RESIDENT EVIL: BASILISK

CHAPTER 5:

REUNIONS

As we followed the imposing dark-skinned leader of Delta Team, into a nearby building, I looked at Luna, who was using a spell to levitate the Majini. "How long have you been working with the BSAA?"

"Not long. Rolf and I got an interest in magical viruses, and we became intrigued by the T-Virus and the G-Virus."

Rolf being Rolf Scamander, the grandson of the famous magizoologist Newt Scamander, he of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them fame. And, more importantly, Luna's husband. "Wait, wait, hold up…are you implying that the viruses Umbrella used were magical?" I asked.

"I'm not implying," Luna said. This brought Jill, Chris, and Sheva to a halt.

The leader of Delta Team then said, "We can talk about this inside." That stopped the conversation, for the time being, anyway…

Ah, Luna. Luna Lovegood. It was not long after my break-up with Ginny that I consoled myself with her. Luna, while she's rather scatterbrained, was very intelligent. And while Hermione was an excellent friend, I didn't want to get in the way between her and Ron, especially has Ron got upset with me. Luna, however, gave me a shoulder to lean on. One thing led to another, and, well, we had a friends with benefits thing going on for some time. But in the end, Luna could only treat the pain, not get rid of it, and we broke up, albeit amicably, shortly after I was accepted into Ragnuk.

We remained friends, even after she hooked up with Rolf Scamander. I have to admit, I hadn't seen much of her lately, in the past year or so. I guess this was why.

As we entered the building, Chris looked at the leader of Delta Team. "I'm glad to see you guys."

The leader of Delta Team nodded, as Luna laid out the restrained Majini on a nearby table. "I'm Captain Josh Stone of Delta Team. A pleasure to meet you, Chris Redfield. And the same to you, Jill Valentine. I am glad rumours of your death were exaggerated."

Sheva stepped forward. "Thanks, Josh. I owe you one."

Josh smiled, and Jill looked at them. "You know each other, then?"

Sheva nodded. "Josh trained me, taught me everything I know."

"Sheva became the little sister of the team," Josh said, before he became serious. "You must continue your search for Irving. According to the data you uploaded, we believe he moved to the mining area. HQ transmitted some data to here. Some of it, we found before. Others, we got with this lot." He handed Chris a USB stick. "Agent Lovegood, assist them in apprehending Irving."

"Gotcha," Luna said with a smile.

"Okay. We'll clean up around the town before we follow," Josh said. "Keep your radio handy."

"Thanks, Josh," Sheva said. "And good luck. You'll need it."

I nodded. "If you need to, run like fuck. Especially if an Uroboros creature is involved. If you get confronted by something that looks like a big ol' mass of worms, you need incendiary weapons to do any damage."

"I have incendiary grenades, but thanks," Josh said.

As Josh left, Chris plugged the stick into his PDA. He gave a rather grim grimace. "There's a picture of you in stasis," he said to Jill.

"Reynard saw a picture like this earlier," Jill mused. "Any other info?"

"Names for the various creatures we faced, most of them in Swahili," Chris muttered. "Data on BOWs, financial details…but nothing linking Tricell to this mess, as far as I can tell."

"There will be," Luna said, as she began examining the Majini, before casting a spell that looked like a diagnostic spell on it, setting some paper and a ballpoint for the spell to write down the results. She then turned to us. "Now, there's something I've learned, something you need to know too. You may not know this, but this is something I have researched for some time with my husband. The various viruses created by Umbrella, as well as the Las Plagas, are magical in nature."

Chris and Jill frowned, as did I. That made a ridiculous amount of sense. Sheva looked at Luna. "In what way?"

"There's something rather obvious, actually," Luna said. "Many strains of the T and G-Viruses can cause symptoms to develop within only a few hours. Sometimes days, depending on the strain, but often only a few hours. But to my knowledge, normal viruses take days usually to present symptoms. Even the common cold takes at least 16 hours to cause symptoms. The fastest mundane virus, as far as I know, is viral gastroenteritis, which usually takes a minimum of twelve hours."

Chris muttered, "Rebecca was talking about that just after that business at the Spencer Mansion. That's the thing about some strains of the T-Virus that puzzled her."

"Oh, I've worked with Becky," Luna said with a smile. "We're calling it the Chambers-Scamander-Lovegood Paradigm of Magical Viruses."

"Becky?" I asked.

"I told you about her," Jill said. "Rebecca Chambers. A wunderkind in medicine and virology. She works with the BSAA now, but she used to be a medic and mechanic with STARS Bravo Team."

"Anyway, the point is that the Tyrant, God, and Veronica viruses all have magical properties, as does Las Plagas. And what little we have learned of Progenitor suggests that it may be the source of that magic, in everything but Las Plagas, anyway. And what little we know from Spencer's records suggest that he found the original source for Progenitor in Africa. In fact, we learned it was not far from here," Luna said.

Chris frowned. "I knew Umbrella had something of a presence in Africa, but…"

"Ironically, it's only thanks to Tricell that they found Progenitor," Luna said. "The company that became Tricell was founded by Thomas Travis. A descendant of his, Henry, explored Africa, hoping to become as famous as Livingstone. However, according to rumour, Henry's brother, the head of the company at the time, deliberately poisoned Henry's reputation, making out that Henry had fictionalised much of what he wrote." I realised that Luna felt a lot of sympathy for Henry Travis, given that a lot of people never believed her about the weird animals she spoke of.

"Why would they do that?" Sheva asked.

"To maintain a monopoly on the resources they could exploit in Africa. Henry died considered to be a fraud."

Sheva scowled. "How disgusting. Both destroying the reputation of a man, and doing so to exploit resources that were never their own."

Luna nodded. "However, his account of his expedition still had a cult following, and the 72 volumes of this account had a prominent place in Spencer's library."

"Which lends some credence to Progenitor coming from here," Chris said.

"There're more indications amongst Spencer's papers, what little we could decode. Umbrella held a very tight grip on this area, until its collapse. Tricell took over." There was a merry little ting!, like the sound of a bell, and Luna blinked. "Oh, excuse me, the spell's finished." She then took a look at the papers. "Huh. Shit. This seems to be a very different type of Las Plagas to that Leon encountered. There's leech genes in it, plus a few other things that accelerate its growth."

"They seemed to be infected by force-feeding them the parasite," I said. "Infection is swift, but I managed to use an Accio to get one out of a man within seconds of infection."

"You must have been lucky, Harry," Luna said. "According to this, irreversible takeover happens between ten to twenty seconds. This is fascinating. A shame it has to be at the cost of a human life. Wesker must have wrackspurts up the wazoo. Which is a rather painful place to have them."

"Excuse me?" Jill asked, confused.

"Luna's like that. Back at school, she was often called 'Looney'," I said. "As far as I know, only Ginny did it in a friendly manner."

Luna nodded. "I'm still tracking down the Crumple-Horned Snorkack, Harry. This just pays better. And it's so fascinating. And so sad." She pointed her wand at the chest of the Majini. "Vivisectus."

Suddenly, the chest of the Majini was torn open, and Luna looked down into the bloody cavity. Sheva turned away with a grimace, Chris and Jill stared in horror, and even the Majini looked astonished at the fact that his chest was torn open, and he was still alive. And I winced. "Luna, give us some bloody warning, will you?" I muttered.

"What the hell did you just do?" Jill demanded.

"It's a vivisection spell. I can perform what is basically a vivisection, like a dissection, only you're still alive. It prevents the subjects from feeling pain, though according to the spell I used earlier, Majinis' pain processes are dulled compared to humans, and thus helps keep them alive," Luna explained, as she peered into the chest cavity. I could see the Plaga parasite wriggling away within.

"It's still disgusting," Sheva remarked, looking like she wanted to vomit copiously.

"It looks like something Umbrella would use if they had the spell," Chris remarked, Jill nodding in agreement.

"You've been shooting at them all day. I'm sure their remains looked disgusting too. I'll send this one to the secure lab for Rolf to get started on," Luna remarked as she closed up the Majini, who seemed bemused by the experience, as well as annoyed. She then activated her radio. "Agent Lovegood to HQ. I am sending one Plaga infectee to the secure biohazard lab containment cell via Portkey. Please be on standby."

"Acknowledged, Agent Lovegood. After you send the infectee here, get going. We need you to catch Irving."

Which we did. Thanks to some Apparation, we caught up on lost time, and a Lumos spell helped us get through the mines. Luna proved surprisingly adept at combat whenever we encountered Majini and the other Plagas creatures. Or maybe not so surprising, considering she was part of Dumbledore's Army, and had fought during the Battle of Hogwarts.

We finally came to a building outside the mines, where Irving was. We knew this, because, as we approached, we heard a lot of hurried rattling around, of someone trying desperately to search for something…or hide something. So we burst in, with Chris, Jill, and Sheva aiming their guns, and Luna and I aiming our wands at Ricardo Irving.

Now, I would think that arms dealing would be a business where, while amorality would be a boon, so would charisma. Charisma is a boon when you're a salesman anyway, and when dealing in weapons to desperate types, one would have to have decent charisma and a silver tongue. Sadly, when these were being handed out, Ricardo Irving played hooky. He was ugly inside and out, his eyes bulging and looking outwards, like a goldfish or a pug, he spoke with a New Jersey accent that made him sound like a bratty kid wanting to join the Mafia, and he was skittish and vicious. He reminded me of the bastard mutant offspring of Peter Pettigrew and Dolores Umbridge.

And now I'm imagining Peter Pettigrew and Dolores Umbridge having sex. WHY DO I KEEP DOING THIS TO MYSELF?!

"Freeze!" Chris yelled at Irving, who had snatched up a handgun hurriedly.

"Shit," Irving hissed, as he looked at the five of us. He was sneering, putting on a brave face, but he knew he was screwed.

"Ricardo Irving, I presume?" Sheva asked.

"Well, I sure as hell ain't Livingstone," Irving chuckled. Noticing the lack of laughter, he scowled. "Stupid BSAA can't take a joke. Do they take the sense of humour outta youse when you join up?"

"No, we just don't find bioterrorism funny," Sheva said.

Irving snorted. "I'm no terrorist. I'm a businessman, with standards."

"They're standards lower than the chances of you escaping, Irving," Chris said. "Drop the weapon."

"Or hows about you drop yours?"

"EXPELLIARMUS!" Luna yelled by way of reply, sending a Disarming Spell at Irving, who was surprised to find the handgun flying from his hand and into Luna's. I used an Incarcerous on him, and he fell to the ground with an indignant squawk, magical ropes confining him.

"You freaks!" he yelled at me, and Jill. "Wesker must have his brain rotting from all those viruses if youse managed to escape!"

"No, that's just his megalomania," Jill snarked. "Luna, can you use that Portkey thing to send him back to HQ?"

"Sure. I'll have to adjust it so that he ends up in an interrogation cell rather than a biohazard lab," Luna said, pulling out an amulet, and began casting a spell on it.

"You won't find it easy," Irving sneered. "You think you guys can stop Wesker and Excella? Youse must be stupider than you look! Then again, you've got a wizard and witch here. S'no wonder. IQs drop pretty quick around magic."

I looked at him, saw the contempt in his eyes, and made a guess. "You're a Squib, aren't you?"

"Perceptive, aren't ya?"

"It's not too hard a guess. You look like you came from a family that got too much into inbreeding," I remarked.

"You take that back, you bastard! Just 'cause you got magic, and you're the precious 'Boy Who Lived', you think you're better than me?"

"I don't think I'm better than you, Irving," I said, kneeling down next to him and meeting his eyes. "I know I'm better than you. Because I'm trying to make the world a better place."

"That's what Wesker and Excella think too," Irving said with a sneering grin. "What's the difference between youse?"

"I'm not trying to wipe out the world through bioterrorism," I said, just as Luna finished, and placed the amulet on him.

"Bon voyage, salaud," Luna said in French, before Irving vanished with a pop. That was one part of the mission over, securing Irving. But now, the real challenge began, getting to Wesker and Excella's evil mastermind lair. And that was going to take some effort…

CHAPTER 5 ANNOTATIONS:

Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Because Irving is captured, two of the big boss battles don't happen, as he never released them: the one against the Popokarimu (the bat-caterpillar thing) and the Ndesu (the El Gigante of Resident Evil 5). Although there'll be a timeskip to the marshlands sequences for the next chapter, obviously, there won't be a battle against a mutated Irving either. Seriously, doesn't he look like the product of an incestuous relationship in the game? I hope you liked the improved (even if only slightly) dialogue in the confrontation scene. Some dialogue from Resident Evil is great, and other times…well, 'Jill Sandwich', anyone?

I hope you like Luna's debut. She's a bit more serious than in the books, but she's done some growing up. There's still some of the old Luna in there. And while I am not a virology expert, the stuff I wrote in is true, and the stuff about the T-Virus and G-Virus being magical in nature was something I wrote in to explain the sometimes rapid infection time of the viruses. I will also be using the same explanation in Henry Ashford and the Goblet of Fire, though I hinted at it in an earlier chapter in that work, again from Luna's lips.

Oh, and how many of you are reaching for the brain bleach now that you have the mental image of Peter Pettigrew and Dolores Umbridge getting it on? :)

No numbered annotations this time.