Price brought König, and a little reluctantly, Gaz. As soon as Kyle heard that Nik might have been hurt he demanded to come with them. Price wasn't sure about it, but ultimately let him come with.
They drove out to the given coordinates and it led them to a large expanse of woods. It didn't take them long to see a trail of smoke leading up into the sky. They moved through the woods quickly. Gaz had a slightly pained expression on his face and he walked with his hands over his ears.
"I don't know. Please calm down!"
"Kyle?" Price asked.
"The trees are all freaking out. Some of their friends and family were burned in the crash." He explained.
Price rubbed his back between his wings, "The sooner we get there the sooner we can leave, yeah?"
Gaz nodded, determined.
They made it to the crash site, a few trees had been split and knocked over. Flames licked up from the remains of the plane. They all hurried forward.
"Nik? Where are you?" Price asked, getting on his knees to look beneath some of the wreckage. He didn't receive a reply at first, but then there was a slightly wheezing cough sounding from somewhere below.
"J-John?"
Price slid forward, laying eyes on him in the slightly crushed and overturned cockpit, "Nik!" He placed a hand on the side of the metal and pulled it away with a hiss, the metal was still hot.
König shoved him out of the way with a tentacle and grunted a slightly pained sounding sound as he wrapped a few more around the hot metal and worked to pull it up. Price quickly crawled forward as he held it, hurrying to get Nik unstrapped from his seat and dragging him out. Nik clutched a hand around his middle and groaned. As soon as they were both cleared from the wreck, König dropped the metal, a few singed tentacles quivered from the pain.
Gaz hurried over to examine and fret over his burns.
Price had Nik resting on his lap.
Nikolai gave a few more wheezy coughs from the smoke, "Y-you-!" He dissolved into a little hacking fit.
"Easy, Nik. Easy now." Price rubbed his back.
Nik recovered after a moment and let out a little chuckle, "Told you that I would live."
Price shook his head, "You sure like to get close. Gave me a bit of a heart attack back there."
"Gotta keep you on your toes." He laughed again, wincing slightly, "Think I cracked a few ribs, Captain."
Price nodded, looking him over, "We'll get you back home and taken care of, Sweetheart. Don't worry."
Nik snorted, "Sweetheart? You must really have been scared."
Price shook his head fondly, "If you wanted to come home you could have just spoken to Laswell. Didn't need to crash a plane."
He shrugged slightly, "Not my fault some sort of fire monster blew me out of the sky."
Price furrowed his brow, "A monster did this?"
Nik nodded, "Think it's what hit the base."
Price pursed his lips. He couldn't think of a reason why a monster would do that. Of the target was Makarov, which he assumed, he couldn't imagine why a creature would want him. After everything he had done to monsters? Maybe they killed him? But why the rest of the base?
"Let's talk about this back home. Get you patched up." He told Nik, carefully lifting him up with a grunt, trying his best not to nudge his ribs around. He glanced over to Gaz and König, "Gaz, how're those burns?"
"They'll be alright, Captain. Nothing a bit of aloe vera won't fix."
Nik blinked, "Gaz?"
"In the flesh!" Gaz smiled at him with his slightly sharper than average teeth.
Nikolai scanned his appearance, "I guess I missed a lot."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The mansion was buzzing with concerned energy when they returned. Everyone was worrying over Nik and fawning over König's tentacle burns. Horangi hovered beside him protectively as Gaz put salve on them.
They had retrieved the footage from Nikolai's plane and went over its contents. It was hard to get an idea of what exactly they were looking at. They could see what Nik had meant about the base, it was still smoldering, little flames scattered across the buildings. But the monster itself was confusing. They collected a few blurry stills whenever it was in frame. It looked like a ball of flames on camera. Nik said that it looked humanoid with wings in person, but yes, decidedly on fire. They sent the images off to Laswell for investigation.
In the morning, Price, Soap, and Ghost traveled to the base. Ghost sent his shadows out to investigate so that they didn't have to journey into the open, although the clear sky this morning revealed no flame monster in sight. There were no survivors left on the base. Just charred remains and corpses. The place had been totally decimated. When they moved to Makarov's cell, they found it empty, no corpse. They had taken him.
"Why would a monster ever bust him out?" Soap growled. "Something feels weird, Captain."
Price nodded, "I'm not sure, lad. But we're going to find out.
He noticed Soap trembling slightly, and Ghost must have too because he slid an arm around his waist, "Easy, Johnny."
"Sorry, Si." He swallowed hard, "Just don't feel great about not knowin' where he is."
Ghost and Price shared a look. They had all had their fun with him, the next time they saw Makarov, they were going to kill him.
They drove back home and fortunately heard from Laswell. She called Price as soon as they were pulling back up the drive.
"Kate. What do you got for me?" He demanded.
"John." She sounded weary, "It's not great. Get everyone together. They'll want to hear this."
She hung up and Price hurried to gather them all in one room. Nikolai wanted to be involved so they got him propped up on a couch. They connected to a video call with Laswell.
"First thing's first." She started, throwing a picture up on the screen of a familiar man, "General Shepherd."
There was a smattering of growls and soft hisses across the space.
"What's he got to do with our current situation, Kate?" Price asked.
"Because he's the one who sent that monster." She threw up one of their blurry stills of the creature, "I tracked sightings of the monster and it led me to some... unsavory intel." She sounded nearly disgusted.
"I have a positive ID on the creature." The next picture she showed had Soap jumping to his feet and letting out an angry bark. Rudy reeled back slightly and hissed.
It was a picture of Phillip Graves.
"That's impossible!" Soap shouted, bristling, "Rudy and I blew that fucker to hell!"
Ghost reached up and carefully pulled him back down into his seat, rubbing his back, "Deep breaths, Johnny. Let's keep our heads."
"It's true. You and Rodolfo blew him up in that tank. And it would have been fatal, had he been human." Kate explained, "But for all his talk about hating monsters, turns out he was one himself. He likely wasn't even aware."
"He's a phoenix?" Price guessed, trying his best to remain calm himself.
Laswell mumbled a confirmation, "Killing him in that way just unlocked it."
Price pinched the bridge of his nose trying to kill the headache that was threatening to form behind his eyes. He looked up and could see both Alejandro and Ghost also seething, but they were trying their best to remain calm for the sake of their partners.
"Why'd they hit the base?" Nikolai asked, clearly seeing Price's internal struggle.
"They had two targets." Kate explained, "Retrieve Makarov. And kill your team."
"Our last recorded location was when we were stationed at the base." Price observed.
"Exactly." Laswell agreed, "That's why he destroyed the base and everyone inside."
Price was so thankful he had brought the team to stay with him. If they had all been on the base, they would have been taken completely by surprise, and Graves likely would have succeeded.
"Why'd they want Makarov?" Ghost asked.
"Makarov is an expert on monster weaknesses." Price answered for Laswell, "You remember how Graves and Shepherd are about monsters. If their goal is to either kill and imprison as many monsters as possible, it would make sense they would want the man with the knowledge on how to do it the most efficiently."
The room fell into a tense silence. They were all practically vibrating with negative energy.
"Well," Price started after a moment, "the good news is the three of them are likely to be in the same place."
"That isn't the good news, John." Kate told him, "The good news is I already have a location."