Ron Kovic - Rooster

[Scene: Dawn breaks over a misty jungle. Solid Snake leans against a tree, speaking softly into his codec. A distant helicopter hums, echoing the ghosts of old wars.]

Solid Snake (low and steady):
Vietnam…
That war never really ended. Not for the people who fought in it. Not for the ones who came back and found themselves strangers in their own country.

Ron Kovic was one of them. A Marine. Decorated. Paralyzed from the chest down. Came home thinking he’d be honored. But instead… they spit on him.
His own land.
He thought he was fighting for freedom, for democracy, for something noble. But when the noise stopped, and the planes landed, he found himself hated. Abandoned.

Reminds me of that Alice in Chains song—“Rooster.”
"They spit on me in my homeland…"
That line hits hard. It's not just music. It's memory. Pain. Betrayal. Every grunt who bled in those jungles came back carrying something heavier than a rifle—shame they didn’t earn.

Kovic didn’t just suffer; he stood up. Not physically—but morally. He turned his pain into protest. He told the truth. And that truth made people uncomfortable.

The Rooster didn’t die.
He walked through hell.
And he kept crowing.

You can train a soldier to kill, to survive. But no one trains you how to live afterward. Kovic had to figure that out alone—just like a lot of us.

Solid Snake:
They called us heroes… until we said we didn’t want to fight anymore. Then we became enemies.

But like Kovic, I’ve learned something:
The real war isn’t out there in the jungle… it’s in here.
[Snake taps his chest.]
And the only way to win… is to come home whole.

[He shuts off the codec. Rain begins to fall.]
Snake:
Yeah… Rooster.
You ain’t gonna die.