So, here's my attempt at doing a crossover with Resident Evil 7. Some elements are promising, but the story didn't quite turn out like I had hoped. It's not that I've given up on it yet, I'm still working on it, but honestly, Mycoreincarnation is looking far better as far as being published is concerned. Still, I think the first person snarkery and 'Ethan' being a little more competent than he is in the original game might at least entertain you. Even if this idea falls through, I do have an idea for a oneshot crossover with the same game, and even a potential longer story idea.
This story was going to have more than a little Mia-bashing, inspired in part by Hellraptor's fic Bound by the Sins of the Past, where Mia is conscripted by the Connections again after an AU of Village where Ethan, and indeed the Four Lords, survived. Mia slowly slides into villainy until, albeit thanks to manipulation from her employers who painted Ethan and Bela Dimitrescu's relationship in the worst possible light, she's more than willing to kill him. Her antagonism is complex in that work, but even a reading of the canon games shows that Mia, even in the best possible light, is a secretive and manipulative person.
She kept so many secrets from Ethan, even after the seventh game (yes, letting your hubby know he's basically a BOW would be tricky, but so are many important relationship-related conversations, I'd imagine), she emotionally manipulated Eveline without trying to ensure Eveline wouldn't turn on them, she's at the very least complicit in the creation of bioweapons that are presumably sold to the highest bidder, regardless of whether they are terrorists or sovereign states...yeah, after playing the seventh game, I honestly don't think much of her, and I wish there was a 'Save Zoe' ending that didn't end with both Zoe and Mia dead (fuck you, Capcom). Hell, in the Daughters DLC prequel, when writing the note for the Bakers, while she does warn them about Eveline, she also tells them to forget they ever met her, not talk about it to law enforcement. That part of her note sounds like she was trying to cover her arse more than anything else.
This isn't to say she's a moustache-twirling villain by any means: excluding Jack and Marguerite because of their being mind-controlled, Lucas Baker and Eveline are much worse than she is. And the games don't actually portray her as a villain, just someone low down on the totem pole of the Connections, and a victim of their experiments like the Bakers, and Eveline for that matter. But my sympathy for her went down a lot.
Sorry about the rant. Anyway, I hope you enjoy what I've posted...
ZONE OF MADNESS, MOULD AND MAGIC
CHAPTER 1:
FEAR AND LOATHING IN DULVEY
"Welcome to the family, son."
Those were the last words I heard for a while. Certainly the last words I heard as Ethan Winters. In hindsight, I suppose I owe Jack Baker, or the thing he became, a bit of gratitude.
Then again, it's hard to be grateful for being sucker punched by someone who sounded like he was trying his best to audition for a remake of Deliverance or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and as I laid on the floor, dazed, next to my apparently deceased wife, he then stomped my face in. I'm pretty sure I felt my skull cave in before everything went black.
It had been a long day. It started from a long drive from Texas to Louisiana, specifically Dulvey Parish. I had received an email from my wife of six years, Mia, who had been missing for half of that time. The last message I got from her, supposedly while she was on some hush-hush 'babysitting' job while on a ship, was an admission that she lied to me, and that she told me to stay away. That was three years ago, so getting an email, even a terse one, was all I could've hoped for.
The email said she was at the Baker family farm, near the coast, pretty much in the middle of a bayou. I wasn't sure, but latching onto any possible sign that she might be alive, I drove there. I took leave from work, which I admittedly wasn't enjoying lately.
I think, in hindsight, the reason why I set out, despite all my uncertainty, was because I wanted an escape from my life. It had become dreary, routine without Mia, and I craved adventure. Hell, I'd had it since I was a teenager, even if I didn't really do much.
What's the old saying? Be careful what you wish for, lest you get it? Hoo boy, did I get it.
Alarm bells went off when I found the abandoned Sewer Gators van. I remember that show on Youtube. Wasn't that much of a fan of it, given how many things they did that skirted the law, but they disappeared a while back. I went around the back, found a bonfire, and Mia's licence amongst the debris. I knew she was here, and so, despite my better judgement, and an ominous sign reading 'ACCEPT HER GIFT', investigated.
Things went from bad to worse. I found a tape the Sewer Gators left behind, showing how at least one of them died. Or at least his corpse. I doubted the others survived. Someone locked the doors to the house, and I decided, despite the horror films I had watched, to delve deeper into the house.
I found Mia in a hidden basement area…but she seemed strange, like she wasn't quite all there. Kept on saying 'Daddy' would find them if they didn't flee. We got separated, and then, when I found her again…she had changed. Her skin and eyes had all sorts of discolouration to it, she acted violently, and even after I was forced to inflict a fatal wound in self-defence (something I had to rush to a nearby toilet to vomit into afterwards for), she kept going, even cutting off my hand with a chainsaw, and babbling about containment and burning.
And then, while I was trying not to bleed out, and had a gun with me for self-defence, she came after me again in the attic. After having to shoot her again and again, I was about ready to pass out from blood loss, psychological trauma, and possibly a lack of blood sugar on top of a lack of blood.
And that's when Jack Baker slugged me in the face.
The thing is, when he stomped on my face shortly afterwards, he did more than break my nose, and probably part of my skull. Something else was broken. Something bigger.
He broke the lie that was Ethan Winters.
Not that I realised that until later. In between nightmares of a life I never knew I had lived, I only glimpsed brief, feverish glimpses of what happened next. Jack dragging me through the mud, Mia over his shoulder, as we were taken to the main house. Someone stapling my hand back to my wrist, not a standard procedure for re-attaching severed limbs as far as I know, but it worked…
I didn't really have any real coherent thoughts until I finally woke up properly, with a splitting headache, a churning stomach, and a horrific smell entering my nostrils. If it weren't for the fact that I was sitting at a table weighed down with plates and platters of rotting meat and offal, with a quartet of grotesque people looking at me expectantly, and staples ringing my newly severed and repaired wrist, I'd have thought I was back in my frat house days. Even being tied to a chair was nothing new to me, though I'm glad it had only happened once before.
I'd glimpsed Jack Baker briefly before my face had an intimate relationship with his fist, but I could see him properly now. An older man, balding on top, with a short beard, intense eyes flashing behind glasses. And yet, despite sitting at a table that Hannibal Lecter would turn his nose up at, if only because of the lack of class and haute cuisine, he was swigging from a beer bottle casually.
To my right, and Jack's left, was a more grotesque figure. A woman of about the same age, with a matronly, kindly face twisted into something nasty. Marguerite Baker, as I later learned. She was looking at me expectantly, as she said, her voice a Louisianan drawl, "Rise and shine, sleepyhead. It's time for supper."
I flinched as a bit of food hit my face, courtesy of the figure to my left, a younger man wearing a hoodie. His face was thin, intense, and looked like he was on something. That was Lucas Baker, I was soon to learn. And next to him, slumped in a wheelchair, was an ancient woman, her eyes clouded with cataracts, looking barely conscious.
Then again, I was barely conscious myself. I had all sorts of memories swirling around my head, I wasn't sure what was real, and what wasn't, and I felt like I had the worst hangover of my life. So I slurred, "Who are you? Where's Mia?"
This seemed to annoy Marguerite, who seemed to swallow something, I wasn't sure what, and crooned, "Eat it…it's good."
I personally begged to differ, for obvious reasons. Rotten meat wasn't on most sane people's diet plans, let alone what could very well be human meat. I'd understand cannibalism in an emergency, not as a lifestyle choice.
"Dumb sonovabitch wouldn't know good if it hit him in the face!" Lucas sneered, before punctuating his point by throwing his plate right into my face. I gagged on the smell of what he had on said plate, while Marguerite chided him by name.
And that's when things took a turn for the worse, amazing as that seems. Jack Baker grabbed Lucas' arm, pinned it to the table with a knife, before sawing said knife through his forearm and amputating it. And the worst thing? Lucas' complaint was little more than a peeved, "Goddamn it, old man, not again!" As if getting amputated was a common punishment in this household.
Now, had things been different, I would have been a little less fragile in the old stomach area. But that proved to be too much, the world lurched, and I promptly vomited what was left of my lunch onto the table. This seemed to rouse Jack's ire, as he took the knife and marched around the table to me. "This was a very special feast!" the man thundered. "And you just barfed up all over it?"
Of course, I was scared, nauseous, and not quite right in the head, but I managed to muster my wits. "…Sorry about that," I lied. "I've been poorly for a while, can't keep food down! Your haymaker didn't help matters! Gimme time, I'll be all right."
I wasn't sure if my little bit of bullshit would work. But to my surprise, it did. Not that I'm complaining, mind, as it postponed my getting a knife somewhere in my body. As if a switch had been flipped, Jack's expression lightened a little, and Marguerite's own softened, a parody of maternal concern. "Poor dearie. Jack, what have I told you about treating our guests too hard?"
"Yeah, you hit him so hard, he's talkin' like a Limey now!" Lucas jeered.
Yes, that was rather odd. I was speaking with a British accent now. Then again, that was the least of the oddities going on in my skull.
"Hmm…okay, son…" Jack conceded. "I'll give your belly time to settle. Never let it be said that the Baker family's lacking in hospitality. Though now that I come to mention it, I thought you had blue eyes. Why the hell are they green now?"
Well, that was new. Or rather old, but…well, I wasn't sure of what was real anymore in my head, let alone outside of it. So, once again, I turned to bullshit. "Pigmentation dispersal caused by concussion," I said, more blithely than I felt.
"Bullshit," Lucas summed up his own thoughts on the matter succinctly. Even though his hand had been amputated, he treated it as if Jack had only torn his jacket.
Now, I knew that, as soon as they felt I had recovered enough, they were probably going to threaten me into partaking from the piles of rotting organs and Merlin knew what on the table, and I wasn't going to let them feed that to me without a fight. However, my instincts were screaming at me. According to newspapers around the guest house I had been wandering in, dozens had disappeared already, probably turned into meals by these monsters. And already, I was beginning to wonder if Mia, somehow, had ended up being mind-controlled somehow…or maybe they too had something similar to what happened to Mia.
Thankfully, it all became a moot point when I heard the noise of a doorbell in the distance. "Godammit," Lucas groaned. "Betcha any money it's that cop again."
"Goddamn pigs," Jack growled. "Lucas, Marguerite, you know what to do." The two of them left, while he looked at me. "We'll be back to pick up where we left off. Get that gut of yours under control, y'hear?"
I nodded, as it was safer, and I waited until he left, and their footsteps faded away. So, I decided to try and escape then and there, rocking the chair from side to side, and toppling it over. The restraints popped open from the impact, and I was free…of the chair, anyway. The house was another matter entirely, but one thing at a time.
I made to leave, but I noticed the old woman in her wheelchair, watching me. Not as blankly as I had thought, but she didn't look like she was all there. Poor woman, she probably had nothing to do with this. She looked like she couldn't go to the toilet without help, let alone help these cannibals.
Ah, if only I knew.
"You all right?" I asked her gently. A soft moan was all I got in response. "Sorry…I hope they don't feed you this stuff. I've got to get out of here, with Mia, get some help. I promise you…I'll try to ensure you get out of here safely."
It was probably a promise I couldn't keep. But the old lady seemed like a helpless victim, or at least a helpless bystander, assuming that age hadn't taken her faculties away from her completely. Reluctantly, I left her, deciding to quickly investigate the kitchen for a means of escape that didn't mean going through the halls of the house just yet. As it happened, I lucked out on a hatch, presumably leading to some sort of crawlspace under the house.
But it was locked. Bugger. How was I going to sneak out like those POWs in The Great Escape?
And then, it came to me. All those memories of a life that I once lived, clashing with another set of memories that felt more real, even if they seemed fantastical. A life where I was not Ethan Winters, but a British child, only a teenager when he was ripped from everything he knew, and forced to adopt a new life, his memories overlaid with a lie.
I waved my hand at the hatch and murmured a word that I hoped would ensure my liberty. Nothing happened. I tried again. Was it just my imagination, or did the lock rattle slightly?
Desperation and frustration lent fuel, and I tried once more, praying to whatever god exists in this world that those memories were real, because I would need what they showed to survive. I hissed out the magic words, not Abracadabra or Alakazam, but another one. One that sounded like mangled Latin, and yet, could literally and figuratively open up so much potential.
"Alohamora!"
The lock sprang open, and I had to stifle a chuckle, just in case I was overheard. I opened the hatch, hopped down, and closed it after me, before crawling my way through. The first steps to freedom had been undertaken.
But now I knew for sure, I hadn't been born Ethan Winters. I wasn't born in the US. I was born in Britain, until a certain pink-wearing toad bitch raped my mind, and buried my formative years under lies, meant to keep me out of the way. But now, I knew. And I knew that I had some hope to get out of the situation now.
Because I am Harry Potter.
CHAPTER 1 ANNOTATIONS:
What's this? Harry is Ethan Winters?! What the fuck?!
No numbered annotations this time.
