"SNAKE! WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO WITH MY SHIRT?!"

"WHY THE HELL WOULD I EVEN WANT TO TOUCH YOUR GIRLY-ASS SHIRT?!"

"YOU PRACTICALLY WEAR A FUCKING CORSET, FOR GOD'S SAKE!"

Otacon sighed. They'd been going at it for hours, and they insisted on yelling, despite the fact that their own rooms were just a hallway apart from each other. His ears were well past the "ringing" stage, and had moved onto the lesser known "you know, chopping us off would save you some misery" stage. And he wanted to do just that.

"WOULD YOU TWO QUIT YELLING?! JUST PACK YOUR STUFF!!"

Raiden stuck his head out his door. "Geez, Hal, you don't have to yell."

Indeed. Indeed, he did not need to yell.

He settled for screaming and trying to rip his own hair out instead.

***

The flight to England was fairly short, only drawn out by Snake's whining of lack of booze, and constant attempts to shoot down anything with wings.

"Snake, just because we're in stealth mode, and have the weaponry, that doesn't give you the right to blast the shit out of other planes."

"Damn! We're in stealth mode? Come on, Raiden, it'll be fun! No one will ever know." He confided lowly, holding out a PSG-1 like he was a drug dealer offering crack.

"Dammit, Snake! What's the matter with you? Those are innocent people!"

The merc sulked, lowering the sniper rifle to his side. "Can I atleast nick off a few seagulls?"

"No."

"Pansy."

***

They had managed to land safely at the airport. This in itself was a miracle, especially if one took into consideration the fact that Snake was both armed with a sniper rifle and was in a pissy mood. Usually, such situations could only end badly.

But, surprisingly enough, they'd made it with nobody dead or otherwise incapacitated (though Snake had come close to M9ing Raiden when the kid was looking the other way). They hadn't wasted any time in renting a car, though Snake also wasted no time in complaining about 'how those assfuckers drive on the wrong side of the road and that someone needed to beat some sense into the entire fucking lot of them'.

Snake was currently leaning up against the rental car - black, Snake had insisted - smoking a cigarette and cussing up a storm while waiting for Otacon to finish inspecting an inconspicuous London alleyway wall. Raiden, too, leaned up against the car, but busied himself by playing his GBA.

"Third brick... third brick..." the nerd kept reciting like a mantra, running his finger across and up and down the wall, absently glancing back and forth between the paper in his hand and the brick wall in front of him.

"Jesus H. Christ, Otacon, it's a fucking wall. It's not like something's magically going to pop out -"

"Aha! Got it!" Otacon pressed in a brick and the wall dissipated.

"...Well I'll be damned."

Snake dropped the cigarette and stepped on it and grabbed Raiden's wrist. "Come on, pansy. Otacon wants to equip us with some nerd shit."

"Hold on a second! I've almost got this battle won, just gotta make sure Nina casts Bolt X-"

"No, we're going now." Snake flipped off the GBA's power switch, grabbed the device, and pocketed it.

"But Snake!! I hadn't saved in forever!!"

"You should've thought of that earlier."

"Bitch," Raiden growled, falling into step behind the disgruntled man as they walked over to Otacon.

"Welcome to Diagon Alley," the geek said, gesturing the cramped street before them, bustling with people going about their business.

"Holy fuck...," Snake said, staring at the abundance of people in colourful robes and steepled witch hats. "It looks like Halloween at my aunt's house."

"Snake, you don't have an aunt," Raiden pointed out matter-of-factly.

"That's not the point."

Otacon squeezed between the two agents to prevent any physical harm that would be caused by or done to either of them, and again looked at the piece of crinkled paper in his hand.

"Alright, first on the list is robes."

"Like bath robes?"

"No--"

"I'm not wearing any fuckin' bath robes! The hell kinda sick crazies are these people?! Wanting a free peek at my ass. Cheap bastards."

"No, Snake, not bath robes. Wizard robes."

"This is bullshit! I'm not wearing robes of any variety! They're all the same!" he complained loudly, getting attention from various people on the street.

"Er ...alright, then. We'll just skip this for now...," Otacon said uncertainly, dragging a bored Raiden and a disgruntled Snake, who kept ranting on and on about 'those fucking idiots and their robes.'

***

Otacon ran his finger down the semi-crumpled list, seeing what was left. "Umm, I think you two just need wands. Ollivander's shop is right over there." He jabbed his finger in the direction of a shop on the corner. Weaving in and out of the crowd of various robed figures and sprightly gossiping children, the three crowded in the tiny establishment.

An old man quite suddenly popped his head out behind a stack of boxes, and Otacon practically had to leap on Snake's arm to keep him from M9ing him.

"Didn't I tell you to leave that thing at home?" The hacker snapped, prying the weapon out of Snake's hands.

"What, and risk being jumped by these fucking crazies?" He eyeballed the shop suspiciously, his gaze falling back onto the elderly, large eyed owner. "What the hell are you staring at, geezer?" The shopkeeper stared blankly momentarily then began rummaging through some of the boxes.

"D'you see that?" Snake whispered in Raiden's ear. "He was checking out my ass!"

"Don't worry, Snake. He wasn't checking out your ass. No one is going to look at your ass, so stop panicking."

"Are you saying that my ass isn't nice to look at?"

"That's not what I was say--"

"My ass is the tightest, firmest ass you will ever come across, so don't you ever insist otherwise!" Raiden defensively put up his arms, backing away. Otacon buried his face in his arms, screaming; dealing with stress was never one of his strong points.

"So how may I help you boys today?" The shopkeeper chirped politely as he rather randomly moved the contents of one box to another.

"Wands! We need wands!" Otacon told him briskly, cutting off Snake's rant about how 'he wasn't a boy, but very much a man.' "These two idiots are first year teachers at Hogwarts, and need some wands." He gestured towards his two companions, both of which who were playing a massive game of Jenga with one of the many stacks of boxes lining the store. Raiden yanked one out, and stumbled back as the entire aggregation cluttered to the floor. The senior didn't so much as blink.

"Alright, let me just take your measurements." He advanced Snake with a tape measure, and nearly received a boot in the face. "Very perky I see."

"Stay the fuck away from me, pervert. You're not 'measuring my inseams'."

Ollivander nodded, and pulled out a wand, handing it to Snake. "Phoenix tail feather, unicorn hair, 8 inches."

"I'm not taking some fruity unicorn wand. Give me something manly."

"Cedar wood, essence of faerie wings, seven inches."

"Something big and metal..."

"Dragon heartstrings, hippogriff fur, eleven inches."

"...With jagged edges, so I could jam it into someone's eye...."

Otacon rubbed his temples; this was gonna take a while.