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"The Monster Named X", Chapter 13: A Sense of Security
Finally caught up--this is the latest chapter I have finished and hadn't posted yet! The saga of Big Ole Mutant Guy continues!
Rating: Teen (CW for blood, canon-typical violence, human experimentation, human adults cuss like human adults, implied torture/child abuse/child death)
It may not be the typical Umbrella researcher's "first choice of bodyguard", but Claire and Sherry count themselves lucky to have an absolute goliath like Mr. X between them and the dangers scuttling all over Raccoon City now... and perhaps Leon will begrudgingly appreciate it too! XD
A Sense of Security
Traversing the open between the orphanage and the R.P.D. was much less nerve-wracking for the two humans accompanying him now. The rain guttered and filled the streets with the scent of diluted gore, and damp ashes. And the tiniest shred of nature in the form of petrichor. Still, the Tyrant knew enough not to celebrate the cityscape’s renewed pseudo-cleanliness. Many strains of the T-virus survived some duration of time in liquid water—especially when that water was partially bodily fluids anyways. All the rain, all the blood, it had to go somewhere. It had to go downwards…
It already had, no doubt. Despite Mr. X’s presence making short work of the half-dozen infected they met with, Claire and Sherry seemed hyper-cautious—jumping at shadows. He watched closely in the moments between lunges by nearby zombies for some hint at the source of their jittery behaviors; perhaps they instinctively knew it, or had already seen signs of the fact, that more menacing threats than the shambling, braindead former residents lurked within the city limits.
“Do you think my mom’s okay?” Sherry murmured from her post between Claire and T-00, head tilting up towards the woman expectantly—but the look in her eyes was not so naïve to suggest she expected the optimistic answer. Claire’s expression flashed to what Mr. X had to guess was… guilty?
Humans were odd. So similar, and yet so different, to his kind.
“I dunno.” Claire stifled a sigh, “If she is, she’s gotta be in the underground labs. She works there, right?”
“…Mm-hm.” She nodded, troubled. Mr. X had never met Dr. Annette Birkin, but knew that both Birkins most often operated within the N.E.S.T. complex. There was something to that omission of William, and from what he had overheard himself it appeared confirmed that the father was in some way out of the picture.
Mr. X huffed, scanning ahead of their path for danger. She knew something, had seen something. It didn’t bode well.
“I hope to god she’s holding out down there, then. It’s probably a lot safer than out in the open here.” Still, Claire forced her chin up, if only for her young charge’s sake. Sherry regrouped and her stride grew steadier.
From not much further ahead, the sharp report of two gunshots echoed between the damp bricks of the avenue. Claire laser-focused ahead, the realization dawning on her where the shots were originating from. Mr. X had stepped up closer to Sherry, a readied fist clenched over her ducked head, ready to sledgehammer-swing into anything charging her way. After the pause which felt like five solid minutes (but more likely five fluttery seconds) another three shots rang out preceding a shrill animal yelp that carried a dull, sickly gurgle of viral influence to its tone.
Dog, the Tyrant recognized right away. Infected dog. T-virus was a persistent contagion and affected many species, not just humans. Rats, pigs, sheep, rabbits, reptiles, horses, and yes—dogs. Dogs were among the most dangerous once the virus took; they did not lose as much coordination in their four paws as fast, and their teeth were already designed to rip, tear, and adulterate their prey with the ticking time-bomb of their contaminated saliva. Tyrants could afford such bites—already inoculated and toughened against further T-virus infection—but Claire and Sherry absolutely could not.
“Leon?” Claire clearly had the best idea of who could possibly be the one unloading on the canines, and she hastened her pace around the block towards the station. Mr. X glanced to the little girl with a grunt and stuck to her side as she tried to keep up—careful not to get ahead of her.
They caught up to where Claire had screeched to a halt and taken the scant cover behind a waste bin—across the street from the now-open parking garage in the back of the police department. It was what was transpiring within this space that had caused her to stop and reassess how to tackle the situation:
On the stark concrete by the doors leading further into the R.P.D. lay two carcasses—freshly rendered so, but clearly not creatures which had been normal Dobermans in the moments before. They were still outstretched from their crumpled lunges, jaws foaming and wide open as their glazed eyes and lesion-riddled pelts. The two zombie dogs were not the problem. The bodywork of a parked cruiser creaked under the grasping claw of the first monstrosity to show itself crawling over the hood. Mr. X recognized it. One such beast had been what he’d encountered by the library, alongside the mystery woman.
Of course, that had just been one. From around one of the concrete pylons crept another two, their sprawled, bare-muscle limbs nauseatingly frog-like and human-like all at once. A fourth’s warty-fronted cranium lowered down into view from the ceiling, its tongue lolling out and dangling upside-down, a proboscis probing the air for its lost prey. The source of noise.
The gunshots, of course.
Infinitely more sharp-eyed than the blind abominations, the Tyrant spotted that source first. Crunched up to make his form less detectable, a bit of dirty blond hair and some of a man’s shoulder poked out between an unusually small gap between two more cars, hands clasped around his pistol. This was a makeshift hiding spot to say the least—darted into at the last second upon realizing what his mistake had just lured in.
Also far more visually gifted than the Licker pack, Claire saw the man a second later.
“Leon—!” She almost called out, but reigned it into a harsh whisper because of the presence of the things triggering those harsh memories. She silently unslung the shotgun from her back, readying herself for the inevitable intervention.
Somehow even more Lickers had materialized. They perched atop the abandoned paddy-wagon, scuttled down from the dirty, cracked walls. The first let its teeth gnash open and shut with a bubbly gush of noise and it hopped from one cruiser to the next—looming almost directly over their cornered prey. The rest were following suit. Closing in.
Claire took action upon hearing the low, freight-train thunder of the Tyrant’s growl melding with his accelerating footfalls from behind her, knowing it was the best chance and best back-up she could ask for. She stood and made sure her weapon was fully loaded up.
“Hey! You ugly-ass fuckers!”
The moist, rippling forms quivered to a stop at the new auditory input—nine tumorous heads whipping upright and away from where the man was hunkered down. Before the closest of them had the chance to fully shift on its taloned heels the tremendous BLAM of that very familiar discharge sent a round at close distance into what little parts of its head were still required for life. Its cohorts ignored the downfall of their frontrunner and instead all pivoted towards the even fresher sounds and vibrations.
For a split-second, Leon was relieved that he was being bailed out—hell, that someone was even alive to bail him out. After he craned his neck up to get a look above the hood and headlights of the car that relief was frozen out of him.
He damn near had a heart attack. He could see the confident (and, erm, objectively sexy) silhouette of Claire and her shotgun against a weakening street-lamp: Bearing down from behind her the tall, dark mountain of that thing.
—which then… stormed right past her. She hardly even reacted to the near-hurricane of the air displaced by the titanic biped in full sprint.
Mr. X’s sheer presence caused every one of the biomutants to forget about both of the humans on their radar. Good! His ear had not forgotten what it felt like to be surprised by one of these. Taking on eight more in this fair arena was something much more his speed.
Two Lickers dropped down from the ceiling to begin prowling towards the bioweapon, and a third accelerated from its writhing trot up to a feral gallop to meet its new target. When it sprang up towards his face, its own gaping maw was disjointed as it met the sweeping backhand, and its limp form was sent flying perpendicular into the entryway’s unyielding cement. A pair stalked up on either side of him as he hit the brakes to fully occupy the exit—blocking them from continuing and trying to get at his new companions.
One let out a shriek as well as its prehensile, ropy tongue. The appendage lashed up and attempted to wrap around the Tyrant’s neck, but with a ready block ended up caught around his forearm instead. The Licker dug its claws into the slab and tried to drag him off-balance, too much of a basic beast to recognize just how impossible its attempts were before the Tyrant’s other hand grabbed its tongue and lifted its entire body by it like a living flail. The creature behind him was ready to pounce just as its packmate was smashed directly into it from an overhead swing. With a snort, he flung both crushed bodies aside.
Five to go.
If the poor, stupid things were more coordinated, then perhaps the whole group of them could put up more of a fight. Thankfully instinct alone piloted them, like programming a robot of meat and bone. A fourth met its end when it hooked up onto the nearby wall and tried to drop down on Mr. X’s shoulders—being swept out of the air by one forelimb and whacked against the floor like a wet towel. A fifth crashed into the floor where he’d stood a second prior, still disoriented when his boot came down on its spine. He strode deeper into the parking garage with the fourth’s rubbery corpse still in hand, eager now to chase down the last three Lickers as their numbers advantage dwindled. The brutes persisted; the two atop the paddy-wagon flung themselves from the vehicle—one directly at T-00, the other at one of the support pillars in an attempt to flank. And the other, its vocal cords straining in a raucous warble, came trampling over the hood of one of the cruisers above Leon, was immediately stifled by its comrade’s body being flung aside and knocking it back to the cold floor.
Leon peeked back up from where he’d narrowly ducked under that.
Mr. X bared his teeth slightly, facing the next Licker he’d caught by each arm before he unleashed his explosive force—pulling apart in opposite directions. Its chest ruptured down the middle, ribs and spine and viscera suddenly exposed to view. It sloughed down into a bloody pile; Mr. X’s growls intensified as he twisted to eyeball the Licker hovering at eye level ready to slash out with its jagged digits. It swiped, but only shallowly raked over the ridge of the Tyrant’s nose as he ducked back, just drawing out a few droplets of blood before the cuts fused shut again. T-00 backed off another two steps, beckoning the monster into a reckless attack. Of course it fell for it.
SNAP!
With the imprint of Mr. X’s fist perfectly stamped into its sternum and a long spur of its spine protruding out its back, it bashed heavily against the nearest police car and slumped into a final pose, even more twisted than usual. By this point the last Licker standing had wriggled out from under its packmate’s carcass and come back to its senses, hissing and drooling as it locked back onto the movement and heavy steps of the Tyrant making its way over at a casual walk. Its tongue unspooled and reeled back to snap at him, but missed as T-00 drew up short. With a stout kick under the overextended jaw, the Licker’s skull shattered and it was sent head over heels twice until it lost momentum in a sprawling heap. The garage was finally still.
“Leon!” Claire’s voice broke the stillness. She ushered Sherry towards the entrance now that all dangerous mutants were dispatched, “Are you alright?”
Leon slowly stood up—hands ready on his pistol. Eyes still on the T-103 dwarfing him from just a few meters away. And Mr. X, too, was absolutely keeping his eyes on the human he finally had a name for. The frown lines around his mouth creased deeper, his brows crunching inwards more ominously.
Oh.
Him.
So this was Leon… Goody… just grand.
“Oh my god,” Claire’s tension dropped like a mountain of bricks as she and Sherry jogged up to the intensified aura of distrust and distaste between man and monster. “You sure get yourself in trouble when I’m not around, huh?”
Leon was apparently much too stunned and appalled by the focused stink-eye from his monstrous observer to take notice of the blatant flirtatious undertone leeching through her voice. He had yet to even notice the young girl standing meekly a few feet from T-00. Sherry’s petite brow pinched a touch as she caught on to the young man’s white-knuckle grip on his gun.
“Hello,” she peeped, and at first neither she nor he were sure he had heard the child’s voice. “Are you okay?”
“Huh—” Leon finally broke away from the pinprick pupils leveled at him with (he was dead sure) murderous intent and dropped a passing glance back and forth between the face he knew and the one he didn’t. “Sorry, what? Uh—what—wait—Claire?”
“Yes, Leon. Claire.” She smirked, relaxing after she saw no signs of wounds on him. She could turn her attention to his obvious fear of their gargantuan new bodyguard, “You a little preoccupied with somethin’?”
“Uh—” Leon turned to look her fully in the eye, incredulous as fuck. That was the only way to describe it, “How—That big freak is—?”
“H-hey, don’t call him names,” Sherry stepped up, rooting herself between Leon and the giant who by no means needed someone to stick up for him. The young man gawked down again at the girl—finally coming down from the adrenaline enough to fully comprehend her existence.
“S-sorry?”
“Don’t call him that. If he chased you he didn’t mean it. It was the metal thing stuck in his head.”
Mr. X averted his gaze to a place on the wall with a heavy snort. Well… About that.
“Leon, this is Sherry.” Claire brushed over this in order to make the necessary facts known—and possibly de-escalate whatever the hell was between Mr. X and the young police recruit. “She’s the Birkins’ daughter. Sherry, this is Leon—he’s the guy who saved me at the gas station in town before we got separated. And Leon, this is—well.” She stumbled a bit upon gesturing towards their massive onlooker, “I’m not sure he has a name, but he’s something codenamed ‘Tyrant’ as far as I’ve found out.”
“Fucking fitting…” Leon grumbled as he took a cautious step back, “…sorry, um, sorry.” He shot a guilty look towards the child and away.
“It’s fine. Profanity’s the least of a kid’s problems.”
“Hold on—” Leon braced back on the front of the close-by cruiser, his grip on his gun still two-handed, but now shaky, “I’m sorry, but, how?! You got this th—this big… big dude with you?”
“He tried to help me,” Sherry sniffled, “before the thing in his head took control.”
“To be fair, I had a grenade launcher aimed at him when he first bumped into me, and he was even going to leave me alone at first.” Claire’s face seemed to be tugging into a teasing smirk as she stepped up to Leon’s side and nudged his shoulder, “Did you two have a little dispute or something?”
“I mean… you expect that to be coming at me and… and…”
“You shot him right away, didn’t you.”
“I mean—look at the dude!” Leon gestured to the Tyrant as if showing him on a game show like a prize. Claire looked amused enough by now that he straightened up, flushed a bright pink, and elaborated, “He’s obviously not human, c’mon! What would you do?”
“Well. Aim a grenade launcher at him and see how he likes it?”
“I didn’t exactly come kitted out with that!”
“Did you wait before shooting at all?”
“Yes! Several seconds!”
Mr. X found himself cooling off watching the pair bicker back and forth—the degree of the hat-shooting bastard’s flustered state and Claire’s playful intonations clashing mightily for him. Joined by Sherry, he was left to be entertained by their display, and he peered down to the girl to be met with a cheeky, childish grimace and a shrug—their collective confusion and dumbfoundedness.
To his deep shock, he felt a small hand curl up between and grip onto his loose fingers. There was a flash of recognition. Painful recognition. But he could not refuse it; having a hand hold his own was a deeply missed occurrence. It reminded him of loss. But as it was, it was something he at least had now, and would hold onto come what may.
“Geez, they’re acting like a married couple…” Sherry groaned. Mr. X cocked his head; he had no experience with such a relationship, only a divorced couple. There was some overlap, he had to admit. Though, the Ramirezes had been far more poisonous to each other, far less justified in their complaints, their “teases” towards each other. Sherry would know better than him, he supposed. Her parents were married, after all…
“Look, what matters is he’s with us now. Whoever controlled him can’t anymore.” Claire said, with great finality. Leon swallowed hard but then appeared to accept the fact of the matter—and the tantalizing advantage that having such a powerful ally brought.
“And you trust that?” Leon’s brow quirked.
“We can’t afford not to.” Claire pointed out. “Also, I can’t speak for what you went through, but honestly… with what the big guy just did to these Licker things I doubt he ever really wanted to kill people here, even when forced with that brain device.”
“I dunno…” Leon was in his case one hundred percent correct.
“Please?”
All three looked down to Sherry, still gripping the bioweapon’s hand by three fingers. She looked up at them sweetly. The slightest thing she knew to do, by experience. The only power that ever worked on her parents.
Mr. X’s brows raised a touch. His large fingers curled that remaining notch over Sherry’s hand, then made a deep exhale and cast his gaze over towards the two adults, waiting on their verdict (and silently knowing he’d totally ignore any hat-shooter led position).
“Jesus,” Leon’s armored shoulders slackened and he finally let his two-handed grip on the gun shift to a one-handed one. “Fine. But I’m watching that thing…”
Mr. X uttered a gruff snort, purposely turned Leon’s way. Watch all you want. If he touched his hat again… mayhem.
For Leon, at least. He would perhaps now be reluctant to kill him. Claire seemed unusually fond of him, and Sherry would be upset if T-00 turned serious violence on any human aside from the sadistic Chief of Police.
Anyone touched Sherry… worse than mayhem. Far worse for the fool who would do that.
-----------
There were more minor disputes along the way—none of which compared to the frightful reaction of the first encounter. But aside from this, passage through the R.P.D. was eerily quiet. Maybe all of the unexpected mutants had concentrated on Leon’s attempted escape, and subsequently been the only ones to escalate the nature of the infection. Double infection. Chaos. The human trio could only hope that Lickers were the extent of such irregular monstrosities—and two of them even knew better. The Tyrant could hope that such mutants would at least remain smaller, weaker, and stupider than itself; at worst, just one of the above options would still be a satisfactory disadvantage against a T-103’s capabilities.
The bloody, bullet-riddled hallways led to where Claire was sure more secrets were held. Chief Irons’s office. Hating that purely evil man triumphed over his baseline distaste for Leon at the moment, though he at no point willingly shared a square meter with him. Sherry, of course, stayed very close to the giant for security and safety, which was something that Leon could not quite comprehend.
“You sure it’s safe for kids to be around big gray zombie raisin-men?” He grumbled, attempting to be only for Claire’s ears. She tsked at him, both for the unflattering description and the unnecessary distraction while she was riffling through the corrupt Chief’s desk.
“HRMMPH.”
“You heard him. Either bother the Tyrant about it or help me search.”
“Rrrrh…” Mr. X made it clear which of Claire’s options he would prefer Leon go with. Sherry was clinging to his hand constantly now, unnerved on a whole new level by the number of false eyes staring her down from taxidermized carcasses in the room.
“Hey, it’s okay.” She whispered up to T-00, “Leon’s just scared of you. Once he knows you better I’m sure he’ll stop being so mean.”
“Rrf,” He certainly didn’t mind hearing a reminder of the hat-shooter’s well-deserved wariness, but he grunted dismissively at the idea of he and Leon “getting to know each other”. Mr. X would have to pass on that. Leon’s face had gone pink to the ears again and he scoffed, embarrassed at the irrefutable truth being so obvious to even the sheltered eleven-year-old.
His eyes switched now onto a messy stack of paperwork which Claire had shunted aside from one of the desk’s drawers—his own search simplified a great deal as a small memo pad poked out into view. Though his hand could completely envelop it, it appeared to be sufficient space on each page to manage short messages—and after scooping it up and flipping it open it appeared to be all blank sheets with a few scraps remaining of some torn-out ones.
“…What d’you want with that?” Sherry noticed his acquisition, curious and confused. Mr. X gently released her hand so that he could mime out his answer, using a finger to trace out some writing motions on the open memo. “Oh! I hadn’t thought of that… I’m sure there’s a pen here somewhere…”
Lighter items of the sort had been tossed all over from their places during T-00’s earlier pursuit of Irons, but Sherry left her giant guardian’s side for a while and found a simple Bic underneath the large storage closet on the back wall. The Tyrant’s lips twitched up into a stiff almost-smile as she handed it to him and he familiarized himself with a gentle-enough grip. Now he just had to think of what to “say”. He kept the memo pad flat against one palm, thumb and last two joints of his fingers clasping it tight and unmoving and hovered the nib over it in concentration.
Sherry solved his problem with her burning question: “So… what is your name?”
Skrt-skrt. The Tyrant’s eyes widened and nostrils flared in restrained excitement, fighting to keep the pen steady (and unexploded).
Called Mr. X. He turned the page outward for her to read.
“Whoa,” she stood slightly on tiptoe, even the gigantic bioweapon holding the memo down below his waist was not quite enough to bring it to her eye level, “Really? That’s a really strange name… I mean, it’s a nice name! It’s just really different.”
Mr. X retrieved the notepad and flipped a page, clarifying with a quick word which barely fit across the paper:
Nickname.
“Oh… God…”
Detecting the utter distress in both her voice and scent, Mr. X’s gaze snapped to where Claire had unearthed a slip of passwords and unlocked Chief Irons’ office PC. The woman was locked on the screen’s display of a spreadsheet, and a few email correspondences—which the Chief of Police appeared to have been midway through deleting.
“What?” Leon finally ignored the bioweapon, leaning over towards where Claire had her elbows shivering on the table, “You okay? You’re pale, fuck…”
“I think I might throw up…” Claire’s voice certainly hitched like this was the truth, and as the biomutant took one step to see what it was on the screen she suddenly jerked her sweat-beaded head upright, “No! Don’t let her see this. Keep her back.”
Mr. X withdrew, eyes widened, and clasped Sherry’s hand to keep her back at a distance as commanded. Her voice was almost… frightening in its intensity. The context mattered. T-00 averted its eyes down to Sherry’s own alarmed expression and squeezed her hand delicately; he did not need to see the sordid details. He had seen the half-preserved young woman… girl, really, and nothing could sink his idea of Irons any lower. Sherry had also seen this victim, not too many years older than herself, and there was no way a human juvenile ever had the expectation to comprehend anything worse.
“Shit, I…” Leon stepped back, eyes distant. “I’m sorry I doubted, I… I didn’t have any idea.”
“It’s fine. He was a slimeball with power. They’re good at hiding that stuff.” Claire steeled her nerve, switching through emails before frowning, “In any case, he was in with Umbrella. He got issued an entry keycard to the N.E.S.T. complex under the city, so it should be here somewhere…”
“Unless he’s got it with him,” Leon growled.
“Shit.”
The Tyrant watched as Claire turned away and escaped to one of the few ornate chairs left upright in the chaotic office space, slumping with head in hands. Leon held out a hand as she went but seemed reluctant to disturb her during such a state… especially since they were all tired, all battered, and all had seen more than any living thing with a brain should in the span of just six hours. At first he simply released Sherry as she tugged to sit on the clear patch of floor next to Claire, her blue eyes lit with unease and sympathy. The atmosphere was weary, and anxious, and miserable.
Mr. X flicked his memo to a new page, wrinkled brow and lips crinkling with thought as he contemplated how to fit the message on his tiny canvas.
Thud—thud—thud…
Sherry looked up in surprise first, but Claire merely glared up through her clung-together bangs.
“Look, unless you want to cheer Sherry up or tell us we’re about to get overrun by the undead, I’m not really in the mood to be social.”
Mr. X remained stoic and turned out the first message on the notepad; Sherry began excitedly tapping Claire on the forearm to get her to straighten up and invest in the intrusion.
“Claire—look—he can do something—look!”
“What—” Claire finally raised her slumped head, and froze as she read.
Will find Irons.
“…Okay.” Claire had not been taking in the revelation happening behind her that the T-103 was fully able to communicate via language in this capacity, but seeing no other way the writing could have appeared she took it in stride, “How, though? Even with that busted face and limp, he could be anywhere in the city by now…”
The Tyrant retracted the pad, flipped a page, and let his pen glide along for two seconds of a reply:
Can track him.
He flicked to another sheet once sure she’d absorbed the first, and wrote:
Scent. Very easy.
“Is that how you found that orphanage?” Sherry peeped, and with a softened brow the Tyrant gave a slight head bob.
“You could find him…” Claire strained and stood, beginning to reach for her trusty shotgun before two of the Tyrant’s fingers snapped out and stopped the strap in place, “Wh—”
Mr. X’s grip relaxed right away and brought up a finger in reproach in front of his immobile lips, then flipped to another page.
Can wait.
New page.
Scent strong. Stays.
New page. He let his gaze flicker down to Sherry for a meaningful moment as he revealed it:
You need rest.
“Hey, you bothering her? Because if you are I’ll—” Leon stopped short in his swift interception and raised his hands in submission as the hulking creature shot a sharp, laser-hot look over his shoulder on his approach, “—I’ll… I’ll calmly and non-judgmentally request you don’t, Trenchy.”
“His name’s Mr. X, not ‘Trenchy’,” Sherry’s nose wrinkled but her eyes held a faint trace of amusement at the back-and-forth. Leon gave her a baffled look.
“How’d you know that?”
“He wrote it down and showed me.”
“Uh…” Leon turned from the girl, unwilling to face her with anything that might let her down, “No way that thing can write.”
The Tyrant produced a soft chuff, amused himself by the rookie cop’s doubt, and flipped back to the page which read: “Called Mr. X” before holding it out to show him. Leon squinted hard at the small page, then scoffed.
“Alright, c’mon, there’s no way that is the big guy’s handwriting.”
Mr. X retracted, flipped to the next blank page, and gently scrawled a new retort with an extra flourish of the punctuation…
Why not?
“I… uh…” Leon’s embarrassed flush grew again, with Claire silently suppressing a chuckle at the sight.
“You thought Claire did it,” Sherry giggled, somehow reading the room and Leon like an open book despite being so young and inexperienced. “You did… you thought it was too pretty...!”
“No!” Leon groaned, then turned aside, “Coulda been yours…”
Claire rested her elbows on her knees, and Mr. X could not miss the exhausted muscle spasm of her calf upon doing so, but it was soon overtaken by her laughter, near-silent and equally weakened.
“Okay, X. Or Mr. X. Whatever. Okay,” she reached and rustled into the hip pouch on her right and pulled out a spray antibiotic before applying some liberally to her scraped and abused elbows. “We can all wait just a bit. We all need a rest…”
“Somewhere safe,” Sherry peered over her shoulder nervously, eyes to glass-orbs with the permanently preserved Dall’s sheep on display, “and without all the dead things…”
“Come on,” Leon spoke now with a lot more softness, and no trace of his skepticism, “There’s a room at the bottom of the stairs that nothing’s figured out how to get in. There’s some supplies left in the lockers, too. It should be safe.”
I don’t think we ought to normalize or justify bullying as a means to keep people from being annoying — a sentiment that in and of itself could make for a whole article’s worth of conversation — but I do think we should make a habit of politely but directly telling people “hey I didn’t like that”, “that wasn’t funny”, “you are mistaken”, and the like if it’s called for, and more importantly, you should be able to take a “that wasn’t funny” for instance without taking it personally, because protecting a polite harmony where no one can criticize each other, not even politely, is also really, really bad.
Born on a Virginia farm during the Jim Crow era, Dr West became one of only four Black employees at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in 1956 and the second Black woman ever hired there.
The mathematician's calculations quietly became the backbone of GPS technology used by billions of people every single day.
The world has navigated by her work for decades before it learned her name. That's the kind of legacy that doesn't need a spotlight to be real. It just is.
We honor Dr. West and the long line of Black women who built the future while the world looked the other way🤎
She's gone... I scrolled and was happy to see her being shown off but then scrolled a bit lower, and got so sad. Rest in Peace Dr. West, the foundation of all GPS among other amazing things.
It's heeeeeeere! Something shiny and new from the love of those Big Ole Mutant Guys. From the POV of a very different Tyrant personality that is a lot of people's favorite.
Pre-RE2/3 by several months (roughly occurs at the same time as events of RE1).
Rating: Teen (Nemesis has some very colorful internal dialogue, dehumanization, experimentation, non-consentual medical procedure)
Welcome to the Huge Snarky Badass and his Inner Tentacle Friend:
The Making of Nemesis
NE-02 had never been given a charismatic nickname in his training at Sheena Island like a great many other successfully-finished Tyrants. Indeed, none of his “batch brothers” had either—all referred to only by the cold codes: NE-01, NE-02, NE-03… there were five of them, each of them beginning as an identical cloned embryo roughly the size of a kidney bean. Now that he was grown to a mighty heft even for the average Tyrant it had miffed him that their designations were so dull—and so different from the logical T-dash-numbers of the others. Worse was the lack of a proper, easy name.
It was maddening at times, hearing the Trainers call out to a T-103 in the turnout yards by their nicknames either silly or serious. “Bruce.” “Aggro.” “Sleeper.” “Chucho.” “Frankie.” It was at least attention. Some feeble extension of caring about the breathing, bleeding creature beyond their serial number. Most late hours in the nightly lock-in of the large group Tyrant housing, NE-02 would retreat inside himself to brainstorm what his name ought to be once one of the oblivious lab coat pissants cared about the experimental being enough to note something about him worth naming.
There was a lot to behold in that regard, in his own less-than-humble opinion. He’d beg them to pick anything: He was a rough-featured beast, desaturated tan in hue unlike the typical clammy pallor or even grey, face warped and wrinkled and folded with thick calloused areas along his brows and around his lips. He wasn’t sure why—some quirks of growing out in the post-inoculation stage. They could even call him a name which was grisly—something ugly—and he would not mind, so long as it was true. So long as it was him.
And he was broad-shouldered yet lean for a Tyrant. Tall and burly obviously but compact. An ugly face but much handsomer proportions, he thought. That warranted a name, surely. And he had very advanced use of his scratchy, deep voice for his kind—enough to form a few words with some effort, and easily replicated the syllables humans could identify. What then could his name be…
“Hulk”… no, not really refined enough.
“Titan?” No, that was already another T-103 named that. And more appropriately as that fellow was just absurdly tall.
“Silvertongue.” Hmm… no. Accurate but too complex. Harder to call out to get his attention. Too many syllables. He wasn’t even sure if he would be able to say it himself.
“NE-02—I said stand up!”
The voice of the Umbrella agent cut his latest ponderings short. With a startled snort the Tyrant straightened up and rose to his full height from the steel bench the row of them had been instructed to wait on for the past hour. The five of them had all been collected up from their various places of advanced training—Sheena, N.E.S.T. 2, and from Umbrella Paris like himself. This was now a new, bizarre laboratory complex, clearly not dedicated to bioweapon training from the lack of walled bays and test runs. He was certain it was still close to Umbrella Paris as most of the staff and scientists alternated between English and French. Only a few were now speaking a tongue he did not fully comprehend—similar to French, different enough he could only guess at the cognates.
NE-01 had returned from where the lab coats had led him, stepping past the adjacent section’s doors and their plastered caution signs and flanked by a scientist and a more sympathetic Handler. NE-02 was instantly curious; at some point during his elder’s absence the head covering had been removed to reveal its oily-skinned, slate-colored face spattered with heavy scars. The slightly clouded yellowish eyes flicking about, their dilated pupils gleaming with faint reds and greens. Whites whaling with open worry like a puzzled but nevertheless loyal dog. What had transpired to cause that state in one of his kin?
“Come on, NE-02—your turn.”
One way to find out. He didn’t fancy being shocked for insubordination anyways.
The Tyrant was coaxed down the halls to a set of double doors which opened into a sterile surgical theater. NE-02’s huge shoulders slackened; a med visit, then, that was all? This was something he was accustomed to, and with a bored snort he lumbered up to the operating table with a casual grace.
“Very good—please, lie down for us,” a high-ranked researcher praised and ordered all in one, patting the rippling shoulder heavily to be felt through the old Limiter. The Tyrant grunted and began to do so, swinging up one massive leg and then the other, about to relax back before a treacherous sting lit up his senses from the back of his burly neck.
Dégage, the bastard! There was little he could do now but give out a low growl of protest; this was some sort of fast-acting paralytic. Another researcher appeared from the corners of his vision, strapped up in full goggles and PPE to administer something else. Sedative, it seemed. Though NE-02 felt no less inflamed by the sudden jab with no warning afterwards. Merde, the stupidity of the lab coats; T-103s and even the simplistic Proto-Tyrants knew to hold still for a med check or a procedure when it was calmly and adequately explained to them. How demeaning. Could they not just divulge what this was for first? He, of all Tyrants, would understand!
His ample muscles convulsed sharply as the drugs asserted themselves, and an assistant’s puny human strength was able to guide the powerful wrists and legs into steel band restraints. The blaring surgical lights above further blasted his blurring retinas. Another sting lit up his immobilized bicep, and with one more disgruntled huff the beast felt the powerful cocktail finally drag him down into a semi-anesthetized state.
-------------
The first thing NE-02 returned to was a horrible throb in his neck, arching up to the back of his head and down between his shoulder blades.
A low rumble rattled his chest almost automatically. Further pain lit him up like a constellation. Points along his limbs and back convulsed sharply, and he hissed as he finally sat up to take stock of his surroundings. Somehow, he had been moved to a secondary section of the surgical lab, cordoned off with dull grey-blue curtains. That paralytic must have still been too strong in his system for the reversal to fully wake him up; when he tried to flex his legs and core up to a standing posture all that came of it was faint abdominal twitches. NE-02 gave up for the moment and relaxed, and hiss and a seethe in his throat…
<What are you.>
NE-02 blinked hazily. What an odd thought. It had his hackles pricked right up. That was not a thought, was it? It felt like an echo did, but without sound. Thought-echo. A second head-voice.
Supremely odd.
<Are you aware of my presence?>
This time the Tyrant jolted in place. That was absolutely not a thought! That was another voice. Another independent thing, in his head. NE-02’s breath hitched. How does one reply to such a thing, if no physical voice is reliable?
Thinking at it, maybe?
…Who the fuck are you, then?
<WHAT.>
The echoes intensified the throbs in his head; he rasped angrily at it.
<WHAT ARE YOU?>
Fucking damn, that hurt! The Tyrant grit its teeth hard and clenched shut his eyes as tightly as he could. He faintly noticed now how one eye was half-obscured, his jaws and teeth so much more exposed through knotted, stretched holes in a span of new facial scar tissue. But his recoil of consciousness inspired a calmer attitude from his mystery head-mate.
<You are… different.> It waited, as if surprised by the control and perhaps embarrassed by the grumbles of reply from the Tyrant. <I apologize for the distress.>
Different… NE-02’s interest piqued. Different from what? He uttered a more sustained growl, battling against the brewing headache to formulate a response. Even an easy one; the easy one:
Who and what are you, and how and why are you in my head?
<I am designated by Umbrella as Nemesis Alpha Project, entity 02. I have no name. I do not live without a host.>
NE-02 took a moment to ruminate on this. Nemesis Alpha Project? It had to be a subtype of Tyrant, what he and his four batch-brothers were created for. And what this operation here was intended to do. He paradoxically relaxed, shutting his unobscured eye against the lab’s lights.
So, a parasite?
<In a strictly technical sense. I assume you are intended as my disposable host, and for us to be as a crude single-use weapon. This… displeases me greatly.>
I also don’t fancy the idea. The Tyrant snarled and laid himself back, twitching, So, how do we both live?
<Unsure… I am engineered from many sources of DNA. Most of which are fully parasitic. I also… have had no prior hosts. Only memory.>
Memory of what?
<Not reassuring. Predecessors, implanted memory. Mostly mutually-assured death within macaques, or the Hunter Alpha B.O.W.s>
Well, fuck. It seemed to him that his risky lifespan as a bioweapon was destined by his makers to be grimmer and yet slimmer. He tried to nibble at his upper lip in thought and remembered that he now could not—the elongated lower incisors digging into gums and drawing blood instead. He had an impulse:
We may not have much time, then, he thought, and since we are stuck together, we may as well figure this situation out while we can.
<True, very logical.> The voice sounded almost meek and surrendering. But truth be told, neither were in any state to be considered “in charge” of the mind and body they occupied now.
<…Do you have a name, host?>
The Tyrant let the question dig at him, bringing him back to the moments before this twist of fate. And the consideration warmed him to the unwilling addition to his mind. He let out a commiserative snort.
Of course not. They just call me NE-02. Uncreative lot, oui?
<Agreed. Perhaps I shall just call you Host…>
Only if I can call you un Crevard, and the bioweapon chuckled—a low, gravelly sound made of breath and bitterness. I’m kidding, of course.
But that word in your designation… What does it mean?
<… “Nemesis” ...?> The parasite seemed bemused by his curiosity.
<Accessing data… Yes. “Nemesis”, noun, common use refers to an inescapable rival and/or archenemy.>
Hm. Interesting.
<Originally it refers to the name of Nemesis, the Greek goddess of vengeance tasked with punishing the sin of hubris. Original context also suggests she was responsible for not simple animosity but a form of retributive justice. Archaic English use included this more positive connotation; modern sources simplify the moral slant and instead the use case is a more neutral unbestable opponent or a personal bane which guarantees one’s downfall…>
More and more interesting.
I like it. The Tyrant chuffed, Perhaps that could be our name.
<Our?>
Why not? We’re going to be inseparable anyways. The thought of the pain he’d woke to brought to mind a few ideas of retribution anyways; he ran his tongue along the edge of his exposed incisors and relished the possibilities. The parasite seemed to be at least partially privy to those flashes of imagery, and by the warm sensation down his spine the creature concurred.
<Very well. If we are to be forced together, then we shall be partners. And remember the conduct of these… researchers.>
Nemesis.
Nemesis.
He sat up fully, stretching his gnarled jaw and examining his newly-enlarged hands. The thick hide strained; while unconscious he had easily gained twenty percent more mass. It could be his new partner “accommodating itself” by necessity. Probably a good thing—it was already going to be a little crowded in here from now on. Not only from the two minds, but the clustering emotions. He found himself both irate and oddly chipper at the same time.
It had to be the name. Nemesis. Yes, that and his unexpected equal arriving like an airdrop to his central nervous system.
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Still catching up posting more of these chapters! More mutants, more Raccoon City.
Rating: Teen (TW for blood, violence, descriptions of injury, child peril, human experimentation, implied child abuse/death, human adults cuss like human adults, and BRIAN IRONS)
Even though it's only a minute later, it's as if Mr. X has woken up to a brand new day. And now he has the chance to prove to Claire and Sherry that he's no longer their unwilling pursuer!
New Friends
“Is… he…?” The tiny voice swam in and out from the black fog that had settled over his senses.
“No… I’m not sure it’s possible to kill something like this,” answered an equally shaken, but more confident voice. Claire’s voice. The Tyrant could not yet feel his fingers, or even his own shallow, twitchy breaths. “Come on, it—er—he’ll be up again pretty soon. If I crouch, can you piggyback?”
“I think so…”
“Good,” there were grunts, worn-down and bone-tired, but their next words implied success, “I think I can squeeze around it now…”
Blurry at first, the semblance of light, dark, and faintly-blooming color started to return to his fixed-open eyes. With a slight wheeze of discomfort at their scratchy, papery dryness he blinked. It was then he realized, lying limp on the cold, dusty linoleum, that he’d regained his senses without that remote force exerting control of his body again.
Claire froze in mid high-step over the sprawled mutant’s bent elbow when the thing’s lungs creaked out a long, guttural groan. Its entire frame shifted slightly. It had hardly been thirty seconds since it had been brought down. But since it seemed in no hurry to get back up, she took her chance and hopped over the now twitching, splayed arm and set Sherry down quickly so she could run. Claire swung her shotgun off of her shoulder and into her hands to guard their retreat.
With creaks of leather and Kevlar, Mr. X pulled one hefty arm beneath his chest and levered upwards. He growled; nerves still tingled in an unpleasant way, a way no living thing should experience. In full control—but frustratingly sluggish. His head tilted down and he eyed his other hand as it dragged into position to prop him up to hands and knees; pinprick pupils were finally able to refocus, watching with equal parts alarm and morbid curiosity as a persistent drip of deep maroon blood fell onto his glove and the ground beneath him. From his left temple. Wounds should have closed by now.
—Unless there was something obstructing the process.
Pain was no longer a deterrent—though he certainly felt it as he shifted his weight to one arm and fumbled up to the trickling abscess that remained under the control implant’s former location. Two fingers dug into his subcutaneous tissue with a visceral squelch, and after a long second of weathering the horrible pressure and fire he wrenched out the broken-off tip of the screw from his skull. A fresh gout of serum and blood followed it, but soon ceased as the injury knitted shut.
Clink. He let the offending piece of metal fall, and he laboriously rose. The sound of the shotgun racking drew his attention immediately, and his head snapped to it before he forced his body to shift around more slowly. Given the conflict between himself and the woman up to this moment, he expected her to take the chance to blast him right away. Perhaps she ought have. But she delayed, ushering Sherry first towards the double-doors.
Mr. X rumbled in his chest, turning over the difficult situation in his mind; if he made the barest hint of stepping towards the pair, he would be treated to another painful reminder of Claire’s determination and precise point-blank aim. Yet, he could hardly dredge up what else to do with himself now that the cranial shackles were not weighing him down. There was admiration and respect there, at least with regards to Claire. And a sinking worry when it came to Sherry. So much like his one friend in the world.
But here, in this viral hellscape. Those protective synapses were buried in far deeper than the implant had been. It compelled him to face the barrel of the shotgun and yearn to approach, follow. Shadow. Destroy what would dare harm a hair on the little girl’s head—and her human guardian by proxy (though she could very much handle herself).
And, in a flash, it occurred to him that his mission was slipping his mind. No, not quite. The Tyrant knew beyond a doubt what he was sent here to do. The faces and names of his targets flickered through his recall, as did the layout of N.E.S.T. where the G samples waited. The insistence to follow-through was what was now gone. The imperative, the need to obey.
There was now… choice. Yes. T-00 let the word roll about in his thoughts, like a perfect marble between two fingers. Choice. Fantastic word.
Now it could choose the mission. What he wanted.
“Stay down, you bastard!” Claire took a shuffle back, fear spiking in her throat as the creature—the “Tyrant”, as she had read in the documents found at the R.P.D.—locked eyes on her and took one slow, heavy step towards her and the nigh-hyperventilating child cowering at the door frame. “Sherry, get ready to run!”
Then, to her confusion, the giant murder-monster stopped sharply. The Tyrant uttered a low grunt, frozen. All except for the eyes, which flicked over the girl briefly before zeroing in on Claire’s shotgun once more. Did the thing… understand what she was planning? It acted like it did, knowing the moment she pumped enough lead into its body to stun it she and Sherry were going to beat feet in the opposite direction.
Mr. X tried not to let his brows furrow in a frown. He began to inch into another step—tread lightened as much as possible—knowing this was probably going to hurt a lot just to prove a point to them.
BLAM!
“Rrrgh..!” With a massive hand T-00 swayed on the spot and clapped over the spot where the pellets had blossomed against his jaw, obscuring the smear of blood from the shallow wounds. There was no reason now to mask the pain, to be a rock wall instead of showing any sort of reaction. Quite the contrary. He would rather not have another round of twelve gauge, and did not mind if Claire knew it.
He felt the torn skin meld back together, and wavered back a half step. The Tyrant avoided direct eye contact much of the time unless challenged by a threat or fixed on a target, but lifted its gaze in a quick second of it before slightly dipping his head down and shifting his weight to try the approach again…
BLAM!
“Uuurh.” He visibly grimaced at the shot peppering his chest and neck, but otherwise muscled through it and took another careful step closer. He stopped then—tilting his lowered head slightly, showing her the newly-bare left temple. Silently banking on her understanding, especially as he lifted a ponderous hand to the area, just barely grazing the heavily-wrinkled skin with the tips of his gloves exactly where the metallic cylinder had snapped off.
Look! He willed her to put it all together, You did this. Implant is gone! Implant was the problem—now, gone!
“What… in the hell..?”
Against every reflex she’d picked up in the apocalyptic city, Claire let the barrel dip down an inch. From around her side Sherry’s frightened face peeked to survey the suddenly more docile giant.
“I-I think… shooting off that thing did something to him.”
Yes..! Mr. X’s eyes widened with satisfaction. This was working, making it worth the pain. He straightened up, giving each of his former adversaries a long, meaningful glance as he held his position a safe distance away. He wondered if trying to slacken his immense shoulders would have any visual effect at all. Didn’t hurt to do so anyways.
“I think you’re right…” Claire’s gun lowered another fraction, and she sounded mystified under the top layer of wariness. “Hey, you… ‘Tyrant’, right?”
He gave an affirmative grunt in reply alongside an energetic nod. Sherry peeked out a bit further.
“Does this mean you’re not gonna be trying to kill us anymore?”
Mr. X’s nods grew more emphatic. His intention now was quite the opposite. Claire seemed to take a moment to appraise the bioweapon further and weigh whether or not trusting it was a risk she could take. Her judgement came out to a hesitant yes, and this time she took a half-step towards the T-103.
“Well… That’s a relief.”
“Maybe he’ll help us!” Sherry chirped, stepping alongside her protector and shakily holding onto one of her forearms—gently, as she was very aware by now how sudden, spastic movement might alter Claire’s aim.
“Sherry, uh—I wouldn’t assume that.”
Something prickled his hackles, distracting him from the exchange. Some tiny noise of movement behind him; so slight that he did not even consciously register it. Still not knowing why, he was fortuitously alert as the dull-colored cylindrical capsule bounced down from its thrown arc and clattered to a stop a few feet from both Claire and he.
Flashbang!
T-00’s arm swept up to cover his eyes, and he emitted a deep, coarse growl as a warning. It was not clear enough, nor fast enough, being cut off by the jarring crack of the device exploding into a white flare and ear-splitting shockwave, and soon after the half-deafened cries of Sherry’s alarm and Claire’s aggravation echoed the bestial noise.
Mr. X lowered his arm and shook his head, willing his hearing to recover faster. While his eyes were still screwed shut, he picked up the garbled sounds of a struggle. Someone was after the two. The moment his eardrums began to work with only a sharp ring scrambling his senses his eyes snapped open to the sight of Claire struggling on the floor in front of him. One hand clasped vice-like on the shotgun, perhaps because the attacker had tried to disarm her of it. Her other hand was pressed hard over her eyes. She’d been fully blinded and disoriented by the flash.
Sherry.
T-00 twisted around to follow the noise of her screaming half-coherently, as well as the low, venomous cursing of her abductor. He knew that gruff, oily voice. A swell of thunder was produced in his chest at the sight of Irons’ blood-streaked face; this time, the police chief did not make it very far with his victim.
“Stop squealing, you little bitch—ur—ulk!”
It took three gargantuan strides of his powerful charge, and the Tyrant caught the slimy pig with one hand by the back of his shirt, lifting up and back just enough to have the collar dig deep into his throat. In the Chief’s battered state, even this was enough to make his grasp on Sherry’s upper arm slip. Seeing Sherry tumble safely aside, Mr. X looked down on the scumbag with a derisive snort and flicked his wrist to send the man slamming into the wall on the opposite side.
“Wh—what th’—you were broken!” Irons blubbered, pawing wildly at pockets and straps for something to use against the towering creature. “You were broken, you shouldn’t be able to—gakk!”
While Mr. X no longer felt obligated to hunt down the R.P.D. targets, in this case he found a selective adherence to his orders to be very, very justified. Lifting him effortlessly by the front of his shirt now, the Tyrant let his lips curl a fraction as he snarled and lined up his other fist.
The worm squirmed; a flash of steel appeared in his grimy hand, and flailed downwards in a burst of force. The Tyrant sucked in a breath and hissed as a splitting fire shot through the palm of his hand. His grip spasmed open—the combat knife severing at least one nerve—and Irons dropped like a sack of meat before cowering and scrabbling away like a cockroach.
Mr. X stared down at the implement jammed through his hand in annoyance. The Limiter gloves were insufficient, it appeared. Perhaps it was a fluke—or it was the desperation of the piercing blow. In either case, the Chief was away for now. Sherry was safe again, and removal of this thing was going to be an experience…
“Sherry?!” Claire had staggered upright, still wincing and eyes watering, but stopped in bewilderment at the rapidly-clearing sight of the T-103 standing protectively over Sherry still half-crumpled on the floor by the wall and rubbing her eyes, the giant grumbling at a dripping knife sticking up to the hilt through its twitching hand. “…Oh.”
“Claire?” The little girl pressed her back to the wainscotting to help her labor upright. “Where are you?!”
“Right here—it’s okay—he’s gone,” the young woman was at Sherry’s side in the next instant, slinging the shotgun over her shoulder so she could help the child stand up with a hand on the side of each slight shoulder. She peered aside, towards Mr. X. She had to know what had happened—or at least the gist of it. Still, she seemed tremendously surprised to discover this biomutant had interfered. The Tyrant tore his attention away from the throbbing impalement to meet her gaze, and produced an acknowledging rumble. He took a firm grip on the knife’s hilt, baring his teeth as he slid the weapon back out. A dull squelch later, the source of the pain finally popped free and the rend in his hand immediately began to seal up.
“Ouch…” Claire murmured with a sympathetic wince, “That’s how he got away, huh?”
“Hmmrmph.” T-00’s wrinkled nose wrinkled further in disgust as he huffed and nodded in admission. With any luck, the cumulative injuries Irons had earned in this long chase would hinder him so much that some infected creature or collapsing infrastructure would do him in unceremoniously.
More importantly, those the bastard had antagonized were now safer. Confirmation he had croaked would just be a satisfying bonus.
“Ugh. Well.” Claire’s tightened shoulders shuddered as a bit of the stress sloughed off, and her tired eyes brightened as they lit on the blade the Tyrant was holding. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take that. Mine got snapped off in one of those skinless things.”
Mr. X definitely didn’t mind, and swiftly flipped the weapon around in his grip so he could hand the somewhat clean handle to her first. She accepted it like a peace offering, and wiped it slightly more clean of the grime and sticky black-red Tyrant blood on an already quite red-stained rag before securing it in an empty sheath between two small ammo pouches on her left hip.
Sherry seemed to have finally gotten her hearing, sight, and her nerves back after the close call, and gingerly stepped a bit closer to the bioweapon.
“See, I told you he was going to help us now,” she half-smiled.
“Well, sure—but how would you…?”
“He’s the big man I told you about. The one who wanted to help me, before…” Sherry trailed off, uncomfortable with the memory of the Tyrant’s unwilling betrayal, “It was that thing in his head that made him come after us. Like a remote control or something.
“But you’re good now, right? You remember me?” She craned her neck up, tone so full of scratchy-voiced, ragged hope. Mr. X felt his craggy features soften a few millimeters, and he gave a resolute nod before reaching up and lightly touching the brim of his hat. This gesture was a hundred times more than any word could be, and Sherry’s expression turned much more relieved. Of course he remembered. There was warmth and gratitude in this that his face just was not capable of conveying.
“Sherry, careful—”
“Is your hand okay?” Sherry had closed even more space between them, utterly dwarfed but still able to reach up towards the formerly-impaled palm, hesitating and not touching the large digits, instead hovering her tiny ones inches from them. Afraid to accidentally cause more pain. Mr. X flexed the hand in question and rumbled a sound almost like a purr, showing without a doubt that he’d regenerated. The concern was endearing even if it wasn’t warranted. “Okay. Um, thank you for getting that… man to leave us alone.”
He could not help but puff up a notch, though it was a more humble form of that body language than in the past. He dearly wanted to thank her instead, and Claire as well. The exchange felt very uneven to him; swatting away that swine was the very least he could do.
Perhaps a notepad and some kind of pen durable enough for his powerful grip could be found nearby… This would make things easier.
“Are you going to come with us?” Claire asked, her jaw gritting in some unspoken resolve. Mr. X could relate to that; she looked very much like him, he supposed, when the cogs were silently turning as he formulated a plan of action. He twisted to face her more fully, his throat rattling like gravel as he attempted to exert speech once more:
“Mmhmmh.”
“Guess there’s nothing I could do to stop you.” She sighed, “But we’d appreciate a little help with those undead fuckers. If you’re willing.”
“Mmh.” He was more than willing. New objective: Protect Claire and Sherry through any means necessary.
“Alright. Sounds good. No hard feelings about the, uh, shotgunning,” Claire gestured to Sherry to stick close, “We have to get back to the R.P.D. There’s something there that should get us into that underground lab—probably in Irons’ office. Hopefully we’ll find Leon alright on the way.”
The hulking bioweapon stuck closest to Sherry, who seemed secure in the creature’s shadow as they followed Claire’s lead out the main doors and into a now steady rain that dampened the various fires lining the ghostly buildings on the street. Leon was a new name to him. He seemed to be an acquaintance of Claire’s, and if that was true he was sure he would not pose a threat to them and integrate easily into the group. After that, N.E.S.T. made sense as a destination; Sherry’s mother, if she had survived this mess, would be there above any other place.
He hoped reuniting them truly was in Sherry’s best interest.
More RE fanfics--more mutants, more corporate shenanigans. Finally, we have arrived on the day of RE2's events.
Rating: Teen (TW for blood, child neglect/abuse/peril, significant violence, human experimentation, dehumanization, medical/lab settings and stuff, described injuries and gore, plus also human adults cuss like human adults, and TW for BRIAN IRONS because he is a trigger warning in itself)
Mr. X always gets back up from a half-dozen shotgun shells in short order, and now he works on recovering some energy. But what's this interrupting him? An actual valid target? Hoo boy does it lead on a wild chase. And a fortuitous twist of fate for our big mutant protagonist!
No Signal
He had dozed off while waiting for his scorched face and deeply punctured neck to recover enough to be ready to stand once more. With a series of dull grunts, Mr. X came around while blinking a few times before pushing himself upwards to his feet with a stronger growl.
That had taken a lot out of him.
No. Correction: He had been underprepared. He’d been brought much of the way here under low transport temperatures, and that had allowed Mr. X to not be concerned about food or water to begin with, but hours into this assignment and after exerting himself much more than usual, he was hungry… He was thirsty… And he was quite sure his handler wouldn’t care. Shooting the now-shut and silent elevator door a wary glance to be sure that heavily-armed survivor was well out of reach, T-00 squeezed his way out of the secret passageway until finally the bioweapon could breathe a sigh of relief at the ceiling opening up over his towering height. Now his eye wandered over to the makeshift survival supply station piled up by the intake counter. Surely there was a source of nutrients sealed up somewhere in those stacked boxes.
The former Lieutenant Branagh was absent from the slumped posture he’d last been left in. By the trail of noxious blood smearing off towards the offices, the man was now fully infected and had shambled off in search of uninfected creatures to gnaw on. Or someone had performed the small mercy of putting him down, dragging away the carcass. Mr. X was glad of the absence. He did not much relish the idea of a body getting back up in his presence, especially not while distracted sifting through this stuff for sustenance. After two boxes were ripped open under the huge seeking hands, Mr. X recovered something labelled as an “M.R.E.” He could safely assume the “R” stood for “ration”, given the heavily-sealed packet insisted on its contents being at least partially a list of things the Tyrant was aware were edible: Oatmeal, bananas… other. Whatever—it was all calories. Eschewing his humanoid appearance and capacities, he briefly went animalistic in ripping the dense packaging open with his teeth, sending a plume of dry shelf-stable seasoning mixture shooting out the sides before shoveling out handfuls of dehydrated grain into his mouth. It crunched like biting into gravel as he ignored the dryness, wolfing down the rest of the contents anyways. He was immediately digging around through other boxes, not really satisfied with the unpleasantly powdery snack. How humans managed the stuff, he had no idea; he must have been skipping a step. Or five. Mr. X plowed through another which claimed to be beef stew, but was mostly dry strips of meat and incredibly crispy slivers of unidentifiable vegetable matter. It was marginally better than the “oatmeal”.
The Tyrant paused, a hunk of meat half-in and half-out of his jaws and chin dusted with stray salty seasonings, as a door slamming echoed out through the main hall.
“Just who the hell is out here messing with that sta—” the furious voice of the man shouting from the shadows of the banister’s arcading cut himself off in a choke of panic. T-00 turned slowly, shooting a glare back over his hulking shoulder at the interruption, still with the last bite of desiccated flesh clamped in his teeth.
There he was. Police Chief Irons—his mustache quivering and eyes widening as he cottoned on to just what was locking onto his portly figure with a very annoyed expression. The mutant snapped up the meat and swallowed without taking its fierce eyes off the target, the slight violence of the motion finally inspiring Irons to stumble back the way he came, frantically shoving the abused door back open.
Finally. Valid target. Though it would have been nice to have had the chance to find some clean water first. Flinging the remainder of the M.R.E. aside, Mr. X strode across the space with a speed and force that had the floors and supports shaking in a thunderous tremor. The 1st floor east hallway door was backhanded into the wall right off its hinges, and the Tyrant was greeted with a spray of magnum-powered rounds. Three whizzed by his ears and shoulders, with only two hitting home from the Chief’s shaky aim. The bioweapon stumbled slightly, but gripped into the plaster of the walls for balance, leaving deep, finger-shaped dents. He eyed the rapidly-paling man down the hall and puffed up with a deep, sinister grumble while wiping the blood from his cheek by the swiftly-regenerating wound.
Irons was forced to perform more legwork than any police chief in his position, just to avoid the Tyrant’s full speed charge along the open hallway. He was wheezing in a mix of terror and exertion as he dove around a decorative corner in a tuck-and-roll.
The Tyrant knew where his momentum was taking him, and brought his dominant arm up to shield his head as he slowed as much as was in his power before his huge mass and velocity smashed completely through one of the thin inner walls. He landed, cat-like, on hands and one knee on the scattered carpet of wall rubble and flattened chairs. The sounds of his prey struggling upright and continuing his flight along the hallway echoed to him, and in a fluid motion he rose and lunged again up the small press stage at the back of the room, intercepting the man’s path. He lifted both mighty arms over his head and interlocked his fists into a far larger, more destructive implement—slamming down in a full body swing as soon as he heard Irons’s steps growing louder.
The police chief yelped—ducking and tumbling forward as softball-sized chunks of wall showered over and past him. Tromping out through the generous doorway he’d created, T-00 drew back an arm and swung down a powerful overhand punch which the man barely wriggled out of the way of—just a split second to spare, cracking in half the sacrificial floorboard that had formerly been below him.
Mr. X jerked his face aside to protect his eyes from the panicky onslaught of four more point-blank shots. Slippery bastard, wasn’t he… But judging from the size of the firearm’s magazine, the target had at most three rounds left. He could only buy himself about five more seconds—or one more of these close calls.
And T-103 Tyrants were very like humans. T-103s were persistence hunters.
But the chase wasn’t over yet. Irons could prove himself an even slipperier bastard.
Shaking blood free of his face and swiping at his eyes quickly to clear it away from his vision, T-00 zeroed in on the chief’s back as he scrambled for some distance. He was going for the back eastern staircase—closest route to his office. Likely aiming for an escape using the elevator hidden inside his office. Many ways to do this. It all depended on how much more fight Irons was willing to throw—or shoot—his way. The Chief was assuming that his elevator was safe. Mr. X’s steely eyes glinted as he rose again and pursued; it would not be safe for long.
Brian Irons had tripped on the first few steps of the back stair, gasping at the shock of pain in his creaking knees before throwing a wild look back at the brute powerwalking up the distance.
“Wait! Wait!” He blubbered, holding his gun upright, “Why’re you after me? I’m with Umbrella! We had an agreement!”
Mr. X slowed his pace by a few notches—levelling a very unimpressed stare the target’s way with his nose crinkling and the edges of his mouth twitching outwards in a hint of snarl. Whatever this police chief’s “agreement” had been, it was irrelevant to his objective, and his handler was making no move to intervene. He slowed to a stalk, allowing the man now crawling backwards up a few more stairs to think perhaps the B.O.W. was being the slightest bit convinced—or confused.
“Wh-What the fuck…” he whimpered in a lowered tone, fumbling with his gun and very nearly accidentally aiming its barrel right towards his own foot. “Look—look—You got a job to do, right? I get it! I gotta do the dirty work too, right? Can’t we come to an understanding here? Maybe—maybe—isn’t there anything you’d like, huh? Get you to look the other way?”
Almost within range where the exhausted, cowering man would not be able to slither aside. Mr. X stalked closer, lining up the strike in his head.
“I mean—you’re still a guy right? Does Umbrella let you have fun? I could set you up, come on!”
Mr. X’s shoulders bunched and he dove forward, stronger arm wound back. Irons abandoned his dubious pitch, aiming his magnum and desperately squeezing the trigger. The Tyrant let out a sharp grunt of pain and displeasure—the damn bullet’s fragments had damaged his right eye, and closing it tight he took a wild swing at where the target ought to be. The leather of his glove clipped something; the minimal impact rewarded him with a gasp of more human pain. The follow-through of his hook smashed through the railings of the stairs, sending the pieces clattering and scattering like bowling pins.
Another bullet scored past his jaw—at a higher angle. Blindly he swiped with his other hand, earning another yelp of alarm. Almost out of ammo—or perhaps just now out judging from that terribly frightened noise.
He took a second’s pause, from the uncomfortable twinging as his cornea melded back together. His ears kept close tabs on the clumsy, rough progress that his prey made up the stairs. Slow. And not even steady. Jittery. The next time he closed the distance would be it, he calculated. With a grunt, he scrubbed free coagulating blood from his eyelid and flickered it open and shut to be sure the regeneration was finalized. The bedlam left over from his assault—including the two upended and splintered stairs where his second blow had landed—came into clearer view.
Good. The target had stumbled after ascending the last stair, cursing under his short breath. Mr. X craned his neck upwards, crouching down and gathering strength as he gauged the angle between him and that landing…
Chief Brian Irons was fighting his own shaking hands, hastily cramming more bullets into the clip of his gun from the dwindling supply in his vest’s pocket—cussing in a muted snarl as a chunk of lint found its way into the mechanism and required him to winkle it out for a crucial second. He managed to reload four before a powerful thump and crashing of leather-and-Kevlar-wrapped knees trashed the railing of the stairway’s landing as the Tyrant landed that 24-foot vertical. Slamming the magazine back into his magnum, Irons staggered away, trying to reach the doorway into his office with his free hand.
T-00’s silvery, laserpoint eyes fixated on him. He stood to his full height, chest puffed even larger and fingers tightening and loosening with eagerness. An almost whispery growl vibrated up through the massive creature, daring the man to shoot. He was ready—the target’s aim was piss-poor—with only four rounds, that only bought him two or three seconds. If that.
“Oh, f-fuck!” Irons’s free hand missed the office door’s handle, and a flood of cortisol-laden sweat scent filled the hallway. Tinted with… urine. Ugh. The Tyrant’s expression tightened another few notches in disgust. But suddenly, the target’s free hand dove into his other vest pocket and ripped out a rounded canister.
…Flashbang? Mr. X squinted reflexively, and then tucked his face behind a powerful forearm as the Chief yanked a pin out of the device with his teeth and tossed it over at the mutant’s boots.
Very technically it was a “flashbang”, in that it BANGED just as loudly, and the fiery blast did constitute a flash. The grenade shot shockwaves and shrapnel up into the Tyrant’s entire lower body, rattling the floor beneath its feet and throwing off its balance. Just before his eardrums were crippled by the short-range explosion, Mr. X picked up the door swinging open and shut, and the low “oof”, as his prey threw himself beyond the doorframe to avoid the metal shards zipping in all directions.
Damn.
Slippery bastard indeed.
It didn’t matter. The Tyrant grunted as he went to one knee, one hand cupping an ear, and the other plucking out a larger chunk of grenade casing that had lodged itself deep in the calf area of his Limiter’s trouser portion. His brows cinched up, and waited a second for the sounds of the R.P.D. to begin fading back in before he stood, adjusted his hat, and barged his way into the Chief’s office.
Irons peered back over his shoulder in a flash of panic as he vanished through a previously hidden door. Ah. So that was how one reached that elevator. Throwing the creepy taxidermized deer aside, Mr. X stalked after at a pace that would just about let the slimy man close those elevator doors on him. Again, that wouldn’t matter. Elevators were not safe.
Not if sabotaged.
“L-look, I’m not gonna say it again!” the target wailed as his back was to the elevator’s doors, waiting the painful moments for the car to rise into place. Mr. X tried to tune the words out, ducking under the doorway and stomping forth. Eyes wide, and nostrils flared, with bloodlust rising to repay that explosive trick. Brian Irons aimed his pistol, “I was supposed to be safe! I was in charge! Now back off you… you… stupid animal! I’ll shoot you again!”
Go ahead. That was what the slightly-bared teeth of the Tyrant said as he sped up his stride. See what good it does!
The elevator produced a soft “ding!”
The moment the doors opened, he’d dove backwards into the space and jammed the button to descend. Mr. X halted just a foot from the closing doors—able to relish seeing this very annoying figure’s smirk of triumph twist into confusion as the Tyrant merely watched the flimsy metal and polycarbons slide weakly closed.
The moment he heard the hum of the mechanisms sending the box down, Mr. X squared up, snorted, and punched a hole through the outer doors as if through aluminum foil. His massive hand clasped tight over the thick cables and electrical wires both holding up and powering the elevator.
Skrrrrk!
As strong as elevator cables were, nothing compared to the sheer force a seven-foot-nine, over-700-pound Tyrant could summon in an instant. With the also-severed electricals sparking and snapping, the elevator car clanging and battering in its uncontrolled fall, Mr. X retracted his hand and awaited the deep BOOM as it finally came to a sudden stop in the depths of the basement level. With a deep huff, he turned and made a more leisurely approach back into the Chief’s office. The odds the target survived the fall were fairly low—a similar fall had bruised up and stunned a Tyrant—and regardless of survival he would not get out of the wrecked elevator car unscathed. It would not hurt to double-check…
…but first, water. Damn, the sheer salt from those M.R.E.s had only made him so much thirstier. The running water may be contaminated at this point with who knew what, but offices often had water coolers. Halting, his eye snagged on something. A box—no, a vending machine. The bulb was malfunctioning, but the odd flicker of light revealed the label of “Aquafina” to him.
“Aqua”… agua? Same thing, yes? “Fina”… that was just exactly what it said. Maybe. If the advertising insisted, he would be advertised to at the moment; Mr. X grabbed at the upper corner of the machine’s front door and wrenched to pop it open—completely blacking out the bulb in the process. The interior was lined with twenty-ounce bottles, each ready for a now-broken dispensing arm to grab and toss them down into the outlet tray. No need; he could do it himself, thank you.
The Tyrant snatched one, bit the lid off with his teeth and spat it aside, and drained it in a matter of seconds. A little heavily chlorinated, but safe enough for his purposes. He repeated the process with three more, gaze idly flicking about as his senses sharpened further with the proper hydration.
…something was happening out the nearest window.
Dropping the latest empty bottle, the Tyrant stepped closer and tried to train his keen senses on the movement through the rain-streaked glass. Two forms were making a meandering progress across the street that bordered the back of the station. Meandering… no, almost a back-and-forth, tug-of-war type of movement. A bit of a surprise, considering one form was quite big, and the other very slim, small, almost—
—child-like.
The white eyes opened wider. That was… Sherry. While relieved to see her still alive, he was less relieved to now understand that she was being yanked along by…
…no.
Him. In a burst of frustration, his arm swung out and knocked the half-busted vending machine onto its side. Twenty-ounce bottles tumbled and bounced out in a cascade. How long had he taken getting the water? Not that long, surely… He trained his observation skills onto the larger form and… yes. However Irons had managed to survive the two-story drop and pry his way from the destroyed car, he had been injured and sported a noticeable limp now. That also might explain how he was having so much trouble managing to abduct a meek, tired 11-year-old.
Their forms were starting to get lost to the shadows of buildings, of trees, of distance. Mr. X let out a deep, throaty growl and punched out the window. He could not completely trust that the small girl would be safe in his presence, but he trusted the police chief’s grimy presence far less.
And, disgusting as it was, Iron’s scent trail would be very easy to follow now.
------------------------
Irons had a head start, but it wasn’t long before the Tyrant’s heavy footsteps came to a halt in front of the gates of a…
A…
What the hell was this place?
Robust but decorative brick and metal fencing surrounded the large building, culminating in a thick wooden gate. But… someone had drawn or painted on these gates, subduing the intimidating protection of these barriers in the most bizarre of ways.
He was… not sure what the paintings were meant to be. A strange worm—but with… flared sides and a simple humanoid face? He shook his head. He must focus on how to enter, how to find his target. How to destroy him—before anything happened to Sherry Birkin.
He was… uneasy about even the brief time she’d been his captive… charge? Captive felt more apropos. Especially with the way his hackles were raising.
The gate proved no barrier at all as T-00 leapt up and gripped onto the top with both hands, lifting himself smoothly over and dropping into a spread-out posture. The interior was… oddly silent. The size of the building, and its defenses against the dull-witted infected should easily have protected a few dozen people at least. Especially if it was already inhabited, which the wear upon the footpath suggested it had been.
The doors at the front also looked strong. A palm pressing on it met resistance stronger than a simple lock, and the Tyrant had to grunt softly and press his palm harder to prompt the crossed chain and padlocks lacing over the entrance to snap open in a spray of steel fragments. One side of the double doors creaked open, and the bioweapon slid inside before shutting it behind him.
He sniffed. Irons was here. There had also been… others. They’d been terrified. They’d been… juveniles. The scent of old, stale blood-spilling layered over with the powerful essence of cleaning enzymes and bleach was… Mr. X unflared his nostrils as far as the movement could go.
What the fuck was this facility..?
Despite any efforts to conceal it, the place still smelled to his senses as stale death, old urine, permeating stress. So many layers of it, it could not have been only the disaster responsible… If Mariposa had been here to feel this, she would have called it evil…
With a grunt, Mr. X tried to ignore the unsettling surroundings and detect which direction Irons had fled to. There were old plushes everywhere in this hall, staring at him. Reminding him. Guilting him. The strongest odor was lacing back and forth from the entry to a nondescript door on the 1st floor—but the most recent trail led up the stairs. Mr. X clenched his jaw; another scent was equally strong along this route—and rife with fear. He hadn’t tried to memorize Sherry Birkin, finding such a thing likely to frighten her at the time (humans simply did not… uh, sniff at other humans and dogs, horses, and Tyrants did). It was likely her, and he did not like what this trail could mean.
He crept up the staircase, not wanting to give the damn police chief any chance to escape now. Nearing the door opposite the landing, the Tyrant’s shoulders hunched higher at the voice he heard muffled through several walls:
“Now, you’re gonna stay put,” The speaker was beyond threatening and there was a crash, then a dull clunk and rattle, “You just behave yourself. If Claire brings what she’s supposed to, I’ll let you go, you hear?”
Claire? A name. Bringing something. Ransom. Extortion. Perhaps far less vile than the other possibilities.
Perhaps the objective, his mind screamed at him. He had to admit the possibility, especially since Irons seemed to have some insider knowledge. Speak of the devil—he was hobbling back this way. Resisting the urge to growl, Mr. X posted himself against the wall where the opening door would mostly conceal his presence. First priority was to separate out his prey. Get the element of surprise—and put himself between the target and Sherry. If the Tyrant never spotted the girl, there would be no excuse for the bloodthirsty handler to set it on her.
“—Goddamit…” The voice blended with the bang of the door and its painful shudder back into hanging open. Mr. X watched the top of the man’s head limp out, fumbling with a series of keys as he came to a stop. The Tyrant helpfully reminded him of the stakes of his situation by slamming that door behind him with a whamm!
Irons jolted, and threw himself towards the banister with a cut-off curse, dropping the key ring in the process.
Mr. X stamped up to close the distance, kicking aside those keys with a prominent flick of a boot as he did, enjoying how the man’s expression flicked over to terrified realization. Chief Irons gave a shout, stumbling forward into the banister before whirling about with his magnum drawn. It had to be assumed he’d reloaded it. Three close-calls worth of ammo. If, and only if, Mr. X was unprepared.
He was not.
A slim moment before the trigger first depressed, the Tyrant ducked low and charged—covering much of the distance without being touched. Brian Irons sucked in a choking breath as the beast rose back up to its feet less than a meter from him as the shot’s echo rang across the hall. The bioweapon growled and slung out a sharp jab for the man’s still-mystified face, hoping to end this mess.
Irons had pressed back, reducing the force just a touch, and the blow blasted the man through the wooden railings above the entry hall and sent him coughing and rolling a story down. Blood had spurted from his thoroughly-destroyed nose the whole way, decorating the child-friendly wallpaper. He crashed down, then laid still over a load of wooden banister shards and dusty carpets for moment.
A long moment.
Deed (as far as he could see) done, the Tyrant groaned a deep exhale, ready to proceed back downstairs and be completely sure this time…
The Tyrant gave a dull but threatening rumble, trying to carry on towards the stairs before a faint pressure around the leather of his glove—
“Is it you? Are you… okay now?”
Mr. X fixed his face forward for as long as he could. Was the handler able to detect any tactile sensations? Whoever the fool was, they could see and hear what he did, and the odds they were alerted to pain stimuli was likely. Still, T-00 tried not to tighten his fingers over the tiny hand that had looped over the side of his palm and tugged softly. Tried not to think about it, pay any attention to it…
“Urrgh… aghh..!”
Croaks and groans not unlike those of an animal dying on the side of the road after being carelessly clipped by a bumper were coming from Irons—muffled though by the sheet of blood draining over his mustache and chin. Mr. X’s head snapped over to the movement; in obvious agony, the police chief struggled and whined as he dragged himself up onto hands and knees. He coughed, spewing red-stained mucus onto the dusty floors. T-00 frowned, twisting around to plow right through the banister and come to a bone-crushing stop on top of the inching progress his target was making.
Must kill Irons.
Turning even that fraction had been a bad move. A blue-white blur flickered back through his peripheral vision; whether the handler had suspected this T-103 was avoiding something or not, this alone caused the bastard at the wheel to slam on the brakes. The bioweapon’s knee had bent to burst through the railing but only seized and shook as further movement after the cop was paralyzed.
NO!
Leather strained as hands twitched into fists, and for a split-second the control implant battled the Tyrant’s stubborn resolve. A blistering jolt to the brain knocked some of that resistance down, and Mr. X hissed as his neck cracked when it was twisted sharply to face Sherry.
She was confused, and mortified, by the shuddering, robotic movements, but stayed very very aware something was wrong here. Even if it was coming over this giant man much slower than when they’d met.
“Rrrhf…” The handler powering the servers apparently saw no need to restrict its vocal cords, so the Tyrant’s thunderous snarl soon expressed whatever he could: Most obviously frustration beyond that of a rodeo bull, and the general “keep away”, but so many other things indecipherable to anyone outside the monster’s head. Sherry’s eyes widened and she started lining up her back to the door, hand straying to the knob as if checking to be sure it would still be there for her escape.
T-00’s shoulders heaved and shook as his lower body was sidled around to face the child down. Below, he could hear the creak of furniture and the scuffing of shoes and battered flesh as Irons pulled himself back to his feet. What did this damn controller have against juveniles? What possessed them to ignore that slimy police chief?
He felt one boot stalk forward, shaking the old building. Whatever. The low growling grew to even louder, more focused bursts of bestial noise. The handler could not force him not to do something if Umbrella didn’t even think it possible…
“Rrr… Rrh…” He locked eyes with Sherry, “Rrhun.”
Her jaw dropped open, but she kept her wits. It was a good thing she did; Mr. X tensed—she tensed—and he gave the implant the barest hint of leeway. Rather clunky and graceless as he fought the lightning shooting through his limbs, he still ended up lunging quite fast for a creature of his size.
Sherry abandoned the doorknobs and she dove underneath. Her tiny legs still had some speed in them, and Mr. X ended up being bodily smashed into the door—and the door lost the clash by a mile. Snorting and fighting to reach up and sweep away splinters from his lapels and the folds of his face, the Tyrant was lurched back upright and made to spin about after her. The little girl was half-tripping down the stairs by the time the wretched implant forced him back up and towards the deathly, colorful hall again.
Irons was nowhere to be seen—but his blood trail was. A searing white spot lit up in that side of his vision, echoing with stinging pain as the handler deterred him from looking further. Again the Tyrant became uncharacteristically loud—a rasping huff escaping him as the handler now encouraged him to leap down after the child just as he’d been ready to do after her abductor. Sherry bolted towards the entrance doors, but stumbled as the floors quaked under the massive creature landing just a few yards behind her. The controller was getting more insistent; something in his shoulder popped as he struggled to pull the skull-shattering hook before it reached the child. The breeze from the sledgehammer fist rustled by her blonde hair wildly, and she scurried squirrel-like to the side towards the only other door. She had to know: She had to break line of sight—she had to hide somewhere with a second avenue of escape. Somewhere he did not know of. Chances were increased from the location now—he knew the R.P.D., he knew the N.E.S.T.—he did not know the… the… death-smelling childhood-stereotype-design house.
In her white-knuckle grip, Sherry revealed that she had scooped up the Chief’s collection of keys. At frantic speed, she jammed one into the side door’s lock and let it fly open—sprinting within and slamming it shut in the shambling Tyrant’s face. There was not much room to spare; the door did not provide much of a barrier at all. But a second’s pause was a second’s pause. Mr. X hoped this second would give the girl time to hide; his palm shoved into the locked door and splintered it apart into several flimsy pieces.
She was nowhere to be seen, but the handler at his controls stalked him into the adjoining hallway anyhow. Just don’t find her. Don’t find her, and the stupid bastard should lose interest. The Tyrant jerkily rounded the corner and was stunned into stopping the forced patrol for a brief moment.
This was not a place for a juvenile to hide. The milky eyes fixed on the anemically-pale body laid naked on a dissection slab beyond the stark metal shelves. She should not see this. He hoped she was too distracted by the pursuit to catch on to what this looked like…
A soft gasp, nerves and possibly nausea, reached his hypersensitive ears. Soft enough it was clear Sherry was holding her hands over her mouth, trying to muffle it further. Neck muscles stung as Mr. X’s gaze was forced towards the noise. The controller could definitely hear what he did. Unfortunately. He still did not see Sherry, but the handler pushed him into action with a vindictive impatience—Mr. X watched his right hook swing out and bash through the shelving. Slats of metal went flying apart and the greater part of its bulk toppled over and crashed against a desk in the far corner. Glass jars of specimens and foul-smelling chemicals shattered and spilled across the tiled floor and sterile walls, their cacophony blending with and emphasizing the petrified shriek from under the intact furniture. T-00 hoped against hope that none of the glass or noxious fluids had reached her under there. His own nostrils stung as he reeled back and bumped into something—something that he put together the identity of with a wave of disgust and staggered aside.
The handler in his head tried reasserting control quickly. The Tyrant felt himself dragged inexorably towards the shelter of the desk, and in a rough lunge he watched himself lift the entire thing and hurl it end over end, where it crashed on top of the wrecked shelves. The child darted out like a hunted rodent with another squeal and ducked behind the slab and its corpse occupant.
Urgh… He did not like to be made to look at that. There was little doubt Irons had the same in mind for the even younger girl—and that brought on a flash of anger. A disorienting flash of anger; almost before he comprehended it he was stepping around the side of the table and cutting off Sherry’s escape route. Towering overhead, his left hand moved without permission, and while he could hold off some of its strength and its normally lethal aim the swipe was more than enough to snatch the girl around her fragile waist and lift her up to eye level.
“No, don’t—!”
The Tyrant strained as far as he could to delay what the handler was pushing him to do, but in despair he realized this would be a losing battle. He could feel his knuckles twitch and spasm against the increasingly intense impulses to tighten his grip around her vitals. He fought to redirect these commands, lifting her higher and closer instead. If anyone was going to come to the girl’s rescue, it had to be now.
A beat passed, and no rescue came.
Sherry had to help herself. Grunting and gasping with as much strength as she could muster, she pried at the bioweapon’s steel-vice fingers—kicked it in the chest ineffectively. As she was raised up she switched to reaching for his stoic, grooved face. Gouging at the eyes, clawing at wherever she could get any purchase. It was no good; nothing she could do seemed to faze an elite Tyrant.
Until it did. In desperation the girl’s delicate fingers found the small metal peg protruding from his temple and latched on. Lightning shot down the giant’s spine, finally overriding the implant’s commands.
It also overrode just about every fragment of physical control of himself Mr. X possessed. The bioweapon’s hands seized open and he wavered on his equally jolted knees. The girl dropped to the floor, the breath knocked out of her and elbows scraped against the harsh surface, but able to scurry back to her feet with only a hissing intake of pained breath. She limped as fast as she could past the creature—back into the hall.
Dazed, Mr. X cursed internally as the control was exerted back over him in a furious wave. His movements overcompensated and sent him staggering into a wall. With a deep growl, he steadied himself and shook his head. The numb fire in his brain was yet to subside. It was far worse than he remembered the implant’s anti-tamper deterrent to be. Perhaps because another being had triggered it; Sherry would not have known the miniscule protuberance had such a profound effect on the creature it was embedded in. She had every reason to yank it with all her petite might, even if she’d known.
As the implant forced him back up to a stiff march he found himself even more incredulous of it. The handler was clearly not the only illogical one. Why put such a serious weak point on the outside of him?
Stupid! But, in just this case, fortunate. Sherry did have a way to keep out of his grasp, if only for a minute. But she still had nowhere safe to go in any direction. He feared nowhere could hide her. His heavy footfalls were catching up to her.
“Claire!” She squeaked out—piquing the Tyrant’s interest. He’d heard the name before. It could be the woman who’d provoked him in the library of the station—or… it could be the younger woman with the titanium backbone and the tremendously high-caliber firearms. If the latter was here to protect Sherry, the odds were better. At least he could try and make it easy for her to knock him down with that shotgun, though it was hard to tell how much of a head-start that would give the two in fleeing a T-103.
“Sherry?” He heard the voice, bleeding with worry, relief, and weariness, echoing out from the entry hallway, “Are you okay? Are you hurt? I swear, if that creep touched a hair on your head I’ll beat his face in…”
Mr. X was in agreement with the sentiment—though Claire might be disappointed to know the bioweapon had beaten her to it.
“C-Claire, no—” Sherry’s voice was tripping over itself, in haste to get the warning out as fast as possible, “We have to run—the really big man is here—he keeps coming after me—”
“The really big…? … Oh.” Claire’s voice took a sudden plunge into dread. Then, just before the Tyrant rounded the corner, there was the heavy racking of her shotgun.
He locked eyes with his unwilling adversary, halfway locking his knees to force the implant to stop him. It was all he could do now to wrestle with the increasing charge of the pulses, and give the two any crucial seconds to prepare to survive this encounter. Claire’s eyes glinted angrily back and she planted herself resolutely between him and the vulnerable child.
“You want her, asshole? Then you gotta go through me.”
“Claire no—” Sherry whimpered, seeming tempted to bolt for the open door but not wanting to abandon the woman’s side. “It won’t work—we can’t hurt him at all—”
Mr. X’s legs began to move onwards, automatic and unnatural like pistons, prowling towards them at a painfully-slow pace. The bastard at the wheel seemed to be relishing this. Yet another thing wrong with him. Claire grit her teeth and fired, the large buckshot tearing into his jaw and slamming hard into the Limiter over his collarbone, but barely pushing him back a step. The relentless approach continued; Mr. X felt one arm raise, fist clenched in preparation.
“Claire, wait—” Sherry suddenly tugged on her protector’s arm, “The metal thing! Do you see it?”
“What—?”
“It stuns him—Quick—Aim for the metal thing!”
The T-103’s eyes flew open wide. Yes. That would certainly stun him (and then some). If she still had her snapshot aim under stress.
The next five seconds passed as if five hours:
Claire’s shotgun canted higher; the flash of its blast blew past the Tyrant’s ear, clipping flesh but just missing the metal; Sherry screamed, cowering and covering her head in her hands; Claire stepped back to dodge the clunky swing of T-00’s attack coming into range; they were backed into the wall, with 8 feet of unhappy assailant just two steps away.
Claire took another shot—from point-blank range.
This one hit. In a paralyzing bolt of pain, his vision went instantly pure white. He heard himself produce a rough croak, just after the nauseating CRACK and sharp splintering—of metal pushed past its physical limits. Scalding hot blood was flowing down his temple. There was nothing but shock as his central nervous system scrambled under the last ferocious dose of deterrent.
He felt himself falling forwards—senses spinning. He was mercifully unconscious well before he hit the ground, his mass shaking the orphanage’s foundations.
And beside his still form, rolling back and forth in a divot of the linoleum floors, was a cracked and dislodged silvery cylinder. The long surgical screw only half-present, its tip sheared off.
Somewhere, miles away, an Umbrella tech startled upright as the broadcast equipment in his cubicle switched over to error codes and static (frantically fumbling to hide the fast-food wrappers and the magazines he was not meant to have before moving to report this). It was unprecedented.
I haven't seen anyone else mention this; but the UK recently completed outlawed incest fantasy porn, and for some reason cum tributes. They are also saying that these laws are going to be taken very seriously, with 2 years of jail time for even having these things.
I shouldn't have to tell you this, but even if you don't like that kinda stuff, even if it's a squick for you, THIS IS BAD! This is another step towards the global fascist movement of demonizing and outlawing sexual content, which in the short term will hurt sex workers, and in the long term will no doubt lead to certain groups of people being outlawed as "too sexual".
Also let me be clear, this isn't about "protecting women". The idea that ANY kind of porn is inherently dangerous or harmful to women is fucking puritanical hogwash. These laws are never made with the intent of protecting women, or protecting children. They just know that sounds better than "we're making this law to control internet speech".
Please share this post btw, especially if you're in the UK or have UK moots. The jail time thing is super scary and considering this is one of the most popular and mainstream kinds of porn there's a good chance people need to start using VPNs if they aren't already.
Modern-day Ancardian Orc flexes on his orcish battle reanactor sisses and bros by having the Real Thing, that was legendarily known for stopping head and eye injuries by its wildass design--
This is one of the oldest surviving recordings of a trans person.
Masoud El Amaratly (1897-1944) was an Iraqi trans singer who became famous in 1920s Baghdad for his folk music. He worked as a farmer before transitioning in his teens. The mustarjil, a term similar to trans man, then moved to the city and sang in cafés. A music agent discovered him there and his fame spread across West Asia.
Enjoy this 1925 recording of him singing the traditional Iraqi song, "Khadri al Chai" ("Please Make Tea"). Check out Ajam's website for more.
it's worth mentioning that mustarjil is an identity specific to ahwari (also known as marsh arabs), an indigenous community in the mesopotamian marshlands, today on the border of iraq and iran.
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I just want to highlight just how ol’ timey this racism is. The subject line “snipe hunt is over, the moon crickets are in the field bag” should not be overlooked because moon crickets is a slur used against black slaves who would get to together and sang hymns at night. This is an antebellum racial slur, and I get the feeling this is just a continuation of that tradition. Not an evolution of anti-black racism. It’s the same racism and these rich whiteys were just incubated from progressing it.
Steps I took to fact-checking this before concluding that this is probably fake:
Noticed the image of the article looks AI generated
Noticed that the image was posted without a link.
Googled "Epstein Hunting Black People" (no search results, suspicious considering this post was made 3 days ago and that would be a long time for this story to be up on a news platform without being disseminated widely)
Went to the news source listed in the image (News Wall, found this to be a yellow flag because it's a source I've never heard of) and found that while it is a real site, it does not have any articles listed with this title.
It is very easy to be susceptible to misinformation that feels true based on the context we already have of the world. I am asking that everyone spend some time thinking critically and using media literacy before sharing things like this. The real news is bad enough, y'all. We don't need to fall for hoaxes too.
So whilst I agree that media literacy is imperative, I’d like to point out that knowing how and where to search is also key to media literacy. Being that in this case the media in question is directly Epstein emails I went straight to the Epstein library and by searching the keywords in the emails above was able to find all of this within a 30 second search span.
In conclusion, before making an attempt at *educatedly* correcting black people publicly, ensure you’re correct. Don’t rely on chat bots or google results, know how to do your own actual research.
Underneath each screenshot I’ve also included the file number so anyone is free to fact check it as well.
And just to really cement how ignorant this "fact checking" is, while they are correct in that News Wall doesn't have that specific image on their website, the link to the Instagram post that News Wall made is literally right below the image. There isn't an article on it because News Wall doesn't write articles, they disseminate information. They're a news distribution website, and rate how reliable the articles they post are.
Their instagram post doesn't indicate an article is written, only that there's something to report on, which SHOULD BE your sign to start digging into this by looking for the EMAILS that EPSTEIN sent.
As Lena has pointed out, they are easily found in the Epstein library, through the Department of Justice, where the files have been being released from. (It isn't hard to actually do the work to look into something, btw. You just have to actually look at the information thoroughly.)
Everyone say thank you to Ubernegro and Lena for doing the work CORRECTLY by providing links, reference numbers, and looking further than the first search result when fact checking.
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