Franco( a.k.a the very first J'avo Jake meets) is named after the very first character you meet in Dead Space 2, who unfortunately dies and turns into a monster mere seconds after his introduction. Poor guy.)
"Hey, hey man, wake up, we're almost here!"
Kuan Ling yawned as he woke up from his quick nap. The British B.S.A.A soldier sitting opposite him shook his shoulder.
"We're there already?" he asked James, who smiled under his helmet and laughed.
"Gotcha, man! Hey, seriously though, wake up. We don't know when we'll run into trouble. The second American team that just chased those hostiles to the wet market have gone silent, you know. Who knows when something blows up in front of the car and then only the two most handsome people survive?"
He snorted. Despite being a first-hand witness of the horrors of this new virus in Edonia, James hid it all beneath a cheery, optimistic and joke-loving exterior who sometimes didn't seem to be aware of the magnitude of the problem. Most of the team had yet to decide whether his personality was a mask to hide a much tougher, possibly traumatised side or if he really was that oblivious.
"Actually, I don't even know what our current objective is," the Japanese soldier who sat beside him said. His name was Kazuo, and he, along with some of the other soldiers in the APC including Ling and the Captain, was part of the Far East branch currently operating in Lanshiang to combat the bioterror attack. The situation was serious enough that teams from the North American branch and European branch, most of which were also veterans in the Edonia incident were also here.
It had also been confirmed that the legendary Chris Redfield, who had been missing ever since Edonia, was part of the American strike team. His presence alone was enough to provide a considerable morale boost to the soldiers.
"It's simple, is what it is. Secure this district, clear it of all hostiles, and then hold it secure. And if possible, apprehend Evin Lee , an individual with possible ties to Neo-Umbrella and was last seen in this area," their captain, Yang shouted before adding "Although she also has a twin sister, so it's our job to make sure we don't mix them up,"
They all nodded and agreed. Ling put his hand on his chin thoughtfully before realization dawned on him.
"Twin sisters, huh? Dear God…" he thought to himself in shock.
"You think Neo-Umbrella's really a direct descendant of the original Umbrella?" Scott asked. There were murmurs of 'yea' and 'no'.
"I don't think so. Umbrella Corp more or less dissolved ten years ago. And besides, where'd the funding come from?" James said.
"Well, wasn't Umbrella's CEO a really rich guy?" Damien said."If you really believe it's the old Umbrella, then you're outta your goddamn mind. Might as well believe in the continued survival of Albert Wesker," Pete said.
"H-Hey! Wesker's still alive, you know! He's actually been sighted in Lanshiang several times now!" James said.
"Haha, very funny. Wesker's dead already, just face it. I don't think it possible that there's a mad bio-terrorist who is dead already still somewhere out there and dodges bullets on reflex, punches through walls and likes to play with his food a lot. Also, he falls in love with just about anyone. I mean, come on, man," Erik added.
"But…Wesker has to still be alive…all the facts are consistent…"
"I doubt a dead man who already died once would still be alive," he said in a bored tone.
"How about some powerful new virus, then-"
"The 'consistent' fact is that he still looks just like a normal human and has no visible genetic augmentations of any type," Damien said, remembering the rumors he heard about the secretive Kijuju report by Captain Chris Redfield.
James looked stunned before he pouted and crossed his arms like a spoiled and angry brat. He muttered "Wesker's still alive and you know it…" under his breath.
"Hey Ling, you got any stories to share?" Sophia, the French girl asked.
"Huh?"
"I've read your bio, you know. It said you were born and raised in Lanshiang before being involved in the Hong Kong incident when you went there to continue your studies and joining up with B.S.A.A shortly after that. Anything nice to say about Lanshiang, I mean, maybe we can tour it after this whole mess? Have a beer or two?"
He stared at her.
"I've got a story for you. My childhood home is being destroyed, none of my family are responding to my calls and messages, and people I love are dying left and right. This also happens to be the area where I used to live. That good enough a story for you?"
She looked deeply ashamed of herself before looking away. The rest of the team was silent for a moment.
"Although, something about those twin sisters are…..familiar," he said. The other soldiers perked up, intent on listening. He continued.
"When I was a boy, there used to be twins from the opposite apartment from over the street who came over all the time. They were orphans, you know, and if they weren't stealing from the marketplace in our block they were begging in the streets. Crossing the road was dangerous, so they learned to use the sewers to cross over." He chuckled. "None of the grown-ups ever found out about it. Only I did. Caught them one day playing ball in it,"
He smiled.
"They beat me up, tied me to a post, threatened to do stuff to me because I've discovered their hideout and where they've been keeping the loot they stole, but somehow we became friends instead. Hell, I've forgotten exactly how that happened. After that, I used to sneak down there and play with them all the time. Hide-and-seek, stuff like that. I would always lose, because they've got the sewers all memorized out, and in case you don't know, it's a goddamn maze down there,"
"And then, I started helping them out. Stuff I didn't need, I gave to them. Clothes, toys, food, you name it. Would just tell my family I was gonna throw it out, then I'll get down to the sewers and hand it to them. I would hoard my pocket money then split it up with them. Eventually, they got enough money to go to school. One of them. The other decided to look for honest work."
He then sighed.
"Evin decided to work, while her sister Sara went for education. But I don't know any other details after that, because my parents sent me to international school in Hong Kong, when the T-Virus outbreak there occurred. I survived and decided to dedicate my life to fighting bio-terrorism and honestly, I haven't gotten in touch with them a long time. Busy schedule. I…miss them, and I hope to God this Neo-Umbrella Evin is not the Evin I knew," he finished his story.
A few moments passed before James said "I feel for you, Ling. I know that busy feeling too. I hope everyone you know's ok. We all have loved ones, do we?". He then patted Ling reassuringly on the back.
The others whole-heartedly agreed before the driver shouted "Brace yourselves!"
That was what they heard before the APC shook and swerved to the side. There was a thunderous crash before James blacked out.
When he came to, he could see only fire.
Huh…what's happening…
His vision faded and came back repeatedly as he felt himself being dragged away from the wreckage of the APC. He heard gunfire, saw several soldiers…some alive, some dead…
Reality began to blur together with dream, and soon the images alternated between this and his memories...
Go! Go! Go!
So these are the new B.O.W.s, then? God, are they ugly...
So, wait, are these J'avo rebels who turned themselves into these things to fight the government, or are they something like the Majini, just tools to be used by a leader?
Ah, that was when they were dropped off...
What the hell is it saying?!
Well, its hands are in the air and its shouting something at us but its not attacking...What? What?!
Hey! What'd you shoot him for?!
Him? Don't you mean it?
I think he was trying to surrender...
Since when did viral mutants ever get the concept of surrender?
Alright, alright...
No! Elliot!
We got a sniper!
Elliot...his best friend, used as bait...may he rest in peace.
Did you hear that? The bird-whistle thing the J'avo do...
Hey! We've got a kid here!
A child soldier?
Get him in...hey, watch out!
He's got a syringe!
Oh God...we...we murdered a kid...
Is that...the C-Virus?!
Jesus...that was a bad, bad memory...
Just then, he felt a sharp pain as someone jabbed a syringe into his chest. He felt energy come back to him from the synthetic adrenaline, and he shook himself awake.
"What the bloody hell!" was the first thing he said aloud as he came to. Everywhere he looked was chaos. The men he who were with him were now fighting a rather large group of J'avo, the APC was upturned amidst the wreckage of several other vehicles. He turned to his savior, who turned out to be Sophia.
"Hey there, beautiful," he said to her, shamelessly flirting with her at the wrong time. To him at least, she was still an untarnished and shining example of beauty, especially with the blazing fire in the background. He couldn't help but smile dreamily as he was pulled up.
There was an angry and flustered look on her face before she shushed him and helped him to his feet.
"C'mon, c'mon, we gotta go!" someone he recognized as Yang, yelled. The remaining B.S.A.A troopers assembled near him. He was under a wrecked car, and had to shout over the gunfire.
"There's too many hostiles! I've radioed HQ and they're gonna send reinforcements, but until then, we need to find shelter! Somewhere safe!"
Ling looked over to an apartment building close by.
"That's where I used to live," he said as he pointed to it.
"Ling, now's not-" Sophia started to say, but James continued.
"I say we go in there!"
Yang looked at it and nodded.
"Alright, you heard him! Let's hole ourselves in!" he commanded. Ducking under the gunfire, the trail of soldiers got to the doors. Ling and Yang nodded before kicking them open together.
A humanoid monstrousity was standing over one of the corridors branching off the large lobby. Ling recognized it as the entrance to the sewers.
"How did…" he started to say when voices came from below the hole. The B.O.W standing there turned to look at them, it's deformed and mutated face contorting into a snarl before looking back and slamming the concrete block close.
Was it made of concrete? He remembered it being fairly easy to move and close. When did it turn into concrete?
"Chrysalid mutation. Oh God," James said in a rare non-serious voice as he came in and saw the B.O.W as it stepped forward. It looked somewhat like a T-Virus Tyrant, its body covered in cracked and bony plated armor with patches of exposed flesh here and there, what skin it had left pale and stretchy, sharpened ribs sticking out its chest, and its face horribly scarred and cancerous. Its yellow eyes narrowed as the lower jaw split into two mandibles and the B.O.W roared very loudly at them.
For some reason, it also had dark blonde hair on its head.
"Open fire!" Yang yelled. Everyone raised their guns and shot at the monster.
It roared again as it charged them, arriving at their position in the blink of an eye. It then backhanded Damien, who was knocked out instantly by the powerful blow. Next came an open palm strike aimed directly at Erik, who was sent flying and hit a wall before falling unconscious.
It then punched Yang in the gut, the Captain gasping and gurgling before falling to his knees, then slumping to the ground.
James noted how the B.O.W's attacks were almost like soft pushes, how it didn't seem to utilize much force. Like it was deliberately limiting the use of its own strength.
Well, it was made known to them in their briefings that unlike creatures spawned from other strains of viruses, all C-Virus B.O.W.s had, for all intents and purposes, a human level of intelligence and sentience. If so, that meant this particular B.O.W was no different, it had a plan up its sleeve or something…
Or was it under orders from Neo-Umbrella to incapacitate them so they could be used as human test subjects?
"Shit!" James exclaimed when he realized his daydreaming in the middle of combat may have cost him his life. It was standing in front of him, and grabbed him by the collar before lifting him up to eye-level. He squinted as he tried to look away from the mutant's yellow eyes. And that smell...
Where the hell was Sophia and Kuan Ling?!
Just then, a female voice let out a fierce battle cry and leapt on the B.O.W's back. It merely gave a grunt of annoyance as it flailed around, releasing James from its grip and trying to get the girl hanging onto it off.
Successfully grabbing her by the uniform and throwing her away like a pest, it failed to see the Chinese soldier with the SPAS-12 shotgun creeping up on it. It turned around to receive a load of buckshot to the chest at close range.
It cried out in surprise as it stumbled back, some of the plate armor blasted off and exposing the raw flesh underneath. It clutched the vulnerable area before glaring at Ling, who responded by pumping the shotgun and shooting again.
It roared as the force of the blast toppled it backwards, and as it got back up, seemingly only set back a little, the trio saw the exposed, glowing yellow heart beating on the now-bare left side of its chest, right next to a set of knife-sharp ribs.
James didn't waste any time; he raced forward, drawing out his machete, and stabbed it into the heart.
"Eat that, you son of a bitch!"
It was apparently stunned by the attack, as it took several dazed steps back before slowly pulling out the machete and staring at it. It then glared at them, the mandibles clicking like an insect.
"Uh…I think we just made it angry," Ling observed.
"Nice one, Captain Obvious," Sophia responded.
The B.O.W roared and…
Turned tail and ran.
"Huh. Never thought they would actually retreat," James said. Just then, he felt the cold presence behind him. Turning around, he saw another tall mutant, icy blue and covered in ice-like crystals. It seemed to be generating an ice field around itself as it walked towards them and growled.
How far did this virus go? What was gonna come next? A giant dragon? A harbinger of the apocalypse? An angel monster?
"Great. This just got a whole lot better," he said as he readied his assault rifle.
Leon groaned in pain as he fled from the B.S.A.A soldiers upon seeing the ice-B.O.W appear behind them and realizing it wasn't quite dead yet. While he may have tried his best to take them out non-lethally, seeing as trying to intimidate and scare them away with a roar didn't work, and certainly would have combated the ice mutant and make sure this time he stayed dead, if he did so it would just wear him out and leave him very vulnerable to the B.S.A.A trio. Still, something in him urged him to at least give them a chance of survival.
He could smell Helena from under the small sewer gratings along the corridor. All he needed to do now was follow the scent, and possibly find something to help the soldiers.
Opening the front doors, he was greeted by a large battalion of masked J'avo, all of whom looked surprised to see him emerge. They murmured amongst themselves, probably discussing what to do next.
As he looked on, he saw a flamethrower being held by one of them in the front ranks, probably a shock trooper or something of the like. Making a quick decision, he did what was possibly the stupidest thing he ever did.
He walked straight to the J'avo, who froze up in fear as he came up, and roughly yanked the flamethrower from his grip.
The other masked men simply stared as he casually walked back in to the lobby.
As he got back to where he was, he saw the three soldiers locked in battle with the ice B.O.W. Trying his best to make sure they didn't see him, he tossed the flamethrower from afar, seeing it land in the middle of the lobby.
His part was done. Now he just had to leave and catch up to Helena.
"You're a tough bastard, aren't you?!" James yelled as he rolled out of the way when the B.O.W unleashed an ice shockwave on the ground. Having you feet frozen in the middle of a fight…well, it's not a good thing, ok?
He got up just as he heard something heavy clank on the ground. Turning over, he saw a flamethrower.
A flamethrower. An honest-to-goodness gun that shoots fire.
Awesome.
"Watch your asses!" he told his teammates as he picked it up and aimed it at the B.O.W before pressing the trigger, not bothering to wonder who their savior was.
A jet of hot fire erupted from the nozzle, and the mutant screamed as it tried to shield itself from the flames.
"Yeah, take it, taste it!" he taunted as he edged closer.
The creature's crystallized body seemed to be distorting, melting as it flailed in pain. Slimy bits of itself started dripping to the ground as it slowly disintegrated.
Moving very close to the mutant now, he concentrated the fire full-force on it. It screamed one last time before the whole outer body melted into a puddle of blue goo, revealing a skeleton than crumbled into a pile of broken bones.
"YEA! I'm the Lord of Fire, you can't beat me! Bring it on, bring it on!" he yelled.
"THAT'S ENOUGH, JAMES!" a rough voice ordered as James was spun around. Captain Yang was standing before him.
"C-Captain, sir! I-I wasn't aware you had recovered!" he stammered.
Instead of berating him further, the Captain smiled and put his hand on his shoulder.
"You did a good job, soldier. A good job,"
"S-Sir?" Sophie said.
"What is it?"
"There's something happening to the B.O.W's…remains."
Sure enough, as they turned around, they noticed that the liquefied corpse of the mutant was bubbling…subliming into a blue gas.
"Dear Lord…it's a virus cloud," James said.
"EVERYBODY GET OUT! GET THE WOUNDED OUT OF HERE! DON'T STAY IN THIS BUILDING ANY LONGER!" Yang yelled.
Leon exited the building to see that most of the J'avo were now aiming their guns at him, though they didn't fire. They were probably unsure of his status as a threat.
He had no time for this. He could smell Helena's distinctive scent, just had to follow it.
He ignored the J'avo as he paced across the empty road, sniffing out Helena from below. He could feel his armor regenerating, the vulnerable heart already protected, though it felt like the process was considerably slower than the regeneration of Helena's hand. Still, if there was one thing he learned, it was that he needed to watch himself around shotguns.
It was then that he felt a prickling pain in his leg. Looking down, he saw the steel-tip arrow embedded in his knee, though it didn't hurt that much.
Plucking it out, he wondered. Looking behind, he saw one J'avo, a small automatic crossbow in his shaky hands. He particularly stood out because the J'avo surrounding him had distanced themselves from him. He most likely discharged the bolt by accident.
He really didn't need a fight now, but he needed to tell these guys to back off. Opening his jaws and mandibles, he roared loudly at them.
Apparently, that was the trigger they needed, seeing as a Jeep suddenly started up and charged full-speed at him.
He could only gape in surprise before he was hit, taking the full force of the blow. He was sent crashing through a blocked window before smashing into a wall, his vision going dark as he struggled to get back up.
There was shouting and gunfire outside, but as Leon came to he saw a very interesting sight.
Four masked J'avo were sitting around a table, illuminated only by a single flickering light bulb. It appeared they had bolted and shut the window and door themselves, so that no one else could catch them with what they were doing. There were many tiles on the table, with numbers, symbols and Chinese characters on them.
Mahjong. Mahjong. Of all the things that could happen, he just had to crash a presumably secret game of mahjong being plated by bio-terrorists.
They stared at him before looking out the window, seeing the chaos unfurl before them. Then, at a rather jarring speed, they drew out firearms from under the table and stood up, pointing it at him and shouting loudly. A moment paused before Leon decided to roar at them.
Almost comically, they immediately fell silent, quite unlike the J'avo outside. Then, one by one, they're shaky, sweaty hands dropped their guns, and the men bolted out from the room through the same window he crashed through.
…well, that was that. For once, the roaring intimidation technique worked. Ignoring the battle going on outside between the J'avo, the B.S.A.A, and some newly turned zombies, he went down a corridor, and caught something familiar.
Helena's scent. It was going upstairs.
Time to go.
#####################################################################################
Leon: Hunnigan.
Hunnigan: Yes, Leon?
Leon: I ate a raw egg, and it restored my Health.
Hunnigan: Wait, you—what—you what?!
Leon: I ate a raw egg, and it recovered some of my Health. Good thing too, because I had run out of herbs and first-aid sprays.
Hunnigan: Oh, err, I see….ah, excuse me for a second!
Leon: ?
Hunnigan: You heard what he just said?
Unknown Operator 1: Yeah, I did. There's no way eating raw eggs would heal external injuries.
Unknown Operator 2: Sounds pretty real, though. You think Agent Kennedy's a superhuman?
Unknown Operator 1: I heard Chris Redfield from the B.S.A.A and some other agents from the West African division could do such things too. Maybe they're all just hallucinating it?
Hunnigan: You mean like a placebo effect?
Unknown Operator 2: Beats me.
Director Mikami: Everybody, stay focused! As long as it does him no harm and heals him, surely eating raw eggs will help the mission, yes?
Hunnigan: I-I guess so…ok, I'll be getting back to him. Yes, Leon, eating raw eggs will recover your Health and you should do it in a pinch whenever you are wounded to heal yourself. Understood?
Leon: ?
#####################################################################################
Rate and review, please. Also, I'm so terribly sorry that it's not Chris' team, but don't worry, he'll show up soon enough!