By Grendel226 a.k.a. Arren Dracone
Note: I don't own any of Resident Evil...it's all Capcom's doing. This story takes place during the first RE at the Arkley Mansion. The only plot inconsistency is that I've included everybody's favorite misanthropic enemies: lickers. Bear in mind this IS a silly-fic. While I keep my descriptions and writing style mildly serious, I take pot shots at everything from Barry's limited vocabulary to the sluggish doors and letter-boxed cinematic sequences, all leading up to a really bad punch line at the end. As you'll probably be able to tell from the dialogue, the fic opens with the start of the game. Enjoy. :)
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"What is it?" Barry asked for the fifth time in at least five minutes. Jill and Weskar had already helped him establish that it was in fact a mansion they stood in. Now they had to affirm the unmistakable sound they had heard was a gunshot. "Maybe it's...Chris," Weskar whispered, "Now Jill, can YOU go?" Barry stepped in apparently feeling a surge of testosterone. "I'm going with you. Chris is our old partner y'know." Jill quietly wondered when Barry had developed a southern twang to his voice and shrugged as they walked up to the door, which slowly swung open. "A dining room!" Barry exclaimed. Jill shook her head...he either missed it entirely or overstated the obvious. Jill was examining a clock when she heard Barry exclaim, "What? What IS this?" Seven times in five minutes. Jill walked to where Barry was standing over a pool of dark red and slightly sticky liquid. "What is it?" Jill asked in turn before biting her tongue. 'Great, it's catching,' she thought to herself. Barry finally determined that it was blood, once again restating the obvious. "Umm, Barry. Is it just me or has the room become...cramped?" Jill asked looking at the black line above her head and just below her kneecaps. But Barry didn't seem to notice. "I'll keep examining this," he stated bluntly and Jill went through another slowly opening door while Barry continued to examine and re-examine the puddle of blood, hoping it would reveal more clues other than its obvious bloodiness. Jill turned a corner, her rocket launcher bouncing irritatingly against her hip. Just then she heard a drip above her head and looked up. A large creature that appeared to be a skinless ape with razor sharp claws hissed at her. Its tongue snaked out before it promptly fell to the floor with a thud. Jill had wanted desperately to back up but the black bars had appeared above her head and at her feet again, and she found it difficult to move when her feet were not altogether there. Not hesitating, she shouldered her rocket launcher and fired straight at the creature's back. It promptly burst into flames, screaming and writhing before turning into a small charred heap.
Fleeing back out the slowly opening door, Jill made a mental note to begin kicking the doors open. As she walked back into the dining room she was once again encumbered by the pesky black bars which at least left her feet free this time. "Barry?" she called tentatively. Just then the door swung open. "What is it?" Barry asked, feeling it seemed appropriate for once. "Watch out, it's a MONSTER," iterated Jill as the certainly inhuman looking fleshless beast crawled towards the pair. Barry feeling a surge of testosterone again stepped in front of Jill, "Stand back," he proclaimed valiantly "Let ME handle this!" He then proceeded to unload six or seven rounds into the creature that finally rolled on its back, its tongue lolling out of its mouth. Jill tapped her rocket launcher against her shin and glanced about innocently deciding against telling Barry that one rocket would destroy the beast. "What IS it?" Barry asked again, this time more for effect than anything else. Jill bent over the creature and stared at the cadaver. It's tongue was blue. Well that was certainly odd.
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Jill mounted the stairs to the second floor balcony. She and Barry had split up after Weskar disappeared. Just then Barry reappeared through a door. "Jill!" "Barry!" "You're alive!" "That's what *I* was going to say," Jill retorted, suddenly realizing what a foolish remark it had been. "I found something," Barry said in important and conspiratorial tones. "What is it?" Jill felt like slapping herself on the forehead but a black bar, which had appeared on Barry's entrance, was currently obscuring her forehead. "It's a WEAPON. It's REALLY POWERFUL against living creatures." Jill was greatly relieved to find it was more useful against living creatures rather than dead creatures, and took the Acid Round wondering if it would be more effective than her rocket launcher. "But what about you?" she asked, feeling almost certain that a grenade launcher didn't stand a ghost of a chance against a rocket launcher. "I have *THIS*," Barry remarked triumphantly, brandishing his diminutive handgun. Barry left the room and Jill found herself once again uninhibited by the black bars. She walked and found yet another slow opening door and began to convince herself that none of the doors in this house could be opened with any expediency. She certainly hoped that she didn't need to beat any hasty retreats. Just then another one of those disgusting creatures dropped from the ceiling. Jill fired twice: the first rocket sailed into the ghastly green wallpaper but surprisingly made no damage whatsoever. The second connected with the creature that rolled into a screaming blistered pile. Curious, Jill reached in past the razor teeth and grabbed the beast's tongue. Purple. What was going on here?
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Jill couldn't make heads or tails of the happenings of the evening. Weskar had disappeared, and now she was in some strange underground laboratory where at least the doors opened more quickly. She had run into countless numbers of those odd creatures through the night, and each had sported a different colored tongue: red, orange, green, purple, and brown. It made no sense. She was wandering back to the elevator she had just reactivated when she found Barry whom she promptly chastised for dropping her down a deep hole though she suspected perhaps the suspicious black bars that kept appearing had hindered him. Turning a corner she found her facing Weskar and found Barry pointing a gun at her head. "Weskar! Just as I suspected!" she hissed. She had only come to suspect it after finding two or three files telling her Weskar was on Umbrella's payroll but this confirmed her suspicions. Barry left for the heliport and Jill turned to face Weskar. "Barry was easy to manipulate. I have bigger plans." "Then this wasn't part of Umbrella?" Jill asked wide-eyed. "Umbrella? Haha. No, this was for my own personal gain." Weskar hissed. "In fact I'm going to *SHOW* you!" Jill and Weskar walked through the slower than usual opening door and immediately one of the skinless things fell in front of them. Jill shouldered the rocket launcher and reduced it to ashes, then was shocked to hear Weskar's bellow. "You fool!" Weskar cried angrily. "You stupid fool! You've ruined my plans!" The tongue of the creature dipped out of the side of its mouth, a small white stick rolling across the floor. "I'll never know now, NEVER! Ever since my childhood I've sought the knowledge. And now it's all gone!!" Jill looked at the room strewn with tiny papers and tiny white sticks as Weskar dropped to his knees.
"HOW MANY?!" he cried in despair. "How many licks DOES it take to get to the Tootsie Roll Center of a Tootsie Pop?? Now the world may never know!"
The End :)
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Back to the authors note: So I played with Survival Horror a bit. *grin*
My original closing line was "How many lickers does it take to get to the
Tootsie Roll Center of a Tootsie Pop"...maybe I should have stayed with
that.