Chapter Text
Leon S Kennedy has had more than his fair share of unpleasant wake-up calls in his forty-nine years of life- but this one might be in the running for the most unpleasant of them all.
After all, being thrown forward by an explosion that leaves his ears ringing, only to bash his head on an overheated floor covered in broken glass, is undoubtedly really fucking unpleasant.
"Ow, fuck-"
The world swims around him while he tries to drag himself upright, picking shards of glass out of his arms and trying to figure out how the hell he wound up here.
…Wherever "here" is.
He shakes his head, taking as deep a breath as his battered body will allow before he doubles over in a coughing fit that tries to wrench his guts up out of his throat.
"Goddamn it-"
Once everything stops spinning, the first thing he notices is the unbearable heat and the smell of smoke and sulfur all around him.
The second thing he notices is his complete lack of weaponry.
"Fuck."
He doesn't have the luxury of panicking, obviously, so he tries to take stock of his surroundings.
The walls around him are fleshy, pulsating, like he's in the stomach of some giant beast. There are pods all around him- most of them broken, some on fire.
Alien. Weird. Unnerving.
So, he has no idea where the fuck he is. Or how he got here.
Nothing he hasn't dealt with before.
Through the smoke, he sees a door (or something like a door, anyway) open with a sickening squelching sound.
Leon steps toward it warily, peering around in puzzlement.
"Alright then," he mutters to himself, forcing himself to put one foot in front of the other and move forward.
This certainly doesn't look like any sort of Umbrella lab or anything. But hell if he can figure out what else it could be.
"…Hello?" a tiny voice calls out, from somewhere above him.
A child's voice.
Leon's head whips around, seeking out the source of the sound.
"Who's there?!" he calls back.
"I-I'm lost, I think-"
A set of tiny, pale hands appear on the ground, and a head of unkempt blonde hair pokes out from under a steel surgical table.
Sure enough, it's a little girl. A startlingly skinny one, at that, with a strange, glassy look to her eyes.
"Ah hell."
He crouches down and reaches out to her, trying to coax her from her hiding place.
"C'mon, I don't bite. No need to hide."
"Um, okay…"
The little girl creeps out and grabs his hand, but she doesn't look at him.
Considering the thick cataracts over her wide eyes, she probably isn't looking at much of anything.
"Hey, kid-" he calls out to get her attention. "What're you doing here?"
"I dunno," the child answers. "Grace said we were…we were gonna leave…"
Grace.
The image of a terrified blonde woman, caught in the grasp of a slavering, barely humanoid monster, flashes through his mind.
That FBI agent that had been kidnapped.
"Is Grace here?" he asks.
"I dunno," the girl says, shaking her head. "She said there was a strange light, and then I woke up here alone."
Not great.
"Well- c'mon, we can't stay he-"
A deafening explosion sends him careening to the ground, just barely avoiding landing on the poor child.
The girl screams from terror, clamping her hands over her ears and curling up into a ball.
"I wanna go back to my room!" she wails.
Me too, kid, he wants to say, but doesn't.
"Hey."
He grabs the child and turns her around to face him, even though it's pretty pointless.
Poor thing- she's obviously been crying for some time, and her whole body is shivering from fright.
"We're gonna be okay," he reassures her. "But we've gotta get outta here, alright? It's dangerous, but I'll keep you safe."
The little girl takes a shaky breath.
"O-okay-"
He turns around and taps her on the wrist, signaling for her to climb onto his back. After groping around for a bit, she finds her target and grabs on.
His knees scream in protest as he stands back up, but he ignores it.
"Alright, don't worry. I'll get us outta here."
"Okay…I'm Emily."
My name's Leon."
The girl presses her face into his back, as though that could hide her from everything going on.
Pressing onward, he looks around to try to spot any sort of way out of this place.
No sooner has Leon made it back to the ground than he hears a woman scream from a short way away.
"What's going on?" Emily whimpers. "Why is it so loud?"
"Dunno, but just hold on tight."
"St-stay back!" an all too familiar voice pleads. "I-I-I-I'm not-"
"This is your end!" another voice hisses.
"Ah fuck-"
Leon breaks back into a run, following the voices until—to his relief— he finds Grace. A bit worse for wear, but alive and unhurt.
To his frustration, she finds her pinned to the ground by a woman with green-hued skin and armor adorned with rubies, a silver blade pressed against her neck.
A very, very bad time to be caught without a weapon.
"What the hell are you doing?!" he shouts, drawing this strange woman's ire.
She lunges for him instead, but doesn't get far before both of them recoil, an invisible railroad spike driving itself through each of their skulls.
Images of a red dragon spewing fire. Strange, tentacled creatures with unfeeling eyes. More people like the woman before him, with those alien faces, speaking an alien tongue.
"Tsk'va!"
Grinding the heel of her hand into her eye, the woman regards them with a bit less malice.
"…You are not thralls," she murmurs. "Vlaakith be praised, we may survive yet…"
"W-what do you mean, survive?" Grace asks, scrambling to put distance between them.
"Grace?!"
Emily perks up, turning her head from one side to the other.
"We carry illithid parasites," Lae'zel says. "Within days we will be ghaik- mind flayers!"
Parasites.
Again.
"Of fucking course," Leon sighs.
Grace, for her part, doesn't seem to notice.
"Oh my god- Emily!"
She sobs from relief, touching the girls face and stroking her hair lovingly.
"Thank God- a-are you hurt?"
"…No," Emily murmurs. "I'm okay…"
"Good…that's good."
Leon passes the child off to her; Emily clings to her, shivering from fright.
"You," he says, addressing the strange-looking woman. "You seem to know what's going on- what the fuck are we supposed to do?"
"My people possess the cure for our infection," the woman says, still in the same curt manner as before. "But we can do nothing until we escape."
"Sounds like a plan. Lead the w-"
"-We must go to the helm!"
"What-"
The sudden voice comes seemingly from within his own mind, but in actuality seems to be from the enormous brain at his feet, scuttling about on a set of four clawed legs.
"We will not survive here," it insists. "At the helm we are needed!"
Leon has about a million things he wants to say, but can't properly articulate.
"…What. The actual. Fuck.' he says instead.
"I-I-I found it around here," Grace explains. "It was trapped. I-I think."
"What the-"
"We are Us," the brain explains.
At this point, Leon is beginning to wonder if his illness has finally made him lose his mind.
"…Ooookay then."
"It will remain tame so long as it believes us to be thralls," the alien woman explains. "It may be useful in the fight to come."
"Sure, whatever you say. Lead the way, I guess."
"To the helm we go!" Us chirps, happily. "My friends and I are going to the helm!"
He urges Grace to follow along, and they allow this alien-looking woman to take the lead.
"You got a name?" he asks.
She doesn't answer at first. But after the longest ten seconds of his life, she does speak.
"You may call me Lae'zel."
Weird name. So, a fitting one.
"Got it. So, how do we go about getting rid of these brain words?"
Lae'zel holds a hand up to get him to fall silent, pointing ahead with her sword.
Ahead of them are some small, winged, vaguely humanoid things, digging into the corpse of some unfortunate victim.
"Those imps will need to be dealt with, first."
"No problem."
The imps have wicked claws, and teeth like a moray eel's. But they're small enough, and look fragile from where he's standing.
Lae'zel readies her sword and lunges forward.
"H'taka!"
Her shout alerts the imps, pulling their attention away from their meal.
They let out a hiss and an ear-piercing shriek and lunge at them, claws and teeth bared.
The nearest one finds out that this is a bad decision by way of Leon's fist connecting squarely with its jaw, shattering the bone and sending it reeling.
He doesn't give it the chance to recover; he grabs it by the skinny neck and twisting it until he feels the snap.
Another grabs onto him, sinking its claws into his bicep and trying to get its teeth into his shoulder.
Between the two of them, they make short work of the little annoyances.
Lae'zel looks him over with more curiosity than disdain, now.
"You prove surprisingly adequate in battle," she remarks, sounding genuinely surprised.
He decides to take that as a compliment.
"Yeah? You aren't half bad, yourself."
Lae'zel straightens up, and Leon thinks she almost smiles.
"To the helm, then."
The only way through is up on a high platform, with only a crude mesh sinew and arterial tissue to get them upward.
"Here, lemme give you a boost."
"Uh- o-okay-"
Even holding a whole other person, it's still trivial to grab her and hoist both her and Emily safely to the ledge.
"You're kinda tiny, aren't you?" he can't help but remark.
"I-I am?"
He shakes his head, hauling himself up the slimy mesh and following Lae'zel as she storms forward.
The room they find themselves in next has more of those pods, and some unfortunate souls strapped to metal chairs, dazed and near death.
Not everyone is unconscious, however.
Someone is still trapped in one of the weird pods, banging on the glass and screaming.
"Damn it- let me out!" she shouts, when the glass doesn't give.
"Hang on, I'll figure something out," Leon assures her, looking around and taking stock of what he has to hand. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots something that makes his heart leap for joy.
"Well, hello, beautiful," he murmurs, grabbing the well-worn aluminum attache case off an abandoned table, sitting on top of a familiar and equally beloved lambskin bomber jacket.
Popping the case open, the first order of business is to grab his trusted hatchet and strap it to his belt. The second is to load up his handgun in preparation for whatever lies ahead.
"You know how to shoot?" he asks the strange woman, who's currently hovering over his shoulder, radiating confusion.
"I have seen no such weaponry before," she answers, masking that confusion with a thick layer of annoyance.
"…I'll take that as a no, then."
He pauses when a strange sound draws his attention.
Muffled. Faint. But it sounds like a voice.
Slipping his jacket on, Leon starts fishing around in his pockets, where the sound seems to be coming from.
His hand closes around his earpiece, which he slips on and confirms his suspicion.
"..eon? Leon, where are you?!"
That voice is also familiar- and comforting, given the distinctly unfamiliar situation.
"Hey, Sherry- I'm back."
He hears the woman sigh from relief.
"Where are you?" she asks, her voice more muffled and distorted than normal. "I can't pin your location- it's like you vanished off the face of the Earth. What the hell is going on?"
"Uh-"
Leon glances around at the chaos, and at the strange people he's stumble on.
"…Well, Dorothy, I think it's safe to say we're not in Kansas anymore."
"What do you mean? What happened?"
Now that he's properly armed, Leon gets a firm grip on his hatchet and approaches the woman trapped in the pod.
"Gonna be honest," he says, jamming the hatchet's blade into the thin gap between the lid of the pod and the rest of it, "I have no fucking clue. But right now, I've got that FBI agent with me, there's a blind kid, and everything is on fire- literally. So I'm gonna deal with that first and I'll call back, alright?"
A moment of silence.
"…Okay," Sherry concedes. "Be careful."
"Me? Always."
"Who- who was that?" Grace asks.
"Someone who's gonna help us out once we get outta here."
He slams his elbow into the poll of the hatchet once, twice, then three times.
Finally, with a crack and a jolt of electricity through his body, the lid flies off with a startling amount of force.
The woman in the pod tumbles ungracefully out, hitting the floor with a dull thud.
"Jesus Christ, that hurt!" he groans, shaking his head like a dog getting rid of water. "Ugh- you alright, lady?"
The woman accepts his hand and he pulls her to her feet.
"…I thought that damned thing was going to be my coffin. I-"
She sees the alien woman and scowls, her tone turning from relieved to annoyed.
"You keep dangerous company."
"Yeah- didn't think I could afford to be picky right now. We're all in the shit, like it or not."
"…Fair point."
"You should come with us," Grace insists. "W-w-we've got a plan to get out of here- I-I'm Grace."
The dark-haired woman regards them with suspicious before speaking.
"Shadowheart."
"Uh huh. Well if we get outta here quick you might still be in time for the Evanescence concert, hm?"
Shadowheart looks puzzled for a second, but spots something that steals her attention, and lunges to grab it and a bag to shove it in.
"What w-was that?" Grace asks.
"Nothing," Shadowheart snaps. "Now come on- we can't waste time."
"She is right- this is enough chatter. To the helm, now."
The entire ship shakes as something hits it, rattling their brains in their skulls.
Fortunately, the entrance to the so-called helm is close enough
The squishy sound that greets them as the door opens makes Leon's skin crawl, but he chokes the feeling down.
There's the shriek of metal on metal, and something inhuman screaming in agony.
After scanning the room,the source becomes clear-a vaguely humanoid creature with a set of four tentacles where its mouth should be. It thrashes about, letting out a horrific shriek as its body writhes and contorts in front of a man that looks straight out of any stereotypical depiction of Satan he's ever seen in his life.
"What the-"
The tearing of flesh and cracking of bone floods the helm as the creature's body expands. Its skull splits open, extra tentacles sprouting out from the split open bone, each one armed with rows of jagged teeth.
It lunges for the devil attacking it, wrenching the sword from his hands before seizing him and wrapping those toothy tentacles around his face.
The captured devil barely gets the chance to scream before a horrifying crunch turns into a squelch, and he falls limp to the floor sans his entire head.
"W-w-w-w-what the fuck?!" Grace stammers out, stumbling backward while struggling to keep her grip on Emily.
Another pair of devils, laying limp on the floor alongside their companion, start to stir, letting out reedy, wheezing sounds as they rise to their feet.
One coughs up a fountain of blood; the other turns its head, a terrible crackling sound accompanying it.
"…This day keeps getting better and better," Leon growls.
"Connect the nerves!" Us urges. "Nerves! We will connect them!"
"The fuck are you talking about?"
"The transponder," Lae'zel answers. "I will connect it- but we must get through those things first."
Blood dripping from toothy tentacles, the mind flayer starts floating toward them, flanked by the newly zombified devils.
"Oh holy shit-"
Leon throws an arm out to keep the others back, raising his gun to the creature.
"Grace, stay behind me," he insists, hoping he sounds more confident than he feels. "Keep Emily safe."
"What's going on?" Emily whimpers.
"It's gonna be o-okay," Grace tries to reassure her. "J-just hang on tight."
"The ghaik and those cambions will not allow us to reach the transponder easily," Lae'zel growls.
Cambions. Apparently even devils are different around here.
No worries, there. Whatever they're called, he knows exactly what he has to do.
"You worry about getting to the transponder," he assures Lae'zel, cocking his gun and bracing himself. "I'll cover you."
Lae'zel nods, sprinting forward to take out the armored, very pissed off boar in her path.
Deep breath. Firm grip. Steady aim.
One shot. Two shots.
One of the tentacled monsters drops, though he assumes it won't do him the courtesy of staying down.
Another explosion, and something undoubtedly very, very big roaring from just outside the hull of the ship.
Grace screams. Emily screams with her.
An imp shrieks as it's incinerated by a ball of radiant light somehow shot from Shadowheart's hands.
Just another day at the office, really.
A cambion lunges for Lae'zel and tries to bite her, but she manages to move quickly enough that his jaws close around her metal bracer instead. The pommel of her sword cracks bone as she bashes it into the side of his skull; it sends him reeling, but not for long.
She grabs the imp sneaking up on her, swinging it headfirst at the cambion and smashing their skulls together.
"What is the meaning of this?!" she shouts. "They do not stay down-"
"Just get to the transponder- I'll explain later!"
Though she's not happy about it, Lae'zel presses on.
The bedlam is familiar by now- blood, death, growling, the solid thunk of his hatchet rending limbs from bodies.
"We gotta get you back to Sea World, buddy," he grumbles, whirling around to kick the once-more risen mind flayer that tries to lunge at him.
The room rattles, sending him tumbling to the floor.
"I have it!" he hears Lae'zel shout.
Shadowheart grabs Leon to help him to his feet, but halfway through the motion, the biggest explosion yet peels the entire side off the ship.
"Oh holy shit-"
Despite all the things he's seen- all the horrors he's witnessed- staring into the single eye of an enormous, crimson dragon is an entirely new level of terror. "Fuck-"
He sprints for Grace, though he's not sure how he's supposed to protect her from a whole-ass dragon.
Before he can reach her, though, he's thrown backward, bashing his head into a metal table.
Stars pop into his vision,the world spinning nauseatingly around him.
"You-"
Damn it- stand up-
Despite his best efforts, his body won't obey his mind's demands, instead stumbling around like a puppet with tangled cords.
"Come on, Grace- it's dangerous here, and you're needed at home."
Victor-
"You son of a bitch, don't touch her!" he snarls, swinging a fist in his direction and praying the blow lands.
Victor grabs his wrist and tosses him aside with a sigh of annoyance.
"I've had about enough of you-"
"Goddamnit-"
"No!" Grace shrieks.
"Morere!"
Victor howls in pain, reeling as open, necrotic wounds open across his grayish skin. He releases his grip on Grace's shirt and allowing her to scramble away with Emily.
Shadowheart looks quite proud of herself- if only they got the chance to savor that.
A burst of overwhelming heat as the dragon unleashes a jet of fire, scorching everything it touches.
Then, falling.
Then-
Nothing.