Kaz

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Uh, Leon?”

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

“Leon, your bag, it’s glowing?!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Leon?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Leon, you okay?”

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

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

Leon blinks. “I’m a what.”

“Dragon.”

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

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

“You should run,” Leon repeats.

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

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

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

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

Shit, he’s definitely got a cracked rib or three.

There’s a shift of movement to his right, scratching against the concrete and a rumbling growl that can only be Arias. Chris cracks his eyes open, his vision too blurry to make out anything more than a large indistinct dark mass above him. Arias, he’s right there, shit— Chris’ hands paw for any kind of weapon but then there’s a softer higher-pitched grunt of pain—shit, Leon—and then a blur of movement.

Distantly Chris hears a loud crunch and bile barely has time to burn his throat before there’s the sharp retort of a gun. Still alive. Chris wills his vision to focus in time to see Arias’ towering over him, but instead of bringing a massive fist down on Chris’ prone body, the mutated man is turned away from him. Arias snarls, flinching back with each crack of gunfire, his direction becoming more intent. Then he’s out of Chris’ eyeline, the bark of gunfire intermixing with roars and impacts that Chris can feel in his bones.

Get up, Redfield, Chris growls as he pushes himself up, one hand wrapped around his ribs. He manages to get himself to his knees, eyes quickly flickering across the rooftop. Rebecca is a handful of meters away—uninjured aside from the virus still ravaging her body—and on the other side of the glass walkway is Leon, weaving around Arias.

Chris shoves himself further up, his eyes catching on his watching and the ticking timer. Five minutes. Shit. He’ll have to trust Leon to handle Arias, Rebecca needs that vaccine— But before Chris can make a move to head inside, there’s a blur of movement and Chris looks up just in time to see Leon’s limp body fly through the air, crash through the glass barrier, and disappear off the side of the skyscraper.

“Leon—!” 

The cry catches in Chris’ throat, and for a second he stares at the empty air where the man vanished, an old familiar horror curling up his spine. (Another friend, dead.) But as instinctual as the call was, it’s a mistake. Arias turns back toward Chris, face twisting into a leer as he slowly steps forward, with the easy certainty of knowing he’s won. Chris is too injured to run and has no weapons, Rebecca is beside him and too weak to stand, and Leon just fell to his death.

“Tiiime’s uppp, Redfieeeld,” Arias snarls as he steps closer. Chris grits his teeth, carefully bracing himself on his feet. Like hell, he’s not going down without a fight. 

But before he or Arias can make another move, a massive shape barrels into the mutated man from the side. Chris swears sharply, stumbling back as the thing—some kind of massive snake—rams into Arias, knocking him back. Arias snarls but seems momentarily put off as the new player stills just long enough for both Arias and Chris to get a good look.

… It’s a fucking giant flying snake.

Chris gapes, utterly stunned for a solid few seconds as he sees what he can only describe as motherfucking dragon ungulate midair in an utter slap in the face to physics. And then, before Chris can question whether he’s begun hallucinating, the flying serpent arrows toward Arias. The mutated man doesn’t get a second to react before the dragon is coiling around Arias’ torso and limbs, jaws sinking into the mutant’s neck.

It’s only several decades worth of fighting impossible monsters that gets Chris’ brain to reboot. His eyes flicker to Rebecca and back to the two tangling monsters. He needs to get that vaccine, he doesn’t have time, and while he hates to leave Arias, the… dragon seems to have things in hand.

And so, one hand clutching his ribs and the timer on his watch clicking ever downward, Chris shuffles back inside to find Arias’ vaccine. Hopefully he can at least save one of his friends.

And somehow, Chris does find it, along with some high powered ordinance with Arias’ name on it.

By the time Chris makes it back outside, DC and Nadia have arrived in the Osprey. Arias, meanwhile, has managed to grab onto the dragon, squeezing it in a massive hand in much the same way he did to Chris earlier. The dragon, however, is returning the favor. It’s wrapped its body around Arias’ arms and torso like some kind of constricting snake, and judging by Arias’ howls, it must be just as painful.

Right, time to finish this.

Chris loads his gun, levelling it toward Arias. The dragon spots him though, his snarl faltering for a moment as it catches sight of the gun. Then, seemingly realizing what he’s doing, it abruptly unravels its body from Arias. Arias staggers in place, and the dragon takes the opportunity to wrap nearly its entire body around the arm still holding it. Then, with an almighty SNAP, Arias howls in pain and the dragon suddenly shoots skyward, freed from Arias’ grasp. 

“Bye, bye, asshole,” Chris growls as he pulls the trigger. 

The high powered mortar round sinks deep into Arias’ chest and then in a bloom of fire, detonates. Chris is nearly thrown off his feet by the force of the explosion but manages to duck down, gore and bits of rubble raining down around him. After a few seconds, Chris slowly stands, looking at the smoking pile of meat scattered across the rooftop that was once Arias. 

Chris exhales, watching the smoking ruin for a few moments, for any sign that the arms dealer isn’t as dead as he looks. But, thankfully, nothing stirs. 

With Arias as dead as Chris can make him, he quickly drops the rifle and rushes back toward Rebecca. She’s pale, her skin riddled with blue veins and body twitching erratically, but she’s not gone. Not yet. Chris rigs up the mask as quick as he can, carefully inserting it over Rebecca’s face. Her breath rattles in her chest, but with each inhale, the twitching slows and her breathing becomes steadier.

Finally, the veins start to dissipate, her exhales steadily clouding the mask. A reminder she’s still alive. Chris’ watch beeps, it’s timer having run out. Chris takes a rattling breath of his own. She’s okay. Seconds to spare… but she’ll be okay.

“Hey, Rebecca,” Chris smiles softly, heart aching. “Scared me there.”

He glances back toward the shattered glass barrier where Leon had vanished off the edge. He saved Rebecca but got more of his friends and allies killed in the process. Damian, now Leon… Chris swallows. I’m sorry, Leon, Chris thinks quietly. They know what they signed up for in this profession, but that doesn’t change the fact that Chris is the reason the man is dead. He’s the one who pulled Leon into this mess.

And now Leon is dead, because of that. Chris is going to have to go down there… find him.

Chris huffs, a pained laugh wringing itself out of his throat. So many of them in anti-bioterrorism die to monsters… they forget they can die to such mundane things as a gunshot or gravity as much as anyone else. 

A soft sound pulls Chris’ attention back to Rebecca, who stirs slightly beneath his hands. As Chris watches, her eyes crack open, looking up at him. She blinks at him for a few moments, before giving him a weak smile and a shaky thumbs-up. Chris chuckles, the corners of his mouth twitching up as he looks back at her. “Hey, doing okay?”

Rebecca hums but then her gaze fixes on something above them, and the sound hitches, her eyes widening. Chris immediately jerks his head up, and… Oh fuck, he forgot about the fucking dragon. It’s moving lazily through the air, almost as if it’s swimming rather than defying the laws of physics. Chris watches warily, pulling Rebecca closer to him as the dragon trails toward the rooftop, the beam of the Osprey tracking it as it descends.

Now without the frantic chaos of the fight, and the added light of the aircraft’s spotlight, Chris can get a better look at the creature. It feels wrong to call the thing a bioweapon, to lump it in with that class of monsters, considering it treats physics as a mere suggestion. It’s serpentine, a good forty feet long at least, coated in blue scales and a mane of blonde-brown fur trailing down its spine. It touches down gently on the other side of the rooftop, across from Chris and Rebecca.

A sharp tug on his sleeve has Chris’ gaze flickering away from the dragon to Rebecca, who is looking from the dragon to him with wide eyes. Are you seeing this?! Chris nods. Yes, he is seeing this. Somehow. He looks back toward the dragon, alarmed to see it’s drawn closer, maybe five meters away. The only thing keeping Chris from reaching for his gun is (a) that he doesn’t have any more rounds of ammo for it and (b) the dragon is… oddly non-hostile.

As the dragon steps closer, it finally allows Chris to notice something…odd. There’s something dark wrapped around the creature’s forelimbs. At first Chris thinks it’s a shadow or some sort of scale pattern, but no, it’s a jacket. A dark brown leather jacket stretched over pale scales, two vertical white stripes running down the arms. Leon’s jacket. 

Chris’ eyes flicker up from the jacket to the dragon’s head. A pair of slitted stormy-blue eyes stare back at him almost curiously, blonde-brown hair flopped over an elongated snout. Fuck, he even has the same haircut. 

It feels like time has stopped as Chris stares into the dragon’s eyes. He can’t tell if there’s recognition in them, if there’s anything of his friend still inside. What happened? Chris wants to ask, but how can he? He can’t even tell if this mutation is the result of a bioweapon… he’s certainly never heard of anything turning people into fucking probably-magical dragons.

The dragon turns its gaze from Chris to focus on Rebecca, head tilting. And then, as if Chris’ day couldn’t get any weirder, the dragon opens its mouth and speaks. 

“How are you feeling, Rebecca?” the dragon asks in Leon’s voice. 

Rebecca blinks, but gives a shaky thumbs up. “B-better,” she says softly. Chris can’t tell if the shake in her voice is an aftereffect of the virus, or the fact there’s a fucking dragon that might be Leon standing in front of them.

The dragon pulls its head back, nodding. Then it looks down, head tilting to inspect itself. The dragon growls, a huff of air whistling past its bloodied fangs. That’s right, it bit Arias. Several times, even.

“I bought this jacket two months ago,” the dragon grumbles, arching its neck and back. It slaps its tail against the concrete, drawing attention to the ragged set of jeans around its hind legs that are holding themselves together by mere seams. “And this is the third pair of jeans this month. Forget doing this pro bono. Redfield, you’re going to buy me a new set of clothes and the booze you dragged me from.”

Chris is dimly registers the words, but his brain is in the midst of a blue-screen of epic proportions. A blue-screen that was due the instant he saw a giant fuck off snake defying physics. 

“Helloooo? New York to Captain Redfield?”

Something waves in front of his face and Chris starts, focusing to see a pair of long tendrils waving in front of his face. Chris starts and the tendrils draw back, revealing themselves to be… whiskers? Long, cat-fish like whiskers, attached to the front of the dragon’s snout.

The dragon huffs. “There you are, now quit zoning out. We’ve got a job to finish.”

Chris blinks, and finally broaches the question that’s been sitting lodged in his throat since he first recognized that stupid jacket. “…Leon?”

The dragon—Leon—looks at him and… huh. Chris never knew a dragon could look sarcastic. “Yes, that’s me. No shit Sherlock,” Leon says, lips curling back to flash his fangs in what can only be called a draconic smirk. 

Why the hell is Leon being so nonchalant about this?! Chris gapes, his jaw falling slack as he waves an arm furiously over Leon. “What is this?!”

Leon blinks, looks down at himself, then slowly raises his head to look back at Chris. The expression on his snout rapidly turns from judgemental to confused to sheepish. “Oh…” Leon hums, his serpentine neck arching back on itself as he pulls away from Chris. The tip of his tail—because that’s right Leon has a goddamned tail, hell, he’s all tail!—twitches, curling back toward his body. “Uh… I can explain?”

“You fucking better,” Chris says, pointing sharply at Leon. But, regardless of his desire for answers, Leon is right, they’ve still got a job to do and a city to save. Chris slips the mask off Rebecca’s face and helps her up, glancing toward the Osprey now parked on Arias’ helipad. “We need to get this vaccine out.”

Supporting Rebecca, Chris starts limping toward the stairs. But Rebecca nudges him to stop, looking back toward Leon. “You coming?” the resident scientist asks. Chris follows her gaze to Leon, still draconic, sitting awkwardly—all forty feet of him—on Arias’ rooftop.

Leon blinks. “Uh… yeah.” 

He steps forward, body unfurling as he cautiously moves to Chris’ other side, next to Rebecca. Rebecca slowly stretches a hand toward Leon, but hesitates, looking up toward his head. “Can I…?” Leon nods, and Rebecca rests the arm not looped around Chris’ shoulders on Leon’s shoulder. Leon carefully shuffles closer, and despite having a frankly ridiculous amount of body and spine, he seems adept at controlling it.

“Grab the mane,” Leon says, carefully positioning himself so Rebecca can do so. “Better grip.”

Rebecca follows his instructions, fingers brushing over scales before twisting into the fur (or hair?) along Leon’s spine. “Feels like fish scales,” Rebecca mutters.

Leon snorts. “Feel me up later Rebecca, we gotta get you to medical.”

“Oh my God, Leon,” Rebecca groans, her face flushing and Leon barks a laugh, fangs flashing at the tease. Chris chuckles as well, despite himself, as their motley crew make their way up to the Osprey. DC and Nadia are waiting, eyeing Leon with no little bafflement. 

“I think I need a vacation,” Nadia mutters and Leon snaps his teeth. 

“Says the ones who pulled me away from mine,” Leon grumbles, but nods to Chris’ crewmates all the same. “Thanks for not shooting me by the way.”

“Uh… sure?” DC says faintly as they get Rebecca aboard and start organizing how they’ll load and distribute the aerosolized vaccine. 

As they talk, Chris glances over at Leon, running a critical eye over the man-turned-dragon. “I don’t think you’re gonna fit in the Osprey. Also, think you can carry some of the canisters without puncturing them?” When Leon gives him a look like he’s gone insane, Chris gestures toward his own mouth. “Your uh… teeth. No hands?”

Leon sighs heavily, his entire serpentine body seeming to deflate. “Get me a spare set of pants.”

“What?”

“Pants. I can turn back, but I’d rather not moon all of New York while we load this stuff.”

Chris has officially reached his threshold of insanity for the day. Leon is a dragon. Leon has apparently been able to turn into a dragon at will for an indeterminate amount of time that he is not shocked by it. Chris is only now just finding out about it. Sure, why the hell not.