With a gentle click, “David Pie” locked his backdoor, internally sighing at how the surrealist nature of his life had caught up with him. In a way he'd expected it, if isolating himself from civilization in Alaska didn’t prevent him from being roped into infiltrating Shadow Moses, what chance did he have in the suburbs? Hell, he should be grateful it was just some drunk kid and not an ex-comrade with a grudge. It was still worrying, how could he give his kids the normality they deserved if he was a trouble magnet? Of course Beatrice was after Pinkie and not him.....

"Maybe it's inheritable?" he muttered. Otacon was always going on about memes, even without a direct lineage was it possible for Maud and Pinkie to adopt his knack for trouble?

Pushing the topic aside for another day, Snake returned to his sandwich, deciding against stowing the M9 as he didn’t have enough time to safely secure it with his daughter’s friends crawling around the house. He instead decided to ignore the weight in the back of his trousers to deal with a much harder choice: Should he add some chocolate to his midnight snack? In the good old days such a decision wouldn't have mattered, but with his 'Old' body, Snake had to carefully watch what he ate lest he suffer from severe indigestion and the mother of all backaches. Being old was such a pain in the ass.

A quiet squeak drew him from his reverie though, paternal instinct and common sense battling his soldier genes on whether to draw and fire his weapon, It was close and the mental battle resulted in a rather awkward 'deer in the headlights' expression for the father of two, but it was vindicated when he saw the origin of the sound, one of Pinkie's friends who'd been the center of attention in the larger group. What was her name again? Buttersky? She seemed quite intimidated. Snake worried, he didn't scare them that much, did he?

"Hey kid," the living legend grunted. He knew bits and pieces on some of Pinkie's friends, was this the fashionista? She certainly seemed pretty enough, in a waif-like model way.

"H-h-hello Mr. Pie" she whispered, shrinking into herself.

‘Christ, she looks terrified,’ Snake noted, absent mindedly adding the chocolate bar to his plate. "Call me David kid, no one has ever called me 'Mister Pie' before...well other then my girls’ teachers."

"Umm...ok David," 'Buttersky' squeaked shakingly. She wasn't usually this bad around new people, but something about Mr. Pi-- David… just seemed to make her want to hide and hope he'd never find her.

"So, uh, what do you like to do in your spare time, fashion and stuff?" The icebreaker was bad and he knew it. ‘Why is this so hard?!’

"A l-little," she said, trying desperately to ignore how he savagely tore into his meal, "I like animals more though."

Now here was something he could work with. Much better than fashion, especially since outside of his suits, he only really owned a few jeans, polo shirts and that damned Tuxedo Meryl bought him. Of course he could talk about the benefits of Military Fashion till the cows came home, (For the last time Pinkie, Chocolate-Chip Camouflage is highly overrated) but he doubted the fashionista would care much for it. Animals though? Far easier territory.

"You like dogs?" he asked, noticing the visible shift in her body language at the change of topic.

"Oh yes," ‘Buttersky’ exuberantly exclaimed, "Applejack has the cutest little border collie you have ever seen. Her name is Winona and she's so well behaved even though we spoil her.... I would like to have one myself, but my parents say Hummingway, Mr. Mousey, Angel and Elizabeak are more than enough pets." The frown on her face said otherwise.

"Eh I'd disagree, but then again I'm biased, I have owned fifty Huskies" Snake nonchalantly replied, whilst washing his now empty plate. A smirk wormed its way onto his face at the girl’s sudden intake of breath. Most people couldn't comprehend owning more than three dogs, let alone fifty.

"That sounds wonderful!"

Well that was unusual, an average person usually thought he was crazy at best or hideously negligent at worst. Otacon found the idea of him sitting alone in a log cabin drowning in a sea of fur and feces hilarious, any reference to his Huskies always brought a smile to the programmer’s face. It was more organised than that of course, but Snake let him keep his humor, the poor guy had suffered a lot in his life, so if he could cheer him up with his silence, then so be it.

"Yeah, I lived in Alaska long before I met Maud and Pinkies’ mother. Needed some company so I thought 'Huskies, why not?'" A somber mood came over him, it had been both a dark and terrible, yet simpler, experience in his life, "Even raced in the Iditarod with them."

"Wow", even the thought of going on such an exciting and epic adventure gave Fluttershy the shivers. Sure, the Fall formal and the Dazzlings had been exciting and dangerous in their own ways, but this was a nine-hundred and thirty mile race. Even discounting the Alaskan weather and any of the other potential problems that could occur, the fact that he could casually speak of partaking in the incredibly dangerous event said a lot about the man.

After the father of two finished cleaning the dishes, he leaned on the sink, a hand went rummaging into his suit jacket to reappear with a packet of cigarettes. He had been trying to quit for several years now, but found that the stresses of fatherhood and shenanigans like with Beatrice caused him to crave the warm embrace of nicotine. He wasn't the only one though if he guessed right, as Buttersky was eyeballing his packet of 'The Boss' with that tell-tale look of someone in need of their fix.

"So..." he began, slightly perturbed at the predatory stare she was giving to the pack in his hands, "Did you want a glass of water... or anything?".

A blush came over the girl’s face before she suddenly decided that his tiled kitchen floor was far more interesting. "Umm, I was actually looking for a lighter" she mumbled.

A quiet chuckle was his response, followed by a retrieval of a cheap plastic lighter from his seemingly endless inventory of well organized pockets. "What do you smoke kid?" he asked curiously.

"Mustangs," she mumbled out as she patted her pockets, rapidly becoming frantic.

"Forgot your smokes?" receiving an awkward nod, he let out a sigh and held his pack out, "Be careful, they may be a bit stronger than what you are used to."

With a smile and a ‘Thank You’, she took a single stick and lit up. Two drags in and it was obvious she wasn't enjoying the experience. After a few moments, whatever politeness she held was thrown out the window, followed by her lungs judging by the sound of her coughing fit. "H-h-how can you smoke these? They taste like...like..."

"You got your ass kicked?"

"It's not really a taste, but I suppose so." she wheezed.

"That's why they’re called ‘The Boss’" Snake stated with a small smirk on his face, sixteen milligrams of tar was tough on someone who was accustomed to a lot less. "So, why did you start? I mean, you don't really look or act like the type?"

She raised an eyebrow, "The type?"

"It could be my age showing, but most teenage girls who smoke tend to have the whole 'bad girl' persona going for them and you...uh..don't"

"Umm, thanks?" Buttersky said awkwardly, it was kind of a compliment she guessed, "I have some anxiety issues you see, someone said they might help, so I thought 'why not', just to experiment you understand." she neglected to mention how Treehugger had tried to encourage her onto stronger substances, but she had her limits.

"Does it help?" Snake grunted out, feeling more at peace with the nicotine rushing through his system.

"A little...."

Sympathizing with a fellow addict, he began rummaging through one of the kitchen drawers. "We've all got our reasons kid. I started about your age, had a lot of problems at home... well homes to be exact. Multiple foster parents does that to people. Then when I got my first job, all my comrades smoked so it was a sense of fitting in with the group, you understand?" he mentally chided himself, hoping that she hadn't picked up on him slipping 'comrade' in his explanation. Ignoring his assessment of his own impending senility, he tossed his newly discovered prize to the girl, who, despite squeaking in surprise, caught it easily from the air.

"Lucky Strikes?"

"Friend of mine bought them for me a few months ago, saying he wants me to quit and thinks going down to a weaker brand will be 'helpful', but damn things were like breathing air." Bless Otacon, he did try, really, though the Lucky Strikes were a reminder of some dark times that he would rather forget. The same reason why he never used the Zippo Maud gifted him for his birthday last year; it may have been sixteen years ago, but he could still smell the burning flesh....

"You can keep the box though Buttersky."

"M-my name is Fluttershy, David."

Goddamit!

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

With Maud and Rainbows’ rapid exit, Fluttershy disappearing into the kitchen for 'water' and Sunset taking a bathroom break, it left just the four of the girls in the living room, which was perfectly fine by Rarity’s standards. She liked to have a bash as much as the next girl, but sometimes Pinkie’s events got a little too heated for her, as she preferred the 'dinner party' type than her friend’s frantic, but enjoyable, chaos. Things had taken a more sedated turn due to Rainbow Dash changing the conversation topic to Pinkie’s living family, resulting in the girl pulling a vibrant pink Laptop out of seemingly nowhere and regaling herself and the others with the modern equivalent of a slideshow parade.

"-nd that's Auntie Meryl and Uncle Johnny. He's a bit klutzy, but nice." she giggled, a pretty looking redhead and a blonde man in wedding attire depicted on her screen.

"Are they in the military as well darling?" It was a tad perplexing to the elegant girl on just how such a normal man, even disregarding having daughters like Pinkie and Maud, seemed to know so many members of the armed forces. Pinkie claimed her father had never been a soldier, which added more riddles to the situation.

"Yeah, they're in the Rat Patrol!" she exclaimed, punching the air a few times with accompanying 'hooh-hah' noises, "It's some kind of Army police unit....I don't think I'm supposed to know though, Uncle Johnny is bad at keeping secrets."

"So let me get this straight Pinkie, your Pa is friends with a Colonel, some-kind of computer-engineer genius who makes weird little cute robots for the Army, a Captain in the Navy, the head of a massive arms company and some 'secret' Army police unit....does your Pa have any friends not in the military?" groused Applejack.

Twilight carefully eyed Applejack as she wasn't usually this blunt, but then again from what she understood so far, this world had a vastly different military to her own world. From the magic Internet she had barely gleaned the start of the divergence, but these 'guns' must make things a lot more difficult. Hopefully the power of friendship would be able to solve all their problems in the end.

"Weeeeell there is Uncle Raiden!" Pinkie said, scratching her chin in thought before bringing up a head shot of a striking man with platinum blonde hair.

Fanning her blush away, Rarity ogled at the picture, this perfect specimen knew Pinkie’s gruff old father?

"He's kinda pretty I guess," the farm girl mumbled blushing, "What does he do though?"

"Oh, he's a samurai."

There must have been something very unusual about this, Twilight guessed as her friends don't look as if someone had kicked them into the barrel unless something truly odd was happening. "What's a...'Samurai'?"

"It’s a kind of, well, kind of a knight I suppose, Twilight..." Rarity explained "Only they haven't really existed for over a hundred years."

With clear glee on her face, the permanent party girl brought up a video on her monitor, "Oh no, he's definitely a samurai, look."

The man whom made the girls melt was standing in what was clearly the Pies’ back garden, wearing a white long sleeve polo shirt and dark trousers holding some kind of rectangular metal briefcase in hand. A younger Maud was visible several meters to the right with a box of watermelons at her feet. Raiden turned to the camera giving it a smile and thumbs up. A thumb that was disturbingly long though, almost claw like.

"You ready Pinkie?" he asked, his voice friendly and comforting.

"Absolutely positively Uncle Raiden!" Pinkie squeaked, her enthusiastic nodding presumably shaking the camera up and down in affirmation.

"You ready Maud?"

"Yes, Uncle Raiden" the teen said, lifting one of the melons carefully.

As a devilish smile came to the man’s face, he slowly lifted his 'briefcase' to chest height, when it suddenly opened of its own accord at the bottom. A eerie electric blue light came from within as a sheathed blade hung in mid air. Raiden however gave it no time to linger as he rapidly grabbed the floating sheathed sword from the air and threw the briefcase behind him, before he drew the blade, some sort of katana, in a single fluid motion from its sheath, electricity dancing across the sword.

"Pull!" he yelled, Maud complying with great speed.

One of the watermelons sailed at the 'Samurai' as fast as she could throw, and in the blink of an eye it was cut cleanly in half, the man going from a simple 'drawn' stance to that of a successful strike. This scene was repeated three more times, each one more intricate and furious than the last. The final Watermelon was struck with such speed by the barely visible blade that it hit the ground in multiple neat wedges.

"See what I mean ?" Next Chapter: A Phantom Pain Estimated time remaining: 19 Minutes