Dislaimer: Dino Crisis is the property of Capcom. They own all rights to the characters, situations and etcetera therein, I'm just borrowing them for a bit for a bit of no-profit fun.
Title Briefing
Rating PG-13
This was going to be something David would regret later, he knew it. He did usually feel pretty nervous during briefings (they tended to tell you all the shit that could go wrong all before telling you anything else), but this was… something else. Dinosaurs, man. Guys with guns? Yes. Bombs? Fine. Normal wild animals? Sure, bring 'em on.
Most of the cast of Jurassic Park? No, no thanks. He didn't like the idea of being stepped on, ripped apart and eaten by just the one animal in one sitting - one that, apparently, not even a good grenade in the face could kill. In David's head, guns could solve pretty much all situations – with that in mind, T-Rexes officially freaked him out.
So far, the briefing had included 'how not to get caught by raptors', 'what to do if you ignore the previous advice', 'what will happen to you if you don't follow that advice' and then 'how to fill out your life insurance forms'. OK, so not the last one, but it may as well have been there.
And of course the survivors from the last accident were walking freaks of nature. Or they had seemed like it. They'd already told horror stories about two of the agents needing masses of reconstructive surgery – and Regina, the (hotter than Hell) woman had already been made to show off her left arm, which seemed to be just a mass of white-pink scar tissue. OK, he was going to rephrase that – Regina was hotter than Hell, but not when her left arm was on show. (And when she wasn't running her mouth, but that was another story)
Then there were the CCTV tapes. There'd only been one given out to the press, a doctored couple-of-minutes tape showing nothing but Regina and another guy, the medic-hacker, in one of the first floor control rooms. He'd seen both versions and they were just as boring as each other.
Blah blah, banter, blah blah, fast forwarding, blah blah—tape running.
At this point, Regina turned so that her left side was facing the camera, and whoever was holding the remote paused the tape so they could see exactly what was wrong.
Her arm was dark red with blood, the material of the sleeve-thing (fucking weird looking uniforms) ripped along the edges of a series of wide tooth-marks puncturing the flesh.
The tape started again, and Rick winced.
"Ouch."
This time, the tape fuzzed over and they couldn't be seen or understood. David twiddled his thumbs as they fast-forwarded, and when it did focus again, the two were still there. Brilliant. A government patsy gets more money for standing doing sweet fuck all than he, David, someone who actually went out and risked death for a living, got for actually, well, risking death.
"…. Screen's fuzzy," Regina, now sporting a bandage on her left arm, was saying. The screen in question didn't have anything on it asides from what looked like a corpse crawling with maggots or something.
"Good. Let it stay that way," Rick barely looked up to say, and David privately agreed.
Regina gave him an irritated glance and went back to looking at the screens, before evidently seeing something that the CCTV couldn't and jabbing at the thing with her finger.
"Hey, look—"
The screen gave out completely. Regina cursed – and boy, could she swear; he was almost jealous – and slammed at it with her fist; it bounced back with a dull clang.
"Get it back up!"
"… But I hate bugs," Rick muttered.
"Self-hatred is very unhealthy." (David sniggered.)
"Feeling better, I guess?"
And the tape had, at that point, completely cut out. Most of the other tapes were pretty boring, but one that really stuck out was footage of the inside of an elevator as it traversed four floors – 1 to B3 – with a Tyrannosaur and three guys on it (one TRAT soldier had had to leave the room before the elevator hit B2). By the time it hit B4, the lens was covered in a haze of red.
And guns can't kill that thing? David wasn't going to have a good time of this at all. He clasped his hands together; no, they weren't shaking, he was just fidgeting. Really.
And thank God he wasn't the only one; most of the TRAT guys were pale, one or two had gone green. Dylan Morton – who was sitting next to him – didn't seem too bothered, but David didn't expect him to be. According to Reston over at Records, Morton was a hard case; something about gang wars. Nice enough guy for a thug, but whatever.
And Regina? Completely expressionless. Like a robot or something, it made him uneasy. Maybe you could only take so much of this shit before something just shuts down? He'd have to ask her sometime – if they lived.
Title Ordinary World
Rating Somewhere between PG-13 and PG-16
Over the past three weeks or so, since returning from Edward City and realising that in just three days, he'd almost forgotten what the real world was like, Dylan had been spending a lot of time with Regina – usually at her place. If anyone asked, she had a PlayStation2 and that made her place much better than his, but really… Well, he was getting used to her being around.
Something, he didn't know what, had changed after May 10th, and somehow Regina was the only familiar thing he had. Something irrational within wanted to hold onto her forever just for that.
"When are you back on duty?"
"You mean how much longer until certain people decide that I've 'recovered sufficiently from my traumatic experiences' – shooting lizards and disarming nukes?" Regina's voice was dry, and she didn't stop typing on her laptop (now that he was getting to know her outside of Edward City, he was starting to realise that she spent more time in the virtual world than the real one) to say it, "Two more weeks. I'm more delicate than you, so I get more time off."
"I wish I was delicate," he grumbled, mashing on the PS2 pad a little harder than necessary and cursing his lousy ten-day 'holiday'.
The screen blacked out to go onto a cut scene and he dropped the controller onto his leg before leaning back and stretching; the two were sitting on Regina's very uncomfortable sofa, him like a normal person, her draped over it – and him – like she was some kinda throw rug. Not that he was complaining.
"Well, unless you develop an extra X chromosome, tough shit…" Regina trailed off, the laptop noises stopping as she squinted at the developing scene on her TV.
"Is that guy humping the sword?"
Pause.
"I hate you. I really hate you." Dylan said at length, trying to sound serious but completely unable to stop sniggering. In the end, he just gave in. One good thing about being around Regina (apart from her being easy on the eyes and all): she was… weirder, for lack of a better word, than most people he knew. It was cool.
"Why, thank you. You're dying, by the way."
"Shit." He grabbed the controller again, pushed some buttons (hey, he'd never claimed to be a good gamer), and Dante performed some kind of trick combo that blew away everything on screen pretty damned quickly.
"That was lucky," Regina said; the typing and clicking had resumed.
"Luck is really a matter of practice…"
She snorted. "Is that you admitting you spend far too much time with that thing?"
"Could be."
Better being addicted to Devil May Cry than Regina, huh?
First sign of being insane. Talking to yourself. This wasn't good.
