Disclaimer: Resident Evil is owned by CAPCOM. I only own my OCs and make no profit from this either.


"If I start hearing banjos at any point during this trip I'm so outtie 5000," Alma declared to Leon when they finished mopping up the villagers they'd come across tending to the farm.

"I thought it was 'Audi 5000'?" Leon replied, catching his breath and giving her a little half-smile.

"What?" she asked in confusion. "That's what I said; outtie 5000."

"No, you said 'outtie', not 'Audi'," her partner countered, going through a few cabinets on the first floor of the shabby barn house.

Alma pursed her lips in annoyance, folding her arms over her chest. "That's what I said Leon," she insisted once more.

"No it's not-," he trailed off, withering slightly under the glare she sent his way.

'Women are scary, don't matter how old they are. As a matter of fact, the older they are, the scarier they seem to get,' he thought to himself, giving her a blithering smile in response.

She seemed pacified with the way he fell silent and continued opening a few wooden crates with her knife as Leon covertly breathed a sigh of relief.

Once they had finished pilfering supplies from the farm the duo headed through the only doors they could. The other set of doors was barred shut and while Leon could've easily boosted Alma over it, there was no reason not to take the right path first.

Work smarter, not harder after all.

They shouldered the doors open together, revealing a few stone steps carved into the ground leading down a hill from their current position.

"That doesn't bode well," Leon murmured, nodding towards a sign in the shape of a red 'X' with what looked like two skulls hanging from it. "Watch your step."

"No kidding," Alma agreed, looking at the ground for any hidden bear traps before cautiously walking forward.

"?!" Alma let out a startled squeak when she felt Leon grab her by the belt and yank her backwards as a giant boulder came crashing down on the exact spot she'd been standing moments before.

She went down hard, hearing an ominous 'pop' elicit from her right elbow when it struck one of the steps. Fire seemed to lick at her fingertips as white-hot pain flared up and down the length of her arm. It took everything she had not to start crying.

"You okay?" Leon asked, extending a hand her way to help her up. Alma gave him a sour look, reaching up and grasping his outstretched hand with her left.

"Thanks," she muttered after catching her breath, allowing him to help her to her feet. "You've got good reflexes."

"I just pay attention," he shrugged, eliciting another dirty look from the brunette. "Not saying you don't-."

"I know," she sighed, wincing when she tried bending her elbow. "Might be out of commission though."

Leon frowned, uncrossing his arms from his chest. "Are you hurt?"

"Heard and felt a pop when I hit my elbow," she sighed, swallowing tightly. "Don't know if it's broke or-."

"Dislocated?" Leon suggested, taking her right wrist gently in hand and helping her out of her coat so he could examine her elbow.

"I don't know. I'm not gonna look though," she sniffed, turning her head the opposite way.

"I can pop it back in for you."

"Um, I don't think-."

"My little brother would always get nursemaid elbow when we were kids so I got pretty good at it."

"This is a little different than that-."

"This might hurt a bit."

"Please don't-." A howl of agony escaped Alma when he pulled down on her wrist and levered her elbow back into place with a wet 'snap'.

"You okay?"

"Do I fucking look okay!?" she seethed angrily, ignoring the fact that the pain was actually slightly more manageable than it had been in favor of being a bit of a bitch (and justifiably so, thank you very much).

"Sorry, I'll bandage you up," he stated with an apologetic shrug, withdrawing a roll of bright blue coban from his ammo pouch along with some gauze, a yellow herb and a green. "The herbs will help alleviate some of the swelling at the site. I've also got some Advil in my kit I can give you."

Alma watched him diligently wrap her elbow with gauze that had the paste-like herb concoction on it. He was being so gentle that it was making it really hard for her to stay mad at him.

When he finished patching her up she choked down her painkillers dry, grimacing as she did so.

"Thanks," she sighed as he helped her back into her jacket.

"Can you still shoot?"

"I'm ambidextrous when it comes to firearms."

"Convenient," Leon replied with a slight chuckle.

"Wasn't the best sniper in SWAT for nothing," Alma stated.

"You were a sniper?" he asked as the pair cautiously made their way down the hill, keeping an eye out for any more unwelcomed surprises.

"Mmhm. Been shooting since I was old enough to hold a gun."

"What's your favorite?"

"Ah, nothing can beat a good old fashioned bolt-action rifle," she smiled. "But I've always had a soft spot in my heart for 12-gauge shotties."

"A girl after my own heart," Leon teased her as they made their way through a break in the hillside, dodging bats as they did so.

The other side opened to reveal a rundown barn (though everything was rundown it seemed), and two small houses.

"See him?"

"Mmhm. See two in fact," Alma agreed, withdrawing her handgun from her shoulder holster with a wince. "There's another in the house."

"What's he holding?" Leon asked, squinting a bit.

"Something hazardous to our health?" Alma suggested.

Leon took a step forward, then another before a hissing sound reached their ears.

"That's-." He threw up his arms in front of his face to protect it from dirt and debris spraying up from the ground.

"Dynamite," she finished, taking aim as the Not-Zombie held up another stick he had gotten from god knows where. Alma waited for him to ignite it before nailing him in the hand, setting it off prematurely and blowing their enemy to bits.

"Do you think you can hit the-?" Leon hadn't even finished speaking before the second Not-Zombie blew up as well.

"Yup."

"Remind me never to get on your bad side," he settled on saying as she strolled past him nonchalantly. "You remind me of someone I used to know."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" she asked over her shoulder, sidestepping a bear trap.

Leon furrowed his brow, glancing away as the memory of a certain Lady in Red decided to surface for the first time in a while.

"Oh, bad thing, huh?" Alma tried to joke after a few moments of silence had passed.

"No. Just-someone I knew from Raccoon City. She, uh, she-," Alma swiftly cut him off.

"You don't have to explain. I know how much it sucks getting flashbacks to things I don't want to remember," she assured him, clapping a hand on his shoulder and giving it a shake. "C'mon. We've got a mission to finish."

"Roger that," Leon agreed, giving her a tight-lipped smile that didn't reach his eyes.


"Door's locked."

"No kidding," Alma snorted with a roll of her eyes. "Too bad I didn't bring my lock pick kit along."

"Isn't your motto supposed to be 'always ready' or something?" he asked, crouching down and eyeing the heavy padlock securing the door.

"That's the Coast Guard you're thinking of. My old squad's motto was 'Don't get up, we'll let ourselves in'." Leon was unable to stifle a laugh at those words.

"Cheeky."

"Comes with the territory, you know that. You were a cop once upon a time, weren't you?"

"Only for a day."

Alma raised an eyebrow at those words. "Seriously?"

"Yup," he stood, brushing off his pants. "Stand back."

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to shoot it off."

"This isn't Hollywood Leon, you can't shoot a padlock off a door," she scoffed, resting her hands on her hips.

"With a shotgun you can," he assured her. "Stand back."

"And you know this how?"

"Trust me when I say you don't wanna know," Leon replied. Alma retreated to a safe distance, watching him take aim before blowing the lock clear across the porch (as well as putting a dent in the metal door).

"Impressive."

"Oh please. I know it'll take a lot more than that to impress you," Leon replied, shouldering the shotgun once more before opening the door.

Alma raised an eyebrow, a tiny smile tugging at her lips as she followed him in.

"See anything useful?" she called, puttering around the tiny kitchen as he wandered further into the house.

"Yeah. Come give me a hand with this."

Alma started down the hall after her partner. "There's a breeze coming from behind this bookshelf. Looks like there's a room behind it."

Alma leaned her good arm against the bookshelf, bracing herself with her feet as she helped Leon move it.

"You hear that?" Alma tilted her head in the direction of a wardrobe at the back of the room Leon had nodded towards. The door was rattling, like something was trying to get out of it. "I'll take point."

"I've got your back," she assured him, readying her weapon.

"Just so long as you don't put a bullet in it."

Alma bit back the rude comment on the tip of her tongue, instead replying with a scathing, "That wasn't funny."

Leon glanced over his shoulder at the irritated agent. "I was just joking. Sorry if it came out sounding-."

"Ignorant? Rude? Dickish?" she supplied hotly, seeing him wilt slightly under the verbal onslaught.

"Yeah," he rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly before clearing his throat. "Anyways, you ready?"

"Locked and loaded," she grumbled, raising her Picador to the wardrobe. Leon stood off to the right side, gripping the handle.

He locked eyes with her, giving her a curt nod that she readily returned, steadying her aim. Leon unlocked the wardrobe as a body came tumbling out of it. Alma stepped forward, lowering her weapon after a moment when she realized he was bound hand and foot.

He looked wildly between the two agents, mumbling and frantically shaking his head. Leon crouched, ripping the tape off his mouth.

"Ouch, ohh, little rough, don't you think?" he spoke with a thick accent, glancing between the pair nervously. Leon unceremoniously rolled the man on his front, withdrawing his knife from its sheathe.

"Y-you guys aren't like Them?" the captive asked as Leon began sawing through the ropes securing him.

"No, you?"

"Nope," he rolled away from the agents, rubbing at his bruised wrists and running a hand back through his disheveled hair. He cleared his throat, brushing dirt off the sleeves of his used-to-be-white shirt. "I just have one very important question."

"If it's 'can I have a gun' the answer is no," Alma stated, holstering hers and drawing her right arm across her chest, cradling her elbow.

"Nah. Just wondering if either of you have a smoke," the Spaniard said with a sheepish grin.

"Got gum," Leon offered, procuring a wrinkled pack of Double Mint from his jacket pocket.

"You were holding out on me," Alma said, reaching forward with her left hand and wiggling her fingers. "Gimme."

"You could say 'please'," Leon grumbled, opening the pack before hearing the floor creak loudly out in the hallway.

Alma swung around, seeing a bearded man that towered over her by at least a foot and a half standing at the doorway with two other villagers wielding pitchforks.

"Perfect. The 'Big Cheese'," the former captive sighed, leaning back against the wardrobe door.

"Who?" Leon asked, eyes narrowing as he sized up the new arrivals. Alma swallowed tightly, taking stock of their opponents and coming to the realization she wouldn't be able to draw her gun before they reached her. She couldn't rely on CQC, regardless of how much better her elbow was feeling. Maybe they could-

She didn't get any further than that in her planning before Leon charged forward, spinning a powerful back kick to the giant's chest. There was an awkward paused before the 'Big Cheese' grasped Leon's booted foot and flipped him ass over head back into the wardrobe.

"Leon!" Alma yelled as the wardrobe crumbled to splinters around her partner and the other male. She didn't fare much better than Leon, being brutally bitch-slapped into the wall seconds later. She struck her head on the corner of a cabinet on the way down, lights bursting in myriads of color before her eyes.

The last thing she saw was the 'Big Cheese' approaching her before the world flared white and just as abruptly went black.


"Hey. Hey, wake up."

"Ay, yi, yi. Crawl out of one hole and into another." Alma inhaled sharply through her nose, opening her eyes to narrow slits. The ground was hard beneath her and she could feel dirt and gravel scraping against her cheek.

"What fresh hell is this?" she muttered hoarsely, clenching her eyes shut before fully opening them. They were in what looked like a storeroom, judging from the bags of grain she was currently propped against, sunlight streaming in through a narrow window.

"Ngyuen, you okay over there?"

"Not really," she replied, eyeing the heavy manacles around her wrists securing her to the wall. "But I'll make do. You wanna tell us what's going on here, guapo?"

"Hmph, me llamo Luis Sera but thank you for the compliment," the Spaniard flashed her a charming smile only to receive a sour look in response.

"My name's Leon, that's Alma. We came here looking for this girl, have you seen her?" Alma heard Leon rustle around in his ammo pouch, withdrawing a picture of Ashley from it and showing it to Luis.

"What, are you supposed to be cops or something?" Luis asked, glancing between the agents. "Nah, neither of you look the type."

"What does it matter? Have you seen her or not?" Alma grumbled, getting tired of the way he was dancing around the question as she stretched her legs out before her with a pleased sigh.

"Oh, feisty aren't we? Mm, let me guess. She's the President's Daughter…?"

"That's too good for a guess," Leon said after a pause. "Wanna start explaining?"

"Psychic powers," Luis stated cryptically.

"Yeah, and I'm the Queen of England," Alma retorted with a roll of her eyes.

"You must be fun at parties," Luis replied, eliciting a small chuckle from Leon. "Nah, I just overheard the villagers who locked me up mention something about the President's Daughter being held in a church somewhere."

"We were already by the church and they tried to murder us," Alma said, glancing over at Leon.

"No you weren't. There's a secret passage that leads under the church in the village to another church."

'Church-ception,' Alma thought wryly to herself as the two men began nattering away. Alma managed to wrestle two bobby pins from her hair and set to work unlocking her binds. The lock looked old and she figured with a bit of skillful jimmying she could get it open. She only paused in her endeavor when she heard the words 'Raccoon City' and 'Viral Outbreak'.

"I think I might have seen a sample of the virus in the lab at my department," Luis said.

"What do you mean department? Where do you work?" Alma asked before hearing something metal scraping along the floor.

"Te voy a matar!" She heard a gruff voice say angrily. Alma glanced over, seeing a bloodied villager approaching the Leon and Luis, dragging an axe behind him, and immediately redoubled her lock picking effort.

"Do something, cop!" she heard Luis shout.

"Tch, after you!" Leon answered, struggling against the chain holding them together. "Oh shit-."

The villager was less than five feet from the pair when Alma heard a liberating 'click' elicit from her restraints. She shook them off her wrists and leapt forward, kicking off a nearby crate with a war cry. The villager turned, seeing her flying towards him. He didn't have time to raise the axe as Alma's legs landed on his shoulders.

She locked her ankles around his neck and let her weight carry her backwards, bracing her hands on the ground like she would during a backflip as he flipped over her face first onto the floor. Alma gave her hips and knees a swift jerk to the left, hearing him gurgle weakly before a crack like a gunshot echoed in the storeroom.

Alma stood, seeing the villager melt into a puddle of goo at her feet. She breathed heavily through her nose, trying to catch her breath as she knelt to undo the chain securing Leon and Luis together.

"Hey!" she yelped when the Spaniard sprang up, knocking her off her feet before darting out of the room.

"Let him go," Leon said, grasping her arm and helping her up. "I'm sure we haven't seen the last of him."

"If you say so," she sighed, rubbing her right arm and working out the stiffness in her elbow. It felt much better than it had and she figured it had to do with Leon's herb mixture. "You okay?"

"Yeah, that was…," Leon trailed off, looking at the pile of yellow goop on the floor.

"Amazing? Badass? Coolest thing you've ever seen?" Alma supplied, resting her hands on her hips and offering him a cheery smile.

"Terrifying," he finished with a faint shiver. "Did you seriously just do a god damn Frankensteiner on him? And snap his neck with your thighs?"

"It certainly seems that way, doesn't it?"

"Where did you learn that?" he asked in disbelief.

"My dad used to be a small-time wrestler back in his prime and owns an MMA gym, the Struggle Snuggle Academy," Alma informed him. "As soon as I could walk he taught me how to fight."

Leon was silent for a moment. "You are something else."

"That's what they tell me," she chuckled, seeing their guns lying on a nearby table. "So nice of them to leave our guns and my vest. Too bad they took our jackets."

"Just tragic," Leon replied sarcastically, grabbing his radio off his belt. "Leon to Hunnigan. Come in Hunnigan."

"Leon, it's been-."

"I know, I know. Sorry I couldn't report in sooner. I was a bit…tied up…," he trailed off, eliciting an eye roll from his partner.

"You're both okay though, yeah?"

"Mmhm. There was a male being held captive. According to him Ashley's being held in a church somewhere."

"What happened to him?"

"He escaped," Alma called over her shoulder, checking out their weapons while Leon gave report.

"Do you know where this church is?" Hunnigan asked, taking notes as they spoke.

"Apparently there's a secret passage in the village proper that leads to it."

"Of course there is," Hunnigan muttered before raising her eyes to meet Leon's. "Take care you two. Over and out."

As the pair got suited up once more, Alma turned to face Leon. "Now what?"

"We head back to the village," Leon said, holstering his pistol after making sure it was fully functional.

"Great," she sighed, following him through the small building and out the door.

Before them was a set of metal double doors and Alma spotted at least seven different villagers patrolling the area past the low stone wall but she was willing to bet there was a hell of a lot more than she could see.

"Great," she muttered again, checking her gun. "Don't think I have enough bullets for this. I'm gonna take one more look through the building again, maybe I can find some more supplies."

"If you say so," Leon replied, surveying the area with his binoculars. "Looks like this is the only way forward."

Alma headed back inside, spying a box of rifle bullets on a table. "Hm. If you are here then that must mean…," she trailed off, shouldering the door open to a side room.

Her eyes widened and a slow smile spread over her face when she saw what was hanging on the wall.

"Oh baby. Oh honey, Alma thinks you are gorgeous," she grinned, carefully picking up the coal-black 30.06 rifle. It was no Remington 700 but she could make do.


"Remember cadet. There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and for those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it never cared for anything else thereafter*.

"Sir, yes sir!"


Her lips curved into a faint smirk at the thought as she loaded eight rounds into the magazine from the ammo box. She pushed the bolt as far forward as she could, hearing a familiar click as it stripped a round from the magazine into the breach.

It had been too long since she last held a rifle, not since she completed her training with the Secret Service.

"Time for a little target practice," she murmured, adjusting the scope as she headed back outside to her partner.


Obligatory Alma badass scene (don't worry, there won't be too many of them, just a sprinkling here and there to remind Leon she's not some damsel). To those who don't know what a frankensteiner is you can find plenty of videos on YouTube of it, it's so cool looking. Like I said, I'll be taking a page out of RE6 and using more over the top combat moves because why the hell not? Long chapter is long. Hope you enjoyed. Sorry if the cut-scenes sound like a script revision. Tried to make it original but it's hard. *shrugs*. I really, really wanna get to the Del Lago scene which is coming up in the next chapter so yay. Thanks so much for reading lovelies and many thanks to those that have reviewed with their kind words and encouraging thoughts. Till next time. Cheers.

*I can't take credit for the sniper quote, Ernest Hemingway said it.