microphone, some of the blood from her nostrils seeping in her mouth. "It knows he's here."

She crawls past a stack of packaged cocaine and yanks the young scientist to cover behind a building on fire; her options are limited. If they can't outrun such an adversary what is left?

"What ... should I do?"

She doesn't slip into panic, but she is scared.

[alterplex]

Curiously, it's the coil of a rising inferno that lends clarity to 'Big Boss's' objective. War is akin to religion in that it absolves the soul for as long as one maintains oneself to it. The smell of fire and the panic that surrounds it is every bit as calming to Venom as the confines of a confessional. He is here to make his sins known, and once he steps out of this hell, it's back to the daily grind.

He bypasses the carcass of what used to be a man, half of his body strewn in bits and the other as a new layer against peeling stucco. Eli's voice is small, frightened, and it hastens his steps.

"Leave the hostage. You can't take him." Their target has no name yet, and thus, is lower on the ladder of importance than the small girl with her sunken eyes. Eli. She is already within the ranks of people that Venom doesn't want to afford to lose. "Listen for the helicopter, and move as fast as you can in the opposite direction."

As for him? Well. He's meant to survive, and that's what he'll do. The pilfered grenade launcher sits comfortably along one shoulderblade, digging a bruise into his scarred skin as he runs for an optimal location, the heels of combat boots bracing in moist jungle dirt.

"I'm taking the choppers down," he announces, as if it's simple as that. Perhaps it is, to a man who resigns himself to the banality of destruction. Another flurry of missiles rain onto the far end of a nearby warehouse, sending it alight and simultaneously alerting Venom of the enemy helicopter's position. Carbon-black cutting through ash-gray; it's all so impersonal, these metal cages acting as monstrous deterrences.

Venom's first shot blasts the behemoth to the side, skewing the trajectory of its path long enough for Venom to reload, dispense with another volley, and send the vehicle screaming through the air to its eventual destruction. The ground rattles with the impact, and Venom can feel the ends of his hair singe from secondhand heat.

[vakna]

She affirms his decision to leave the scientist to his ingenuity and tries to save her skin by using her own. She makes for the low compound wall but the Indonesian seizes her leg as she clambers over the divide and both figures tumble onto the mud slicked earth. The man, understandably puzzled by the abrupt change in his rescuer's directive tussles with an irate Eli while the so-called gunship takes aim.

A barrage of bullets lashes the ground like a serrated whip and when the plume of dirty smoke lifts from her vision she is still holding fast to the scientist's wrist, as to cast him aside, but when her eyes climb his forearm there is no longer a body attached to the limb. The helicopter's assault had made paste of its quarry. She drops the limb and sifts through the gore until she exhumes a briefcase from the remains. She sprints past a gallery of men in white and orange hazmat suits who must have fled from the warehouse for fear of being incinerated with their product.

The impact of Venom's first shot upsets the gunner's grip on the controls and a stray missile sets a nearby patch of jungle alight, the fauna taking to the air; she sees a bird in flames barrel through the sky like a comet. When she emerges before Snake it is after a frenzied dash though the dancing flames. The girl holds out her arm rigidly and proffers her commander the intel.

"I have his briefcase," she says. "I have have briefcase." Her tone is moderated but she seems unable to stop repeating the phrase. "I have...."

[alterplex]

"—Eli!"

His voice cuts through her broken repetition, lifting the proverbial needle from the record. She is unsteady on her feet, mechanical, and Venom wastes his precious time to scoop her into the crook of his arm, to press her bloodied, singed form to him. Somewhere on the other side, Miller furiously radios in with status updates and demands for information. Contained within his speech is an 'I told you so', or a less juvenile permutation of it.

It doesn't matter. This storm has to be weathered, and lectures can come later. Relieving his charge of her briefcase, Venom pulls her thin shoulders from him with a steady hand. The world collapses around them, but he remains a constant.

"We're getting out of here." Obvious, but with conviction. No room for doubt. "Can you run?"

A rhetorical question, considering that they need their feet. Something whistles above them, heralding the approach of a second enemy helicopter hovering in wait for the wreckage of its fallen brethren to clear. It doesn't give them much time to act.

Without asking for Eli's answer, Venom takes her hand and sprints to the side. Ladders unfurl down from the sky where they'd been moments before, and heavily-armed soldiers drop to the ground in neat rows.

[vakna]

"What's wrong?" she asks with knitted brows.

In such singular frame of mind she cannot fathom Venom's "unprofessional" conduct (is he shielding her from harm?), her body limp and malleable within his brace as though the slightest force will bend her any which way despite her awesome strength. She cocks her head and peers at him quizzically because, after all, in her mind she had made her declaration just once. To reiterate it twice, three times, would simply be irrational.

Released she rubs at her cheeks with her palms to clear away the grime and vestiges of the ex-hostage's gray matter, etc., and rights her footing on uneven ground. Epinephrine weaves a current through her frame and stabilizes her like a neurological prosthetic. What came of the suitcase? Did he retrieve it from her? Did she do well?

She starts to nod when she is swept away, her head swivels and she glimpses ladders descend eerily from a sky flashing epileptic white. Out of sight Eli flattens herself against the bole of a great tree and seizes Big Boss's wrist so that it him who is anchored to her strength and not the other way around. Power and powerlessness, slave and master — a whisper in her thoughts, the same.

"Boss, there's only jungle ahead." The growth too dense to permit safe landing whereas the extraction point is beyond the column of armored troops.

"I'm going to kill them. Those big guys. But I can't do it alone."

[alterplex]

His grip slicks with acrid remains of something that used to be human, and the more they wade through mud and grime, the less human he has to feel. If she doesn't understand the way she skips and refrains like a nursery rhyme with one too many stanzas, Venom doesn't comment on it; they have more pressing matters at hand, like the thunder that runs along the ground in the form of footsteps and artillery.

Wild animals scream in the thickets of the jungle. Victims, all of them. How many years will it take to repair the cocaine-burnt wasteland that they're leaving behind?

A useless thought, as Venom feels his limb pull by the socket in a grip from a small hand. The incongruity of Eli's power will always blindside him— he blinks ash out of his eye and rolls the shock out of his sinews.

"You're going to kill them." He echoes. The simple terms sound discordant, but he accepts them as an inevitability. A day ago, that steady voice inquired into pedestrian things like Venom Snake's choice in music: today, they condemn an entire legion to death.

That's life.

"Fine." Is there any other acceptable answer? He knows well enough that gentle morality is a shallow grave. None of the men training their scopes on them, fixing them with the swamp-green focus of their thermals, will give them a second thought. There are more shadows approaching, and Venom hefts his rifle against his chest, dislodging Eli from him in the process. "I'll be the bait."

[vakna]

She looks out at the ambulatory shapes like those of some primordial bog-men wading through the tall grasses. Their hardware tells of the scale of their assignment which, coupled with the helicopters, is tantamount to total cleansing. They burn man and beast, let the inferno torch even the neatly packaged agent of their enmity. She and Venom witness not a territorial conflict but the erasure of an organization by a superior force. They are outmatched in every respect save individual power and Eli, having no illusions of invulnerability, cannot forecast her victory to him. Only that she intends to kill. She is mum for doubt is contagious. If he frets over her his bullet might miss.

She disarms and turns her cheek from the mercenary that her face is obscured. Her shoulder blades touch and separate in a patently discomforting motion and the girl clenches and unwinds her fists once, twice — till her bones shift. Her head pivots his way slightly, tentatively, and she speaks, with passable clarity even, through a mouth disfigured by greatly elongated teeth:

"I'm sorry it's this way."

Her claws split the bark of the tree as she seizes hold of the trunk and leaps into the canopy. She aims to ambush the hunters one by one, prioritizing those closest to Big Boss first; nobody else can have him.

[alterplex]

The planes of Eli's body shift, tectonic plates under a calm surface of skin. Her rumble is an earthquake, and her eloquence between the jagged ends of her teeth cool Venom's blood, like silt settling on the bottom of the ocean.

There's nothing to say to her apology. They can be sorry later, huddled in the comfortable dispassion of a helicopter ironically named.

She bounds forward through the trees, and strikes upon one of the ambling soldiers heading the chase. He's overconfident, drunk on a perceived victory, and doesn't expect the small shadow falling from the canopy to be anything but an animal caught in the crossfire. An unfortunate bird, perhaps.

It's only when he finds his gaze shifting backwards with his torso still faced front, that he realizes his neck's done a full 180. Eli's initial assault is uncompromising and unforgiving, eliciting a string of confused curses in several foreign tongues. The dissonant presence of such a small stature dispatching flesh from bone dulls an otherwise primordial 'fight' response— Venom takes advantage of their enemies' hesitation to pick away at the ranks, one by one, with bullets to skull.

One younger recruit gathers enough courage to lunge at Eli with his machete drawn, blade glinting orange-red in the fire that still rages on behind him.

[vakna]

Is her apology reserved for him, another, or the general state of things? The simplest of statements become the most variegated under scrutiny, but this is no time for dismantling her stance, if she in fact has a stance. The world is an enigma and their botched attempt to retrieve the man confirms it to be so. Nothing is a given, except perhaps the temporarily of events and that of the flesh. One day they'll surely die, yes, the contest of arms will unmake them, but there is yet living to be done. All they have is now.

She spits the unrecognizable remains of a victim's nose into the shuddering leaves. His insistence on body armor has exposed him to such cruelty, although Eli does not particularly care for his pain. Her viciousness merely illustrates the vast disconnect between her treatment of Big Boss and of those who are not Big Boss.

She wheels her head about and entombs her gaze in the eyes of her young assailant. The otherworldly vision arrests his charge, stops him in his tracks. Burning timber and immobility, irregular bursts of gunfire. Eli rises with limbs in repose and regards the boy slowly, who in turn haltingly lowers his machete — whereupon Eli walks up to him and kills him.

While striking out against the last of the gunmen her claw is caught in reinforced Kevlar and won't pry free. He throws a solid right hook to her face and puerile teeth litter the ground. But her fangs endure. She clambers upon him and attacks his neck just as Venom's well-placed shot perforates his heart, and both collapse.

once again, so sorry for the delay...!

[alterplex]

Here they are, stranded in a wasteland of their own making, with only a suitcase covered in viscera to show for their efforts. It's pathetically small, these victories, but Venom will have to take them as they are.

The fruits of their half-completed mission hefted in his bionic, smoking rifle dangling tautly at his side, Venom trots through a field of broken limbs and lacerated flesh to bend by Eli's side. Pebbles of white dot around her like diamonds; he's reminded of the folklore of the kind youngest sibling who dropped jewels from her lips with each good word spoken.

In this case, perhaps she's paid for each death with her broken teeth. If so, Venom should have every bone in his body broken. Equivalent exchange.

"Eli," is what he finally says, breathing in the sulfur-thickness of the air. "We need to leave. Come on."

His practicality nearly borders on callous— where is his softness to compensate for the hell he's thrown her into?— but the furrows along his hard-cut expression speak to a melancholy that he doesn't articulate, and the quiet hand that tries to pry the smaller figure from the still-twitching corpse feel for any breaks in her body, and injuries that he'll have to be mindful of as he carries her through this warzone.

[vakna]

Her concern is for her performance, as physical strife, after all, is an old friend. Pain a familiar visitant that comes and goes much like any reoccurring symptom. While one cannot exactly grow accustomed to impromptu dentistry of this kind they can accept it. She pulls the deadman aside and reclaims her footing with the help of her boss, though she will not meet his gaze while rivulets yet stream down her battered lip. In fact she cannot but smile; not so "pretty" now.

Understandably she is short on confirmations for she can only respond with an incoherent jumble of words like an idiot, and her dignity is all that she has — so no response, merely the tacit nod and the turning away of the face as they head for extraction. Only the bruising on her hands and he, the sole surviving witness, can attest to her abnormalities. Those that are visible to the naked eye.

Flames tear through the compound and yet their return is marked by silence from her end. The weight of failure overshadowing it all.

[alterplex]

They push through unfriendly thickets and leave the screaming wreckage of their previous destination behind, with only the irregular pulse of radio static in their earpieces to serenade them. Somewhere far away is the sound of a friendly vehicle cutting worried circles through fogged, desolate sky— 'Pequod' lists landmarks in a disjointed poem, interspersing descriptions with positions on the face of a clock. Some kind of intricate, demented code: green, three-pronged tree, canyon face, two o'clock approaching three o'clock.

Venom doesn't offer to hold Eli's hand throughout. They come upon the lowered platform of their chopper after a short eternity of scampering, and it's only when the suitcase slicked in gore is loaded onto their extraction vessel that Venom offers his scuffed glove for her to hold, to hoist her up and onto safety before him.

His face is obscured by ash and blood, a far less miserable state than his companion's, but the translucent blue of his single eye attempts to gauge her condition: is she upset? Weary? Detached?

Does she care at all? Where are her priorities?

His only concern is her wellbeing; they've weathered another storm, but her potential emotional injuries alongside her physical are more pressing.

[vakna]

Her hair dances frenziedly as the helicopter descends and it occurs to her that she too should have it tied during future excursions. Or maybe not, the place beside him she had clearly delineated in her thoughts has become compromised. She does not want the suitcase opened lest it contain mere articles of clothing, nothing of use, nothing to solidify her usefulness to Ocelot and Miller and in consequence to Big Boss. A strange irony is at play: she is fixated on his officers' verdict because it may devalue her in Venom's eyes, while Venom is in fact anxious about her here and now; she has value yet—troubled by her performance—she cannot see it.

His hand guides her in though she embarks without effort and when she inhales past her lips her teeth are newly made, if bloodied, as if she's been eating raw meat. His skills as a man of medicine however are still of use. Perhaps his worries are so poignant because it is in his character to heal the wounded.

She sits on the cabin floor with her palms at her sides and her expression anonymous.

"The hostage is dead. Everyone is dead," she says. "I killed a kid." The burning aftermath, squared in cinematically by the cabin, looks like an extract from some brutal Vietnam war epic. "I have nothing to say for myself."