Fan Fiction / Crossover Fan Fiction / Magic Knight Rayearth Fan Fiction ❯ Tragic Heroes ❯ Piranha's Bite ( Chapter 7 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Tragic Heroes
a Magic Knight Rayearth/Metal Gear crossover
Chapter 7: Piranha's Bite
8-16-2003
by Grey Fox

Disclaimer: Solid Snake and Metal Gear are the creation of the gaming genius Hideo Kojima and the property of Konami. Hikaru Shidou and Magic Knight Rayearth are the creation and property of the talented ladies of CLAMP studios.

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Snake stared down the hulking mercenary who was threatening to utterly defeat them. "Piranha, huh? That's the sort of name that makes your enemies quiver in fear, isn't it?" Snake jested sarcastically.

"And just what kind of weapon is that?!" shouted Hikaru in a demanding tone.

Piranha simply looked at both of them with a cold, stony gaze and said, "Well, let me put it this way: this weapon is the exact opposite of the one used by the the last 'big guy' that Snake faced." She then lifted up her huge cannon and made several motions with her hands, as if preparing the device for usage.

*Hold it,* Snake thought. *Pyro Bison used a big flamethrower. If this thing's the opposite, then....* The warning bells suddenly went off in Snake's head. "Oh no. Hikaru, LOOK OUT!!" he desperately cried out to his newfound friend.

"Too late, Snakey!" yelled Piranha evilly as she lifted her large cannon-like weapon, pointed it at Hikaru, and fired. Out came a quick burst of water at super-high speed. Hikaru flipped to the side a microsecond before it would have hit her, and instead the blast of water slammed into the stalagtite-like rock that had been behind her, making a large crashing sound and sending shattered pieces of stone flying everywhere.

"A... water cannon?" said Hikaru perplexedly, staring at where Piranha's weapon had made such a powerful impact.

"That's right, a water cannon," answered Piranha, her voice filled with fury. "At such high speeds, a stream of water can cut through steel. It'll smash through your puny little body as if it were cardboard!"

"You won't get the chance lady!" cried Snake angrily as he fired his assault rifle at her. But Piranha was able to deftly dash away, avoiding Snake's attack and taking cover behind another rock. "Damn!" he yelled, frustrated.

"How can someone so big move so fast?" Hikaru thought aloud, turning to face Snake. But then Snake noticed her eyes widening. "Snake, BEHIND YOU!" But her warning was unnecessary; Snake had heard the soft, careful footsteps from a few meters behind him. Acting on impulse, Snake took out a grenade, span around, and tossed it. Just as he had sensed, Piranha was sneaking up behind him. Once again, Piranha moved with impossible speed and backed away, but it wasn't enough this time; she was still too close when the grenade went off, evidenced by the loud shriek Snake heard. He wasted no time making a follow-up attack, firing his rifle again at her, but the grenade hadn't slowed her down enough, and she managed to slip away again.

"She's a sneaky one, isn't she?" said Hikaru bitterly. "Maybe we should split up."

"All right," Snake agreed, "I'll take this side of the plateau, you take that one." With that, he went in the direction Piranha had ran off to, and Hikaru went in the opposite direction, looking and listening attentively for any sign of their enemy.

Unfortunately, Hikaru was still trying to get adjusted to the thermal goggles, and by focusing so much on trying to make sense of what she was seeing, she neglected the telltale sounds from above.....

All of a sudden, Hikaru heard something land loudly behind her. Hikaru immediately guessed what it was: Piranha once again jumping down from one of the rock formations. Quickly she turned around and readied her left hand. "Flame...."

That was all she managed to get out. Piranha fired her water cannon at Hikaru before she could discharge her fire spell, and the blast of water hit her dead-center. The impact sent Hikaru flying backward several meters, slamming her into a large rock. Her entire back exploded with white-hot pain from the impact as she slid down to the ground. She was in too much agony to even muster a scream.

"Ha ha ha ha ha!" laughed Piranha evilly, staring down at her fallen prey with a look of pure malice. "Too easy! Now to take care of the Legend."

She didn't have to wait too long to get her chance to try. Snake came rushing at her, heart full of rage and assault rifle at the ready. Without wasting any time to spout off any witty comments of his own, he opened fire on Piranha, emptying the rest of his current ammo clip. Just like Snake expected, she seemed to sense his approach, turning around and moving to avoud his attack. But again, she was just a little too slow, and a few rounds from Snake's rifle struck her in her right hip. She didn't scream in pain, but just covered the gunshot wounds with her left hand, and Snake could see blood dribbling through her fingers. She returned fire, but without both hands on her cannon she couldn't aim as accurately as before, and Snake evaded the deadly bursts of water with even greater ease. He deftly rolled to the side and then ran behind another rock. It wasn't too long before he heard Piranha's footsteps again, and they were heading toward him. *Good, come after me, you bitch. Just as long as you stay away from Hikaru,* he thought angrily as he reloaded his rifle with a fresh clip.

Snake quickly ran out from behind his temporary cover and turned back towards Piranha and fired. Piranha avoid his fire by doing an acrobatic jumping flip to the side with the grace of a gymnast. *Damn, how can someone so big move like that WHEN WOUNDED?!* he thought to himself as he ran behind another rock. *It's obvious that she's not gonna go down easy, so I guess it's time I started playing dirty.* He reached into his pouch and pulled out one of the claymore mines that he had picked up on his way up the plateau. With a smirk, he rearmed it and set it down nearby. "All right, come and get it, you big ogress," he muttered.

Snake waited in that spot until he heard Piranha's footsteps draw extremely close, then he sprinted away. Piranha then rounded the corner, ready to fire her water cannon, but instead received Snake's little 'surprise' - the mine exploded as soon as Piranha stepped within its proximity, and soon after the mine went off, Snake heard a loud thump that must have been Piranha falling down. Snake turned back and cautiously walked forward, his hands tightly on his rifle. Unfortunately, the mine kicked up a lot of dirt, and without his night vision goggles on he couldn't really see well. Snake could feel sweat build up on his hands inside his gloves as he frantically looked around. Suddenly, he sensed movement to his right. He turned and aimed his rifle, but all he got a chance to see was Piranha charging right at him, and closing in fast - too fast. Piranha rammed right into Snake before he could do anything and her momentum easily knocked him down. Snake hit the ground hard, his rifle skidding away several meters and out of reach. Snake reached for his pistol, but before he could get it out of its holster, Piranha reached down and grabbed him by the throat with an unbreakable, choking grip. She easily lifted him up, and then she spun around and tossed him away as if he weighed nothing.

Piranha had meant to throw Snake off of the plateau, and she would have succeeded, had Snake not managed to reach out and grab the edge with both hands. He quickly pulled himself up and drew his pistol. About twenty meters away he could see Piranha, who was slowly approaching again, both hands on her cannon. He saw that she had hastily applied some crude bandage to her gunshot wounds. *What's it going to take to bring her down?* he thought to himself.

"Doubtless you're wondering just what it will take to stop me," spat out Piranha as if she had just read Snake's mind. "Well, at this rate, you'll never manage to beat me."

She had spoken too soon.

"Flame Arrow!"

A roaring jet of flame tore through the night from out of nowhere, and struck Piranha in the upper right side of her body. "Gyyaahhh!!!" she shrieked as she kneeled down on one knee. The fire had mostly impacted with her water tank backpack, but a good portion had hit her right arm, burning it badly.

Snake turned toward the direction the fire had come from. There stood Hikaru, her left arm outstrecthed and steam rising from her hand. She was struggling just to stand up, but there was no way she was going to back down from this battle. "Snake, go get your rifle!" she ordered. "I want another try at her!" Clutching her sword with both hands she boltly darted toward Piranha.

"You.... little runt!" hissed Piranha as she aimed her cannon at Hikaru and fired. But Hikaru simply leaped upwards and over the stream of water. Lifting her sword over her head, she came down with a fierce downward slash. Piranha barely managed to leap aside to the left in time, and Hikaru's sword came down instead on a large rock, shattering it to pieces. Wasting no time, Hikaru turned to her left and charged at Piranha again, but she was ready for her. Piranha blocked Hikaru's sword swipe with her cannon, and then pushed forward, forcing Hikaru away about a meter. She then made her counterattack, delivering a vicious left hook to Hikaru's face and knocked her down to the ground.

Hikaru's head was reeling, she was seeing stars, her jaw felt like it had been dislocated and she could taste her own blood, but there was no way she was going to give up. Blocking out the pain, she got back on her feet and backflipped away from Piranha before she could attack her again. She thrust the tip of her sword into the ground and leaped forward, using her sword like a pole vault and delivering a flying kick to Piranha's face. Her foot slammed into her jaw with a satisfying smack and knocked her backwards a good distance. Hikaru landed on her feet, and noticed Piranha was bleeding effusively from her mouth, just like she was, but there was no time to dwell on stuff like that. Hikaru whacked Piranha's gunshot wounds with her sword, using it like a baseball bat, and she let out an earsplitting howl. "That's it, I'm going to tear you apart!" she yelled, taking a swipe at Hikaru with her cannon, but Hikaru simply backflipped away twice to put a lot of distance between her and Piranha. Piranha then fired her water cannon wildly at Hikaru, but yet again she managed to foil her plans. Hikaru dodged all the shots with ridiculous ease, the blasts of water harmlessly whizzing past her.

And Piranha had been so focused on shooting at Hikaru that she had totally forgotten about Snake. Definitely a fatal mistake. He had recovered his rifle and had been watching and waiting for the right time to strike, and he decided that that time was now. Snake aimed at Piranha's right leg and opened fire. The bullets tore through her leg and she immediately dropped to one knee again. Snake then stepped forward and stood beside Hikaru, and took a good look at his comrade, noticing that she was bleeding from her mouth. "You OK?" he asked her.

"I'll live," she replied, wiping away the blood trickling down her chin.

"Not for much longer!" shouted Piranha as she opened fire again on the duo. Hikaru and Snake scrambled out of the way to avoid her rabid attack. She then tried sending out a large stream of water and sweeping the area with it, but Snake and Hikaru ducked and let it pass over them. Instead, the stream cut through one of the stalagtites, and it crashed noisily onto the plateau.

"OK, that's it!" cried Hikaru, having had her fill of Piranha and her water cannon antics. "Flame Arrow!" she shouted, sending out another blast of flame. Her spell slammed right into Piranha, knocking her backward and right into a rock, much like how Piranha's water cannon had done to her earlier. ""What goes around comes around, huh? You're lucky I only put enough power in that blast to knock you out."

Piranha stood back up and attempted to and fire again, but she had received way too much punishment at the hands of both Hikaru and Snake, and couldn't muster the effort to fight any longer. Her shaky hands dropped the water cannon and it clattered onto the ground. She then slumped down into a sitting position, leaning onto the rock for support.

"You got me," she muttered angrily, her voice filled with despair. "Round two to you and your little playmate, Snake." Hikaru frowned at the indignity of being called Snake's 'playmate', but she bit her lip and kept quiet about it.

"Alright you, enough is enough," spat Snake. "We've trekked through an entire jungle and climbed this plateau to find you, and..."

"Oooooh, so you've come all this way, looking for me?" Piranha cut in in a sardonic voice. "Awww, I feel so special...."

"Don't play games with me lady," replied Snake acidly. "You shot your own comrade to keep him from saying anything else - and my gut tells me it's something really significant about this base. We tracked you down all the way here to find just what's going on here, SO SPILL IT!"

"Well, isn't it kind of obvious?" Piranha said derisively. "You heard what Joey said before I shot him."

Hikaru decided to speak up. "He seemed to say that he's not part of the U.S. army."

"Exactly," was Piranha's swift reply.

"But Army Chief of Staff Parker's cronies are in charge of this base!" cried Snake "He's the one who built another Metal Gear here in secret."

"True, they DID run this base. That is, until WE took it from them," said Piranha, her mouth curling into a cold, cruel smile.

"What exactly do you mean by 'we'?" asked Hikaru.

"You must be part of some terrorist group, and you're planning to use Metal Gear to your own ends," deduced Snake.

"Well, you're right about us planning to put Metal Gear to good use," answered Piranha, "but that part about being terrorists, that's a bit harsh," said Piranha.

"As far as I'm concerned, anyone who wants to use Metal Gear - for anything - is guilty of being a terrorist," Snake shot back. *Including those manipulative monsters Parker and Gardner,* he silently added.

"Think whatever you want, Snake. But we've got big plans for that walking hunk of metal, plans we're going to put into action real soon."

"And what exactly are those plans?" asked Hikaru interrogatively, eager to discover what this woman intended to use Metal Gear for so that she and Snake could stop her plans.

"That's for me to know and for you two to find out," replied Piranha. She reached into her pant pocket, and then pulled out something. Hikaru immediately recognized it to be another security card, clearly marked with a big number three. The blood that was on her hands now covered the card as well. With a flick of her wrist, she flung it towards Hikaru and Snake. "That level 3 card will get you into the base's research facility, located to the west of this plateau," she explained, pointing westward. "You want a better idea of what's going on here? Go there. The one in charge of the facility will gladly tell you everything..... after she's beaten the living crap out of both of you."

"You seem awfully confident about that," said Hikaru.

"That's because I have reason to be. You think I'M tough? You haven't seen anything until you've seen good ol' Trudy in action." She then stared at Hikaru. "By the way kid, how's your jaw?" she asked with mock concern.

Hikaru just gritted her teeth and shot back a scornful look of her own, but didn't say anything. Snake, however, did have something to say. "Why should we bother tracking down this Trudy to get the information we need? We can just get it from you," said Snake as he picked up the security card.

"Because I don't plan to stay here with you two much longer," said Piranha.

"Ummm, it doesn't look to me like you're in any condition to go anywhere," pointed out Hikaru.

"I know. I was just stalling you two until my ride got here," answered Piranha. "And I think I hear it approaching now."

"Huh?" said Snake, confused. Then he heard it: the sound of helicopter blades.... getting closer. He looked up to see something that had become all too familiar to him: a Hind D attack helicopter. And it was closing in on their position fast. "Aw hell," he muttered under his breath as he turned around, grabbed Hikaru by the arm and ran for cover. They barely made it behind a tall rock in time before the Hind D attacked with its machine gun, its rapid fire impacting noisily all over the plateau. After a while though, the noise abruptly stopped, and from the sound of things, the Hind was staying in one place. Snake stayed safely behind cover with Hikaru for a long time before deciding to risk peeking out from behind cover and seeing what was going on. He immediately didn't like what he saw: the Hind had dropped a rope ladder and Piranha had climbed onto it, and now the helicopter was flying away. Piranha was escaping! "Hikaru! She's getting away!" he shouted to her. Hikaru jumped out from behind the rock and saw the Hind fly off with their defeated foe. She watched the helicopter disappear into the distance, taking their only possible source of information with it. "Why didn't you try to shoot it down?" questioned Snake harshly.

"What's the point?" replied Hikaru, shrugging her shoulders. "If I had blasted that helicopter, I probably would've killed Piranha and the pilot, and I'm sure you want us to kill as few people as possible." Snake lowered his head. She was right about that. "Besides, we hurt her pretty badly. I doubt we'll have to worry about running into her again."

"I suppose you're right," said Snake.

"But still, we're back where we started," said Hikaru, frustrated. "We lost the only lead we had, and we still have absolutely no idea where we need to go."

"Wrong. Next we head west to that research facility Piranha mentioned," stated Snake, holding up the blood-stained security card.

"How do we know she was telling us the truth?" asked a worried Hikaru.

"From the look in her eyes, I could pretty much tell she wasn't lying to us," answered Snake.

"She could be leading us into a trap," pointed out Hikaru.

"You're right, it is a trap. I could tell she WANTED us to head that way. But right now, we don't have much choice. We still need to know Metal Gear's location, and we'll have to find this Trudy to get it."

******

Stick around for Chapter 8: You'll be in for a shocking twist!

So long,
Grey Fox