Chapter Twenty-six: Carbon-based Nutrients
"Porridge."
Ada Wong stares up at the contents of the monstrous pantry, shaking her head in disbelief. "Twenty-two thousand metric tons of PORRIDGE."
Sherry grabs the sides of her head and does her best impression of the woman screaming in that shower scene from 'Psycho'.
Leon shoves the shrieking pre-teen aside, staring in horror at the multitude of bland-colored boxes. "Please...please tell me there are hamburgers behind the porridge."
Ada chucks a few boxes aside, then a few more, then starts frantically tearing boxes down from the endless stacks, quietly sobbing to herself. "No," she mutters bitterly, stepping away from the towering mass of porridge containers. "...There's...there's nothing but porridge."
Ashley walks forward, 'pff'-ing derisively. "What's the deal, ya big babies?" she snatches up a box off the ground, giving it a sniff-a-roo. "What's so bad about porridge?" As she turns around, she is greeted by cold, silent stares from the group.
Claire squares her jaw confrontationally, her ice-blue eyes full of icy blueness. "You mean to tell me that your mother never cooked you porridge?" she asks, her voice also full of the ice. All the iciness causes Ashley to shift uncomfortably.
Sherry chimes in, suddenly speaking with a Russian accent. "Ven I...ven I vas leetle girl...my mother... she...she cook me de porridge." Sherry's eyes grow misty with a far-off look as she continues. "Every day, she say 'Sherry. Eet de porridge. Ees good for you.'" Sherry glares, clenching her fists. "And she feed me de porridge EVERY DAY, EVERY DAY EES NUSSING BUT PORRIDGE, PORRIDGE, PORRIDGE! Aaah.." she falls to her knees, sobbing brokenly. Claire embraces her, shushing her quietly and rubbing her back in quick semi-circles.
"Um," Ashley starts, scratching her arm awkwardly. "That...sucks. I guess I forgot to take into account the fact that I'm the only one here from a ridiculously privileged family. You know. Being the president's daughter and all."
A plastic spoon clatters by her feet.
Ashley looks down at the spoon, frowning. Then she looks back up. Claire gives her a wide, spooky grin. "Dig in."
ooo
"JASON!"
"JASON!" The name echoes through the empty sub corridors. William Birkin pokes his head around the corner. He glances left. Right. "…JASON!"
"JASON! JASON!" William walks through the metal halls, peeking into random rooms as he continues to call out. "JASON."
In one room, Billy and Chris are having a discussion. "So then I said-" Suddenly, Birkin walks up to Billy, staring directly at his face. Billy abruptly stops talking, regarding Birkin with a raised eyebrow.
"...JASON."
Billy just follows Birkin with a bewildered stare as the other man quickly walks away again. Suddenly, he calls out to the scientist. "WE'RE NOT SO DIFFERENT, YOU AND I." William waves his hand dismissively, continuing to scream 'JASON' as he turns the corner.
Just then, he bumps into a fuming Annette. "JA- oh hi honey bumpkins," William mutters. Annette regards him with a stone-cold gangstah glare.
"WILLIAM, DO YOU REMEMBER OUR CHILD'S NAME?" she demands.
William snorts, folding his arms across his chest. "Of course, you numbskull. His name is Jason."
Annette's eyes remain unblinking for an uncomfortably long time. William begins to sweat. Someone's hand reaches in from nowhere and pats his brow with a handkerchief.
Annette walks away for a moment. She returns, dragging a blank whiteboard. "Sit down," she commands. William plops down onto his hiney. His wife pulls out a large red marker and draws a stick figure on the board.
William watches her, crunching on graham crackers and noisily slurping down some milk. Finally, Annette finishes her shoddy rendition. She swats the board loudly with a yardstick, causing William to jump in surprise. Some of his milk slops over the rim of the cup, spilling onto his lap. He glances down slowly, making a forlorn pouty face at the mess.
"ACHTUNG," Annette shrieks, striking the board again. Her yardstick breaks in half.
William fumes. "ALRIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!" he screams back, his face turning red as veins bulge.
Annette furiously inhales through her nostrils, looking like she's about to throw her husband into a wall. However, she channels her rage into her impromptu lesson plan and begins pointing at the whiteboard. "SHERRY BIRKIN is OUR DAUGHTER. SHE IS A LITTLE GIRL." Annette swats the drawing on the board again, focusing on the stick figure's triangle of a skirt. "LITTLE. GIRL." She holds intense, smoldering eye contact with William, who seems dumbfounded. "DAUGHTER."
William slowly opens his mouth, furrowing his brow. "Daw. Turr."
Annette gasps suddenly, her face taking on a horrifyingly exaggerated expression of sheer joy. She clasps her hands by her cheek, beaming with happiness. "GOOOOoooood!" she gushes. "Does William want a COOKIE?"
William considers this for a moment. He narrows his eyes, stroking his chin once or twice before answering. "Yes."
Annette pegs him in the forehead with a chocolate chip cookie. "THERE. NOW GO FIND OUR DAUGHTER BEFORE I EVISCERATE YOU."
"OW. FINE." William rubs his forehead as he stands up, snatching the cookie off of the floor and scampering away. Annette follows him with a withering, maternal gaze.
ooo
"MAN!" Christopher P. Redfield exclaims, as he shovels another spoonful of porridge into his mouth, "I'm sure glad ya'll found these PORRIDGE RATIONS!" He gives Leon and Claire a big grin, porridge spilling out between the little gaps in his smile.
Claire tosses Chris a gangsta nod. "No problem, BRO," she growls, borrowing a line from Leon and knowingly nudging him in the arm with a wink and a smirk. Leon just rolls his eyes in slow motion and laps at his own bowl of the bland, sticky treat.
Ashley is in the corner, curled up in a ball, weeping in misery. Fresh tears slip through the dried porridge that cakes her mouth. Barry softly consoles her with little squirts of his water pistol onto her hair and nose.
Jill daintily sets aside her now-empty porridge bowl, licks a few remnants off of her lips, and turns to stare at Ada Wong, seated beside her. "Why don't you look me in the eyes anymore when we make love?"
Ada spits up eight mouthfuls of porridge in one violent explosion, and immediately collapses to her side in shrill, blustrous laughter.
Billy wipes Ada's expelled porridge off of the side of his face.
Steve is back with the crew. Seated next to Billy, he was shielded from the projectile porridge. He titters half-heartedly at Billy's fate and fiddles with his porridge, secretly wishing that the bowl was Claire and the spoon was his heart or something.
Then, William makes the scene. He shuffles up to the gang, shoulders low and chin tucked downward. His brow is furrowed. He carries a half-deflated red balloon on a string which trails along behind him. "Muh," William scoffs. "Have any of you dimwitted bumpkins seen my sorry excuse for a child prodigy wandering around here?"
Chris shrugs twice with alternating shoulders and puffs his cheeks before expelling a lip-flapping breath. "I dunno, man. She's proooobably dead."
Claire whacks him upside the head. "UNTRUTH," she bellows.
"Humph," Billy grunts. "She's probably with my on-again off-again love interest Rebecca Chambers, and that gratuitous and blatant self-insert Anthony Mihovich."
Again Claire rejects the notion, this time by striking her thighs with a chopping motion and then swiping her hands above her lap in an 'X'. "No!" she shouts. "For heaven's sake, will ya listen to reason?"
William regards her with a sort of perturbed, unblinking stare. "...Enlighten me," he permits.
"She's in the navigation room," Claire states.
The entire room shares a collective gasp. Steve chokes on some porridge.
"We let her give it a go after she told us that she could probably sneak in through the air ducts," Claire explains, twirling a finger through her ponytail.
"Genius!" Jill shouts, chucking her bowl at Barry. It lands on his head and he pretends that it is a tiny helmet. Jill hops to her feet. "I've no doubt that child will steer us to victory!" she shouts, pumping a fist into the air.
"But Jill!" Chris whimpers, "Have you no faith in Brad?"
Jill drops her arm, glancing at Chris. "No, not really. He's taking forever with this thing."
ooo
"AND I SAID- HAAAY-YAAAY-YAA-HE-HEY, HAAAAAY-YAAAY-YEAY," Sherry Elizabeth Birkin sings loudly, and stamps her foot down on the console beside Brad's face, "I SAID HEY. WHAT'S GOIN' ON."
Brad just frowns at the twelve-year-old. "Will you please stop singing?" he asks again, rhetorically this time. He knows she's not going to stop. She's NEVER going to stop. The young Birkin even smashed the sub's radio so that her song would be the only one heard.
As if on cue, Sherry suddenly changes songs and begins dancing again on top of the navigation system. "IIII DON'T WANNA WORK. I JUST WANNA BANG ON ME DRUM ALL DAY!"
Brad has just about had it. He goes so far as to fold his arms in displeasure at the situation, and turns his frown even deeper. "Don't you have someone ELSE to pester?" he sneers.
Sherry responds by snatching the Admiral's cap off of Brad's head and donning it on her own, while changing tunes again. "He don't love me! Like he loved me.. yester..DAAAAY-HAAAAY-HAAAAaaayy.."
Anthony Mihovich smashes through the locked cabin door suddenly, somewhat wide-eyed and panting. "For the record," he states, pointing at Sherry, "I never loved you. That would be creepy." He quickly leaves again.
Sherry turns away from him, pinching the bridge of her nose and sighing. She addresses Brad in a hushed, Italian accent. "You see he do dis to me? Why for he no love me, eh? EH?"
Brad just glares at her. "It's because you're TWELVE, you rapscallion," he starts, reaching for the hat.
William Birkin rushes into the room suddenly, grabbing Brad roughly by the vest and bringing the man's face close to his own. "Don't you DARE touch my daughter!" William seeths. Brad responds by farting a little and shivering in fear.
The mad mad scientist glances at Sherry. She raises her eyebrows in anticipation.
"Have you seen my daughter?" William asks.
Sherry stares at him for a few moments. She begins to turn her head, still eyeing him, then looking to Brad. Brad just peeks at her out of the corner of his eyes, his lips pulled back in a grimace of frightened agony. Sherry looks to her father once more. "Uuum.. Nnnnnnnoooooo..."
William drops Brad. "Dang it. Oh well. Thanks, little boy," he says, giving her a pat on the head before leaving.
Brad crawls under the nav console to whimper miserably for..presumably the rest of the evening.
"Well," Sherry starts, hiking her britches up and cocking the Admiral's cap forward on her head, "this submarine ain't gonna pilot itSELF."
With that, she begins randomly mashing buttons and levers.
ooo
"UPDATE!" Alexia screams.
Saddler drops his muffin, and watches it with a few waning shreds of grief as it rolls into the path of Salazar's rip-roaring Hotwheels jeep.
"I DEMAND AN UPDATE!" Alexia repeats, with horrific fervor.
Salazar crashes his tiny jeep into the side of her throne pedistal again, flipping the vehicle sideways and sprawling out of it, unconscious.
Alexia glares furiously down at the wreck for a few moments, and then descends from her throne and begins beating Salazar's unconscious body with the jeep itself.
"Uh, my lady!" Saddler calls nervously, trying to create some sort of distraction.
Alexia hurls the toy car away from her, taking out a squad of zombie butlers. "WHAT."
Saddler gathers his teeny-weeny wits about him and slicks his disgusting oily hair back, tilting his chin up slightly and gazing down from his lesser throne. "My boy Salazar will- oh wait no that was from the other game.. uh.. I mean uh, Krauser should...definitely have some sort of. Update. Thingy." His voice cracks as Alexia smiles, still glaring hatefuly. "Uh, for you."
The fiery woman with super ant queen pyro power hops back onto her throne and crosses one leg over the other. "He had better. Lest I.." she appears to fumble for a moment, "beat.. Salazar some more with his own stupid toy jeep." Alexia dials Krauser up on the video walkie-talkie. "UPDATE," she screams into the receiver.
Krauser's sweaty man-meat visage appears on the screen. Hispanic music can be heard in the background, with Alfred singing loudly and Carlos and Hunk screaming at him to shut up. "Their sub.." Krauser gasps, "..is going..all over the place. Don't..know...wh...wh..."
"Gimme that," Wesker snatches the walkie-talkie from Krauser, his sunglasses-wearing face appearing on the screen now. "Hey LEXIE," Wesker sneers. "We're closer than ever to catching up with the GOOD GUYS and BASHING THEM something WICKEDLY FIERCE." He pauses to laugh hysterically and evilly. Then, halting the laugh abruptly, he continues to speak in an even tone. "After which I will most likely betray and overthrow you." Wesker smiles suddenly. "Byyyye~"
The screen goes dark.
Alexia pegs the nearest zombie minion in the face with the communicator. Saddler flinches at this. "I despise that man," Alexia states with eerie, unblinking calmness. She then breaks out into shrieking banshee laughter.
Saddler sinks down into his throne, pulling his hood over his eyes and wishing that he were a kajillion miles away from there.
ooo
"This is literally the most disgusting thing that I have EVER ventured to do in my entire existence," Morpheus Duvall complains.
"That's strange, coming from a tyrant bioweapon who was once a human male," Marcus quips.
Nemesis silences them both with a gutteral roar. The three henchmen resort to uncomfortable, smelly silence. They are currently traveling blindly through the ocean, seated inside a massively inflated leech. The idea had been Marcus', and he claimed that it wouldn't hurt his little leech pet whatsoever. A single flashlight held by Nemesis is keeping the slimy interior of their makeshift vehicle illuminated.
"Leechy-poo, are you SURE that you have located our enemy's submarine and are conveniently keeping pace with it?" Marcus asks.
A strange, wet grunt is heard in response. Marcus sits back, looking smug. "See, I TOLD you this would work. And leechy says there's even ANOTHER sub behind THAT one, too. BONUS."
Nemesis just sighs heavily and slaps a hand over the spot where he used to have his other eye.
ooo
The silence in the room is ironically deafening. Rebecca Chambers, girl genius, is seated on the sort-of-crappy bed while Anthony Mihovich, future neckbeard afficcionado, watches her from the corner of the room.
"Look man," Rebecca starts, laying down the line, "we've got to fulfill one of my three desires here." She counts off on her fingers as Anthony softly rocks back and forth. "Kooky lab experiements, a general search for higher scientific knowledge, or awkward romance."
Anthony thinks to himself for a moment, while chewing on a carrot. "Well, we tried the awkward romance thing, but that always gets interrupted by the even more awkward 'Sherry Birkin, twelve-year-old, is psuedo-romantically interested in me already and is jealous of our would-be relationship'."
Rebecca scrunches her face in distaste. "Jeez, yeah, what is WITH that, anyway?"
Anthony shrugs. "Apparently, the author thought that it would be hilarious."
"It's NOT hilarious!" Rebecca states with distaste, raising her voice. She frumps for a moment, jutting her lower jaw while glaring. Suddenly, she shouts in Anthony's general direction- "IT'S NOT FUNNY." The chemist/field medic sighs wretchedly, presenting a Kanye shrug. "At least age her up or something."
"COP-OUT!" Kamesen shrieks, rushing into the room all of a sudden. He and Anthony stare weirdly at one another for a moment before the author continues. "Total cop-out! People pull that crap all the time; they tack on a few years to the character's age but make no adjustment for mental growth at all. It's.. it's sickening."
Rebecca blinks skeptically at him. "Ok, how'd you come across THAT information?"
"Nevermind," Kamesen grunts, swinging his hands around evasively. "We're gonna do this the RIGHT way. SHERRY BIRKIN, ADVANCE AND BE RECOGNIZED."
And just like that, Sherry runs into the room. "Yeah whaddaya want, ya big fat luggage?" she spits, tossing up a few half-hearted gang signs.
Kamesen beholds her with a stern glance. "We're aging you up, PROPERLY, so that your weird little crush on Anthony won't be frowned upon."
"Alright," Sherry agrees courageously, cracking her knuckles. "Let's DO this thing, I've got reservations to Olive Garden waiting."
Anthony casts a worried glance at Kamesen as the author puts on a long-sleeved shirt and then rolls up the sleeves. "Are you SURE this is a good idea?" he asks.
The author turns and gives Anthony a dead-eyed stare. "Think about it this way. Would you rather have a minor hitting on you, or an adult?"
This earns a vigorous nod from the rookie. "Point taken. Do it."
"My body is READY," Sherry shouts, flexing. Anthony and Rebecca watch as Kamesen begins to wave his hands around and yells a spell.
"Alahkazam and shmiggity-jive! Make this girl turn TWENTY-FIVE!" The author flings his hands toward Sherry, and she is enveloped in a cloud of smoke.
A collective gasp rolls through the room as the smoke clears to reveal a tall blonde woman in a labcoat, blouse, and pants. Sherry Birkin dusts herself off and peers around, looking somewhat annoyed.
"Oh my gosh," Rebecca utters, "she looks so much like her mom!"
Sherry's eyes fall to Anthony. She narrows them for a moment in recognition. Anthony swallows hard, looking nervously from side to side. "I used to be head-over-heels in love with you when I was a little girl," Sherry notes aloud. She raises an eyebrow. "I wonder why."
With that, she leaves the room.
"Oh my gosh," Rebecca utters once more. "She ACTS so much like her mom too!"
Kamesen slaps Anthony on the back, shaking his head. "I guess it didn't work out after all, buddy boy. Oh well." He then looks to the readers and flashes a huge smile. "Well folks, that's what happens when people grow up! THEY CHANGE. Goodnight." He pulls his pants up over his head and vanishes.
Anthony breathes a sigh of relief. "Well I'm glad that's over with. No more creepy little girls to deal with!" He symbolically dusts his hands off and turns around, only to bump into two young girls.
"I'm Manuella," one girl says.
"I'm Lucia," the other states.
"I'm out of here," Anthony replies, and promptly walks into the broom closet before shutting himself inside.
Manuella and Lucia turn to look at one another, sharing creepy smiles. In unison, they cheerily state, "And it ALL starts OVER a-GAAAAIN!"
Rebecca stares at them for a moment, horrified. She immediately runs to the closet door then, slamming her fists on it while screaming to be let inside.
Next time, on Resident Evil: Super Quest! Our heroes finally arrive at Japan! Will they finally get their hands on the, um, 'new' Resident Evil 5 game? Or will their journey be thwarted by one of a dozen baddies? Find out next time! I hope someone still reads my story!