Jungle Fever
Episode 3: A Lesson in Etiquette
"So let me get this straight. You comb the Island as I instructed, scouting around for the location of The Hive and yet your failure to locate the facility was a result of, and I quote here... 'A group of naked people in their late teens early twenties, two of whom had managed to outmaneuver you and incapacitate you before you were sent back out to sea on the boat from which you arrived'... Is that correct?" Wesker recounted, obviously disappointed by the two Soldiers he had sent to scout the Island for the location of the Hive and subsequently The Fortune.
"Uh... Yes" answered the soldier, elongating his response, realising that when the context of his failure was spoken aloud it really made him appear incompetent to lose to a group of unarmed people running around in the nude.
A momentary pause caused the room to fall silent for a moment as an awkward stare between superior and employee stood motionless awaiting for the other to speak.
"I'm fired aren't I?" the soldier asked sourly, his tone of voice dull from the primary reason he was fired in the first place.
"Oh yes" Wesker replied darkly, reaching over towards a control panel with big red shiny button on it.
"WOAOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!" screamed the soldier as he was flung out of the Laboratory though the skylight, breaking through the glass as he blasted off into the sky via a hidden spring which sent him flying into the stratosphere.
"You do know that you're costing this company hundreds of dollars in having to get the glass on the skylight replaced every week right?" Birkin sighed, dryly commenting on Wesker's unusual methods of 'firing' his employees in a way that was all too literal.
"Who cares, Umbrella has more money to burn than a gambler in a casino" Wesker retorted, completely dismissing the principle of the matter, smiling smugly over his GENIUS metaphor.
Billy Birkin sighed once again, realizing that it was going to be another one of those days where he'd have to put up with Wesker's moronic numbskullery.
Three weeks... Three weeks was all it took to drive Jill INSANE.
Oh sure, they'd done a FINE job at trying to diminish her sanity 2.9 weeks prior to her encapsulation on the island, but today was the day her little group of friends as nude as their group name 'The Nakeds' would imply, had well and truly pissed her off.
To a common observer they might appear to be seemingly innocuous behaviours, some perhaps finding no fault at all with the behavior of the naked group. But to a girl so uptight on etiquette and common courtesy like Jill Valentine, she found that the behavior of Chris, Claire, Leon and Becca to be simply inexcusable and absolutely shameless.
*EARLIER THAT DAY*
Another day in paradise so it seemed, well for everyone else anyway. Jill meanwhile was bearing witness to her friends' usual antics of fun, Leon kicking back against a palm tree, Becca giggling to herself as she found herself staring intently at the many different specimens of plants on the Island, Chris somewhere up above, likely swinging around on vines like an apeman and as for Claire... Well Jill wasn't sure where she was but whatever she was doing it wasn't really at the forefront of Jill's mind.
Suddenly taking her attention away from her inner thoughts was Chris who landed right beside her, seemingly in a good mood.
"Time to water the plants" Chris commented to himself, speaking his thoughts aloud as he stood with his legs apart, Jill's eyes widening and gasp audible as she realized the rather disgusting sub-text behind the words 'water the plants'
"Oh no you DON'T!" Jill snapped, stopping Chris from urinating the ground right out in the open.
"That's disgusting Chris. If you're gonna do your... 'business', then do it over there!" Jill ordered, pointing in the direction of some trees and bushes, there to obscure any golden water that could offend the eyes.
While Chris wandered off, Jill could only shake her head at the display of absolute degeneracy on display before turning her attention to Leon, his penis fully erect as he simply sat there fondling his dick and balls, enjoying his own company. Not if Jill had anything to say about that.
"LEON!" Jill exclaimed.
"What?" Leon queried.
"Stop... touching yourself like that, especially in front of a girl" Jill replied, uncomfortable with seeing Leon just run his hands across his boner and testicles in front of a girl like her.
"Why should I? Can't a man dream of what you look like without that skirt on?" Leon remarked slyly, subtly mocking Jill with another one of his lecherous comments.
"Pervert!" Jill retorted, leaving Leon to his dick while Jill just took a moment to facepalm, muttering something incoherent about boys and their... Well you get the idea.
However it wasn't just the boys that were making Jill lose her temper, it was the girls too.
"YAH-HOO!" Cheered Claire, coming in from the air as she jumped from the trees from above, making her finishing stunt after an adrenaline pumping session of an activity Claire called 'Jungle Sliding' headed straight for a tree where a sharp pointed branch was about to impale her.
"WATCH OUT!" Jill shouted, her voice full of worry and panic over the possibility that Claire was going to die.
By good timing on Claire's part she pivoted her body to the side, wall kicking herself from the tree before propelling herself back onto the ground with a finishing skid to a halt.
"Oh yeah! That was cool!" Claire exclaimed happily, raising her fist in the air as she congratulated herself on another X-TREME STUNT! she pulled off.
"Are you crazy!? You could've gotten yourself killed!" Jill yelled, completely shocked that Claire would put her life in such a dangerous position.
"Could've, but I didn't" Claire cockily remarked, placing her hands on her hips as she drank deeply into her own little world, still feeling the adrenaline rush of her close encounter with death.
Jill just backed away at her wits end, feeling like she hanging on a thin thread of sanity, dangling precariously over a cliff. The girl was damn near certain that it would take only one more thing to snap the proverbial string of sanity and send her plummeting down the chasms of insanity there to giggle high pitched fits of laughter and howl as her mind spun like a merry-go-round, dancing to the music in her head.
Rustling came from the bushes beside Jill, turning her head to see a smiling Rebecca, giggling to herself before showing herself, skipping gleefully naked while carrying two coconuts.
"Look at me! I've got big boobies!" Becca remarked cheerfully, jiggling the two coconuts around her small perky breasts, managing to get a laugh from Claire and Leon by the juvenile silliness of their young friend.
And then it all came crashing down.
*Jill. EXE HAS STOPPED WORKING*
Jill's mind completely shut down for a moment as she came to ponder what the hell she had just witnessed.
Sure she expected Chris and Claire to be a little more fast and loose with their living standards being more primitive, but for people like Becca and Leon, two of them hailing from modern civilization where there was a code of civility to be upheld, an etiquette. But to see Leon and Becca act like this was... Degenerate to say the least.
As Jill began to focus back into reality, her mind was made up and her goal was clear.
It was time to teach The Nakeds a lesson in etiquette.
"...So why don't we just storm the Island with a platoon of soldiers?" Birkin asked, perplexed by Wesker's lack of action against the so called 'naked people' on Mallet Island who prevented his scout troopers from finding The Fortune.
"Oh Billy... So full of naivety. Don't be so simple minded you fool... You can't just storm in without a plan, you must be stupidly elaborate about these things. Why use soldiers who require things like salaries and vacations and workers rights when you can instead unleash a Bio-Organic Weapon capable of untold destruction instead?" Wesker replied.
"Gee, I dunno? Maybe Because those things are usually unstable and probably going to kill everything in its path no matter who is friend or foe" Birkin remarked sarcastically, rolling his eyes at Wesker's ridiculous proposal that he use a B.O.W (Bio-Organic Weapon) to do the job when a larger number of soldiers would easily suffice.
"Yes but Bio Weapons are cooler!" Wesker whined.
"Being cool isn't the point Wesker, it's about efficiency without having to waste scientific resources on a crapshoot plan that-"
"Swear!" Sherry commented, stopping her father's sentence dead in its tracks as Billy winced at his daughter attempting to cut into his conversation.
"First of all Sherry, could you please move away from those chemicals over there. I don't want you messing with my stuff. Secondly, crap isn't a swear word, shit on the other hand, is" Birkin replied to his six year old daughter standing by a desk containing many bubbling chemicals of varying color schemes.
"But you just sweared again!" Sherry pointed out while her father closed his eyes, stewing in anger as he found himself deliberately walking into that trap, bested by a six year old girl.
"EXCELLENT! You're daughter shows logical progression towards strategy. Therefore... I submit that she has a place here inside the Umbrella Laboratories as a mediator between our little discussions" Wesker exclaimed, grinning while his colleague had been defeated by his own daughter and now aware that with her around Wesker would have an easy victory in getting what he wanted by Sherry's adorable means of distracting her father's attention from snarking at his plans and instead embarrassing himself like a complete doofus.
"Still doesn't change the fact that our problem could be easily solved by sending in a small armada's worth of soldiers to comb the Island and find The Fortune with relative ease, never mind the fact that there are naked people there they can just blast them on sight" Birkin spoke, trying to be the voice of reason in a place where apparently a reasonable perspective did not exist.
"That maybe, but it doesn't conform to Wesker's Rule of Cool" Wesker responded, giving a smirk of confidence while Birkin face-palmed at Wesker once again going on about his 'Rule of Cool' as if his sense of style made him sound clever.
"Ooh! Lemonade" Sherry chirped up, looking at a bubbling vial of yellow liquid likely containing some chemical that would sooner melt her throat than provide the delicious taste of lemonade.
"SHERRY NO!" Birkin exclaimed, his eyes widening as his voice expressed more emotion than he'd had in some time given his usual dry tone now becoming stricken with panic as he practically lunged towards his daughter, batting the vial of liquid away and shielding her before it exploded against the wall, melting a good chunk of it down as it burned a hole into the Women's Shower Room.
"AAAAAAH!"
"Sorry Ladies, didn't see a thing" Wesker remarked as the fury of twelve women glared hard at Billy Birkin who was now responsible for their current situation to which all he could do was simply sigh.
"Who's bright idea was it to situate the lab right next to the women's shower room?" Birkin remarked dryly, questioning the logistics of the architect's design plan that lead to him becoming the ire of every woman inside the Umbrella Facility.
Letting out another sigh, Billy just lamented his situation with a few closing words.
"I should've just stayed in bed today" Birkin lamented, his baritone voice expressing nothing but apathy for his current situation.
The Nakeds sat gathered around the only clothed girl on the island as she dragged them into some kind of intervention.
"Ugh... This is stupid" Leon muttered dryly, rolling his eyes sardonically before Jill gave him a stern look before continuing with what she wanted to say.
"Look, I've been able to tolerate all of this uncouth behavior up until now, but let me tell you that it stops here" Jill stated firmly, her stance authoritative as she asserted a commanding presence over the group.
"So, in the interest of trying to bridge the gap between civility and primal living standards I've taken it upon myself to start teaching you all a lesson in etiquette" Jill explained, receiving a confused shrug from Chris and Claire, a soft sigh from Leon and Becca curiously paying attention with utter sincerity given how she always wore her emotions on her sleeves. metaphorically speaking.
"And the first step towards civility is by putting on some clothes so you can-"
"NO" Came a unanimous answer from the group, speaking in unison as they outright rejected Jill's proposition to ever concede to the notion of wearing tight constricting clothing.
"Yeah I guessed you guys would say something like that but clothes have distinct advantages like keeping you warm and protecting yourself from danger" Jill reasoned, having expected the answer to her previous statement.
"But in return you have to deal with humid temperatures and then letting them stick against your skin all the while making them tighter to the point where you just wanna rip them off and run around naked" Leon replied, counterarguing Jill's point.
"And what about winter? When the wind starts blowing and the temperatures lower to sub-zero. What then?" Jill retorted, thinking for sure that she had them.
"We just make a fire" Chris answered simply, completely shooting down Jill's argument with a simple reply, making the girl wince as she felt so stupid that her argument had been considered faulty by means of a concept that has aided humanity since the dawn of time.
"Well, yeah! Besides, it feels really nice to have a cool breeze blow against your body when you're in the nude" Becca added, her tone sounding dreamy as she outstretched her arms as if to simulate how good she felt being naked and exposing herself to the elements.
"Damn right! All clothes do is just keep you bound and restricted. It's way more comfortable to just walk around nude and just kinda bask in your skin. Whether it's warm or cold, like Becca said it feels nice" Claire remarked, only further hammering the point home to Jill on how nudity was just the best damn thing in the world.
Exhaling a soft sigh, Jill realised that her task to get The Nakeds to wear any article of clothing was going to be fruitless, but still had enough resolve in her to try and convince them to find civility in a wild and untamed environment that lacked such courtesies.
"Still you could at least try being a little less... Visceral" Jill spoke, carefully wording her next sentence hoping not to come off as the bad girl in this situation knowing that offending her friends would be a horrible thing to do, even if she disagreed with them, completely self aware that despite their flaws she probably wouldn't survive without them.
"What do you mean?" Chris asked.
"For one thing doing your... 'Business' right out in the open" Jill replied, sternly placing her hands on her hips while her gaze narrowed into a sharp piercing glare, picking the first and by far most offensive point of criticism she had to deal with.
"Yeah, because as we all know the jungle is often portrayed as having a functional sewer system Jill. It's not as if there's really any other place better suited towards that kinda thing" Leon argued with biting sarcasm laced throughout his seething reply.
"Don't even get me started on YOU Leon, sitting around and fondling yourself. What the hell is wrong with you?" Jill snapped, not even making an attempt to hide her contempt for such disgraceful behavior from her male friend.
"Hey man, sometimes ya just get that itch in the crotch. Besides who the hell cares? A man's the king of his own jungle" Leon remarked, shrugging his shoulders as he casually defended himself while making no attempts to deceive himself from the kind of person he was.
"You stupid Bastard!" Jill snarled, cursing loudly as she glared daggers into Leon's soul, having a mind to wrap her slender hands around Leon's neck and throttle him until he stopped breathing.
"Woah Jill, you really gotta chill out" Claire spoke up, worried that the girl was going to explode in a fit of uncontrollable anger unless something calmed her down.
"Chill out? Oh, you should know all about 'chilling out' considering the kind of stunts you pull. I'm surprised you're even alive this long after all of those dangerous acrobatic stunts" Jill chuckled bitterly, her demeanour shifting to a cold dark place as she slowly came into a position where her anger was becoming antagonistic towards her friend's foibles.
"For your information, I've been doing this stuff for as far back as I can remember. I know what I'm doing" Claire replied coldly, understanding that Jill was angry, but even Claire wasn't gonna tolerate this level of bitter hostility all wrapped up in some passive aggressive lecture.
"Jill I understand that your mad and all, but can't you can't just go around being mean to us just because you don't like our way of doing things, it's immature to go off and criticize people's lifestyle just because you disagree with us" Becca reasoned, her voice trembling slightly as she was obviously uncomfortable with the amount of tension that weighed upon the group like a thick mist that blinded Jill into a seething rage. Hoping that in some way she could convince Jill to calm down and just understand them for a second.
"You're the one to talk about maturity miss 'coconut boobs'." Jill retorted, snarkily referring to Becca's earlier display of jiggling coconuts around her breasts earlier that day, causing the youngest girl to sink down slightly, refusing to cry in front of everyone despite the obvious emotional pain she was dealt by words alone.
"Ugh, don't you guys get it, I'm trying to help here!" Jill exclaimed, trying to reinforce the idea that she wasn't the villain here and that all of her anger served a point to help them rather than force them to accept her way and nothing else.
"Jill, you can't change nature. Me and Claire have been living like this our entire lives. And if Leon and Becca are loving this way of life too, then it just means that they're going native" Chris spoke, offering a calm approach to a woman so afraid of a lifestyle that was alien to her and desperately clamoring for a return to something more civilized and homely that she could recognise.
"But I-"
"Look, I know you mean well and all, but it feels kinda liberating to be like this ya know? I mean yeah it might be a bit crude and stuff, but sometimes you just gotta let lose and have some fun" Claire stated, cutting Jill off as she attempted to share some perspective on why being naked was so appealing to them
"But would it really kill you to show some common courtesy?" Jill asked, her voice sounding tired of this argument, given that she was beginning to realise that she was fighting a losing battle here.
"We're letting you wear clothes aren't we?" Chris asked, as if the idea to force Jill to be naked was something that they were going to do, but opted against it out of kindness.
"I mean apart from that" Jill replied rolling her eyes as she folded her arms.
"Dude, you're trying to force a controlled modern way of life into a wild jungle. Both sides aren't gonna mesh well if you put em together" Leon stated, pointing out the obvious difference of what happens when you try and enforce urban living standards in a natural and vegetation filled jungle.
"Leon's right. You're just gonna screw up the natural order of things in the jungle. And if I was to choose where I'd wanna stay, I wanna stay here where I can be free and naked all the time!" Becca chimed, finding a cheerful resolve as she found genuine happiness in her nudity and the fun she had while being naked in the jungle.
She wanted to speak, to retort against them all for even daring to contrary the RIGHT way of living. But she couldn't... She could say nothing against them.
In this moment of silence Jill had soon realised exactly what she was, what she had done and the words she had said that could never be taken back. Insulting their habits, finding them disgusting in her modern context. However that was just it, in HER 'modern' context. Chris and Jill were wild children who had probably never learned how to live otherwise in the jungle before, it'd make perfect sense why they would act the way they do in regards to their personal habits.
And as for Leon and Becca. All Jill had to do was look at them. They were having more fun than she'd ever seen from them. The gleeful laughs they shared as they ran around free and naked as the day they were born. Brightly smiling as they swung across the verdant beauty of the jungle from vine to vine.
Too late did Jill realise that it wasn't her friends who were the ones with the problem here...
It was her.
"I'm sorry" Jill quickly muttered apologetically, turning and running from her friends out of cowardly fear of facing them again, knowing in that attempting to expose their foibles with such enraged passion, that emotion left her at a dangerous weakpoint in which anybody with a brain who knew how to read people could decipher the problem and easily dissect her on an emotional level to selectively know which flaws to point out to her and leave Jill metaphorically naked as a result.
It was from this that Jill lamented her situation, disparaging at her inadequacy as far as her survival skills were concerned. That was her weakness and she realised would be the death of her in her failure to adapt to the jungle environment making her easy prey to a wild animal that decides that it wants to munch on a Jill Sandwich for lunch.
Suddenly jolting to a halt, Jill felt something solid blocking her path, causing her to trip over the object that was shrouded in bushes, tumbling to the dirt as she fell flat onto her face, grumbling a slew of curse words not appropriate for younger audiences, bearing a scowl as she slowly pushed herself up and uncovered the shrubbery to find that which had been fated to trip her over and comically make her fall over like a complete dolt.
Within the shrub she had found a metal footlocker hidden away, the metal rusted from disuse.
Knowing that pulling the lid open wouldn't yield a positive result and given the anger that was still bubbling away from her previous embarrassment, Jill knew that there was only one way she could open this footlocker.
"RAAAAAGH!" Jill snarled, giving the footlocker a mighty kick, flipping the lid open and taking a look inside to see what kind of goodies were hidden inside.
Inside the footlocker was a piece of paper, aged and faded, likely there from decades ago given that it appeared to be modern enough to have been written by typewriter, putting the document within the 20th century at least, containing a map and co-ordinates written down simply titled 'Fortune' alongside a name written down at the bottom right of the page titled 'Langdon Alger'.
"What the?... Could this be what those Umbrella soldiers are looking for?" Jill asked herself, recalling that they were indeed looking for something called 'The Fortune' and given their tenacity and the fact that the were willing to shoot her and The Nakeds dead because of it, this looked to be some kind of instrumental clue as to what could lead them to finding what they were looking for.
The Valentine Girl thought for a brief moment as she held within her hands the power to alter her destiny forever.
This was her bargaining chip and if she played her cards right, her way out of this jungle and back home to a normal life. If she were to ever run into them again, whether it be if they were skulking around the island again or if they confronted her friends directly, she could give them the page in exchange for her transportation back to Raccoon City, leaving this place behind for good.
But of course doing this would also mean coldly rejecting her friends and in many ways manipulating their lives if she were to give Umbrella what they wanted given that they could and probably would kill them if they had the chance like they did before.
The question from this moment forth would haunt Jill until the inevitable day came where she would play with people's lives and play the manipulation game manifested itself into one single query.
Was it worth sacrificing her friends to find her way back home?
A/N: XD HAI NAKED GUYS AND GIRLS!
^^ oooh we've gotten suddenly all dark and edgy now that we've got our big question and mystery thingie XD I love mystery stuff and character arcs and all that edge of your seat stuff that leaves you hanging XDDDDDDDDD
Anyway goofy silly me aside X3 I wanted this chapter to be one more about the characters and Jill's alienation of the environment and what I think would happen after living there for a while.
I mean Becca being kooky and silly and Claire being a daredevil girl who loves danger and being awesome and stuff was easy to write for but I was a little bit stuck on thinking about what boys would do in the jungle ya know (I am a lesbian after all so I dunno XD) So that's why I'd think they'd probably fondle their balls or something ya know.
^^ Another thing I loved writing was the interactions with Billy/Wesker/Sherry being really really fun and stuff. It kinda made me think of the Bonne family from Megaman Legends and stuff which was really fun because they're like evil and stuff, but also a family ya know so it's kinda awesome like that.
Anyway I hope you liked it and coming up soon we're gonna be seeing what happens when The Nakeds attempt to find 'The Fortune'.
XD See ya next time Naked Readers!
