Chapter 1: Blinded

"To be blinded is to be open to the rest of the world." ~Unknown

~Note: Hi guys! This is a new story that I have been writing for a little bit now and it is a more relationship sided story as opposed to The Last One and The Recruit (Although on the latter i AM trying to sneak some in! ;} hehe) You guys and thank Clockwork Echo who actually replied to a comment i left saying they were liking my stuff and awaited updates and in my head i went "SHIT I HAVEN'T UPDATED FANFICTION!" i have been on Archive for the past few weeks so i hope this makes up for the random wait!

~Piers

The last thing he remembers is the building crashing down, the feeling of death and despair flooding into his mind. He washed up on a deserted beach, not knowing where he was anymore. It was good that the beach was so deserted this late in the day because he could barely move without having a sharp surge of pain course through his entire body; although, the deserted beach could possibly be on account of the storm brewing over his head. It looked to be as if a hurricane was moving in, or at the very least, a nasty tropical storm, Piers would need to find some sort of shelter soon.

~Chris (Same time)

It's been two weeks since China happened. He wanted to leave the B.S.A.A., but he knew that he owed everything to the men he had lost. They had a vaccine and treatment going, so there was still hope for infected people. Jake Muller was the one he had to thank for that, even though the treatments weren't one hundred percent effective, they still gave people a fighting chance, they just needed to still have a will to live buried somewhere inside of them.

That is how Chris Redfield found himself with his new ragtag group of fresh recruits. They were still eager to aid against the threat of B.O.W.s but one of the few things that kept Chris going was the debt to the men he had lost in China and Edonia, and he still had the badge of the most recent sacrifice of a noble man to save Chris' life. Suddenly, Chris got an incoming call to his phone, it was Jill Valentine, Chris wondered what she could possibly be calling him for now to talk to him about.

"Jill, what on earth do you want this time?"

"I'm just checking in on you, you old bear. I just wanted to remind you to be careful there is a storm coming in and people have still been seeing wreckage wash ashore. Some civilians have tried to go check the stuff out and then they just go missing. J'avo were also reported to have been sighted in the area."

Chris sighed; he was getting all too used to these things by now, "I know Jill, I know. We are just going to head out and run some drills to practice for bad weather during a mission. Any sign of hostiles and I will pull my ment out of there, you know I am not eager to lose any more people in this war."

Jill bit her lip for a moment before she continued, "I know you aren't just… be careful, ok?"

"Yes Jill, I'll call with an update if something bad happens." And with that Chris disconnected from the phone call.

Chris returned from his call to look to his men. They were a lot like his last group was, young, happy, care free, everything they had been before the first signs of war began to ebb its way into them almost as fine as the way a spider would weave its very own web. Chris had seen time and time again how young and care free people could become hardened and cold, dead to the rest of the world from war. He had been there once, but even then it was the world that was dead to him, rather than the other way around. He still remembered that day, when he was wasting away in a bar in Europe, the day his team came back looking for him.

"Good steak is hard to come by, not like back home."

Chris has just scowled at the man back then while order another drink from the bartender. He had no clue who this man was or why he was even trying to talk to him. Then the waitress came back, pouring him barely anything while he took the bottle away and said a few insulting things to her.

"Get the hell out of my bar!"

Chris had nowhere to go, he just staggered away from the bar while still holding the booze, this is what he was now, a useless and pathetic old drunk plagued by his past. What happened next was still a haze and fog in the back of Chris' mind, still waiting to be lifted. A man grabbed him by the shoulder saying the bartender asked him to leave. The next thing Chris remembered about that day was throwing the man onto a table, bringing up the bottle he still had to bring it crashing down on the man's skull.

Then, before he had managed to break the bottle on the man's head, a man grabbed his arm, shaking his head indicating that the man was not worth the effort it took to even raise the bottle off the table. Chris simply stumbled over to a table, the man following him and sitting down across from him. That is when the man started showing him pictures, demanding that he remember his past. Then it all started rushing back to him in painful waves, his men, Edonia, Ada Wong, everything that had put him into his amnesia, and then he recognized the man, Piers Nivans. Piers Nivans was the man that sacrificed himself to save his Captain; he was the Captain's Ace and always stayed on target, even when Chris' vendetta against Ada Wong was causing more and more people to lose their lives in a futile fight.

Chris was jolted from his thoughts when one of the new recruits came up and asked him a question, "Captain Redfield, are you ok? You don't look too good."

Chris responded to the new recruit with a melancholy tone in his voice that did not go unnoticed by the man in front of him, "Yeah just… remembering things."

"Alright, if you say so Sir, but we should get moving and get this stuff done before the storm sets in on us."

"Alright then Quentin, round up the rest of the men and we can head on out to get started practicing."

"Roger that Captain Redfield." Quentin gave a salute to Chris before starting on his way to the rest of the team.

Chris watched as Quentin jogged away to get the rest of the team. They all got together eagerly, a lot like a team he used to have, but no, today would not be a repeat of the past. Today, nobody from his team was going to die, not today, not if Chris could help it.

Chris yelled to his team while they were still gearing up, "Alright boys let's move on out of here! We probably only have an hour or two at the most before this storm starts to pick up."

"Roger that Captain!" Every single one of his recruits yelled this together in unison and started heading out of the gate.

~Piers

Piers stumbled around trying to find adequate shelter from the incoming storm. He was partially blind now, completely in one eye and the virus was starting to blur his vision in the other eye, which happened to be his left eye. To compensate, his body had amplified his hearing. He could hear the worst of the storm rumbling off into the distance, and from what he could tell it sounded to be several miles away. Then he started to hear voices, some of them were the obvious signs that J'avo were in the area but there were other ones, more human sounding but he couldn't quite place them.

Suddenly, gunshots rang out over the increasing sounds of the storm, one such bullet knicked Piers in the shoulder. He could feel blood coming bout of his arm but the wound had healed itself almost as quickly as it had been injured. Piers tuned into his hearing, it was as if he was watching the J'avo from above. Trying to pinpoint where the J'avo were with some kind of accuracy, Piers opened his somewhat good eye but everything still just remained blurs of movement. Piers could hear the cocking their guns again, readying theirselves to let a volley of bullets ring through the ever increasing sounds of the storm.

Another shot went off, hitting Piers' infected arm and Piers could not even try to stop the growl that had forced its way up his throat and could also feel the tingle of electricity arcing between both sides of his clawed arm. He could hear the J'avo getting closer, trying to shout above the storm. Piers decided to try and use the sound of the J'avo to his advantage, because they obviously had yet to realize that Piers may be blind, but he had extremely good hearing, he was able to block out sounds at will, effectively seeming like he could just mute the storm and all he heard was the J'avo. Piers started to let the electricity charge in his arm, he tried to aim at the largest concentration of the J'avo and let his arm shoot off the electricity. He easily electrocuted almost a dozen J'avo and then set part of the forest on fire while trying to kill off the rest of them.

~Quentin

"Okay boys, so, while we are out here with the storm going on I just want you guys to practice aiming, shooting, anything that comes to mind. The weather isn't always going to be on your side during a fight."

Captain Redfield was giving them rather vague instructions but he must have felt that they should practice what they believe they need to, or, at least, that is what Quentin thought, then Chris continued on, "you guys are going to split up into teams of two, Ed and Quentin, Jack and Andy. Report back to me or Ares before things get too rough, anything happens and we will call you over the comms."

Quentin and Ed started heading off into the southern direction where there was some dense forestry and a few caves. After about two minutes of walking they could hear faint sounds of yelling and gunshots. About ten seconds later they saw a fire about half a mile away, they were walking into dangerous territory. They looked to be about a mile or two away from everyone else with as quickly as they started running towards the fire.

Ed looked over to Quentin with a fearful look on his face, "What the hell do you think is going on over there? There shouldn't be anyone else out here let alone having a fire fight setting the whole damn forest on fire!"

Quentin hissed back at him, "Quiet you idiot! There is no telling how many of them could be around here waiting for us!"

Ed took in a deep breath to try and calm himself down but still looked around wildly, "What do you think is going on then, Quentin?"

"I don't know, but I definitely want to find out what's happening in these woods."

"Are you pancake flipping nuts Quentin?! We could get our asses shot to high heaven!"

"And what would you do if those people up there are just a bunch of regular civilians fighting one of those B.O.W. freaks huh? Would you just leave them all alone to die?!"

"Well… no… but that doesn't mean my chicken ass is any less scared of finding out what the fuck is going on."

"Well who said anything about not being scared Ed? We are all scared at some point but we just damn sure better be able to do what needs to be done when the time calls for it alright rookie?"

Ed sighed in defeat, "Alright, let's go find out what is going on I guess."

What they found however, was not regular people fighting a B.O.W. but rather, J'avo fighting a single, mostly humanoid B.O.W.. It had a single mutated arm, its right arm, and the arm was peppered with bullet wounds. They were closing quickly but they could see that it was starting to slow down. The J'avos were mercilessly unloading clip after clip into the B.O.W..

"That's new… never knew J'avo to fight with other B.O.W.s…" Quentin whispered this to Ed, somewhat amazed at the sight he was seeing.

"So… do you think we should help it? I mean, if J'avo are trying to kill it that must mean a good thing for us right?"

Quentin kept an eye on the progressing fight. He assumed the B.O.W. must be blind because it appeared to be shooting in the general area of J'avo rather than directly at them. He motioned for Ed to bring his rifle out and they began to pick off the J'avo. About five minutes and several dozen kills later, Quentin and Ed were the only ones left alive beside the strange B.O.W.

The storm was starting to pick up, the wind was howling and torrents of rain started to pour onto the earth like the sky itself was crying at the appearance of this strange B.O.W. Quentin and Ed didn't even notice when the creature walked up behind them because it was so loud. Ed freaked out and almost shot his foot off when he heard labored breathing coming from behind them.

"Ughh… t-thanks for t… the help, w-who are you guys?" His breathing was labored, he had a lot of bullet wounds in his strange arm that were closing slower and slower.

"Hey, buddy, before we get into that let's get your wounds taken care of, alright?"

"S-sure… I g-guess that's alright."

"Here, eat these while I try to cover up these wounds."

Piers took what Quentin handed him and eyed it suspiciously, it was mixed herbs, although Piers could not currently recognize them because of his blind, and mostly blind eye. He ate the pills and Quentin stopped trying to patch his arm up because the B.O.W. started healing extremely fast again.

"W-who did you guys say you were again?"

"Um…we're the B.S.A.A…"

"The B.S.A.A… argh!"

Quentin and Ed watched as the B.O.W. doubled over in pain clutching his head low to the ground with his left arm. "H-hey buddy, are you alright?"

Quentin was kneeled down next to the creature in front of him. It looked like it was taking a lot of energy for him to stay awake. Sweat was forming increasingly quickly on his head and his mutated arm was thrumming with electricity.

"Ughh… Redfield… Valentine… Simmons… Muller…"

Ed looked at Quentin, "Did he just… how in the hell does he know those names?!"

Suddenly, the B.O.W. stopped writhing in pain. It looked up at them with fear in its eyes. Without a single word it took off into the woods like a maniac, the sunds of its departure lost in mere seconds over the sounds of the storm.

"Do you think we should follow it?" Ed quickly asked Quentin even though it was still easy to tell how scared he obviously was.

"Hmm… let's at least see if we can find him again."

Quentin and Ed took off in the direction the B.O.W. had gone. They found the path easily enough, there was a lot of trees with smashed portions to them, there was also evidence of some kind of wounds because they could see blood on some of the trees. They followed the trail for as slong as they could, but the path dead-ended at a cave entrance where ed thought it would be a good place to turn around.

"Q-Quentin… I don't think we should keep going, he already freaked out are you sure he won't attack us?"

Quentin was saved from making a response when they heard the captain's voice over the comms.

"Quentin, Ed, where the hell are you two?! It's been damn near an hour and you two still haven't checked in."

"Captain, can you hear me?" was the response Quentin rushed into the comms hoping that the Captain did not notice the uncharacteristic tone of nervousness in his voice.

"Yeah I can hear you what the hell have you guys been up to?!"

"Um… Captain I'm not really sure how to explain it right now but we definitely have something to tell you."

"Just hurry your asses back to base Quentin."

"Copy that Captain, we'll be back soon."

~Thirty Minutes later in Captain Redfield's office

Chris had been pacing for several minutes now. Quentin and Ed were sitting silently but still nervous from the ass chewing they knew they were about to get. After a couple minutes of eyeballing the recruits in front of him Chris sat down.

"Do you two have any IDEA how pissed off I am? First you don't check in and then you come back with MISSING supplies?!"

Quentin nervously cleared his throat hoping it didn't show to the Captain, "Sir, with all due respect Ed doesn't need to be here, he followed me because I wanted to check something out."

"Really, and what may I ask, did you want to check out that required you to use AMMO?"

Quentin cleared his throat again, "Well Sir, I know we weren't supposed to be out fighting anything but we came across a bunch of J'avo fighting a B.O.W. which was kind of strange, he had set a little bit of the forest on fire and the J'avo weren't letting up on him. So we figured any J'avo trying to kill a B.O.W. would be a good thing for US, so we started picking them off. We didn't notice him sneak up on us afterwards but he didn't attack us, I patched him up a bit and gave him some pills which helped him heal extremely fast because I guess with all the bullet wounds it slowed him down a lot. After that he was actually talking, asking us who we were with and when we said *B.S.A.A.* he collapsed clutching his head in pain like he was having some sort of flashback, during that he mention a few names, one of them being yours. After he stopped clutching his head he went running off into the woods with this scared look on his face like we had just killed his mother. We followed his trail through the woods and it was a… slightly disturbing sight to say the least, trees were smashed and splintered with blood on them, like he was trying to break his arm off. We followed him to the mouth of a cave but Ed here convinced me it might not be such a good idea, and then we heard you over the comms."

Chis looked to Ed raising his eyebrow, "Well that is quite a mouthful of a story, is this truth Edmonds?"

Ed looked up to Chris and looked him dead in the eyes, Ed may be many things but a liar is not one of them, "Yes Sir, every single word of it."

"Alright then, when this storm lets up you boys are going to show me where this… *friend* of yours went to, do I make myself clear?"

"Yes Sir." Quentin and Ed both replied with a salute.

~Piers

"The B.S.A.A… argh!" Piers doubled over in pain clutching his head while thousands of forgotten moments flashed through his head like water when a dam breaks.

"Redfield… Valentine… Simmons… Muller…" the man kneeling down by Piers said something but it wasn't even comprehensible and so Piers couldn't even make out what he said.

In an instant, Piers remembered everything, Ada Wong, the underwater oil facility, the C-Virus, everything he had been missing since he woke up on that beach was rushing into his mind. He looked back up at the soldiers for a split second; they were wearing North American B.S.A.A. badges. Piers remembered Chris, his friend, mentor, and Captain. He couldn't imagine what would happen if the B.S.A.A. decided to put him down and Chris was the one who had to do it.

So, Piers ran. He ran as quickly and as far as he could. He doesn't remember why but somewhere along the way he started bashing his arm into trees. It might have been some subconscious effort to try and get rid of the mutated appendage that was now his arm. He splintered trees and drew blood, but the wounds just kept healing. He found a cave and ducked inside of it while the storm still raged outside to get some sleep and just hope that nobody would ever find him.