A Corvid In A Hoodie

Hell, Leon even has a cat now. Or at least, a black and white stray tuxedo that routinely visits his balcony he started leaving food and water out for, and began letting inside when he’s home. Leon unofficially named it Oreo. Chris tells him he should just adopt the little bastard already. Claire tells him that the cat wears a suit better than he does. They are right on both accounts.

Suffice to say, Leon’s apartment has seen more visitors in the past year than in the entire preceding decade. He can’t say he minds it much either. He’s begun stocking his cabinets with more than just hard liquor in anticipation of someone dropping by. The apartment feels more lived in too—spare clothes from Claire, a left behind jacket and some DVDs from Chris, and a few plants and photos from Sherry. 

(When Leon argued he couldn’t keep a plant alive, not with his schedule, Sherry had assured him these were indestructible. Leon promptly asked if he needed to worry about getting murdered by a mutant plant zombie. Sherry had just grinned. “Remember to water them, then.”)

It all led Leon to where he is now, standing in the middle of his meager kitchen with Claire at three in the morning, struggling to not burn noodles. While they technically could have bought something, neither of them feel like making themselves sick on whatever biohazard the 24-hour corner store claims is food.

“I swear I used to be better at this,” Leon mutters as he tries to scrape off the pasta stuck to the bottom of the pot. “My Italian ancestors would be so disappointed.”

“Give me that,” Claire says, elbowing him away from the stove. She points to the cutting board, abandoned in the rush to save the spaghetti. “Get back to chopping.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Leon says and promptly returns to his Redfield-assigned task. One would think that Leon’s skill with knives would transfer to the kitchen, but apparently cutting throats is very different from cutting vegetables. Who knew?

After a couple hours, much swearing, and one destroyed smoke alarm later, Leon and Claire vanquish their enemy. Their reward? Slightly burned spaghetti with sauce. Claire exhales heavily as they stare at their grotesque creation. “So… you think garlic or pepper goes well with charcoal?”

Leon snorts. “So long as you don’t season it with buckshot, I think we’re good.”

Claire pauses, slowly turning to stare at him. “Why the hell would we do that?”

“My cousins did it once.” Leon grimaces, shuddering at the memory. “It was when I was… a teenager, I think?” He doesn’t really remember how it happened, just the explosive aftermath. Suffice to say the grill hadn’t survived, nor very many eyebrows. “I’m pretty sure someone called in a bomb squad because of it.”

Claire barks a laugh. “I’m pretty sure we’ve used similar tactics to kill zombies,” she says as she takes her plate, sitting at Leon’s table. Leon is quick to join her, sliding into the chair across. She eyes him as she twists noodles around her fork. “…I didn’t realize you had cousins.”

Leon shrugs. “My adoptive parents had a… sizable extended family.” Claire hums, acknowledging and inviting in equal measure, but she doesn’t probe further. Simply waits. I’m listening, if you want. They don’t talk about family much, none of them. Leon knows the Redfields’ parents died when they were young, that Chris—only 18—took care of Claire afterward. In turn, the Redfields know Leon was orphaned when he was a kid. 

Leon doesn’t touch the memories of his life prior to Raccoon City very much anymore. They tend to be utterly overshadowed by that one night in the city. Still, Leon doesn’t want to forget. And perhaps that’s why he opens his mouth and continues, dredging up the old dusty memories. 

“I had a few cousins,” Leon starts, staring idly into the distance. “The extended family lived pretty close to each other so I saw them often. I think… I don’t remember my cousins getting into trouble on purpose, but I do remember at least one mud fight.” He snorts. “I was afraid my parents would be mad, but instead they said something along the lines of ‘oh giant and scary mud monster have you seen Leon?’” Leon shakes his head, a smile pulling at his lips. “I’m pretty sure I argued with them for a solid five minutes that I was Leon, not a mud monster, but they only conceded once I’d hosed myself off.”

Claire snickers. “That’s adorable,” she says, not even trying to hide her smile. “They… sound like good people.”

“They were,” Leon chuckles, but his smile slips, replaced by something heavier. He looks down at the plate of noodles, twisting them with his fork but not making a move to eat. “I haven’t thought about them in years,” he admits quietly. Well… that isn’t entirely true. Leon has thought of his parents, usually when he was covered in blood or stinking of alcohol, and how disappointed they’d be.

“Are they…?” Claire trails off, and Leon shrugs.

“I don’t know. I… hell, I haven’t talked to them in decades. Not since the city.”

Claire starts and when Leon looks at her, her eyes are wide. “Do they even know you survived?”

“I think so,” Leon mutters. “I think I called their landline from a phone booth afterward? No one answered. I left a message, said… something, I forgot what, and then… well…” Leon scowls, stabbing his fork harder into his spaghetti. “After that, I figured it’d be safer to stay away.”

“What’s that for?” Ashley asks behind him, and he turns to look at her, bloodied sword in hand.

Leon shrugs. “It’s just a replica. Only a couple uses for it.” Like to finish a wall mural with three other swords. Once the last sword is in place and the door clicks open, Leon glances around the little treasury, eyeing the various gems and trinkets. He considers for only a moment, then gives a mental shrug and starts stuffing some smaller items in his extra pockets. 

“…What are you doing?” Ashley asks as he loots the place. 

Leon nods his head toward the opulence around them, golden framed paintings and countless other signs of wealth. “I think he’s got enough, don’t you?” Ashley blinks but then nods hesitantly, and Leon chuckles. “Don’t worry, it’s not for me. The Merchant that’s been around pays well for this stuff.” 

The blue jade pendant he snags is nothing special. It’s just another shiny necklace Leon shoves in his pocket to barter with the Merchant later.

Once Leon’s filled his pockets, he and Ashley make their way back to the atrium where Salazar first showed his ugly face. The bodies of the zealots are conspicuously absent. Once back on the main floor, Leon looks around, assessing their route. Luis said to meet in the courtyard so if they keep heading straight through, they should— 

“Uh, Leon?”

The mildly alarmed tone in Ashley’s voice has Leon snapping his head around, grip tightening on his handgun. But there’s no hostiles he can see, and instead Ashley’s gaze is fixed on… him? Leon frowns at her, opening his mouth to ask what’s wrong, but Ashley beats him to it.

“Leon, your bag, it’s glowing?!”

Leon blinks, confused and a little alarmed as he drops his gaze to his belt, half expecting to see a grenade or flashbang about to detonate. Instead, he sees a pale glow spilling from one of his bags. Frowning, Leon holsters his gun and digs a hand into the pouch in question, withdrawing it. One of the baubles he picked up earlier from the treasury, a small blue jade pendant, is flickering softly. 

“What…?” Leon mutters quietly. Some kind of chemical reaction? (He hopes, anyway. Otherwise, a blue glow probably means radiation, in which case Leon is fucked.) But before Leon can figure out what’s wrong with the odd pendant, he realizes he has much bigger problems. That being, his hand.  

Before his eyes, Leon’s fingernails blacken and harden, lengthening into something resembling talons. And from his now-clawed fingertips, something dark ripples over Leon’s skin, climbing his hands.

“Fuck–!” Leon chokes out. He’s lost control of the muscles of his hand already, joints locked around the pendant. Shit, shit, shit! Fucking hell, Luis’ plaga is taking him over already?! Leon snaps his eyes up to Ashley, unable to contain the panic he knows is creeping into his voice. “Ashley, RUN!”

The young woman stumbles back as Leon turns and races as far from her as he can while he can still control his limbs. He doesn’t get very far, his legs buckling under him as something in his back snaps. Leon hisses, curling on his side as his blood burns. There’s a writhing along his spine, what can only be the plaga twisting along his vertebrae. Fuck, he can’t let himself attack Ashley, he can’t—

Leon tries to claw himself forward a little further, but instead of moving, his body slides out of place. Suddenly Leon is aware that there is more of him than there was a few moments ago. Something is worming its way from his lower back. Something is taking both sides of his spine and pulling, stretching him like taffy. Leon writhes, pain and alien sensation filling his brain, but distantly aware there is so much more of him.

There is something thrashing past his feet, his stomach is too far from his shoulders, his neck is twisted like a corkscrew. 

When he slams his head against the stone floor, he feels the impact rattle through a face that is too long to be human. When his jaw splits open, unable to hold back an agonized cry, a thick tongue runs past razor sharp fangs.

Finally, it stops, leaving Leon panting on the floor, fear clogging his throat. He’s all too aware of his alien body, far far too much of him sprawled over stone. Ashley’s still here. He’s a danger to her. He has to either take care of himself or get away or something—

“Leon?”

Leon flinches at the sound of Ashley’s voice, squeezing his eyes shut as he tries to shuffle away. “Nnnno, ssssstay away, Assshhley—” His warning is mixed with hisses and growls, his movements jerking and uncoordinated. Leon tries to shove himself backward, but there is too much between his limbs. He can’t do much more than wriggle in place. Shit, shit, shit—

Beneath his labored breathing, Leon’s aware that Ashley hasn’t said anything more, and he can’t hear her footsteps approaching. Good. But, he still needs to put more space between himself and her before he loses all lucidity.

Leon risks cracking an eye open. He’s not sure what he expects to see—perhaps grotesque twisted flesh, insectoid carapace, or even something millipede-esque considering how much spine he seems to have. What he’s definitely not expecting however, is scales. Blue scales, specifically, and thick blond fur.

And past that, Ashley’s mildly frightened but mostly awed—not horrified, awed—expression. 

Leon blinks and tries to leverage himself onto his hands and knees. (Because if Ashley’s not going to run, Leon’s just going to have to do it himself.) And while Leon can successfully control his limbs, he’s not sure what’s going on… between them. Leon blinks as he watches the blue mass shift and cranes his neck up to try and see and oh shit—

His head lurches upward, neck far far far too long. Suddenly, Leon’s… well, he’s not standing, that’s for sure, but his head is at standing height. Leon swallows back a sudden wave of nausea and vertigo, blinking as he traces the serpentine blue and gold shape sprawled over the stone floor. It resembles a snake, with smooth blue dorsal scales, but the illusion is swiftly broken by the blonde fur that lines the spine all the way to the tail tip. Tracing it back up… Leon’s pants and belts are caught around one set of legs, his shirt around the other set, and then he traces the blue all the way back up until he can’t look down any further.

He’s… a giant snake. If a snake was nearly forty feet long, had a body the diameter of a human torso, a mane of hair running along its body, and legs. 

“What the fuck—” Leon mutters quietly, and distantly notes: Oh hey! He can still talk. Small victories. With his head up like this, Leon can watch as he tries to move, only for his very very very long body to respond with all the grace of a wet, limp noodle.

“Leon, you okay?”

Leon’s head snaps over to look at Ashley, who is slowly approaching. Leon snarls, only to feel his lips feel back from too-long teeth and promptly flinch. Leon shakes his head, nausea climbing his throat as his neck sways side-to-side. “Ashley, you need to get out of here, I’m not sure how much longer I’ll stay sane.”

Instead of running, Ashley squints at him. There’s something sparkling in her eyes. “Leon… you’re a dragon.”

Leon blinks. “I’m a what.”

“Dragon.”

Leon looks down at himself. “…I thought dragons were supposed to have wings?”

“Eh, only some of them,” Ashley says, and Leon jumps slightly. Somehow she’s managed to sneak right up to him. He cranes his head back to look down at her, and she grins. “Need help?”

“You should run,” Leon repeats.

Ashley shakes her head, eyes gleaming with excitement. “Heck no, I am not missing my one chance to experience a dragon.” Internally, Leon despairs, now becoming increasingly convinced his charge has the self preservation instincts of a lemming. Or at least, she does when faced with something ‘cool’. 

“Now, let’s get you up.” Before Leon can protest otherwise, Ashley has latched her arms behind his head and starts pulling him forward. Leon can do little more than bear it, his neck stretching out as he follows her. Then, it gets to its limit and he has to push himself onto his hands, then his elongated back, then his feet…

Finally, Leon stands on four shaky limbs, stretched out impossibly long across the atrium. Carefully, he curls in on himself, spine folding and curving over until he’s sat back on his new tail—fuck, he has a tail—and haunches. His back curves like an S, and then his neck completes its own curve.

Leon stares at his taloned hands and then beyond them to Ashley who, for a girl who has been kidnapped, is looking like Christmas came early. Leon groans, attempting to rub his face only to be reminded he now has a snout instead. Goddamnit. “Ashley, I’m literally a giant noodle, can you please stop looking so excited?”

TLDR I'm leaning toward an 'inverse' S curve for his spine instead of the standard human S curve... it would give the lower back an outward curve instead of inward curve, but also enable more outward flexibility for maximum cat-ness and easier quadrupedal motion. I looked at a few example skeletons -- cheetahs / cougars, utahraptors and other dromaeosauridae, kangaroos, and human spines of course -- and proceeded to mash them together.

Like, as the myriad of lower back problems that afflict humans, attest, our spines are a mess. We are very new to the game of bipedality compared to the other predominantly bipedal group of birds/theropods. Our S shaped spine allows us to stand vertically without a tail for balance (compared to older theropods and modern dromaeosauridae (birds) which are angled forward and have tails to balance). But the S shape also puts a lot of pressure on the vertebrae, particular those of the lower back / lumbar vertebrae. Like... a cheetah spine has a reverse S, its lower back/lumbar section curves more out and "up" than down and "in" like in humans. Anyways. Maybe the plaga have some remnant dinosaur DNA from previous parasitization they're using for inspiration.

Anyways. Leon probably has a slight reverse S curve in his spinal column, allowing for a bipedal stance. Also the "spinal processes" (aka the outward 'spikes' on the back of the vetebrae) are more prominent in the thoraxial (upper back) vertebrae. Also the muscles of his back plates probably attach to these. He's probably got more thoraxial + lumbar vertebrae than a standard human, so his torso is a bit "elongated" by comparison, not to mention the coccygeal vertebrae that form the tail. Also also the pelvis / hips are Weird and I don't entirely want to figure it out now but I'm thinking it's a mix between a human pelvis and a more dromaeosauridae / felidae pelvis that is partially open rather than a fully closed "bowl"... probably. maybe. Like I said. Ignoring it.

He dies, choking on his own blood, Kos’ withered face staring back at him.

He dreams and he wakes and he tries again.

And again.

And again.

Aren’t you tired of losing?

Leon is torn in two, his remaining moment of consciousness just enough to register he’s looking at his own internals before the world whites out.. 

His lungs fill with sand. 

He drowns in his own blood.

His spine is crushed. Then his head.

Again.

And again.

And again.

We could ensure your victory. Your life. Your return.

Micolash called it Orphan. Maria spoke of how humans cut its Mother to pieces, cell by cell, all in search of power and knowledge. A familiar story. The Leon that he left behind in the waking world… he feels for the creature, for the Orphan, who exists as it does by no fault of its own. And yet, Leon hates it, he hates it as he’s hated nothing else before in his life.

Kos rends him down, bone by bone, vein by vein, and Leon’s blood soaks the sands as he dies.

Again.

And again.

And again.

We can help you escape, we can help you win.

He’s tired. And even if he did want to end it all, he can’t. Because he dies as he wakes. Again. And again. And again. The only way to end it is to end Kos. And so Leon dies and he wakes and he dies and he wakes and he dies and he wakes and he dies—

How do you expect a mortal to kill a God?

Sometimes Leon survives a few minutes. Sometimes, a few seconds. On each return, there is no sign of how his body was torn apart. No sign of his blood that once stained the sands. Kos continues to scream and wail. Leon joins it. Their agony and fury and pain inextricable from each other.

Our oath will save you from this sorrow… 

Leon makes Kos bleed, liquid mercury pooling on his saw cleaver.

…this cycle…

Kos rips his heart from his chest, and drips liquid metal down his throat.

…this pain.

He dies.

You need not be in pain.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Why do you suffer still? 

He is more dead than alive. More dreaming than awake. 

Bear the mark and you can be free—

Death counts its strikes. Leon has stopped counting deaths.

I want to go home.

So take our hand, take the knife, and carve it thus. And Leon draws his blade and pulls slender lines of red across his stomach. Five marks make a tally. One, two, three, four, and a last to cross them out—

|||| 

Leon gasps as cold rushes into his veins, pools in his brain, thick as molten metal. It’s cloying, calming, claustrophobic. It seeps into his skin, into his bones, a cold like the expanse of space. Something is wrong. Something is right.

He looks at his stomach, at the tally marks he’s crossed, branded into his skin and already whitened into a scar. But… no, not a scar, the color is leaching from his skin, skin that swiftly vanishes as Leon’s fingers fumble, no longer able to grip his tunic. Bile burns his throat and Leon chokes, horror sinking hooks in his bones, as he realizes his fingers are melting together, pulled and kneaded like dough into something inhuman.

What have I done?

Something thin tickles the nape of his neck and Leon raises the hand that isn’t malformed to the back of his head. His fingers meet with thin tendrils, swiftly thickening and swelling. It is a touch he feels twofold. His brainstem is splitting, roots budding and spilling from his spine. Too much to be contained in one mind. 

The vines pulled from his neck—things he can feel, on which he can sense soft wind and a too-warm touch—waver in the air, curling over his back and around his too-warm arm. No, no, GET IT OFF—! Leon grabs one, too-warm fingers wrapping around a too-cold tentacle, as he tries to rip it from his neck. 

P A I N

White hot agony shoots through his skull, a bullet straight through his cranium, but nothing so kind as to kill him. Lightning arcs between ten quadrillion neurons, countless eyes staring into the spaces between. 

The cold is creeping further, filling him to overflowing. It shapes him, seeping into bone and blood, kneading his flesh until it is no more. Tentacles thicken and fan, tasting the unseen currents of power and potential that reside between atoms, that form along the threads of the mind. It’s easy now, to taste those currents, to tug at those threads.

He can weave them, if he wishes, take those threads and form a tapestry.

The thing these mortals call magic, a tugging of the threads and a weaving of space.

Everything is becoming soft, subtle, a milling peace that wars with the blood in his veins. But he is not peace, he is a thudding heart and bared teeth and claws, a thing that staggers back to his feet. Or he was. He’s not sure what he is… in this space that screams silently, a thousand trillion currents that demand he watch and listen and touch and sing—

There is too much of him now, his edges blurred between this thing that might be a body, and the vastness pressing in on his skin. 

Time has no meaning, as he slowly bears the vast space attempting to suffocate him. (Suffocate. Breath. He breathes.) He exhales, a rush of air, lungs releasing. (Twitch. Touch. He moves.) He twitches, a motion that travels across his body. (Motion. Body. Self.) His mind is overfilling, no longer trapped in his skull. Tentacles waver in the air, floating on the currents. (Mind. Currents. Too much.) He pulls himself closer, trying to find his edges, his tendrils finding his own cool skin and its soft current-touch.

Better. Better. Less of him. Less of him out.

An eternity later, the space between is longer filling him top full, he’s found the pattern to its currents, to its ebbs and tides. He can find himself amidst the ocean, piecing his mind together thread by conscious thread. 

He… he is he. 

He is…

Himself.

Something. Someone.

Lost… why is he lost, why is that familiar… what is he lost from?

Home.

He is lost from home. He needs to go home.

Home. Home is…

Death. Blood. Bared teeth.

Warmth. Love. Friends.

Family.

Home is lost. He is lost. He is l—… that. That’s familiar. He is l—… he is L—…

Leon.

He is Leon.

Leon breathes. He feels—he sees—every electric pulse ricocheting through his nerves. He feels—he sees—the muscles of his diaphragm contract, molecules of air rushing through his trachea. He feels—he sees—his blood move slowly through his veins, leisurely, thick and cloying. 

He feels—he sees—the tentacles wrapped around his neck shiver, a dozen filaments waving leisurely in the wind.

He feels—he sees—the rune scarred into his abdomen, beneath woven fibers of hardened animal skin and dyed cotton canvas. He sees it, and he knows.

He is Leon. And he is wrong.

He is not Leon.

Not exactly.

Chris, Jill and Claire have cleared the remaining infected, have scoured every inch of this blasted facility, looked for any sign of where Leon could have gone or who could have taken him. But there’s nothing.

Chris exhales sharply. “Regroup in the main hall.”

His BSAA co-founder and sister send back acknowledgement and the comm clicks off. Chris twists his head to look at the blood splattered walls, grip tightening on his assault rifle. Objectively, he knows Leon has to be somewhere—that he must have been hit with an EMP or a jammer, that either Leon stumbled into some deeper complex here or that someone took him. But the silence eats at his nerves.

Jill and Claire are at the rendezvous when Chris arrives, quietly conversing. When Sherry had told them that Leon went dark, and that the DSO couldn’t act officially, not yet, Chris had already been grabbing his rifle and calling his squad. Jill and Claire followed the minute they heard. (The other Raccoon City survivors hadn’t quite forgiven Leon for heading back to face the city alone and without their help.)

Chris opens his mouth to speak, but before he can, something gurgles to his left.

He whirls, their weapons all trained on the sound. But instead of an infected, as Chris was expecting, the blood soaked floor is bubbling. Blood that, just a moment prior, had been days old dried rusty stains, not the vibrant deep red that is frothing. And then, to compound the confusion, something claws its way out of the blood puddle a mere few inches deep.

The thing hauling itself from the blood is vaguely humanoid, but it definitely isn’t human. Even from a distance Chris can see long, writhing tendrils wrapped around the body, which heaves itself out as if from a pool, instead of inch deep blood on concrete.

“What the hell…?” Jill mutters, and Chris feels much the same.

They keep their weapons trained but don’t shoot, not yet, as the thing finally falls against the floor. And… proceeds to just lie there, apparently exhausted from having defied physics.

Carefully, Chris advances forward, the aim of his muzzle never wavering. The BOW doesn’t so much as stir. Now that he’s closer, he can see it’s dressed in clothes, but… nothing modern. They’re oddly archaic, a large coat pooling on the floor that does nothing to hide the tentacles wrapped around the creature’s neck and coming out of its sleeve. It’s covered in blood (not surprising considering it just crawled out of the stuff) but as Chris watches the blood seeps off its body, receding back into the floor almost as if alive. As the red retreats, the BOW is left looking bleached, hair and tentacles a milky white.

It still hasn’t moved.

Chris nudges it with his boot and when he receives no reaction, uses his foot to fully push the BOW onto its back. When he does, his blood runs cold. While the BOW’s hair is still flopped over its face, it isn’t covered entirely, exposing a jawline and face that is familiar, if deathly deathly pale.

 “…Leon?” Chris breathes, fear clutching his heart in vice. The BOW twitches, head tilting slightly in Chris’ direction, though the eyes stay sealed shut. 

“… ’rissss…?” 

The sound, his name, is barely a word at all. It’s layered with an odd echo, an echo that rattles Chris’ teeth and squeezes his eyeballs in their sockets, despite the voice behind it being barely audible. There’s a tingle along his spine, a twisting in his chest, a lingering sense of something otherworldly that makes his bones ache.

While years of protocol say otherwise, Chris kneels down beside his husband, fingers brushing the hair away from Leon’s face. Leon barely stirs as Chris pushes the hair back, hair that feels the same despite looking as though it's been bleached to hell and back. And… fuck, it is him. There is odd ribbing along one side of his face, like that of a fungus, and thin tendrils stretching from his brow. When Chris brushes a hand along his jaw, he can still feel stubble, unchanged from when he last saw the man.

“Leon?” Claire’s voice cracks around his name, and Leon—because God, it’s him, it’s him—hums, face tilting once again toward Claire. The soft hum resonants in Chris’ bones, a hiss that makes the ground quake.

“…’airrr…eeee…”

The voice is that of a soothing melody, that of rippling waves and the wails of the damned.

“Leon…” Chris says, his breath catching in his throat. He thumbs the ridges now sprouting from Leon’s jaw, soft beneath his hand. The vine-like tendrils around Leon’s neck lie limp, and there isn’t even a flicker of movement beneath his eyelids. “Can…can you open your eyes?”

He doesn’t know why he asks. But it’s important, it feels important.

And somehow, Leon hears the call. His eyelids peel back, revealing sockets that are nothing but abyssal emptiness. An emptiness that, as Chris watches, slowly begins to stud with pinpricks of light, until it's like looking into the heart of a galaxy. Leon’s head lolls sideways into Chris’ hand, one of his thin tendrils idly curling around Chris’ fingers.

“… sssssafe… sorrrrrry…”

Chris’ fingers curl around the filaments, his hand pressing into Leon’s unnaturally pale skin, which tingles beneath his touch like it's been dosed with an electric current. Chris’ eyes trail down Leon’s body, from the thick tentacles wrapped around Leon’s neck to the strange clothes he’s dressed in, which only seem stranger the more Chris looks.

“Leon… what happened to you?”

Carefully, the agent exhales, long and slow. Get a grip, Kennedy, he tells himself. You’re not out of control. This is tactical. You’ve done this as a human, even if then you were on your knees. But Leon can’t ignore how he falls into the stance far too naturally, how it comes as easily as moving on two legs. (A human body is not meant to bend this way, move this way, and yet he does.) He shoves the thought aside. In the field, you take every advantage you’re given.

Leon stalks low to the ground, slinking between shadows. They welcome him, the darkness an almost comforting embrace. This is Leon’s preferred way to do missions. Stealthy and quiet. A melee is messy, frantic, and a good way to alert every hostile in a quarter-mile to your presence. Not to mention, a good way to get killed. And when you do missions solo, as Leon often does, fights can easily become a game of numbers.

But this? This lets Leon fight on his terms. It saves ammunition, reduces attention, ensures Leon doesn’t have to kill more than necessary. 

Creeping through the shadows, Leon sets eyes on his first target. A mercenary a little ways from the rest in a careless blindspot. Leon keeps his Silver Ghost in its holster. He doesn’t have a silencer, and a gunshot will alert everyone in earshot. So, by hand it is. Leon slips closer, closer… and strikes. The mercenary doesn’t even know he’s there, not until Leon’s already snapped the man’s neck, sightless eyes twisted to stare back at him.

(It’s much too easy. It’s difficult to kill like this, and yet it's far far too easy…)

Leon lowers the body to the ground, only to startle when the mercenary twitches. The dead body, or should-be-dead body lets out a gurgle, neck and head twitching and bulging in a way that’s become all too familiar over the course of the night.

Shit.

Before the plaga can rip itself free, Leon drives his knife into the junction of the mercenary’s neck and shoulder. With a twist of the blade he severs the spinal cord and plunges the knife into the mass of parasite beneath. Instantly, the body falls limp, puppet strings cut. Leon grimaces as he slips his knife back in its sheath and pulls the body into the shadows. So, Illuminados’ hired mercenaries were infected too… figures.

Leon returns to his hunt, slipping around the spotlights. He kills a few more mercenaries lurking on the fringes, a hand over the mouth cutting off any attempted screams in the second before he slits their throat and spinal cord. There’s blood staining his claws again. 

While the rain should mask the metallic stench of blood and iron, the shouts of the mercenaries as Leon stalks his next target make him worry otherwise.

“¡Sangre, sangre, sangre!” they begin to chant, the sound echoing over the facility. Leon stills at the call of ‘blood’ but there’s no immediate descent on his position. Instead, he can hear them cackle, one mercenary proclaiming: “¡Estoy deseando darme un festín con su sangre!” Leon grimaces. Abruptly, he hopes that Ashley’s understanding of Spanish isn’t as good as his own or Luis’. He’d rather she not have to hear someone raving about ‘feasting on their blood.’

But, satisfied he hasn’t been found out, Leon continues his hunt. One by one he eliminates the mercenaries. He rips the men from their rooftop perches and pulls them into shadow, screams silenced with an armored hand before the blade of his tail slips cleanly through their ribs. It strikes Leon, as he bundles another corpse into the brush, that for once Leon is not the one being hunted by a monster.

He is the monster doing the hunting.

How ironic.