[MGR:R x F/GO] Revergence

[fallacies]

Revergence
a Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance x Fate / Grand Order crossover
by fallacies

Jack was no longer willing to fight in the war. The War, however, wasn't so indulgent as to merely let him be.

oo. Prologue I: The War Without End
oo. Prologue II: London, 1888
o1. Moksha Patam
o2. ???
o3. ???
o4. ???
o5. ???
Ex. Appendix: ???
o6. ???
o7. ???
o8. ???
o9. ???
1o. ???
11. ???
12. Epilogue: ???
Ex. Vergence: Cipher, 1997

Notes:

This is to be a sequence of short scenes, largely humorous, no matter how they might initially seem.

Have fun!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

revergence (re - ver ' jens), n. [< LL. revergen(t-)s, ppr. of revergere, incline toward, < L. re-, back, + vergere, bend, incline: see verge.] A tending toward a certain character. [Rare.] "The evernioid revergence of this subdivision is observable also in Parmelia perforata." -- E.Tuckerman, Genera Lichenum, p.22.

-- The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (1889), Volume V, Part XVII, Page 5316.

-

oo. Prologue I: The War Without End

The X-Liner series of Unmanned Gears operated always in units of seven: King, Queen, Bishop, Knight, Rook, Pawn, and Beast. Designed by the Harraway Foundation in the image of chess pieces, they were angular, minimalist figures of silver platinum, slightly larger in stature than an adult human -- and far more difficult to damage or incapacitate than typical cyborg infantry.

They were, as well, severely flawed in the security of their control system. Within a month of the mass production types' deployment to the war-front, the enemy had developed a means of exploiting their defect -- physically connecting to the exposed ports in the UG's cyberbrain via monofilament, and subverting the AI. The turn of the tide had cost the European Federation a number of key territorial holdings; and now, half a year on, the X-Liners had come to substitute much of the enemy's ground forces.

The times were changing.

Maybe, Raiden imagined -- blocking just barely the blade of the King -- Snake had come upon this same apprehension in his final years. It was growingly obvious that his sword had at some point become unnecessary; obsolete. No matter how many monsters he cut down, there was no termination to the conflict; no goal or conclusion in sight, and hence no purpose to strive for. All that existed was a status quo -- and himself as a machine, stuck in an endless loop.

War itself had become monotonous. More than trauma -- more than the sheer scale of the human suffering that was still ongoing -- what had overcome Raiden in his years of fighting was a fatigue that vanished only when Jack was permitted to take the reins.

That wouldn't be happening again -- at least, not in this lifetime.

[You've gotten the girl to safety, Wolf?] he asked, voicelessly over Codec.

[We are situated on a cliff-top one hundred and fifty-eight meters due east of your position,] came the reply. [The client has insisted on observing your fight.]

Raiden cursed, evading the thrust of the Rook's spear, and somersaulting over its frame. Activating Blade Reflex in a two hundred millisecond burst, he directed his sword through the UG's head. The cut was unexpectedly shallow, splitting only the semi-monocoque shell; a high-density ceramic casing shielded the cyberbrain within.

Before he could commit himself to another attack, the Rook revolved -- moving at what appeared to be normal speed, despite the acceleration of Raiden's subjective time perception. With the bladed tip of its polearm, it plunged through the armored plating on Raiden's chest -- piercing his Molten Carbonate Fuel Cell.

Carried by momentum, Raiden touched down upon the perpendicular surface of a wall, immediately bounding again to the rooftop across the street before falling to a knee.

[Just get her outta here, even if she resists,] he said, grimacing at the noticeable drain to his FC charge. [I'll catch up with you later.]

[... it has been five years, seventy-two days, and eighteen hours since you last issued me an order,] said Wolf. [What are you thinking, Raiden?]

On the platform to Raiden's rear, there were seven metallic impacts. Sighing, he stood, lifting his High-Frequency Long Sword.

[I'm thinking,] he replied, [that I'm not gonna be able to cut loose if I hafta concern myself with the girl's safety.] He turned his head, directing his right eye at approaching the UGs.

"Blade Overdrive," he intoned aloud. "Activate."

-

His systems were functional enough to boot him out of unconsciousness on identifying the approach of footsteps.

Opening his eyes, he found his vision filled with digital artifacts, and his remaining FC charge at 3.64% and dropping. The client -- a young Asian woman clad in a glaring crimson coat -- stood only a few meters away, accompanied by Blade Wolf amidst the fragmented remains of the X-Liners that had scattered the ruined square. She hadn't exhibited any signs of cyborgization under prior scrutiny, but the faint red glow from her eyes in the dimness of the twilight was probably indicative of nanomachines.

"I thought I told you to leave," he said.

"You did," she replied, expression impassive. "However, the client's requests should always be given priority."

Blade Wolf stepped closer to the wall that Raiden had propped his torso against.

[The actions you have elected to undertake are tantamount to self-elimination,] he stated. [Was this outcome necessary?]

"I wouldn't have been able to run, even if I tried," Raiden answered. "And if I hadn't stayed, they would've captured all three of us."

This was true, technically. Contrary to pre-mission intel, the ground-speed of the Third Generation X-Liners significantly exceeded Raiden's own mobility outside of Blade Overdrive, and beat out the performance of Wolf's equipped reconnaissance chassis by a fair margin. The moment the enemy had obtained their position, in other words, escape had ceased to be an option. Raiden could've only chosen to stand and fight -- even in the knowledge that the nano-repair paste utilized by the Third-Gens was incompatible with his body.

His response to Blade Wolf was incomplete, however. The motives that he'd carried into battle were nothing so straightforward as a desire merely to protect.

"Just get going before the reinforcements arrive," he said. "The Frontline along the Helmand Caliphate's only fifty kilometers away. That four-wheel drive we picked up should have more than enough fuel to get you outta the No-Fly Zone."

[And how do you intend to extract yourself?]

"I'll figure something out," said Raiden. "And if I don't, you already know what to do."

Blade Wolf bowed his head downwards.

[Your words betray you, Raiden,] he said. [However, it seems that you have made your decision.] He turned, strutting away toward the vehicle in the distance. [I will begin to make preparations.]

When the UG had departed the range of human hearing, the client broke her silence.

"You agreed to escort me from Port Victoria to Kabul," she said, "straight through enemy territory, despite the likelihood that we'd encounter Third-Gen patrol units. Why?"

"As you said, the customer's always right."

The girl shook her head.

"I don't think so," she said. "I think you were looking for an excuse. What you wanted was dignity."

Raiden couldn't muster the energy to glare; his battery had fallen to 3.18%.

"With all due respect, Ms. Zelretch," he said, "my reasons are my own."

"No Ms.," the girl replied. "Just Zelretch. This body's only a terminal, and I don't identify to a particular gender." She crossed her arms beneath her chest and turned to her side, slowly pacing. "Yes, your choices are your own, and I'm not here to criticize you -- but this conversation was my motive for hiring you in the first place."

A 'terminal?' Even though her body registered at over 99% flesh?

"You're an AI or something?" asked Raiden, unable to keep the hostile rasp from his voice. "You set me up for this?

"For convenience, I suppose you can consider me something like an AI," said Zelretch. "But no, I didn't plan for anything to happen. I merely offered you a job that you wouldn't turn down, with consequences that fell within a certain margin of probability. Everything else, you arranged on your own." She paused, tilting her head. "After all, if you could choose the circumstances of your death, it would inevitably be with your blade drawn, defending your ideals."

Raiden's grip tightened about the hilt of his shattered HF weapon.

"As it happens, I know a few things about the realization of ideals," Zelretch continued -- raising a finger. "First, context is necessary -- because you can't have a hero without a dragon." She raised another. "Second, there must be a means of asserting a conclusion -- because a hero without a sword is just another man."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that we're having this conversation because you're in need of a sword -- and because this isn't your dragon."

The girl leaned forward, meeting his gaze with glowing crimson.

"It isn't over yet, Jack," she said. "You still have a War to fight."

---

Notes:

Other than to place Zelretch in a position to converse, this story does not involve the use of the Kaleidoscope. Furthermore, no events are explicitly mediated by Zelretch's agency.

[Frostyvale]

This I will accept, graciously, as one takes a gift bestowed by the high heavens.

That being said, it was a lovely red herring.

[fallacies]

There floats a phantom on the slum's foul air,
Shaping, to eyes which have the gift of seeing,
Into the Spectre of that loathly lair.
Face it -- for vain is fleeing!
Red-handed, ruthless, furtive, unerect,
'Tis murderous Crime -- the Nemesis of Neglect!

-- Punch, 29 September 1888.

-

oo. Prologue II: London, 1888

The elderly gentleman waiting before the gates at No. 1 Devonshire Court was known to Albrecht as 'Doctor Frederick Vanderbilt.' It likely wasn't his actual name -- but amongst the agents of the Foundation, the adoption of a nomme de guerre was not particularly uncommon.

"Good evening, Mister Grant," called the doctor as Albrecht alighted the carriage. "Henry informs me that you're responding well to the treatment."

"Good to see you again, sir," said Albrecht, opening his umbrella to shield himself from the downpour. "And yes. Thank you asking after my health."

The doctor nodded.

"Please," he said, raising his hand toward the entrance of the facility. "Do come in."

Albrecht nodded. Following the doctor's lead, he crossed the rain-soiled bricks of the garden pathway, ascending the steps to the double doors of the forward atrium. Until two years prior, the building had been the location of the Manderley Infirmary -- a large-scale voluntary hospital appointed by public subscription to the care of children and the poor. When financial pressures forced the closing of the operation, the Foundation had wasted no time in acquiring the property -- converting the premises into a laboratory for the medical sciences.

"Your eyesight has been improving as anticipated?" asked the doctor, pacing before him through the disused waiting area.

"I can make out handwriting at roughly five hundred yards now," replied Albrecht.

"Good. And your appetite?"

"It's considerably reduced -- even accounting for physical exertion. On some days, I manage only on water and a light supper without noticeable discomfort." Albrecht paused. "This is normal, is it? Henry stated that I shouldn't be overly concerned."

"It isn't of detriment to you, in any case," the doctor replied, stopping in the corridor adjoining the lobby and depressing a button to summon the lift. "The inoculation that you've undergone is intended ultimately to optimize the adaptivity of your flesh to the rigors demanded of soldiers in wartime. It would do for you to comprehend any changes in your performance as a gain of logistical efficiency in the military sense. In the words of the Bonaparte, a meal less carried is a league further marched."

Albrecht nodded, aware that he had perhaps pushed for too much information. Properly, it wasn't his place to question the orders of his lifelong benefactors -- but where matters of health were of issue, small-minded self-concern was difficult to quash.

Not wishing to impose, Albrecht spared the older man the labor of operating the lift, pushing open the collapsible gateway without prompt upon the arrival of the cab. Once within, he again secured the gate and pulled the crank rightward.

"To the top, please" said the doctor, and Albrecht bowed his head in assent.

"This 'prototype' that I'm to accompany as a handler," he said. "I understand that it's undergone the same procedure that I have?"

"'She' -- not 'it,'" the doctor gently corrected. "And yes, she has indeed received a series of inoculations similar to your own." Supporting his hands upon the carved handle of his umbrella, he stared through the grate on the wall at the slowly passing floor-numbers. "The strain of cutaneous symbiote that now comprises the majority of her epidermis functionally differs in a number of respects, however."

"Cutaneous symbiote?" asked Albrecht, frowning as he attempted to make sense of the terminology.

"I won't bore you with academic trivialities," said the doctor, waving his hand. "Suffice to say, her capabilities are not your own, and fortunately require little in the way of explanation. Any matter outside the realm of the self-evident is likely not to be of concern in practical application toward your objectives."

On the seventh floor, the lift came to a stop, and Albrecht brought the crank to neutral. Pulling open the gate, he allowed the doctor to exit first -- wordlessly trailing after him through the maze-like passageways beyond. In the rear of the building, they came upon an expansive solarium covered in a dome of wrought-iron and glass -- illuminated occasionally by lightning, and loud with the pattering of rain.

Centered beneath the dome, there was an enormous glass egg, wreathed in piping and filled with a clear citrine fluid. There curled within in foetal position a girl-child in the nude, slight of build and abnormally albinic in coloration.

"She's somewhat ... younger than I expected," Albrecht observed, choosing his words so as not to offend; in his opinion, she appeared rather sickly.

"The base corpus approaches twelve years of age. As a complete organism, however, she is more precisely yet to be born. If Sir Harraway's request were not so urgent, I would permit her to incubate for another month yet."

"I'll be able to take her with me tonight?"

"If there are no complications, certainly," the older man replied. "Now, if you don't mind, Mister Grant -- please remain silent until aspect association is concluded."

Avoiding the areas of the floor where pipelines radiated outwards from the 'egg,' Doctor Vanderbilt approached a lectern-like mechanical fixture that faced away from the girl -- producing an octahedron of ruby from his overcoat and slotting it within an aperture at the heart of the bronze dial. Like flameless embers, linear grooves upon the surface came alit -- illuminating outwards in a molten crimson flow. Some yards away, the fluid that enveloped the girl pulsed to lucence.

"Before me, the Thunder of God," the doctor intoned; and overhead, the lightning flashed. "Before me, the tears of the children unborn; the pain of those abandoned, and those unloved."

Thunder sounded -- and as if in reply, there manifested a palpable shift in the atmosphere about the solarium; an indescribable energy thrummed within the stillness of the air. Albrecht didn't consider himself the superstitious sort, but of the marvels and prodigies that he'd thus far witnessed in the service of the Foundation, this was perhaps the most he'd seen of the forces beyond man and nature.

"Before me, the Rain," the doctor commanded. "Before me, the Wrath." He extended a gloved hand, palm open. "To thy vengeance, this vessel is offered unbound. Thus, I beseech: Walk amongst us, that we might learn of your ways."

Momentarily, the call was answered: There came abruptly a blinding brilliance, and a noise far greater in magnitude than cannon-fire -- rocking the solarium and rending the dome above. As one with the rain, the broken glass fell, scattering as it hit the floor.

In the downpour, removed of his hat, Vanderbilt stood statue-like and unmoving -- training his gaze intently upon the glass egg amidst the steam that had risen.

It cracked.

From the first fracture, fluid began to flow -- and the outcome was by then almost as if foreordained. Unevenly, fragments washed away as fissures spread, outwardly collapsing the surface of the egg as the child within stirred to consciousness.

Grey eyes opened.

-

Raiden was at first aware of the viscous fluid clinging to his chassis -- and of the rain.

Somehow, the process of awakening differed from the usual; there was nothing of the eugeroic boosting that he'd come to rely upon since his cyborgization. Instead, every droplet of precipitation that impacted his surface evoked a spark of pleasure, as if his somatosensory apparatus were overstimulating the wrong neural region.

'A malfunction?' he wondered, blinking his eyes. 'The HUD's missing ...'

The shattered nano-repair pod he was seated within was situated in a ruined room -- covered in aging pipes, and exposed to the elements via a damaged skylight. Toward the entrance, there stood a pair of Caucasian men dressed in antiquated clothing. The elder -- monocled and clad in an Inverness coat -- bore a passing resemblance to the Herr Doktor Voigt prior to his full cyborg conversion.

"Welcome," said the man, without particular inflection. "How find you your new flesh?"

'New flesh?'

Furrowing his brow, Raiden glanced downwards -- and found to mounting horror that his custom combat chassis had in the duration of his unconsciousness been replaced with the body of a child; a preadolescent girl.

"Wha- ... what is this?"

This was sensation: The firing of actual sensory receptors -- millions upon millions in excess to the quiet hundred and eight that comprised a typical cyborg's subdermal feedback matrix. The cacophony threatened to overwhelm; but steeling himself enough to stand, Raiden climbed from the pod, stepping barefoot to the cracked, wet tiles of the floor below.

"What have you- ..."

The voice was unfamiliar -- and hearing himself issue the question in so high a pitch, he stumbled over his words.

"... What have you done to me?" he asked.

"Nothing that wasn't promised," the man replied. "Though this body that you inhabit has indeed served as a canvas to my ministrations, I assure you that it remains unsullied, without binding."

"... a canvas?"

To Raiden's knowledge, the transplant of an augmented central nervous column to a flesh body was an extremely high-risk procedure -- very likely criminal, as the host was in this case merely a child. Aside from limb prosthesis and the treatment of terminal conditions, statutes observed across the human territories prohibited the application of transhuman technologies to minors. Realistically, a preadolescent body healthy enough to accept a CNS transplant could be obtained only by means of human trafficking or a cloning procedure -- both of which were similarly outlawed.

The 'ministrations' the older man had referenced were in all probability custom nanomachines of some type; now that Raiden had begun to acclimate to the somatosensory noise that accompanied the possession of flesh, an instinctive grasp of his body's capabilities was somehow filtering into his awareness -- not dissimilar to the factory-made combat reflexes once implemented by the Patriots' SOP.

"Flesh isn't a canvas," said Raiden, stepping forward.

At his side, between the digits of his right hand, three kunai formed in a swirl of rust-colored particles; and he tossed them with a flick of his arm -- aiming to intimidate.

The younger of the two men moved: Executing a well-practiced speed-draw with the Colt Single Action Army holstered at his hip, he fanned a trio of shots in quick succession -- each bullet deflecting a single kunai, and in turn ricocheting to the floor inches from Raiden's feet.

"None of that now, Miss," said the man, lowering his weapon. "Any further hostilities, and I'll be forced to act against you."

Raiden reconsidered; he'd gotten too used to categorizing debilitating injury as a temporary setback. For the time being, he was well and truly defenseless -- nude, and restricted to a body of flesh and blood; the form of a child. There was nothing to be gained of asserting dominance over an Ocelot-wannabe aside from the probability of injury.

Backing away, he activated his stealth, leaping upwards through the skylight and bounding across the rain-drenched rooftops. On a building two blocks removed, he came to a stop -- staring at the cityscape with widening eyes as his camouflage disengaged.

Big Ben and the Parliament were in the distance, and the course of the Thames placed him in the City of London. The skyline, however, was otherwise unrecognizable: There was not a single skyscraper in sight. Not the British Telecom Tower; not the Shard; not the Tate Modern. The London Eye was itself conspicuously missing, and the Tower Bridge stood as-yet incomplete.

"This is a simulation," he whispered to himself, incredulous. "This is a fucking simulation."

---

Notes:

1) The Colt Single Action Army was created in 1872-1873.

2) The End was born in the 1860's. Code Talker was born in the 1880's.

3) Elisha Otis, founder of the Otis Elevator Company, showcased the first safety elevator in 1852. The first passenger elevator of this type was installed in 1857.

4) "For example, in the 1880's, when Conan Doyle was writing his famous detective stories, Watson would stuff a revolver in his overcoat as frequently as Holmes would inject himself with 7% cocaine. Presumably readers found nothing odd in either activity. In 1909 police pursuing armed robbers in London borrowed pistols from passers-by. Firearms licensing came in only in 1920, but since 1997, possession of a handgun has been illegal." -- Sharp, David. Gun Control in the UK, Journal of Urban Health. 2006.

5) Following its founding in 1883, the London Hydraulic Power Company established a hydraulic power network in central London, supplying kinetic energy to drive an assortment of mechanical equipment, including elevators. The specific variety of elevator described in this passage, however, is slightly anachronistic; it originates from the 1910's. However, this is a Metal Gear crossover ...

6) Prior to the 20th century, many hospitals in the United Kingdom fell within what was known as the 'voluntary sector' -- providing services free of charge to patients on funding from charity and voluntary public subscription. However, large-scale institutions of this variety frequently suffered from poor maintenance, mismanagement, and numerous other faults. In the latter half of the 19th century, it grew to be a mainstream opinion that charity was simply insufficient to handle mass epidemics and other public health crises. Calls for government intervention mounted, and as such, the foundations for the British National Health Service were lain.

7) Raiden's present capabilities include:
a) active camouflage by real-time alteration of surface pigmentation; counterillumination by way of bioluminescence
b) the catabolism of metallic molecules; the rapid anabolic fabrication of metallic objects, limited by materials available
c) the rapid release of water particles to air, generating a mist-like vapor
d) greatly improved reflexes and strength, relative to a normal human
e) photosynthesis and the cutaneous absorption of water and air; however, exposure to fresh water (even if polluted) induces a distracting pleasure response; coverage of large amounts of skin may lead to suffocation; salt water is painful
f) resistance to extreme climate conditions, given hydration or atmospheric moisture

8) The sneaking suit used by Raiden when infiltrating Big Shell is referred to as the 'Skull Suit' in official materials.

9) The full designation associated with Raiden in his present state is 'Yield Andrographic Mark II: Maria.' However, there wasn't a good place to insert this within the text, so it was left out.

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome!

[Frostyvale]

I enjoyed this a great deal and would gladly have more of these citations.

Setting established, conditions set, and it's already quite fun.

[Kirby]

so jack is jackie now, right

[Frostyvale]

It sounds like Jack (Raiden) is now occupying the physical and parasite-augmented (In a manner not unlike Quiet.) body, similar to, but not exactly identical to that of Jack the Ripper (Assassin of Black) and the key difference one may observe is the eye color, which is specifically stated to be grey rather than yellow.

To be precise, it's a gradient of grey and yellow in the official art, but I'm sure, on reflection, that there is actually no visible difference.

Now, what in the world was meant by "andrographic"? The simple concatenation of the Greek roots would suggest that it means, to write, and of a masculine quality. That's a meme name for sure, since it simply indicates that the unit is a vessel that contains a male.

[fallacies]

"Writ of man." -> "Mocking the form of man."

[Xamusel]

Hmm... I hope you decide to finish this story at the least, fallacies. I think it'd be nice to finish something, don't you agree?

[Frostyvale]

"Writ of man." -> "Mocking the form of man."

Good to have that sorted.

Raiden's false impressions are also quite appropriate.

[fallacies]

It sounds like Jack (Raiden) is now occupying the physical and parasite-augmented (In a manner not unlike Quiet.) body, similar to, but not exactly identical to that of Jack the Ripper (Assassin of Black)

Specifically, Raiden can turn invisible, materialize knives (metabolizing subdermal stores of metal via metallic archaea), and generate mist. Lacks Assassin's other capabilities (for example, Presence Erasure and Noble Phantasms), but has a few powers Assassin wouldn't have (for example, an equivalent to Blade Mode).

[Ayakashi]

This is going to be good!

[ItsaRandomUsername]

Steampunk, Metal Gear, Jack and Jack and presumably a dearth of convoluted conspiracy set within the Nasuverse means that I'm so subscribing to this one, fall.

[Troika]

I'll enjoy this (until you drop it after several chapters).

[OG_Procupine]

Specifically, Raiden can turn invisible, materialize knives (metabolizing subdermal stores of metal via metallic archaea), and generate mist.

Well, I suppose you could say that his knives are good for...

Getting under your skin?

In any case, what made you choose archaea here?

[fallacies]

In any case, what made you choose archaea here?

In MGSV, we don't know where Code Talker gets the archaea from, but the Foundation gave him access to the body of The End and research materials pertaining to The One That Covers. It isn't a massive leap of logic that they might have also provided him with samples of archaea. Assuming this is the case, they might have formerly employed another specialist in the area.

Unrelatedly, as an informational crossposting from SV:

So what does Yield Andrographic actually mean? I seem to remember them being used as a term in Sword Vector. Are they the first prototypes of the A-rays?

A Yield Andrographic is an artificial being created by use of a process developed by Victor Frankenstein. YAs are indeed prototypes to the A-RAYs. The term Yield Andrographic means "that which comes of mocking the form of man," where 'mocking' means imitating.

For context, the coining of a homunculus typically entails pairing an artificially generated soul to an embryo and encouraging customized features within to shape the resulting flesh toward a specific purpose. However, the further a homunculus deviates from the performance of a normal human, the shorter its lifespan, and the more likely that debilitating defects manifest during the process of growth.

Comparatively, the growth undergone by the flesh of a YA is not mediated by the features of the paired soul; the base corpus is not fundamentally superior to humans as a result of maturation under the influence of a customized soul. Rather, any capabilities that exceed the human norm (including lifespan) come of modifications founded in magecraft, conventional science, and medical technology. Thus, the issues that arise in homunculi are cleanly avoided. (In some cases, the corpus is outright 'manufactured' rather than grown.)

The second innovation represented in Frankenstein's process is the pairing of enduring conceptual existences to flesh; the creation of the A-RAYs resulted of efforts to perfect this procedure.

Is their any relationship between the Foundation and Victor Frankenstein? I assume he had some part in creating the YA's? Also if this is London how does that fit with this being Clock Towers base of operation. Is it just another name referring to the same thing?

The Foundation is one of the organizations that Victor Frankenstein approached for patronage following the falsification of his death. Officially, it's a mundane body unaffiliated with the Clock Tower, but it does occasionally employ magi / thaumaturgical practitioners. The Clock Tower is aware of its existence, and vice versa. Because their areas of interest are largely unrelated and noncompetitive, they do not often come into conflict, and they do not regard one another as a threat. The fact that the Clock Tower and the Foundation both have bases of operation in London at this point in history owes mostly to the relative position of the city in contemporary geopolitics.


The first mention of 'the Foundation' by this specific name appears in a cassette tape recording of a conversation with Code Talker in Metal Gear Solid V.

[Mattias]

Jack the Ripper is Jack the Ripper. Raiden has Quiet powers. I like it. The Single Action Army did make me guess Ocelot at first before I remembered 1887.


Also there are actual chapter lists this time. Hope!

[fallacies]

o1. Moksha Patam

Albrecht arrived at Ewell in Surrey shortly before dawn. Forewarned of his arrival by telegram, the household staff at Sir Harraway's winter estate received him without question, and saw him to the drawing room in the east wing.

Despite the very early hour, the middle-aged statesman was as usual impeccably dressed, and accompanied by the blonde young woman employed as his assistant. Albrecht would not suspect of his benefactor any of the moral improprieties typically associated with retaining an unmarried girl as a personal attendant -- but bizarrely, she'd stood in as a regular fixture at their private meetings in the fifteen odd years of Albrecht's employment, somehow unaging.

"No," Sir Harraway replied, upon hearing Albrecht's account of the failed search. "The loss of an asset is indeed unfortunate, but we /will/ be pressing forward. Preparation is a luxury we can no longer afford."

"I'll be working with the Oriental, I presume?"

"He was most agreeable with the arrangement. Eager to seek out fresh challenges, I understand. I've sent him ahead to scout."

Self-discipline was one amongst Albrecht's strengths, and he managed not to betray displeasure -- but privately, he found the personality of Toshihiko Yagyuu nothing less than grating. At six-foot two and thirteen stone, the brutish mercenary was a far cry from the polite, small-statured artisans who so lately serviced Tannaker Billingham Neville Buhicrosan's Japanese Native Village exhibition at Knightsbridge; he was at once too jovial and outspoken, and too willing to cut down a man on the promise of coin alone.

"Where should I find him?" asked Albrecht.

"Christ Church in Spitalfields, northwest of Whitechapel at noon sharp," said Sir Harraway, stepping before the hearth and stoking the embers within. "We've placed the enemy's activities roughly in the vicinity, but their precise location isn't yet clear."

Whitechapel and Spitalfields: Fine examples of the rot at the heart of London, where gathered like dust the wretched and misbegotten of the Empire. Albrecht had in adolescence taken employment from the Foundation at first to uplift his brothers and sisters from such a gutter, and then to ensure that they might be educated so as to uplift themselves. His charity, however, began and ended with his own; and the majority of those who populated the rookery were entirely convicted in the belief that it was their lot in life simply to sink and sit -- or at best, to further themselves by criminal means, because widely-accepted conventions so dictated.

Albrecht could sympathize not in the least.

"The police have intentionally neglected the East End in their patrols of late, and one can hardly cross a street now without running afoul of the unsavory elements," he said. "How are we to know the enemy, precisely? I assume they've hired muscle of some sort."

"To misappropriate a phrase from recent fiction, 'When you've eliminated the probable, all that remains is the impossible." With effort, Sir Harraway seated himself in an armchair at the fireside. "More plainly, I would ask that you permit instinct to guide your aim. Have faith in your judgment above all else."

The bylaws of the Foundation forbade disclosure of sensitive information to the rank and file, and Albrecht had come thus to expect a measured vagueness of his instructions -- not so much that he would err out of misinterpretation, but enough that he frequently found himself divorced from the specific weight and meaning of his undertakings except in distant hindsight.

Sir Harraway's response was in this case rather more informative than Albrecht had anticipated; pieced together with what he already knew, it seemed that enemy action had recently deprived the Foundation the opportunity to obtain a certain item -- likely of military value or other national import. Nonspecific obstacles fortunately prevented the enemy from simply making use of the item, but they were as such conducting operations from within the poor quarter so to address the issue. The agents in the enemy's employ were furthermore easily distinguishable from the local populace -- sufficient that one Albrecht Grant would recognize them merely on sight.

The reasoning for his withcall from Inverness was laid bare; there was a need for a trustworthy man of his particular background.

"I understand, sir," Albrecht replied, holding his hat abreast and bowing slightly.

To the enemies of the Foundation, he would usher forth the End.

-

There was no conversation until the carriage Grant had hired for transportation into the City was well on its way down the lane.

"My smoking pipe, please, Conrad."

Turning from the window, a middle-aged gentleman approached the parlor table, drawing a Billiard with a carved ivory stummel from its wooden holder, and filling the bowl from a tin of shredded tobacco. From the tray besides, he removed a matchbox and metal stamper, and crossed the fore of the fireplace, offering forth the pipe and related implements.

Seated, the recipient was a slender, beautiful youth, neatly attired in a plain black dress and bodice -- form-fitting and sans exaggeration of the silhouette, as might properly befit a young woman of common standing employed as a governess.

Holding the pipe between delicate lips, the youth struck a match to light the tobacco, and compressed the burning flakes to a level circle within the chamber, smoothly drawing a sip. Leaning lax to the side of the chaise longue, his gaze rose again to his companion, who faced him now from the armchair opposite.

"You have a complaint, I sense," the youth observed, speaking in soft countertenor.

"Merely a concern, Sir Harraway," Conrad replied. "One that has just now reoccurred."

"That I show excessive favor to young Mister Grant, perhaps?"

"You deign to meet him face-to-face, where you would never afford a similar courtesy to the blue bloods of the Clock Tower." Conrad settled to the back of the seat. "I rather imagined that the purpose for my retainment as an impostor was to keep you out of harm's reach -- but now that the gutter-snipe is fully grown, he's no less capable of rendering harm against your person than a well-trained thaumaturge. Why you would continue to hazard such exposure is quite beyond me."

Sir Harraway exhaled a breath of smoke.

"The good empiricist regularly strives to observe first-hand the fruits borne of his ministrations," said the youth. "Did you know, Conrad, that in the Orient, folk wisdom anticipated Darwin's principles of natural selection by nearly two millennia?"

"No, sir, I did not."

"On the Pacific isle of Formosa, there is practiced amongst tribal shamans of the non-Sinic aboriginals a selective husbandry of cobras to the promotion of venomousity. So to artificially cultivate a struggle for existence, the snakes are segregated by sex and sealed by the hundreds within great clay urns -- intentionally removed of nourishment aside from one another."

"Barbaric," Conrad muttered, grimacing in distaste. "But how relates this to the circumstances of Albrecht Grant?"

"By random variation, the probabilistically fittest individual out of a population emerges as the sole survivor -- having thrived upon the flesh of its kin. There is, in the end, room enough only for one snake; one exemplar, which is made to beget the subsequent generation." Harraway paused, gathering a mouthful of fumes from the clay stem of his pipe. "You'll recall that as an adolescent, Mister Grant was awarded his present posting as the outcome of a certain competition I arranged -- pitting him in a free-for-all gunfight against desperate young men of similarly distressed background."

"The fire at Alexandra Palace ... " Conrad trailed off. "You mean to say that it wasn't merely a spectacle put forth to entertain the royals? You intended it as the inception of some experiment?"

"An exercise of what might be termed applied anthropology," said Harraway. "Thusly, we have salvaged from the gutter a savant of talent far in excess of statistical mediocrity. Wouldn't you judge this an investment worthy of my time, Conrad?"

Conrad, in fact, did not.

"I judge it an unnecessary risk," he replied.

Sir Harraway chuckled lightly, expelling a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling.

"Speaking of our good friends at the Clock Tower," he said, "what have they to say regarding the 'evidence' we've provided?"

With resignation, Conrad pulled from the glove pocket of his morning coat a small glass jar, intricately engraved with runic script. Encapsulated within, there writhed a phallic invertebrate that glistened with mucus in the firelight.

"They've appraised the organism we've extracted as a non-thalassic member of Phylum Chordata, Subphylum Hemichordata, Class Enteropneusta -- a close relative of the ocean-dwelling Balanoglossus." The man set the glass upon the end table beside his chair. "As it normally subsists upon the blood and bone marrow of mammals as a parasite, it's referred to colloquially as a 'blood worm' -- derided in the thaumaturgical academia for its inadequate utility as a familiar. In the words of Lord Barthomeloi, no member of his fraternity would diminish themselves as to assimilate so base a creature as an extension of their own being."

"They claim no knowledge of this, then?"

"They claim, specifically, that in accordance to contract, they've made an active effort to police the intervention of their membership in the succession of Corbenic's legacy. Barthomeloi further asserts that as the disputed article is a cursecraft implement of the highest order, it can certainly be of no legitimate interest to the scientific pursuit of the Akasha."

"The magefolk and their ridiculous infatuation with the Root. It amounts to so much omphaloskepsis ..."

Expelling a mouthful of fumes in a huff, Sir Harraway crossed his shapely legs -- exposing perhaps indecently the form-fitting equestrian tights he wore beneath his petticoat.

"If they've so neatly dissociated themselves of the matter, it follows that they intend to offer us no support in locating the culprit," he said.

"That was indeed my impression, sir."

Rising, Sir Harraway paced with feminine gait to the end table at Conrad's side -- lifting the jar to the light and narrowing his eyes at the worm-like creature within.

"For Queen and Empire," he said, "the Foundation cannot permit Machir Zolgen to have his way with the Siege Perilous."

-

If this was indeed a simulation, Raiden decided, somebody had gone through the pains to devote a ludicrous amount of processing power to the calculation of his immediate environs.

Even cutting-edge virtual reality engines running on the latest hardware produced noticeable rendering flaws under certain circumstances -- issues of collision detection and particle bleed-through; unrealistic physics in general; buffering issues, and a failure to properly implement Discrete Level of Detail with high speed movement. In more than twenty hours of searching, however, Raiden hadn't identified a single anomalous detail. Aside from potential anachronisms that he lacked the knowledge to positively confirm or deny, the city about him was quite convincingly the London of 1888.

Coming to a dead end, he decided to put the matter temporarily aside -- turning his attentions instead to his assigned avatar.

Though the body seemed to replicate wholesale the climate resistance of his custom chassis, and he'd long been inoculated against overpowering shame at skin exposure, out of a sense of common decency, he'd nevertheless attempted to clothe himself -- and, unpleasantly, nearly suffered an asphyxiation for his efforts. Blood oxygenation was a process he'd absently relegated to the management of his chassis AI years prior, and it in fact hadn't immediately occurred to him that his new body didn't need to breathe. Rather than relying on the lungs and pulmonary apparatus, respiration was conducted directly through the epidermis; and symptoms of hypercapnia were quick to encroach whenever skin exposure decreased beyond a certain level.

It wasn't glitch or a bug. Raiden was halfway certain that it was an intentional feature. Zelretch -- or whoever it was that had stuck him within the sim -- presumably found it amusing to watch him role-play a scantily-clad little girl.

Purely out of spite, he'd stolen a ragged cloak and a vest that had been hung out to dry in the ghetto; a long strip of cloth for use as a makeshift fundoshi; child-sized riding boots from a shoemaker's workbench in Aldgate; and, as an afterthought, a pair of leather gloves that had been left on a windowsill. Reduced oxygenation cut into his performance to some extent, but he figured that it was better than playing along with somebody's voyeuristic fetish.

Thinking about it calmly, the business with Zelretch was distinctly reminiscent of the prelude to the World Marshal incident of so many years ago. Some wannabe Patriots successor with a flair for theatrics and only a faint familiarity with his background had once again elected to involve him as an audience-participant in a shitty, self-directed farce.

'They could've left a more convenient indication of their intentions, though,' he thought, descending from the rooftop of a three-story building to the lamp-lit cobblestone below. 'Like a fucking HUD, instead of messing with my thermoception.'

Since late afternoon, he'd been sensing an odd directional warmth within his skin -- penetrating his layers of stolen clothing, and maintaining bearing relative to body movement, like heat from a campfire or a similarly stationary source. Half past the unobserved eight o'clock curfew, he'd roughly triangulated the point of origin to a Jewish neighborhood off Wentworth and Commercial in Whitechapel.

'They're planning on having me confront Jack the Ripper,' he thought, taking in the hazy, mist-shrouded street. 'The stage they've set is way too authentically detailed for it to be anything else.'

It was Thursday, 30th August, 1888, according to the papers -- the evening before the first of the 'Canonical Five' Ripper murders. In just a few hours, a woman would be brutally slaughtered not five blocks away from Raiden's present location.

'Question is, is it another user that I'm going up against, or just an AI?'

Placidly, his answer approached from out of the mist: A figure that haltingly lurched at an uneven gait, somewhat faster than a zombie from out of an old Romero film. Raiden stared.

"Oh, you bastards," he said aloud, shaking his head. "You incredible bastards ..."

Kevin had frequently accused him of being morbid, but in downtime early on in his mercenary career, he'd dedicated quite a bit of effort to researching his namesake. At one point before the war, he'd even brought John along on a Jack the Ripper tourist walk during a family trip to London, despite Rose's complaints. The locations; the contemporary new articles; the available police records -- Raiden was intimately familiar with it all.

At five foot two, the oddly pale individual that now stood before him was clad in a dark dress -- carrying over her shoulder what appeared to be a sleeping child. There was no way that Raiden wouldn't recognize her; he'd seen her hundreds of times before in archived mortuary photos.

"Mary Ann Nichols," he said. "The first of five."

-

Notes:

1) Nonsuch Park is a public park situated on the boundaries of the borough of Epsom and Ewell in Surrey and London Borough of Sutton. Formerly the location of Henry VIII's Nonsuch Palace, a 16th century royal retreat, it is now the site of Nonsuch Mansion, a historic building that once belonged to the Farmer cloth manufacturing dynasty. In 1937, the property was sold by the Farmer family to the local management of the Epsom and Sutton Councils to preserve it against redevelopment as a part of the Metropolitan Green Belt of London.

2) Subsequent to the Edo period, the male heirs of the Yagyuu clan tended to use 'Toshi-' as the beginning of their formal name, though their informal given names don't follow any particular pattern. However, the formal names tended to be used either with the ancestral honsei 'Taira-no-' (their ancestral clan name; e.g. Yagyuu Nobuharu Taira-no-Toshimichi); or as part of their full address (e.g. Yagyuu Juubei Mitsuyoshi). Arbitrary usage of 'Toshi-' as the beginning of a given name might either be an indication of imposture, or a simplification to fit within Western conventions. Incidentally, no Yagyuu Toshihiko is historically extant as a legitimate member of the lineage; his contemporaries within both the Yagyuu of Owari and the Yagyuu of Edo are well-documented (though, by actual blood inheritance, the Yagyuu of Edo became extinct by the 17th century, and subsequent heirs were adopted). He might, however, be an illegitimate child.



3) Tannaker Billingham Neville Buhicrosan is an actual historical personage -- a merchant of foreign wares in Britain, and the operator of several Japanese entertainment troupes. First appearing in Australia in 1868, he claimed to be half-Japanese and half-Dutch. Between 1885 and 1887, he operated the extremely popular Japanese Native Village exhibition in Humphreys' Hall at Knightsbridge, London. Employing over a hundred Japanese artisans and entertainers, the interior of the hall was decorated as a functional Japanese artisan's village, exhibiting traditional crafts and Japanese customs. Famously, Gilbert and Sullivan used exhibition to familiarize the cast members of their 1885 opera The Mikado with the culture of Japan. Though Tannaker's birth certificate claimed that his father was a Dr. Willem Nevell Buhicrosan, some theories posit that "Tannaker Buhicrosan" may have been an attempt to Romanize "Tanaka Buichikurou-san."

4) In November 1887, the Metropolitan Police of London violently quelled a demonstration organised by the Social Democratic Federation and the Irish National League to protest unemployment and coercion in Ireland. Owing to the immense magnitude of the government forces called to action, the incident came to be known as 'Bloody Sunday,' and was a prime subject of contention among the radical press. This, along with a widely publicized incident in which a seamstress known as Elizabeth Cass was mistakenly arrested for prostitution (June, 1887), contributed to a general antipathy against the police force for their actions against the urban poor.

In response to harsh criticism over the Cass arrest and other instances of excessive action, Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren issued a general order that constables should outright ignore prostitution unless approached with a well-corroborated complaint from the general public. Furthermore, active monitoring of brothels was withdrawn, as Warren observed that resources expended in reporting brothel operation to local vestry authorities resulted in little censure or punishment. As a net result, even though the Criminal Law Amendment Act passed only three years prior explicitly illegalized sexual solicitation, prostitution was by 1888 a mode of common employ for women of the poorer classes within the London East End; and individual constables tended to turn a blind eye to minor crimes for fear of their own careers.

5) Curiously, no reference is made to the Bloody Sunday incident in Assassin's Creed Syndicate in its Jack the Ripper DLC; it's simply another part of the alleged 20 years of peace that passed between the end of the main events of the game and the Jack the Ripper plotline. In a move rather typical of the Assassin's Creed franchise, the Whitechapel murders are revealed to have been the result of a conflict between the Assassins of London -- to which the Canonical Five were in fact recruits -- and a rogue group led by Jack the Ripper, a former recruit who had become disillusioned with the Creed.

6) In MGS3, it was given that 'the End' actually refers to the utter void or oblivion that The End experiences when blocking out everything aside from the action of the kill; the use in the first passage of this chapter is technically wrong. Incidentally, in the context of Nasu, one could possibly interpret the semi-meditative state that The End forces himself to enter as a potential path toward Mystery -- similar to what 'Sasaki Kojirou' once attained.

7) The 1880's saw the return of the bustle and crinoline, wire-frame structures beneath the skirt used along with the tight-laced corset to exaggerate the proportions of the feminine figure. However, this was in reality a fashion trend largely restricted to the upper classes, and not so much women of the lower classes (excepting certain types of sex workers) or farming communities; what is now known as the 'skinny look' was then associated with poverty, and something to be avoided. Ergo, a housemaid or a young unmarried woman employed as a governess to a upper class family generally wouldn't have worn a bustle unless required by their master.

Though the tight-laced bodice or corset would continue to be in use for a number of years, Victorian dress reform from the 1850's onwards campaigned against its use on concerns of health and comfort -- introducing instead the liberty bodice, a non-boned alternative to the corset, employing cloth strapping to encourage good posture. Incidentally, though exposure of the skin of the ankle was at the time considered scandalous, exposure of merely the shape of the leg (for example, covered in tight cloth) wouldn't have been regarded as such; however, as a manner of etiquette, a proper lady would never allow her legs to be significantly exposed from petticoat in public.



8) The Gu poisons of China were historically prepared by "placing many toxic insects in a closed vessel and allowing them to remain there until one had eaten all the rest – the toxin was then extracted from the survivor." -- Needham, Joseph and Wang Ling. 1956. Science and Civilization in China: History of Scientific Thought.

The practice described in the second passage by Sir Harraway may not be factually accurate.

9) Alexandra Palace is a historic entertainment venue in North London. The original structure, opened to the public with fanfare on 24 May 1873, burned down only 16 days later; roughly 4,700 items of historic and intrinsic value were destroyed. However, reconstruction soon began, and it was opened to the public again two years later.



10) Though the worm-like Balanoglossus was discovered in 1825, it was until 1959 taxonomically classified under Phylum Chordata (phylum introduced 1874), Subphylum Hemichordata, Class Enteropneusta (acorn worm; class introduced 1870); in 1959, observed distinctions from members of the Phylum Chordata resulted in Hemichordata being created as a distinct phylum on its own. However, biologists still sometimes refer to it as a chordate. (The organism pictured above is actually an 'acorn worm,' a related species.)

11) Omphaloskepsis is a word meaning 'consideration of one's navel.' It is first known to have been used in 1925, but 19th century variants that held the sense of 'navel-gazer' included omphalopsychic (1892) and omphalopsychite (1882). Consider its use here an anachronism because MGS-verse.

12) Machir ben Abba Mari was the author of a work of Hebrew religious literature entitled Yalkut ha-Makiri, but the country and period in which he lived is not definitively known; it is supposed that he may have lived in Provence, France. Scholars believe that the document itself was composed sometime in the late 13th or 14th century.

13) Discrete Level of Detail is a 3D rendering technique whereby, for the purpose of optimizing cache performance and render time, multiple models of varying detail are used to represent the same structure at different distances; less defined models are used for more distant structures that can't be closely observed. In circumstances of poor hardware support, high-speed camera movement in a single direction across a rendered terrain causes low-detail models and textures to come into close view -- potentially breaking user immersion.

14) Originally, the appearance of Mary Ann Nichols would've invoked an explanation of the partial Zombie apocalypse hinted to have occurred on the collapse of the Patriots SOP at the end of MGS4. However, because no such event was referenced in detail in MGR:R, I replaced the explanation with an arbitrary Romero reference.

15) Mary Ann Nichols was last seen alive (standing on a street corner) at approximately 2:30 AM on 31 August, 1888, following brief sightings at 11 PM (walking down Whitechapel) and half past midnight (leaving a pub); she was discovered death at roughly 3:40 AM. This story is explicitly in violation of historical accounts.

[Xamusel]

Fallacy, did you forget to update the table of contents?

[Frostyvale]

within, their writhed a phallic invertebrate that glistened with mucus in the firelight.

there

Quite fun as usual. What's your educational background?

[fallacies]

there

Quite fun as usual. What's your educational background?

Thanks. And I'm out of grad school. Unrelatedly, a hypothetical Servant info thing for Raiden might look something like this:

RAIDEN / YA-02 Maria Alignment: Chaotic Good Class: ??? Master: - STR: - (C) END: - AGL: - (A) Mana: C Luck: - N.Ph: - Skills The One That Covers Metallic Archaea Blade Overdrive Blood-Sucking (Zandatsu)