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The motor of the jeep started to rumble as they began their drive to a yet unknown destination. A brief pause, before Skull Face continued his speech from before.
"To unite America and the entire world. The major thought this was his friend's will. But I think he never understood what she wanted."
Venom was covered in dried blood and a crust of sweat was forming around his eyepatch and ear piece. The Afghan sun was burning relentlessly with not a single building or tree offering any sort of shadowy relief and the jeep's speed only gave them flying dust instead of a cooling breeze. He sat directly across his adversary, the mysterious man only known as "Skull Face", and all he could do was listen to his words as his own tactical gear and holstered weapons seemed to get heavier with each second.
"I was born in a small village. I was still a child when we were raided by soldiers. Foreign soldiers."
The heat, the sweating, the dehydration and what was almost worse than all of that, the sitting sideways on a bumpy jeep, made him feel incredibly sick and lightheaded. He tried leaning backwards only to realize there was, of course, no backrest, leaving him hunched over in a very unpleasant position, face to face whith a man he disliked but who seemed to have an even more intense personal grudge specifically against him. A lot of people had, but usually Venom remembered the reason. Skull Face's hatred for him seemed as enigmatic as his identity and oddly intimate, almost as intimate as sitting only a very few inches apart from each other, knees touching with every larger bump the car hit on the uneven road.
"A philosopher once said, 'It is no nation we inhabit, but a language. Make no mistake, our native tongue is our true fatherland.'"
He would never admit it but ever since the traumatic head injury and the coma he had a hard time following longer conversations. Wether they knew it or not, both Kaz and Ocelot had formed a habit of breaking down information into smaller chunks and repeating the essentials on missions to him which he very much appreciated. If they weren't around a few well timed affirming grunts or repeating the last sentence usually sparked his conversational partners to go more in depth, but Skull Face didn't leave much of an opportunity for such things. On top of that, he felt as if merely opening his mouth would cause him to throw up or at least gag with an empty stomach. Something he really didn't want to risk in this situation. He was terribly sea sick on their first visit to the new Motherbase and he was car sick at this very moment.
"Language codes, information codes - beamed all around us - genetic codes spanning history. By controlling the codes, Cipher... Zero intends to unify the world."
Skull Face had a surprisingly soothing voice considering his appearance but that didn't help Venom retain any information. Maybe it was a lack of interest, maybe it was the big words and the long sentences or maybe it was the large pieces of shrapnel lodged into his brain, pulsating after a day of crawling through sand in an unknown enemy base. All he could think about was how pleasant it was to frolic with Quiet in the rain the other week and how he would give anything for it to rain right about now or for Quiet to just take out the target from afar, do her peaceful little hum and give him a thumbs up. Kaz would be mad of course, as he was mad at about anything Quiet did. Venom almost felt like Kaz was always waiting for Venom to take his side over anyone else's. Maybe there was an event, a promise, before the coma that meant a lot to Kaz but slipped Venom's mind.
When the Motherbase staff developped the cardboard box disguise Kaz would always nod to him, jokingly asking if it had room for two. What an odd question to ask considering Venom only went on solo missions. Kaz just scoffed when he supposedly didn't get the answer he was hoping for and punished him with silence for the rest of the day. What a strange man, but a great cook.
"I hold him responsible for killing my freedom. Killing all traces of my past... Killing any promise of a future... We are all but dead men forced to walk upon this earth."
And speaking of strange men, Skull Face was still talking. If Skull Face noticed the awkwardness of being too close for comfort he didn't show it and neither did he show any reaction to the burning sun despite being dressed in all black. As he kept talking he would try to interject with grandiose gestures, always careful to not accidentally hit Venom in the face with his hands or hat because of the complete lack of distance and space between them. It forced his movement to be a lot less natural and made it look rehearsed- maybe it was.
"And the 'mother tongue' of all those codes is English. The word became flesh."
Skull Face paused, pulled out a fairly large metal container and presented the little vials stored inside. He then tilted his head, making Venom nervous for a second because he was surely expecting a response or reaction of some sort.
But to Venom's relief he directly followed showing the container off with an explanation of it's contents.
"The final parasite. It knows English. An English strain of the vocal cord parasite."
Another bullet dodged! Dodging bullets wasn't just for the battlefield it seemed. A pun that made Venom smile to himself for a second. His men didn't see him as the funny type but even he still appreciated a quip here and there, not every moment had to be bleak.
"Let the world be. Sans lingua franca, the world will be torn asunder. And then, it shall be free."
As his mind wasn't occupied by anything else, Venom was considering the consequences of just grabbing Skull Face by the shoulders and pushing him out of the vehicle. Not the least bit honourable but far too entertaining of an idea to just let it slide. Realistically tho, in his current state, he would just tumble onto the ground right along with him, showered in bullets from the enemy soldiers surrounding them. So he decided to remain in his miserable position for now.
"People will swallow their pain. They will link lost hands. And the world will become one. This war is peace."
A nice closing line, even tho Venom didn't listen to the previous speech and didn't understand the meaning of it in the grand scheme of things. But a great statement nonetheless, "this war means peace". He would be sure to remember this unless anything crazy happened in between now and him coming back home to motherbase in what surely must only be a few more hours at maximum from here on. His mood lightened a little. He was about to check his iDroid for the location, maybe call Kaz or Ocelot and check how things were at base-
and then the music started.
"WORDS THAT KILL, WOULD YOU SPEAK THEM TO ME."
At first Venom thought they were just driving past a guard post with a running radio, then he briefly questioned if the heat had caused him to hallucinate. But the volume was constant and from the corner of his eye he saw one of the soldiers briefly fumble with the car's radio. They really were playing music now, and Skull Face didn't say a word.
"OUR SALVATION LIES IN THE FATHER'S SINS,
BEYOND THE TRUTH, LET ME SUFFER NOW."
He was suffering alright. The loud song, the sun, the heat, the man staring him down without making a single sound, it was unbearable. Venom tried moving a bit, gazing into the landscape, but every time he turned back he was looking right into the cold grey eyes of Skull Face, determined and unmoving.
"IN MY HEART I JUST KNOW THAT THERE'S NO WAY TO LIGHT UP THE DARK IN HIS EYES.
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
It suddenly clicked! XOF was FOX backwards. He chuckled to himself upon this realization, after spending quite a while wondering what it stood for and why he knew the logo. Staring at Skull Face's chest with the bright yellow patch for so long finally made it clear. Thankfully he didn't attempt to ask anyone on base, that would've been quite the revealing moment. Lost in his thoughts he was almost startled when Skull Face began to speak again.
"When the world witnesses Sahelanthropus, the hands of the doomsday clock will roll on, regardless of Zero. Sahelanthropus will take the first giant step into a brave new world. It is the bell with which a world - trodden upon by words - declares its independence."
What was that line from earlier he tried to remember again? Well, they were finally at their destination.
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Bonus for funsies: Larry the XOF soldier
Larry's actual mission was clear. Point a gun at their intruder and let Skull Face grab and lower it in a dramatic display of power and confidence. Then drive the intruder and Skull Face, or Big Boss and his boss, to the power plant while playing his cassette.
To the location of The Puss-Bot, a name most of the lower rank soldiers jokingly gave to Sahelanthropus when no higher up was present, because the correct name was both hard to pronounce and ridiculous to say in casual conversations. Skull Face seemed to be enamoured by it tho, as he was enamoured by most things needlessly complicated. Larry remembered his colleagues complaining about having to pick up their boss from the extended hand of the Puss-Bot after delivering a grandiose speech, a maneuver both risky and difficult to pull off.
Back then Larry was thinking surely they were exaggerating about how pompous Skull Face truly was. He had only seen the man briefly before, looking threatening and collected, standing in shadows and placing every word like a well aimed bullet. Using psychological tricks to interrogate and torture prisoners and making Larry's skin crawl whenever he walked by. But the current situation made Larry understand what his mates were talking about.
He was already surprised when his boss payed a discrete visit to the soldier's quarters, asking Larry if he was a good driver and then instructing him on the route. He was supposed to drive calmly, at a steady pace. No rushing, as his commander had told him, because he wanted to have an "important conversation" with the legendary soldier known as Big Boss.
"Take the scenic route.", he said smugly "The Boss and I have a lot to discuss."
Of course Larry obliged, it was his job to listen and follow orders after all, but when Skull Face handed him a cassette tape and told him to play it during the drive and to not listen to it beforehand he couldn't help but be incredibly curious about it's contents.
All of that curiousity was lost in this moment tho, as it was just a song. A nice song, sure, and hearing music was rare on the job to begin with, but Larry didn't quite understand the high secrecy of his bosses plan. The "conversation" so far was just Skull Face monologuing to the Big Boss and they were still a few minutes away from their destination, an amount of time not even the song would be able to bridge. Larry was sure that even Skull Face, stoic as ever, would surely notice this but when he cautiously glanced over his shoulder, awaiting some sort of order or direction from his commander, he just watched as Skull Face motionlessly, silently stared down their captor. He quickly turned his head back to the road when Big Boss briefly made eye contact with him, but Larry couldn't shake the feeling of seeing a hint of confusion in his face.
Larry knew that money and power made certain men excentric, but this was quite a lot. He tried to give a knowing nod to his colleague on the passenger seat but his eyes were closed.
In a week's time he would come home to his son who would ask him with a big bright smile what he did at work, knowing exactly his dad would wink and answer "That's top secret!" as always, leaving his son mystified and curious at once. If only he knew how truly boring "top secret" could be.