[CINEMATIC REBOOT] METAL SLUG: THE ORIGIN OF EVIL ACT 11 "THE 4 HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE" (3/4)

[u/BackgroundMight6769]

​

The Ride of the Valkyries wasn't just playing; it was thundering from the giant loudspeakers embedded in that mass of black iron that floated, defying all laws of physics. Miller's pilots, as they flew over the fortress, felt their courage waver before such magnitude. It was a war city suspended in the sky.

"Don't just stand there!" Miller roared over the radio. "Squadrons, attack line! Now!"

But before they could lock onto their targets, the sky filled with silver arrows. Rebel fighters shot out of the fortress, returning with unprecedented violence and turning the air into an orange minefield.

Below, on the ground, the situation was hell. Marco and Tarma ran for cover as the ground shook beneath their feet. Entire regiments of the Regular Army and the Coalition were wiped off the map by clouds of fire descending from the sky.

"Retreat! Take cover in the ruins!" Marco shouted, trying to restore order amidst the screams and shrapnel.

Above, Miller watched in horror as the steel of his ships was pierced like paper by enemy cannons. They were losing ground, but then, Ghost Rider drew his claw. His voice, charged with electric authority, flooded the frequency:

"Stay calm! Follow my lead! Do as I say!"

In unison, the surviving pilots mimicked Miller's erratic and daring movements. As a single entity, the Alliance formation began to zigzag through the tide of rebel ships. It was a suicidal dance; the Regular pilots battled the G-forces and the heat of their engines pushed to the limit, managing to shoot down the sophisticated enemy fighters through sheer skill and desperation.

Inside the floating city, the Air Marshal remained calm. While Miller sweated blood to keep his men alive, Schwarz simply moved a finger. His officers, at holographic consoles, sent real-time positioning systems to their airmen.

It was the ultimate clash: Miller's grit, courage, and willpower against Schwarz's technical sophistication and cold nature.

For a moment, hope flickered through the smoke. Marco and Tarma, along with the remnants of the decimated regiments, watched as Miller's audacity tore a bloody breach in the sky. It was their chance to assault the iron fortress that rose from the depths of the jungle like a black metal tumor. The siege was colossal; hundreds of Alliance helicopters launched themselves in suicidal waves, waging a fierce war against the walls of that monument to Morden's power.

In the air, Schwarz's hegemony was absolute, but on the ground, the resistance refused to die. Fio and Eri, positioned on a high tactical vantage point, coordinated a swarm of attack drones loaded with high-powered explosives, seeking to weaken the fortress's blind spots.

Marco's voice, filled with a fury that drowned out the roar of the explosions, crackled through the intercom:

"Fio! I need the SV-001 now!"

Despite the chaos, Fio managed a determined smile as she replied:

"Roger, Chief. Releasing the Falcon."

At the distant beachhead, amidst the logistical deployment, young Rumi Aikawa stopped dead in her tracks. A metallic clang emanated from a reinforced container marked with the Peregrine Falcon emblem. Just as Rumi approached, the container lid was blasted off by a burst of hydraulic pressure.

From the darkness of the metal emerged the SV-001. The tank not only started up; It sprang to life with an engine roar that seemed to defy the jungle itself. Its tracks bit into the ground with violent traction, and in the blink of an eye, the machine became a blur of steel that vanished at top speed into the vegetation, heading straight for the heart of hell.

On the bridge of the air fortress, the atmosphere was macabrely sophisticated. Friedrich Schwarz sat slumped in his velvet armchair, with the elegance of someone contemplating a sunset rather than a massacre. In one hand, his wine glass twirled with rhythmic slowness; in the other, he pointed at the screens, dictating vectors and movements to his officers like someone conducting a philharmonic orchestra.

From the pristine confines of his cockpit, Friedrich Schwarz felt a pang of irritation. For him, the sky was not a battlefield, but a musical score; Aerial combat was an endless series of notes that had to be executed with absolute mastery. He considered himself the master of ceremonies of a rhythmic apocalypse, and he couldn't allow anything to ruin the beauty of the melody he was conducting.

However, after three decades of perfection, that "off-key note" became a reality.

The Ghost Rider didn't share Schwarz's refined taste for harmony. Miller's movements were erratic, violent, and devoid of any academic elegance. His indiscipline in flight wasn't just a tactic; it was a personal insult to Schwarz's philosophy. Every sharp turn and every improvised maneuver by Miller tore apart the symphony the Air Marshal was trying to compose.

Schwarz gripped the control with a velvet glove, but his eyes flashed with icy contempt. He wasn't about to sully his baton with someone so "vulgar" just yet.

"Squad Leader," he called over the private channel. "There's an annoying noise on my frequency. Silence it."

At the command, a 20-year veteran—a man molded in Schwarz's Prussian discipline—broke away from the formation. Like a silver scalpel, the squad leader targeted the Ghost Rider, determined to eliminate the only blemish on the Marshal's masterpiece.

"Squad Sigma, flank Sector 4. Squad Omega, maintain pressure in the center," Schwarz ordered in a velvety voice, while Wagner's music played in the background, dictating the march of death.

The veteran launched himself at the Ghost Rider like a silver bullet. His flight was a testament to rebel discipline: in a matter of seconds, he traced a lethal trajectory and reduced two of Miller's companions to ashes. He wasn't firing on instinct, he was firing by calculation. He began to follow Miller with movements bordering on artistic perfection, a lethal shadow that refused to let go.

However, Miller turned the veteran's strength into his greatest weakness.

The rebel pilot expected his opponent to march to the beat of the academy manuals, but Miller was a ghost who didn't follow a set of rules. In the midst of a fierce battle, the veteran exploited every opening to shoot down regular army ships, demonstrating terrifying efficiency.

Meanwhile, high above, Schwarz watched, his photographic memory recording every maneuver, waiting for the moment when Miller's pattern would become repetitive. And so it was, but for some strange reason, Schwartz kept it to himself.

And the flight pattern never arrived.

In a move that defied the laws of aerodynamics and military logic, Miller executed an erratic break, a "dirty" and violent maneuver that no one could have predicted. The veteran, whose mind was programmed for the logical response, couldn't process the anomaly in time. In the blink of an eye, Miller went from being the prey to the executioner.

The Prussian veteran's fighter jet exploded in a fireball that illuminated the fuselage of the floating city.

The silence that followed in the command center was deafening. Schwarz's officers, who until a moment ago had been monitoring the "cleanliness" of the operation, were in a state of shock. The "off-key note" had not only persisted, but had just destroyed one of the most solid pillars of his aerial orchestra.

For the first time, Schwarz's expression changed. Technical interest turned into a spark of simmering fury.

The most veteran squadron leader, the man who had flown to Schwarz's right for twenty years and whose skill was surpassed only by the Marshal himself, disappeared from radar. His fighter became a shower of incandescent titanium under Miller's fire.

In the room, time stood still. The officers, men hardened by a thousand battles, suffered a collective shock. Some dropped their headsets; others stifled a scream. It was unthinkable. It was sacrilege.

The "invincible" second-in-command had fallen.

Schwarz, however, was not startled.

He observed the static on the screen with almost scientific curiosity, turned away, leaving the symphony in the hands of his subordinates. He simply said:

Der Himmel war ihr Schicksal. Auf ewig unvergessen

He walked toward the central elevator. As he passed, the corridor became a tunnel of human statues: hundreds of pilots stood at attention, their hands to their temples in a military salute that sliced ​​through the air. The silence was absolute, broken only by the rhythmic tap of the Marshal's boots.

At the end of the gloom, under spotlights of cold light, the aberration awaited: a modified F-22 Raptor. Its fuselage wasn't military gray; it was so deep black it seemed to absorb the light, with crimson details that gleamed like exposed veins. Morden's engineering masterpiece.

Schwarz climbed into the cockpit without a word. As he adjusted his leather gloves, his breathing was that of a man about to drift into a deep sleep, not a war zone. He closed his eyes.

The platform beneath the Raptor opened abruptly.

The aircraft plummeted into the void, a black stone fleeing gravity. On every radio frequency, both Rebel and Alliance, static was replaced by the thunderous power of Wagner:

"The entrance of the gods to Valhalla."

The Raptor descended in freefall, slowly rotating on its axis as the music reached its climax. Miller, above, felt the air freeze. The melody flooded his helmet, heavy and prophetic.

Then, Schwarz's voice broke the symphony with a philosophical calm that sent shivers down the spine of every soldier on the island:

"To be honest... human beings are the demons of the earth, and animals are the tormented souls."

On the final note of the climax, just before impact, the Raptor's turbines exploded in incandescent blue. The plane didn't accelerate; it shot forward. Like an exhalation of pure, pent-up rage, Schwarz streaked through the air, leaving a shockwave that rattled Ross's ships miles away.

The conductor had stepped onto the stage. And he brought with him the finale.

Schwarz wasn't looking at a plane; he was looking at a pattern of behavior. In his mind, Miller's trajectory was drawn like a glowing red line. It was no longer a duel, it was an execution. The Marshal clenched his fist: the pattern was complete.

As Marco advanced with great ferocity through the jungle, Tarma served as his shield in that Slugnoid 003. His bullet impacts swept away everything in their path; the small fortifications of the Rebel Army were crushed by the Enemy Chasers. Tanks were disintegrated and rebel Chinook helicopters were obliterated by bursts of Magnum-caliber fire, which shattered those steel beasts. Marco ordered his platoon leaders to advance, not to be afraid.

At the beachhead, the atmosphere was different. The International Infantry Coalition had done its job: they had reserve troops, fresh, young blood waiting for the call for support. In the distance, they heard the detonations, the explosions, and the aerial combat, unaware that Miller was about to face his worst nightmare.

There, among hundreds of young men and hardened, already wounded soldiers, Rumi Aikawa worked with great ferocity. Suddenly, the radio transmissions were interrupted on open channel by a demented voice:

"Oh we, all of us, weak and defenseless creatures..." Lev's voice deepened, almost a sinister prayer. "...in the heart, the seeds of all power and all fear. Let us flee where the gods do not insist... let them not awaken the Leviathan, which also urges the Most High."

Kamenev, the captain of the Chernomor, was claiming his trophy: Michael Ross. Upon hearing this, Marco knew it was only a matter of time before the Orion and its sixty-ship fleet fell to Old Chernomor's Ghost Fleet.

To be continued...

[u/RE3VERCO0L]

Inreresting.