Immortals

“(…) in the Metal Gear-iverse if your name is an animal you’re basically a superhero that lives off the grid.” - Superbunnyhop’s Metal Gear Solid 4 review

The initiate descends into the coffin under the Tomb, their classmates chanting 19th century dog-latin around them, cartoonish recreations of Egyptian artifacts burning with electric light on the wall around them. Darkness increases as lights shutter, the almost sarcastic tone only making it all the more real, as if disarming prematurely any attempt to interpret or satirize the ridiculousness of the event, leaving only a pre-modern feeling of awe not often felt in this century. The coffin lid closes, as questioners are brought force, the exhaustion of the previous ceremonies coming to a head as the initiate sputters out, dragged along flows of words - is that my father? Whatever, hands on his cock, confession after confession until he’s desiccated, sucked dry of all that once was virile. He feels final blackness that carries on as the coffin lid opens. Sunlight twinkles in noontime brilliance, alighting off the waters around Deer Island, but the darkness remains. There’s an emptiness now, when cold comes to whip snow across his face, he doesn’t flinch. When speaking, he does so in mechanical fashion, rehearsed to a perfected etiquette of what’s expected. He’s come out the other end of the Eagle, seen beyond the solar radiance of the frontside and now sits on the steps of the pyramid behind, looking out upon the dunes of a desert in all directions, seeing only motion where the commoners see solidity.

A blizzard descends over her city, yet Madotsuki strides above, superior. Having spent her life dancing from the Yang-world into the depths of the Yin-world inside the mountain, having drowned in death at the bottom of the world, having emerged with dark brine where her lungs once where, she doesn’t feel any of it anymore. Winds scream like a sandstorm, the sky and ground covered in ice, heavy dunes of snow drifted without regard for the city’s need for smooth transit, sky blotted out white-grey as if snowed over upside down. Countless cars are piled up, a police officer in his winter uniform stands at the four-way stop sign to send them back, to enforce curfews and travel bans. Every ditch is a wreckage, standing in snow, frostbiting through worn out sneakers, jeans soaked in ice, shivering as their Ford Focus wheezes its last. Madotsuki steps lightly past the cop, through the snow as if it weren’t there, the wind passing around her, head high into the Northern clouds, making her way about the business she has above them.

Gordon could never comprehend the will of directions of the Gman and who could expect him to? The world around Gordon unfolds in the way he always knew it to - with himself as the center, pathways opening as he pushed his head into the oncoming tide, challenges passed and rewards given in turn. The levels always load in sequence, the world always functioned as a machine. He entered the right inputs and it gave the expected outputs. The Gman was someone he could never understand, someone who went out of bounds, someone who had directives outside those passing in front of him. Gordon always vaguely heard whispers when he looked too deeply into the eyes of the Gman about construct? flatgrass? bigcity? he pushed it out of his mind and took on the next challenge forward. There was always another cycle to complete, challenge-reward, challenge-reward, challenge-reward. Before long, the Gman would be out of his life and someone else would be giving him the cycle to grab onto. Gordon came to know better than to think too hard about it.