Tada! Here it is! The newest chapter of 'Fighting for Our Lives'! In my opinion, this is the best chapter so far. It gets pretty emotional so if you easily cry, I think you might need a few tissues… I almost started crying as I was writing it… Anyways, sorry for the delay, I've just been really busy with school. But I finally got this finished during Thanksgiving break! Yay! Anyways.. See you at the end of the chapter:)
Leon and I were almost back to the village, but not yet. Right now we were walking through the house I had met the merchant in. Leon held up his hand, silently telling me to wait, while he checked the hallways. I nodded and Leon began pushing the door open as slowly as possible.
"Jeez, you take ten years to open a freaking door." I said, annoyed.
He rolled his eyes and pushed the door open a little more and stopped. There were voices coming from downstairs. He carefully stepped out into the hall when someone violently grabbed him by the neck, and held him in the air, chocking him. I watched in horror as the man I recognized as the tall man from before chocked Leon until he was kicking and turning blue from lack of oxygen.
I couldn't take it anymore. I shoved the door open and kicked the guy in the shin, doing no damage what-so-ever. At least it got him to look at me.
"Stop!" I screamed. "Please, don't hurt him!"
Everyone was silent. Then, the big man threw Leon down on the ground, brought his hand up, and slapped me. Hard. The sound was loud, and I fell back onto the floor from the force of it. Leon's eyes grew wide with shock and hatred for the man as I clutched my cheek in pain. The man smirked at me and turned to Leon.
"You carry the same blood as us, it seems. Never the less, you're an outsider. Just remember, if you become unpleasant to our eyes, you'll both face severe consequences." He then turned around, and entered the bedroom.
As soon as he left, Leon quickly stood up and rushed over to me.
"Are you alright? Does it hurt?" He asked. "Let me see."
I turned my face to the side, letting Leon get a better look at my now swollen cheek.
"Yeah… it looks pretty bad. There's definitely going to be a bruise. Here…" He pulled out a can of First Aid Spray, and was about to spray it when I stopped him.
"No. You can't keep wasting all of that stuff on me. I'm fine. Really."
Leon looked at the red hand print on my cheek, and then at my eyes. I held his gaze, letting him know I was serious, until he put the can away.
"Wait here." He said and stood up.
I copied him. "Why? What are you doing?"
"Just stay here."
Then I realized what he was going to do.
As he began walking towards the door, I grabbed his arm and tried to pull him back.
"No, Leon, stop! You can't go in there!" I shouted.
He looked at me with annoyance clear in his eyes and I let go immediately.
"Just wait here." He said one more time before I nodded and he forcefully pushed the bedroom door back open.
Not even a second had gone by before I heard struggling, and a gunshot. I sat down, not wanting to go in there, not wanting to be anymore of a bother to Leon, but not wanting him to get hurt either. All of the sudden, two steady gunshots went off, and there was a loud crashing sound. I quickly stood up and ran into the room to find Leon gazing intently out the broken window as if he was in another world.
I approached him carefully, not wanting to startle him. "A-are you okay?"
He turned around looking confused at first, but then assuring and said, "Yeah, I'm fine. Let's go."
Then, Leon's communicator went off again.
"Leon, I've been able to get some now info that might help you." Hunnigan said.
"Fill me in."
"Apparently there's a religious cult group involved. They're called the Los Illuminados."
"Los Illuminados? That's a mouthful…"
"It means The Illuminati…" I explained.
Leon thought for a second and said, "Anyway… we had an unexpected run in with the 'big-cheese' of this village, Bitores Mendez."
"But you're okay, right?" She asked.
"Yeah… but he could've killed me, but he let me live… And he mentioned something about me carrying the same blood as them. Whatever that means."
"'Carry the same blood'… Hmm… Interesting…"
"Anyway, there are more important things than solving riddles right now." Leon stated.
"You're right. Hurry and find that church Leon."
While Leon was talking to Hunnigan, I was snooping around the room. I found a key that had some kind of bug-looking thing on the top of it, like the door back in the village.
When Leon hung up, I turned to him and said, "Hey Leon, look at what I found!"
He took the key from my hands and examined it. "Hmm… Maybe this opens the door back in the village…"
"Yeah that's what I was thinking."
He looked back up at me and then said, "Come on, let's go."
We walked out of the bedroom and down the stairs. There was a painting on the wall of a church, and Leon said something about Ashley. Who was this chick? Was she his girlfriend or something? Whatever… that doesn't matter. In the kitchen, there was an egg in the oven. An egg in the oven. What the hell is wrong with these people? It wasn't even cracked or anything, it was just sitting there!
After searching through the rest of the house, and taking what ever we needed, we walked through the back door and were greeted by the sounds of a chainsaw.
"Holy shit, it's the Texas Chainsaw Massacre." I said, but Leon completely ignored me. "But wait, I thought that one chick cut off his arm?"
Ignoring me, again, Leon shot volleys of bullets into the guy's chest, because, somehow, the paper bag was protecting his head. (AN: Please note the heavy sarcasm in that sentence.) I sighed and shot the guys legs, making him fall to the ground. Once he was dead, Leon and I continued down the beaten path, shooting who ever got in out way, until we came upon the door that led back to the village.
"Well, this is it…"
Leon nodded and opened the door.
There were a few more people in the village, but not many. We took them all down easily. Once the village was cleared, we walked up to the door with the huge, red, bug-looking thing on it. Leon took out the key we found and put it in the lock, and the door opened.
This room was medium sized and had a nice looking table, and a chandelier above it in the far, right corner. I wonder what they used it for…
There was another door in this room that led to some kind of storage room. There was a single red lantern hanging on the ceiling, and a trap door in the back.
"Wait." I said as Leon began walking forward.
Before he could say anything, I shot the lantern, and flames went everywhere.
"Why the hell did you do that?" Leon asked.
I rolled my eyes and walked over to where the lantern fell once the flames died down, and picked up a little jewel out of the ashes. "For this." I took the flashlight from his belt and shined the light on the spinel. "Look, Leon, I would never do anything unless I had a good reason to."
I handed him back his flashlight and the spinel. "How did you know that was in there?"
"It was in a game I played once. And I saw the sparkle."
We walked to the back of the room where the trap door was, and knelt down beside it. Leon lifted up the door and I turned to him as he turned to me. It was too dark to see anything, but I felt his breath on my face. Our faces were so close. All I had to do was lean in just a little more…
I felt my face heat up and I quickly turned away. It would be stupid to kiss him, right? I mean, he was like way older than me. It doesn't matter how big his muscles were, or how blue his eyes were, or even how his smile could cure a blind person. Okay, maybe I was exaggerating a bit there, but come on, you have to admit this man was gorgeous.
"Uh… I'll go first…" I said, trying to break the awkward silence, and jumped through the door when I saw Leon nod.
A few seconds later, Leon cautiously jumped down also.
"Lame. You act as if there are a whole bunch of babies down here or something, and you don't want to land on them." I said.
He rolled his eyes. "You know, you shouldn't just jump down like that, you could get hurt."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever Mom. Let's just go."
We began walking down the tunnel, and I couldn't help but feel a little freaked out. The steps were steep, and the walls were slimy.
"This tunnel could use some creepy background music…" I whispered.
Leon chuckled. "Yeah, like the Jaws theme song or something."
"No, no. Jaws music is specifically assigned to scary water creature things. Not creepy tunnels."
"Okay, then what would be good for creepy tunnels?"
"Hmm… The Halloween theme song!"
"Yeah, that is pretty creepy…"
Before I knew it, we were at the merchant again and Leon got upgrades on all of his guns. Once that was finished we paid and thanked the masked man, and walked through the door we were standing by. The door opened to another part of the tunnel, and once we were safely behind it I turned to Leon and whispered, "That guy creeps me out…"
He chuckled and we kept walking. "Why do you say that?"
"I don't know… It's like he follows us everywhere."
We climbed up another ladder, this one was long. It took about a whole minute just to get up. When we eventually did make it to the above world, there was a path that was surrounded by, you guessed it, trees! Leon went ahead, to check the place out while I followed behind at a distance. A few seconds later, Leon turned around and said, "We've made it to the church."
As soon as we stepped into the graveyard that was in front of the church, someone shouted Alli esta! Leon took down the guy with the axe, and I took down the bitch with the kitchen knife. When that was done, and after we shot the rest of the blue medallions, we walked up to the door of the church, only to find that it was locked.
"Shit!" Leon said as he pulled out his communicator.
"You like that word, don't you?" I asked.
Leon completely ignored me and began talking to Hunnigan. "Hunnigan, its Leon. The door's locked, I can't get in."
"Didn't they teach you how to pick locks at the academy?" She joked.
Leon scoffed. "There's some sort of indentation, like something might fit inside."
"Well, there's no use of standing around. Leon, you have to find some way, or something to get inside."
They hung up and we stood there on the porch of the church. Leon looked as if he was thinking hard about something, and I was thinking about what Hunnigan said.
"That is so what she said!" I exclaimed, trying not to burst out laughing.
Leon looked at me, first like he was confused, but then he got the joke and smacked me in the back of the head.
"Get your head out of the gutter." He walked down the steps and I followed behind, laughing hysterically.
There was no other way to get into the church, so we decided to take an alternate route and see if the key was anywhere. The path we were on led to a bridge out of planks, kind of like the one above the trench. The problem was there were huge gaps in this one. Leon could jump them easily, but I had short legs…
"Just jump across, and I'll catch you!" Leon shouted from across the gap.
"No you won't! You won't catch me and I'll fall into the water and drown!"
Then, in a calmer tone, he said, "Emily, I promise I'll catch you."
"And what if you don't?" I retorted.
"Then I'll jump in the water and save you. Just trust me."
I thought about what he said. If I did fall, and he jumped in after me, there was a ninety-percent chance he would land on top of me. But I decided to just man up, and jump.
"But wait, what about the jacket?" I asked.
"What about the jacket…?"
"Well… it's really big on me, and what if you lose your grip and drop me or something?"
He sighed. "Look, Emily, like I said before, I won't drop you. But if it makes you feel better, you can take it off and just put it right there." He pointed to a spot beside me on the platform.
"And just leave it here? But it's your jacket!"
He shrugged. "It's getting old anyway… Now, are you going to jump or not?"
I took of the jacket, folded it, and set it beside me, shivering and how cold it was with out it. I took a deep breath, readied my self, and jumped.
There was that split, horrifying second or two when both my feet were in the air, and I thought I would just fall, right there, but I didn't. Leon kept his promise and he carefully, but firmly, put his hands on either sides of my waist, and set me down gently.
He must have thought I was insane, because I was blushing like crazy.
"Are you alright?" He asked.
I nodded. "Thank you."
"Don't worry about it."
I smiled and we entered the shed that was to our left. There was another note, which was written in Spanish, so I translated it.
"Closer of the Church." I began.
"Regarding the three fugitives, the apprehension of Luis is our top priority: The American agent and the girl, and distant second.
"What Luis stole from us is far more important than the- Wait. Ashley's the president's daughter?" I asked, astonished.
"Yeah, why?"
"So she's not your girlfriend…?"
"What? No! Why?"
"Oh, n-no reason! J-just wondering…"
He gave me an odd look and I kept reading.
"Unless we get it back, she will become useless to us. We must get it back to execute our plan to the end.
"If it gets in the wrong hands, the world would become a totally different place than what Lord Saddler had envisioned. At all costs, we must not let that happen.
"Nevertheless, we're not letting go of the girl. To ensure that the agent doesn't get to her, I have locked the church door where the girl is being held.
"Anyone who needs access to the church must first get approved by Lord Saddler.
"There is a key beyond the lake, but it should be safe now that the 'Del Lago' has been awakened by our Lord. No one will get across the lake alive.
"Plus, our same blood courses through the agents veins, and we are working on getting Las Plagas into the girl. It'll be just a matter of time before they join us. Once they do, there will be nobody else left that will come looking for the girl… Leon, what are they going to put in me…?"
"Nothing. I won't let them do anything to you. Now come on. Once we get Ashley, we can all go home, and forget about this whole mess."
I just nodded and we kept walking. There was another gap, and when he grabbed my waist, I didn't blush. I was too busy thinking about what he had said: "We can all go home..."But the thing was… I didn't have a home. My parents were both killed; I had no one else left. And I didn't turn eighteen for ten more months; I wasn't even legally allowed to live alone.
Leon must have noticed the sad look on my face, because he said, "Hey, look." We stopped walking in front of the door we had to go through and he made me look him in the eyes.
"I promise I won't let anything happen to you, okay? And if something does, I'll let you hit me. Right here in the face."
I smiled and nodded, looking at the ground. I felt my face heat up again and Leon smirked and said, "There we go." This made me blush even more. Damn you, cheeks! Why do you have to get red every time he looks at you? What made it worse was now he knew it happened!
When we walked through the door, the first thing I heard was caw-caw! Caw-… caw-caw!
"Oh my god, shut up!" I ran out into the open field-type thing, that looked strangely like an arena of some sort, and started shooting at as many birds as I could, which was eight.
After I had finished my little rampage, Leon and I continued our journey, and walked down a few steps and through a green door. There were more steps, and then a ladder, which I awesomely jumped down from, and then I immediately saw a blue light.
"Ooo! Merchant!"
I ran up and greeted the merchant, Leon following slowly behind. He's lame. It's like he doesn't know how to have fun.
"So, Stranga, I see you've all fifteen medallions. As promised, here's your specialized gun. Don't worry about money, this one's on the house."
He gently set the gun in my eagerly awaiting, outstretched hands. I turned around quickly to show Leon my new gun.
"Look, Leon! Isn't it awesome?" I showed off the gun, doing random poses with it.
"I'll take that…" He snatched the weapon from my hand.
"Hey, wait a minute! I was the one who shot all of the blue thingies!"
"Yes, but you're still a noob at this kind of thing."
Did he just say 'noob'…?
Leon sold his handgun and put the Punisher in its place.
"I am not a noob!" I screamed at him as we were walking out. "My aim is way better than yours!"
This made him laugh. "Yeah right, playing video games doesn't boost your accuracy hun, practice does."
I honestly didn't know what to say to that, so I figured my red cheeks could do the talking for me.
We used the other door this time, and robbed the shed that was there. Right past it there was another creepy signpost.
"Heads up…" I warned, and we slowly walked forward.
Yep, I was right. We heard a loud rumbling and merely side-stepped the boulder that came rolling down.
"Losers…" I said, making Leon laugh.
When we got to the end of the hill, we were standing in front of a mini lake/pond thing. There were a lot of creepy men in this area, but most of the time they were stupid enough to blow themselves up in the tripwire bombs, so we didn't use much ammo. We did, however, have to walk in the water, which didn't help the fact that my shoes were completely ruined.
We walked up the ramp, and across the platform, onto dry land. There was another hill, but no sign, so there weren't going to be any boulders.
At the top of the hill there was a door that led to two different directions. We could go right, which led to another shed and a dock with a boat, or we could go straight, which was just a cliff looking out onto the lake. Leon and I took the straight path first. We walked up the hill and when we got to the top, I though of how fun it would be to cliff dive off this thing. That was when we heard the boat. We crouched down behind some brush, and Leon pulled out his binoculars. It looked like the two men in the boat dumped something into the water and Leon said, "Shit…"
"What is it?" I asked.
"One of the police officers."He looked back into the binoculars.
Once the men drove away, there was a loud roar and I snapped my head up just in time to see what it was: Del Lago. He was big, at least one-hundred feet long. He was a dirty green color, like the color of the lake, and his mouth was huge. He had razor sharp teeth that looked like they could shred you to pieces.
"Okay, now would be a good moment for the Jaws theme song…"
I turned around and noticed Leon was walking away.
"Wait, Leon! What are you doing? How are we going to get across the lake with that thing…?"
"I'll kill it." He said with no emotion and kept walking.
"What? How do you plan on doing that?" I hurriedly followed him.
We turned left. "I don't know. I'll figure something out."
We were almost at the dock. "And what if you die? What am I going to do then? What about Ashley?"
He stopped at the dock and turned to me. "Jeez, could you at least have a little faith in me? I won't die, I promise."
"Don't make a promise you can't keep…" I said quietly, looking at the ground. My eyes were getting watery, and I tried my best not to cry.
He sighed. "Look, Em, I-"
"No!" I interrupted. "You don't understand! Both of my parents are dead! They were killed by th-those things! Right in front of me! You're the only thing I have right now… I can't lose you too…" The tears wouldn't stop pouring from my eyes. I weakly wiped at my cheek and looked back up at him. "But i-if you want to go and get yourself killed, that's your decision. I obviously don't mean anything to you. I'm just a stray dog that followed you home."
"No. It's not like that…" He said quietly.
"Then what is it like, huh?" I awaited an answer, but he never gave me one.
"I'll be back soon." Then he turned around and got in the boat.
I sat there on the wooden dock and watched as Leon drove across the lake. I wiped my tears away. I hated this. Hated crying. I wanted to be tough, needed to be tough if I wanted to make it out of here alive. Leon would eventually get tired of me if all I did was whine.
I stood up and looked out onto the lake. There was Leon in the little boat, and… something else. I squinted and looked closer to see a giant, green fish swimming just beneath his boat.
"Leon! Look out!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, praying he could hear me.
Leon looked back at me, and then glanced all around him fully alert. Then, all of the sudden, Del Lago jumped up out of the water right in front of him, making the boat rock back and forth until the water grew more still. Suddenly, the boat sped forward as if it had a mind of its own. That was when I realized that the hook that was attached to the boat by a rope had caught onto Del Lagos back, and was now towing Leon around in the water.
My heart raced as I watched Leon fight the lake monster, stabbing it with the harpoons that were conveniently placed in the boat. Sometimes, he would fall out of the boat and I would watch in fear as he would swim back. Other times, Del Lago would disappear from sight, and I had to tell Leon where he was before he popped back out and knocked him out of the boat again.
Then, one last time, I shouted to Leon, "Behind you!"
The blonde man quickly turned around and chucked a harpoon straight into its open mouth. The monster cried out in pain and sunk deep into the water. Then, as if we hadn't had enough already, the rope from the hook wrapped around Leon's leg and he was forced to cut himself loose, or be pulled down into the depths of the murky lake.
Once that was over, Leon slowly drove back over to me. He stepped out of the boat and onto the dock. I greeted him with a massive hug.
"I'm so glad you're alright…" I whispered once I let go.
"Yeah well, I told you so." He grinned at me and my face turned red. Again.
"So where do we go next?" I asked, looking out at the lake.
"I saw another dock on the other side, so I guess we can go there." I nodded and we climbed into the boat. When we got to the other dock, we both stepped out and began walking towards a house that was there. All of the sudden, Leon made a loud grunting sound, and doubled over in pain, clutching his chest.
"A-are you okay?" I asked, my voice heavy with concern.
"Yeah… I-I'm fine. I just- Ahh!" He screamed our and fell to his knees.
"Leon!"
I helped him back up to his feet and we stumbled into the vacant house. As soon as we were in, Leon began coughing. A lot. He pulled back and looked at his hand: there was blood. About two seconds later, he fell to the floor.
"Leon!"
I ran up to him and felt his pulse: he was still alive. I sighed in relief. I didn't know what else to do; he would have to wake up sometime…
I looked around the room: There was a table, some shelves, and a bed.
A bed…
It hadn't occurred to me just how tired I was until then. I walked over to Leon, and looked at his face. Despite the way he passed out, he looked… peaceful. I looked back over to the bed and thought that maybe sleep wasn't such a bad idea. Leon would have to wake up eventually, and when he did we could continue the mission. I took off the sheet and turned it inside out, so it wouldn't be as dirty, and then I took off my blue over shirt and laid it of the pillow.
I laid down on the bed, and before I knew it, I had drifted off to sleep.
Oh my god…. This chapter was so. freaking. long. It took me like 2 and a half hours to type it. Seriously. Oh well, I better get used to it. This is how I'm doing all the chapters from now on. Each chapter in the story ends where the chapter in the game would end. And sometimes the chapters are LOONNNGGG.
Anyway… What did you think of the story? Do you think I'm going to fast? And what about all the drama between me and Leon? Please review and tell me what you think! :)