All characters and settings are property of Capcom. I make neither claims nor profit. This has been written without permission.
Continuing the snapshot theme, this will be done primarily in glimpses, like the cutscenes within the game (although hopefully the reader will not need to make reflex saves.)
2. Tension
Krauser never really liked the TMP.
Oh, he'll use it—he'll use anything—but it isn't the same as knife or bow. He's been called a traditionalist, but it's not their simplicity. The knife is simple, but it's more deadly and even more frequently underestimated. And it lets him get in close, lets him feel the fight and the emptiness of missing and the shock of strikes connecting.
The bow is definitely not simple. The bow is pure tension. It has to be in perfect condition, the string pristine, the arrow shafts free of even the tiniest crack, or it'll blow up in his face. He can feel when he's got it right, when he's shooting instinctively. He knows the way it seems to draw itself, with him just bracing, roll of muscle in his shoulder and tip of his arm to keep the string from hitting his wrist. Guns are mechanical. The bow is almost alive.
He thought of Ada as like the bow, once, as a delicate balance of forces always prepared for an explosive attack. He thinks differently now. She's more like one of those knife-edged fan things: pretty, and then you pick it up and try to fight with it and lay your own flesh open just before the enemy whallops you one.
He listens to the rising sound of gunfire, looks into the courtyard far below. Some cultists chanting their hopeful "death-is-living" shtick are learning about its fundamental inaccuracy. He grins. Leon shatters a skull with one kick and lands again on the bloodstained floor, checking all sides of him before answering his radio. Krauser cups his chin in his palm and watches. Leon moves across the floor as he speaks, motioning sharply with one hand. He pauses, shifting his weight, checking his pistol in its holster.
He doesn't know Krauser's right there, the castle's solitary gargoyle, a couple hundred feet above his head. And he doesn't have to learn. He's a perfect target, staying out where he can see all the exits like that: all Krauser will have to do is pull a pin, drop a grenade, and hope there's rain coming so Salazar doesn't bitch endlessly about the agent all over his terrace.
Krauser considers, tossing the grenade up and down. The moment draws out.
Then an approaching cultist complete with spiked shield pokes his head through the door, and Salazar apparently says the wrong thing, and Leon moves straight from inaction into action with dizzying suddenness. There's the bark of shotgun, the cultist staggers back from the pieces of his shield, and Leon shoots his kneecaps out. He's on him immediately, taking his head off with the knife in what even Krauser thinks might be kinda an extreme reaction.
Kinda. But he more approves. And he puts the grenade back on his belt and watches Kennedy pivot again, sweeping the courtyard suspiciously. Then he's gone, launching himself into the next room, dead set on his mission.
Yeah. Krauser's always had a thing about the tension weapons.