Behind the Scenes: Special Delivery

Subject: Almace, Teagan. Somewhere. Somewhen, prior to 8chanmania x MFW - IN/V/ASION. 
Behind the Scenes: Special Delivery
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The mystery man dragged Teagan away from the ring and they ran, ducking out a back door. The two of them trailed through a long hallway in silence and escaped to the outside; the landscape was hellish in its creation, bits and pieces of the mirror realm in the distance falling apart as if they were afterthoughts only stuck on because of their relative proximity to the ring. Much closer, on the black road just outside, sat a machine. It was long and tailed and sitting on wide stilts, a quartet of long, blade-like protrusions hanging off of its top heavily.
The light revealed the person dragging her, an old man wearing a neat headband and what appeared to be protective gear. Without turning around or stopping he offered a strange earmuff contraption with a little thing hanging off to her, further compounding the confusion. “Put this on, you’ll need it,” he said, shaking it emphatically. 
She took it from his hand and awkwardly maneuvered it onto her head as they ran for the metal thing; its door slid open without anyone to move it and the man hopped in naturally, as if he’d done it a million times. She followed him in reluctantly, mimicking the man’s actions as he sat down and fiddled with his seat’s straps. The machine began to shake violently.
"What the fuck is going on?!" Teagan shouted into the bit of metal protruding from the earmuffs. Speaking into it felt a bit silly, but it had to be there for a reason. There was a moment of weightlessness and then another of intense pressure, the shock urging her to look out the window. As the ground fell away entirely she suddenly felt too nervous keep looking, turning back inward.
The old man leaned over and bumped her shoulder with his own. "Relax, this'll all make more sense soon." The voice went straight to her ears through the muffs like magic, and the tenor of it felt perfectly natural, as though he was used to speaking this way.
The machine banked hard and so did she, but Teagan caught herself, holding tight to the seat's straps. 
"Keeping your eyes inside the chopper is a good call," the man said, "not everyone does well on their first ride."
"Who are you?" Teagan asked. The machine rocked inward as it leveled off and she fell with it, shifting uncomfortably in a futile effort to get situated in the much-too-big seat.
The man grunted. "Just call me 'Snake'. We’ll be putting you back in soon enough though, so sit tight."
“What do you mean putting me back in?” She asked. He didn’t say anything, and she turned to him; the man known as ‘Snake’ stared at her, unblinking.
"I didn't even win, so why me?" She tried. The man smiled at her under his mustache.
"It all begins now, Teagan." Snake held out a hand, offering it to her to shake. "The Colonel wants you on the team for real and it's time you took your first mission."
She stared at him. “The Colonel?” her eyes lit up with recognition and things started to fall into place. She’d been fairly nervous about being spirited away by some random old man, but if the Colonel had sent him, then there must have been a reason. She took his hand and shook it; he released the grip and pulled another strange object out of a holster on his hip. Judging from the care with which he handled it and the general look, she took it to be a weapon of some kind. He flipped open a chamber inside and began to fiddle with the contents within. “You have a very important mission,” he continued, and Teagan frowned.
"You're not going to humor any more of my questions," she sighed. This time it was more of a declaration than a question, and maybe for that reason alone, he nodded.
"No. You'll get used to that. I can’t give you answers, but what I can give you is a briefing, and ‘’this’’.” He flipped the object about, holding it out to her handle-first. “That is, if you’re in.” 
She looked at the weapon and raised an eyebrow. "I’m going to kill her dead? Sounds good, the bitch has it coming." He offered it to her more eagerly, but she held out a hand to stop him. “But I don’t need that.”
Teagan pushed the object back to him and said “I’ve got my fists.” her green eyes stayed locked onto his, “and if it means I can get the fuck out of this place and back to Alto…I'll do it."
Snake nodded and smirked. “He was right about you.” He laughed gently. “You’ll fit right in with us old soldiers. The woman responsible for this mess is Endolynn van VelkenBriar. We don’t have much intel on her or what she is, but the main priority is to ensure that once she enters the ring, she never leaves."
"After she's been dealt with tidily, we evaluate the situation. If the Hostage is rescued and re-established as the conduit, we go home happy and you get an early retirement. The good kind."
She frowned, suddenly anxious. "If?"
"There’s a chance that he will not be able to reassert control over the Frasergy, and if that happens our timelines will collapse."
She turned to square with Snake and grabbed at his armor, slamming a hand hard against the window behind him. "You're saying it could all be gone!" she shouted, furious. "I've fought too hard to let it end like this. We all have!"
"At the Colonel's direction, our company has prepared countermeasures. After much experimentation, we’ve found methods to contain and store at least trace amounts of Frasergy. It's still not enough to preserve an entire universe, but it can at least stave off aversion for a few individuals or locales. We don’t know if anyone else has developed similar technology, but there is danger there, too. Danger we need to be ahead of."
Snake shook his head, resigned. "If the hostage fails to re-assume control… The first threat will have been eliminated, and we keep on fighting our new war until we find a way to fix him or replace him."
Teagan pulled away. "Will it be worse?" she asked quietly, "To go back to the way things were, and still remember how they could have been?" Teagan bit her lip and looked at her hands, thinking about what that meant. The fact that Saki, Merin, Aubrey… Even Alto, they might all grow to hate her again. She was silent for a long moment, and she turned to look at the old man sitting next to her. “Snake… Is Otacon doing okay?”
Snake was smiling. He stared back at her and said nothing at all.
Teagan realized what was going on and threw her hands up, turning away in a huff. She sidled back closer to her window and looked out to watch the the ground below, staring numbly down at the structure containing the ring. He was right, there would be plenty of time for denial and frustration and confusion and questions later.
Right now, at this moment?
She had a job to do.
Category:Lore