Look, its another MGS post! I’m sure you’ve all missed those very much. 😀
Note: Given this game’s bosses’ naming scheme – you know, The Fear, The End, The Boss and so on – I should probably assure you that The Plot isn’t a member of the Miniboss Squad, though it might as well be. XD
Note to my fellow MGS fans: Covers the game from when Ocelot first shows off his new toy to the mountaintop scene.

When we last saw Our Hero, he had just failed to save the kidnapped scientist from some group or another even though he was handle the overeager kitten just fine, mainly because his mentor and her Quirky Miniboss Squad had teamed up with a rabid Pikachu so that the scientist builds them a giant war thingie. The important part is that we’re now standing in this jungle in the middle of… somewhere and have a reason to run into all these crazy people. Sounds like fun?

Kittens Want Attention! Bond Girls Have Boobs!
Back in the place where we first met Sokolov and the kitten a week (of in-game time) ago, we’re introduced to yet another new character… new to Snake, that is. Eva, who comes riding not on a white horse but on a motorbike, is quick to introduce herself and her boobs to Snake who… isn’t really paying attention. (She’s actually the same woman we saw on the helicopter with The Boss, Ocelot and Volgin.)

They talk about The Plot for a while with Snake sitting on a bench and fiddling with the shiny new gun that Eva just gave him and her trying to behave like a proper Bond girl. The whole seduction thing does not work terribly well, what with Snake shuffling away from her when she sits down next to him and not meeting her eyes and all that. I mention this because I find it interesting: Granted, she can’t see the very similar camera angles with which the two scenes were shot, but she cannot not realise that this moment with Snake mirrors her earlier scene with Volgin almost 1:1 as far as body language is concerned, only she herself has switched roles. (Unlike Volgin, she backs off when she realise that she’s not wanted… for now. Switching the gender of the involved characters around also helps in making this scene less obviously creepy; Volgin might be a rapist but Eva is not.)

Oh, and everyone’s favourite kitten is back again too! He has taken Snake’s advice to heart and is now using a revolver… which he’s twirling around and generally showing off and it’s a very fancy thing and is engraved with what looks a lot like a snake skin pattern and look look isn’t it great, isn’t our kitten great? Unfortunately for him, Snake is paying him about as much attention as he was paying Eva a second ago, but when Ocelot points the gun at him, he at least takes the time to point out that kitten “doesn’t have what it takes to kill him” – which he means literally, because Ocelot had ran out of bullets because the revolver holds fewer bullets than the automatic gun he was previously using. Snake had kept count of how many shots had fallen… Ocelot had not. Thwarted again! But you just wait, Snake! We’ll meet again!

We do a bit later and after Eva has gone back to wherever the rest of the villains hang out to play Volgin’s pet again. Kitten has found quite a unique solution to the lower capacity problem: He has brought two revolvers to this battle (which is also the game’s first boss fight) and now wields one in each hand. Not without spinning them around some more and building up the general atmosphere to feel like that of a spaghetti western, just to remind me why I initially started out calling him cowboy kitty. (He also meows for backup again.) I mention all this because he’s such a ridiculous show-off and it amuses me greatly.

This is also where he acquires his… thing for reloading his revolver in the middle of battle, which might or might not explain why him talking about it years later in MGS1’s first boss battle sounds so much like cheesy dirty talk.
You know, that makes me think of something… the boss battle, not the talking. Ocelot manages to be the first boss chronologically both in-game (her in the prequel MGS3) and on a meta level (in MGS1; although that one only works if we don’t count Metal Gear one and two) and it makes me wonder if he’ll also be the last boss in MGs4, which is the final game in both senses (not counting the upcoming unnumbered games). I think I would really like that. :3 (Don’t tell me if I’m right; as usual, I want to find out for myself.)

BEEEEEEEES! SPIIIIIDEEER– oh wait, those aren’t spiders. Move on, nothing to see here. Also, Photosynthesis! And a really bad disguise.
To get the “disguise” thing right out of the way: At some point you have to sneak into a lab and dress like a scientist. Guards won’t attack you, but other scientists will eventually realise that you’re not one of their own and alert the guards. Let’s just say that the only way this can possibly work is if we believe that the guards are either half-blind or very, very slow. Because Snake does not make a convincing scientist. At all. Even the way he walks looks suspicious! For some reason, this also amuses me very much.

It’s time to fight three of the game’s bosses now that we’ve got the kitten battle out of the way. Very little happens in terms of plot between each of these fights, so I’ll skip it. I’ll also skip the description of me wandering around in a very, very, very dark cave for half an hour, with such helpful tips from Mission Control as “Find a torch!”. BUT I CAN’T EVEN SEE WHERE I’M GOING! Let alone where a torch is, damnit! … I had put the game down for a few weeks right before this, so I had forgotten that there is a map to be found somewhere in the main menu. Ahem.

Anyway, Quirky Miniboss #1: The Pain. Also known as the guy who runs around covered in bees and who spits hornets at you. Because they apparently live inside his body. I don’t even want to know how this is supposed to work. Let’s just say his face is covered with swells from dozens of dozens of stings and why is he still alive I don’t even know what hey stop sending those beasts after me aaaah wait let me jump into this conveniently placed pool of water! … Not sure what else I can say about this guy, other that that I at this point I was wondering if he kept yelling “The pain, the pain!” because he meant it litterally or because it was his codename. i should find out a little later…

…when I faced Quirky Miniboss #2: The Fear. (By the way, you fight him in a part of the jungle that was devoid of any enemy activity the first time you passed through it – not so on the way back. I’m telling you, I knew that place was suspicious!) Guy wants to be a spider, climbs trees, can make himself invisible, throws poison darts and hops around from tree to tree a lot. Also has a very long tongue for some reason. (The last two points remind me of Vamp’s boss battle; the camouflaging however made me very glad I had learned my lesson during the fight with the Ninja in MGS1 and remembered to equip the thermal goggles.) I loved the battle; it was intense. ❤ It was also interesting to see that his stamina bar dropped so fast and that he had to go out of his way to hunt down food during the fight; I finally understood why after I got his uniform afterwards for draining his stamina bar instead of killing him (he exploded anyway; all the Quirky Minibosses do) and put it on – it raises the camo index, making you harder to spot by enemies (good!), but at the cost of depleting your own stamina bar a lot faster than usual (decidedly not good.).

Anyway, he too kept yelling "The Feeeaaaar, The Feeeaaaar!" during the battle, and, you know, I've already brought one of the critters into this, so I might very well do it again: Animal-themed creatures/people with a tendency to repeat their own name? Clearly they're all Pokémon! … Wait, does that make The Boss, who seems to be a lot more eloquent, a Pokémon trainer? And does her unit consist of as many people as it does because you can never carry more than six Pokéballs with you at the same time? Is Snake her sixth Pokémon? Is kitten really a Meowth? And what have I just gotten myself into?

So, on to Pokémon #3: The End. Reeeally old L.D.S.K. sniper who’s so in tune with nature he can photosynthesise. He’s so one with the foret, his boss music are chirping birds and the rustling of wind in the trees. And you better prepare for a long, long battle… and no saving! (The game is very assertive about that, to the point where you’re safe person asks you if you’re reall sure you want to do this, because, you know, she has this feeling that something bad might happen if you do… this is something I knew about this game before: If you save and then wait a few days, Snake will fall asleep, which means The End can sneak up on him and carry him to the prison all the way back to where you disguised yourself as a scientist and you have to start the battle anew. if you do, however, wait a week or longer before playing again (or just mess with the PS2’s internal clock), game mechanics play out in your favour: When you come back, The End will have died of old age. … I watched that scene on youtube and it’s really anticlimatic, to say the least. <.<)

Anyway, long battle. Very long battle. Better do some hunting every now and then and hope to whittle down Turtwig's health or stamina… it's an interesting battle to say the least, made even more intriguing by the fact that this peculiar Pokémon can do something no other boss I've ever met in any game I've ever played can do: He can leave the screen and wander off into a different part of the map. (The battle takes place on not one but three huge maps. Good luck finding him…) Once the battle’s done, his leaf-like uniform whithers along with him, which feels strangely poignant.

Anyway. Even though the battles themselves are great, I have to say that so far I’m rather underwhelmed by this game’s Quirky Miniboss Squad and they have yet to grow on me the way Foxhound and Dead Cell did. Maybe it’s the lack of individual backstories? Speaking of story, there was one plotty bit between the fight that’s actually worth mentioning.

Oh look, it’s all the important characters sans Snake in one spot! Quick, somebody take a photo!
Well, Snake is there to overhear the scene, but he isn’t seen by any of the others and doesn’t interact with them, so. Nothing really important is talked about either, so I’ll just go through the bits of actual Stuff Happening quickly.

– Kitten shows off again, but because he’s not trying to impress Snake this time, he actually comes across rather menacing. (Okay, juggling three revolvers still looks a bit ridiculous, but the set-up isn’t; one of them is only loaded with one bullet and he keeps pulling triggers while he juggles them, directing him at Sokolov whom he’s trying to… intimidate, probably? Nah, he’s mainly still just showing off. The Boss appears and tells him off, not before Sokolov continues what is apparently becoming an MGS tradition that says that once a game, a scientist has to wet him- or herself out of fear.

– Pikachu also shows off, mostly to establish himself as one of if not the most hateable character in this series, as if we’d have any doubts about that, using his lighting powers to torture “Tatyana” (aka Eva), as if groping her breasts while holding her up by the hair so that her feet don’t touch the ground wasn’t bad enough. You know, just in case you wondered where kitten will later get his ideas. Ouch.

– Unrelated to any of this, I keep saving my game more often than I have to just to hear more conversations between Para-Medic and Snake. her being geeky about sci-fi and horror movies’ special effects is too cute, and whether they talk about James Bond (“From Russia With Love”?! And you’re bringing that up right after the kitten fight?) or War Of The Worlds (“When I was little, my dad though the radio play was real! Now I’m forever scared and watched the film version with my eyes closed!” – “So you didn’t watch it! – “I did!” – “Did not.”), their banter is so, so adorable. I’m pretty sure that with all the options the game provides, I’m not actually supposed to ship it, but I think I kind of do. XD (Kind of, over the radio. Putting her into the same room with him probably wouldn’t work half as well, and at the end of the day they come across more sibling-y anyway, so no need to go into Our Hero’s intimacy issues. Are MGS heroes contractually obliged to have some, by the way?)

The Mountain Top
(Edit: So much of this scene’s meaning relies on body language, so if you’d rather watch it than just go by my babblings alone, you can do that here. The image quality isn’t too great, but it’s serviceable.)

– After climbing a really (really, really) long ladder to get from the forest where we fought Turtwig to a nearby mountain (climbing the ladder takes so long that they started to play the game’s opening song just to make it more interesting), we meet up with Eva again in a hut on the mountain so that she can give Snake a plot-important key and provide us with… a whole lot of fanservice really, seeing as she’s dressed in a bra and 80s-sytle underpants and nothing else at the time Our Hero enters. Some people’s enjoyment might be diminished by the style of the panties but I think they’re a nice touch. ^^ And much like Snake (who makes his presence known almost immediately when she doesn’t seem to realise that she has company), my attention zips right past “Boobies!” and “Oh look, half-naked woman!” and zooms in on her scars. (This does not really surprise anybody.)

(The conversation goes something like, “Where did you get those cuts?” – “The Colonel.” – “What? He found out that you’re a spy?” – “Ahahaha, no, if he had, I would already be dead. This is just his hobby. *spits*”) She turns her back to him as she talks about Volgin, he reaches out to touch one of her scars. This is the only time we’ve ever seen him reach out to someone (close quarter combat excluded for obvious reason), and it’s when he’s sympathising with her having been hurt.
“Does it look that strange to you?” – “No, I’m the same, scars all over.” – “Can I see?” She turns around to face him, puts a hand on his shoulder – and he backs away immediately, “No.” No, of course not. That would put him in a similarly vulnerable position, or at least make his more obvious, and he can’t want that. Can’t.
(Oh game. You’ve needed a while to get to this point, but you’re slowly but surly working your way up to breaking my heart again.)

They start talking about The Plot (and noodle soup, and a Raiden lookalike) again for a while after he tries to draw the general attention away from his and back to her scars and she gets dressed and somehow spins the possibility of kissing him into the conversation, with the camera nicely focusing on his lips as she says it, just because.

(Unrelated: In the plot conversation, Eva also mentions that it will be important to fly some kind of… flying vehicle later, which Snake says he can’t do, but don’t worry, Eva has the necessary skill set. I mention this because it’s something we’ve seen before… or which we’ll see in the future, hello prequel, with Solid Snake, who can’t fly a helicopter… but Otacon can.)

Eventually, Eva starts being curious about Snake and The Boss, which ends with him saying that she’s like his mother and his master and Eva being very confused and asking if they were lovers. It was, says Snake, deeper than that (This is the second time we hear a Snake hear “lovers” and say “Nah, deeper than that”, though the other Snake wasn’t talking about a relationship involving him.) and that half of him belongs to his mentor and— you know, I really really like Eva, but her display of Not Getting It here is rather off-putting. (Do you love her? Do you hate her? Youreamanandawomanithastobeoneoftheother!) She does a good job of reminding him that part of his mission is to kill The Boss though, which he very clearly prefers not to think about.

As he talks about the Boss, Eva puts his arms around her neck and at this point I was honestly surprised he let her. Part of it, I’d say, his him being lost in thought, and him not being averse to human touch per se; part of me is convinced that shoving her away would hurt her and at this point he’s projecting too hard to ever want to do that.

She can, says she after a while, fall in love if it’s part of the mission, even with him. And down goes her suit’s zipper again to show us that she still has breasts, and now she does kiss him. He doesn’t kiss back. He doesn’t react at all, just stands there and doesn’t look her in the eye. Eventually, she even asks if something’s wrong, but Plot Happens before he can answer (or avoid and answer), and both the scene and my post come to an end.

(There is a cuscene after this before you can next save your game, but I’ll cover it in the next entry.)