This is an alternate version of the videogame Metal gear Solid V :The Phantom Pain, but without the V, of course. This work of fanfiction is a reimagination of events and characters and more accurately bridges the gap between the previous games and...
"Why are we still here? Just to suffer? Every night, I can feel my leg, my arm, and even my fingers. The body I've lost... the comrades I've lost... won't stop hurting."
— Kazuhira 'Benedict' Miller
Location – Suez Canal
After transferring themselves from the whaler ship to a container ship, Shalashashka introduces himself as Ocelot. Snake recalls their friendly face-off during operation Snake Eater and replies that he's changed quite a lot since the last time they met. Ocelot then administers growth enhancer drugs to help Snake get back his strength, saying that it was certain Chinese woman names EVA, who had arranged the hospital for him, and the medics present on the ship sedate him and remove the shrapnel out of his head. Later, on being asked as why they're heading to South Africa, Ocelot replies that although the MSF was destroyed but the other offshore military and financial assets haven't, and with Miller's support and his business links they're able to establish a new base in South Africa - a soldier's paradise existing free of any global power's political control and a home for those shunned amidst the cold war. Big Boss sees this a more accurate realization of Boss's dream of world peace contrary to Ocelot, who tells him that they need to gather more and more resources to take revenge on Cipher, and for that he's formed a special strike team within the base to be directly under the command of Big Boss, called Diamond Dogs.
Location - Galzburg
They head via chopper to a island 200 kilometers north of Galzburg. From above, Big Boss sees a heavily guarded military complex through the chopper's windows - an expansive land enclosed by the hills and the forest on one side and the sea on the other, complete with a command center, vehicle hanger and several other platforms, most of them yet to be completed. After landing, Ocelot gives Big Boss the honor of naming their new Mother Base, to which Big Boss replies two words – Outer Heaven – recalling the memories of his old offshore Mother Base, seeing it as a way to continue the dream he had envisioned for. Ocelot instead tells him that the Diamond Dogs unit, which is modeled after FOX, is the perfect weapon of vengeance against Cipher.
After being welcomed by his new mates along with Ocelot explain his role as well as the role of the base's important personnel, he escorts him to a memorial at the far end of the base near the sea. On arriving, Snake sees a stone obelisk called 'The Patriots' Stone' on which the names of his former comrades are inscribed including that of Chico and Paz. Ocelot reveals that Chico died inside the helicopter along with the medic who shielded Snake from Paz's bomb saying that "when you pick up the gun, there's always a chance you'll die for nothing". Big Boss then requests Ocelot to give him some privacy. After he's gone, Snake looks at the name inscribed at the topmost position of the monument - Venom - and remembers it to be the medic's codename who had sacrificed himself that day. Snake then looks down with tears and gives the monument a final salute before departing.
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Later, Ocelot summons Snake along with the Diamond Dogs unit to the briefing room and tells him that Kazuhira Miller, their base's Executive Officer (XO) has been captured by the Soviets. Big Boss learns that after the fall of MSF, Miller walked the planet training various dissident soldiers in battlefields all over the world in order to amass enough power to form this second mother base. While, he had been training some Mujahedeen rebels in North Kabul, Afghanistan to fight the Soviet occupation forces, his camp was ambushed allowing the Soviets to capture him. Big Boss accepts the mission but instead argues that he should go in solo to rescue his old friend, mirroring a classic FOX mission, much to Ocelot's apprehension that he hasn't recovered completely. Nevertheless, he agrees to let him undertake the mission but on the condition that he guides him to Afghanistan and that the rest of the Diamond Dogs would provide him cover if anything goes awry.
