Metal Gear Solid V: Chronicles of Outer Heaven (MGS/Valkyria Chronicles)

Ant sat alone in the small room, lit only by the bulb attached to the ceiling. His only company was his own chair, another empty one across from his, and the table between them with a pitcher of water and glasses sitting atop it. Those, and the ache in his jaw from where he got reacquainted with the Boss.

After arriving here he'd had only one request before joining, and that was for Boss to give him a lesson in the old basics of CQC, just like he used to. It was meant to settle the last of his doubts, and it did that perfectly. In the nine years since the Mother Base Disaster he'd grown as a soldier and a warrior, honing his skills to the point where he and Whale were evenly matched in hand to hand, even if their 'techniques' were as different as could be.

Despite all of that, he couldn't hold a candle to his opponent… and that couldn't have made him any happier. Nine years of training and constant battle and Boss was still head and shoulders over him. It was like a mirror image of those early days shortly after he'd joined MSF, when Boss would join in on training the recruits. Back then, he'd thought he was pretty good… but the Boss had thrown him around like a sack of potatoes. This time, Ant was glad to say it took him a bit more work than that.

Of course, Ant still hadn't landed any actual hits, but that didn't really matter. He didn't expect to, not against the man who defined and crafted the hand-to-hand system that MSF and DD used. The ending to that fight was the same as the first time he'd been trained by the Boss; he'd overextended on an opportunity and gotten the spit knocked out of him, before being slammed to the floor hard enough to make him see stars spinning overhead, and when those cleared up…

Boss was over him, offering him a hand up and a bracing pat on the shoulder.

It had taken a lot to keep it all in then. Nine years. Nine long years, and he was finally…

There was a click as the latch was undone on the door, and it squealed open to reveal a figure standing there. Another one stepping out of the mists of the past.

Ant hadn't seen Sub-Commander Miller in 9 years, but he'd heard from him more recently than that. They'd been contacted when AW SES was still growing; apparently Miller had finally heard about what their little group had been getting up to in Central and South America, and called them up in hopes of getting more old MSF veterans on board with the Diamond Dogs.

It had taken a lengthy discussion to decide whether or not to take the offer, but in the end Ant and Whale had their own commitments to the group they'd founded and promises they'd made. That, and…

Without Boss, it just…

All Ant could hope for was that Miller wouldn't hold it against him. The Miller he used to know, the same one who'd been nice enough to keep Ant busy during the 'UN Inspection' rather than letting him go stir crazy in hiding... but was the man in front of him the same person? Even putting aside Miller's visible losses, the way he carried himself and the atmosphere around him were completely different.

Miller's cane clacked as he moved into the room, shutting the door behind him. Ant knew well enough that they'd be observed, but the lack of a visible guard with Miller was a good sign. It meant that they didn't feel the need to posture in regards to the relative power of their positions.

Ant couldn't help but admire Miller. Despite his physical losses, he hadn't been slowed down at all. Some people would have just given up in the face of what had happened… but then again, those people wouldn't have done what Miller had in the first place. It took a special kind of person to be Boss' second. Everyone on Mother Base knew that.

"... It's been a while, Greg," Miller said after a moment of silence, his expression set neutrally as he took a seat across from Ant. It may have been 9 years, but it hadn't been so long that Ant had forgotten the Sub-Commander's tells. He wasn't angry. Not angry at Ant, at least.

"It has, Sub-Commander Miller," Ant responded, sitting back straight in his chair with his hands on the table, the picture of professional poise as always. "It's good to see you again."

Ant felt the stirrings of curiosity in him as Miller placed a manila folder on the table before him and flipped it open, revealing… old records? The MSF logo emblazoned on them threw Ant for a loop, as well as making his heart seize for a moment.

Miller adjusted the papers for a moment longer before raising his hidden gaze to the man sitting across from him, Ant staying still in spite of the growing sense of pressure. "Time is 0913 at the beginning of the debriefing. On March 16th 1975—" Miller almost growled the date before visibly mastering himself and continuing as normal. "You were assigned a solo op to meet a local supplier and to return with provisions. Describe what happened during the operation in your own words."

Ant stared at Miller, nonplussed. Was Miller… actually debriefing him for Operation 'Milkest Run?' Out of everything he expected to happen, up to and including Miller refusing his return for having not having joined up when first invited, this was… not on the list.

Ant paused, and he felt his eyes narrow just a touch as he caught it. The faintest of signs were there, so faint he couldn't be certain but… was Miller fucking with him?

It looked like… maybe he was wrong to have been so worried after all. The anger that Miller so obviously cloaked himself in was potent, but if he could still do this, then maybe…

"Sir. Operation proceeded according to plan. Contact was made with the target at the designated time and location, and upon inspection of the goods everything was found to be in order." Old memories, long left behind, returned to the forefront of Ant's mind. The pounding rain, the difficulty of maneuvering the deuce-and-a-half through the begrudging mud, all to meet a local supplier and informant. Busywork that Miller himself had given Ant. A kindness that had probably saved his life.

"Nothing unusual? No firefight with a gang of drug smugglers? The location and goods weren't 'haunted?'" Miller probed.

"Sir, that only happened…" Ant trailed off, mind wracking itself for an answer that didn't justify what Miller was saying. "... A couple of times."

"Uh-huh." Miller marked something down on the paper in front of him. "Nothing out of the ordinary then."

Flickering memories reminded Ant of something. "Contact mentioned something of note. Sounds of firefights had been noticed in the region. He'd tried to get more information, but I declined to provide it. Then…"

Ant trailed off, eyes flicking back to the old MSF logo on the papers before Miller. The same logo that Ant still had alongside his AW SES patch. Words left him. That day wasn't one he'd talked about often, if at all. He, Whale and the other six remaining survivors who'd formed their group spoke of it rarely, but all had kept their patches as reminders. The very same deuce-and-a-half they'd run their company out of to start with still had the MSF logo on it. It was a memory burned into all of their hearts and minds, something they couldn't forget. Something they'd never let themselves forget.

Miller picked up the speaking slack. "Our intelligence can cover the rest of the story. You rescued survivors that arrived at your designated exfiltration zone and evacuated them." Miller shuffled through multiple papers, one after another. "We've got reports from some of the people you saved, tracking you accurately to Limon. It's why I got into contact with you five years ago, once we'd found you again. You did a lot with what you had."

"It wasn't enough," was the only answer that Ant managed, eyes unfocused on the table as he fefl those haunting memories return. That trek out of there was the same kind of hell Vietnam had been. They'd been picked apart a few more times before they'd either finally managed to give Cipher the slip or they had stopped being worth the effort. That was just one cause for the lives lost. Sickness, injury during the trek… suicide. They hadn't even had the time to give the bodies a proper burial…

"That's not what the reports say." Miller's response wasn't harsh or conciliatory. It just was. It served its purpose and brought Ant back into the moment, tearing his gaze from the table and the past so he could return it to Miller's own.

The pages before Miller were shuffled again, showing new reports. Ant picked up some of what was written on them, having learned to read upside down over the years: intelligence reports, on the situation in Latin America and PMCs operating there, including AW SES. It was more information than Ant was comfortable with others knowing about AW SES, but it wasn't anything that a dedicated observer couldn't figure out eventually: group makeup, numbers and equipment, relative skill level of the men.

The problem was that Ant knew that Miller knew that he knew how to read upside-down, so he was showing Ant his hand. What Ant didn't know was why Miller was doing it. Was it because he didn't think Ant knowing what he knew could matter at that point? Was he doing it to make a point of showing how much he knew?

Or, the non-paranoid part of Ant's mind suggested, was Miller simply comfortable enough around an old comrade not to be concerned about that?

"You're not the only PMC operating in Latin America, not even the biggest," Miller commented as his shielded eyes glanced at Ant, papers momentarily forgotten. "But you've made yourself a place there, and your group's stable and secure. You've got a base of operations that's mobile and armed enough to scare off any of your normal competition. You've been getting plenty of work from your contracts with the 'Comandante Amanda Libre', and the NGOs you've been schmoozing with thanks to your reputation as 'humane' professionals."

"So, why now?" Miller didn't raise his voice, but Ant remembered clearly just why everyone called him Master Miller, even the men older than he was. "Why are you joining up now?" His voice took a demanding edge. "Because the Boss is here now?"

"Because both of you are here," Ant responded immediately, honestly, the only way he could.

Miller paused, giving Ant the ability to continue and finally make clear the reasoning behind his actions, both in the present and five years past.

"It's true that the Boss' return is what sparked the idea," Ant continued. "Whale was chomping at the bit to get us over here once we'd heard the first reliable rumors. But we'd had responsibilities, to our men and to our clients. We couldn't leave everything we'd built to chase phantoms. That was the same reason we declined your offer, five years ago when you invited us to Diamond Dogs then. If it had just been Whale and I, we would have agreed immediately… but it wasn't."

Miller didn't respond, so Ant just kept spilling it all out. "You said it yourself, we're stable now. But back then AW SES would have fallen apart without us. We'd just purchased the 'Iron Leviathan' too, we couldn't afford to leave it then. But now… they don't need us anymore. There's three generations of recruits after us old MSF. Even with all eight of us leaving, AW SES can stand on its own now. They've got the experience and expertise to do it."

Miller tapped his pen against the papers, and after a moment he laid it down on the table. "Both of us, huh..."

Ant took Miller's murmured response as a prompt to continue. "It was your work on PMCs and professionalism that I based AW SES around, Sub-Commander. I couldn't command like Boss does, but thanks to your work and thesis I was able to build AW SES into what it is now. I just took what you taught us and applied my experience from the business world to it."

"... Heh, so it's my fault?" Miller leaned back in his chair, and there it was on his face. It wasn't the same grin that he'd carried back nine years ago, but it was a smile all the same.

It made Ant glad to see it.

"If you join us, you're going to be working your way up the ranks. There's no fast track to management here," Miller threatened, the smile fading away as he leaned forward again, staring down the man across from him just like he had all those years ago.

"I'm not afraid of hard work, sir," Ant responded, same as he had near 10 years ago.

A huff left Miller before he reached into a pocket and pressed something onto the table between the two of them. "That's what I like to hear. Welcome aboard, soldier."

Ant accepted the patch with the snarling dog's head emblazoned boldly on it, staring down on it as he contemplated the whirling feeling within him. He was sad to leave AW SES behind, but more than that, he was happy to be back where he-

"Oh." Miller spoke up again as he took hold of his brace and stood. "Since by all accounts you completed your last mission, that'll be on your record. But…" Miller looked down his shades at Ant, his face an etching of seriousness. "I told you that if you ever lost that truck, I'd make you pay for it. It'll be coming out of your pay."

"Then it's a good thing they should be unloading it from the ship right now." Ant remained seated as he matched Miller's stare, his brows slightly risen.

Miller only managed to hold in the sigh for a moment, a mixture of amusement and bemusement coming out with it. "Of course you brought the damn thing with you…"

"... Welcome back." Those were Miller's final words before he clacked his way out of the room. The door was opened for him, and left open for Worker Ant to take his own leave.

Ant stood up and made his way out, nodding to the fellow MSF veteran who had been guarding the door while Miller had debriefed him. Heading out the same way he'd been brought in, Ant stepped onto the deck and looked out over the great structure of Mother Base. Some of the other struts were visible in the distance, the size of this Mother Base dwarfing even the old one.

When he looked down, he could see the deuce-and-a-half (still emblazoned with the old MSF logo) had a crowd gathering around it, Whale in the middle of it and gesticulating for one reason or another, while the other six who'd joined with them all those years ago lounged on the truck. Past them, the SS 'Iron Leviathan' moved on, having finished the final order he'd given as her commander.

"...It's good to be home," Ant said, gripping the railing of the platform as he savored the moment.