Stoner Wolfess

"Leon, you look like shit." Hunnigan's voice crackled through the earpiece, tinny and distant.Leon Kennedy exhaled through his nose, leaning against the brick wall of the alleyway. The city hummed around him—car horns, distant sirens, the rhythmic thump of bass from a club two blocks over. His skin itched. Not the usual post-mission exhaustion itch, but something deeper, crawling beneath his flesh like ants mapping out new territory.

"Yeah, well," he muttered, rolling his shoulder, "you try getting thrown through a window by a B.O.W. and see how you look." His ribs ached. That was normal. The nausea wasn’t.

Hunnigan sighed. "Just get to the extraction point. Medical’s waiting."

Leon pushed off the wall, his boots scraping against wet pavement. The alley smelled like rotting takeout and motor oil—normal city stenches—but beneath it all, his own sweat carried a sharp, metallic tang. Wrong. His stomach lurched again, and he swallowed hard. Not now. Not here.

He made it three steps before his knees buckled. Concrete rushed up to meet him, but the impact never came. Instead, his palms hit the ground with a wet crack, fingers splayed wide—too wide. His nails darkened, lengthened, keratin splitting as black claws punched through the tips. A sound tore from his throat, half-groan, half-roar, as his spine twisted with a series of audible pops.

"Leon? Leon!" Hunnigan's voice sputtered in his ear, but the words dissolved into static. His earpiece melted against his skin, absorbed like wax into the expanding mass of his skull. Shoulders broadened, muscles writhing beneath his jacket until the seams split. Fabric hung in tatters as his chest heaved, ribs cracking apart only to reform thicker, heavier, each breath a furnace blast.

The alley walls shrank around him—no, he was growing. Brickwork crumbled under his thrashing tail— tail?—as his spine elongated, vertebrae knitting together in a grotesque parody of evolution. His vision swam, colors bleeding into heat signatures, the world rendered in pulsing reds and yellows. Something primal uncoiled in his gut, a hunger that had nothing to do with food.

Leon tried to scream, but his jaw unhinged with a wet snap, his teeth lengthening into jagged fangs that scraped against his own thickening tongue. The taste of copper flooded his mouth—his own blood, hot and metallic. His fingers twitched, claws gouging deep furrows into the pavement as his forearms bulged, scales erupting across his skin like armor plating. The pain was a living thing, a wildfire racing through every nerve ending, but beneath it, something worse: the terrifying clarity of awareness. He could feel his body changing, molecule by molecule.

A car alarm wailed nearby, the sound slicing through the haze. Leon turned his massive head—when had his neck grown so long?—and saw his reflection in a shattered storefront window. The creature staring back was monstrous, spines jutting from its hunched back, eyes glowing like liquid nitrogen. His stomach lurched again, not from nausea, but from sheer horror. This wasn’t him. This couldn’t be him. Yet when he tried to speak, all that came out was a guttural snarl, his vocal cords reshaped into something unrecognizable.

The only dumb thing that seem to be recognizable was his hair. Although it seem to be more thicker and shaggier but... the longer he stared at his reflection Leon realized he didn't look like just any overgrown lizard glowing blue.

The suspended platform bellow them shook and lurched in its downward decent into the abyss. His knees smacked the metal hard, his body giving into the dark slithering ache of his being, brought on by the black leaching veins visible on his pale skin. Labored breath escaped his bloody lips as the screeching of metal echoed in his ringing ears. His body sagged awkwardly on his knees as his tired gaze pleaded for the young blonde reaching so desperately for him on the ledge above to flee. To not suffer the trauma of his inevitable downfall. To survive this place unlike he will. To escape unlike so many in this cursed remains of a city. To live like so many he failed to save. To not be one of his so many regrets.

But at least he was able to save someone. To save her.

A weak cough scraped his throat and shot sparking pain through him as a White shadow moved to stand over him. He never lowered his head no matter how defeated he felt. No matter the acceptance. No matter the pain it brought. He stared down the barrel of the extended barrel of a modified weapon held in dark gloved hands. Even when his vision blurred and doubled. The audible click of the hammer resonated through him prepared for what was to come.

“LEON!!”

He heard her scream, voice hoarse and pained echoing around the large descending tunnel. Knowing her tears were there but unable to see them or comfort her. The concussive blast of the white shadows pistol deafened everything bring blinding white pain with it, but he could still hear distant call of his name resonating around him growing deeper. His head whipped back at the force of the bullet shattering his skull, blood spraying around him like a halo and the blurry world went abruptly black.

~~~~~~~~

Marvin Branagh’s breath hitched in his throat as the Rookie Leon S Kennedy who was told to stay away days ago was manhandled by one of the rotting corpses of this dieing city. The thing that was once his colleague bit hard into the shoulder of the younger man tearing through clothe, skin, and muscle with a sickening squelch. Not moments ago the kid was ready to dispatch the lumbering disease that followed Marvin into the main hall. But before the startled but confident Rookie could get the shot off he lurched forwards clutching at his head in pain allowing the rotted corpse to lunge with surprising speed and attack.

Marvin’s throat went dry momentarily forgetting about the chunk of flesh and muscle missing from his abdomen as he grabbed for his knife with a bloody shaking hand. The large blade slide free with little effort, its stainless steel already flecked with blood. He took a regretful and mournful step forward, cursing himself for what’s happening to the poor Rookie who’d walked into his grave. Morning the man the kid could have been and the unmovable conviction he briefly displayed.

Mid-step the hairs on the back of his neck and arms raised stopping Marvin in his tracks, strides away from the slaughter as an eeriness took over the room worse than what blanketed the city. The sinking pit in his gut that accompanied him for days opened into a deep endless cavern, and his hardened brown eyes widened in shock and horror as the rookies head jerked back like being hit with a sudden concussive forces as a silent scream escaped his parted lips. Marvin’s mind reeled back in horror as Leon’s skin peeled, flaking off in pale and red meaty chunks, revealing a partially cracked bone white skull underneath. The shadows of the skull darkened as void black smoke escaped from the edges of the parted jaw, with even a small trail of it exited from a shattered hole in the center of the forehead. The once dirty blond loose hair lengthened to its neck and darkened in color with streaks of grey forming at what should have been the temples. Black flames erupted around its body burning away the casual clothing of the once rookie replacing it with broader shoulders and a black fur lined leather jacket. Marvin watched as it traveled down Leon’s frozen form watching as his hands suffered the same fate as his once pretty boy face with the tattered sleeves of the leather resting on them. The tattered hem of the jacket ended just bellow the waist with dark grey pants replaced the scuffed jeans with dark worn combat boots finishing out the new form of the creature in front of him. The void black flames died down but still licking at the shoulders of the slightly taller imposing figure of the once rookie.

Fear spiked through Marvin as the agape jaw of the creature snapped shut with a resounding ‘clack’ of teeth and burning icy blue ethereal eyes lit like a flame in the dark empty sockets. Another wave of fear washed through Marvin as the beings head slowly lowered to the rotted corpse desperately sinking its teeth into its shoulder. A slow precise bone hand reach up grabbing a fist full of loose hair before violently ripping the rotted corpses mouth from its now smoking shoulder, dislocating its jaw and breaking teeth from their roots causing them to clatter to the marbled floor. With a firm grasp on the swaying corpse, the creature reached behind and underneath the hem of its tattered leather jacket, pulling free a sharp hatchet, its blade shattered looking and glinting in the yellow lights of the large open hall. With a glint of steel the hatches was brought up to the struggling corpses neck before being forcefully ripped through the tendons and bone causing the body to go limp and collapse, gravity detaching what remains of the neck from its head that was held steadfast in an unyielding grasp.

Marvin took an involuntary step back, his mind reeling and instincts screaming as his foot connected with stray debris scattered on the floor, the noise drawing the attention of the ethereal creature that replaced the Rookie Cop Leon S Kennedy. The sharp blue glow of its eyes locked onto him sending shivers down Marvin’s spine and dread though his being. Without breaking eye contact with Marvin’s frozen form, it tossed the decapitated head aside before turning completely towards him revealing a dark grey-blue shirt tight against its frame with two straps around its abdomen likely for a harness and a tactical belt around its waist. With the full brunt of the creatures attention Marvin found he couldn’t move, couldn’t breath, and couldn’t think. Fear locking him in place no matter how hard he begged himself to move as its imposing figure took step after step towards him the shattered blade of the hatchet glinting with each step towards him.