Best of Intentions (Resident Evil) (DnD Gamer SI)

[Ideas-Guy]

"Sir, you need to pay for that," an overweight Walmart greeter held me up with a hand, a bushy beard on his face that I was only a little jealous of. His gaze flickered to my two very full grocery carts filled with a wide variety of items -- batteries, water, canned food, and so on and so on. Basically, everything you would need in a survival scenario. None of which was currently bagged.

I smiled, "Nah, I'm shoplifting. Thank you, though," I said, not breaking my gait in the slightest as I pulled one buggy and pushed another. The greeter blinked at the rather blunt admission, going to move in front of me to cut me off. "Look, you're doing your job. Not holding that against you, or anything. But did you know you could get fired for interfering? Corporate decided that they'd rather lose groceries than deal with a lawsuit." That, as I suspected it would, brought him up short.

"Er-" Ted, I saw based on the nametag, suddenly seemed far less certain about what he was doing. I understood. I really did. His entire job revolved around checking receipts to make sure no one was stealing, but he wasn't actually here to stop thefts. He was here to discourage them. People saw him, figured that he might notice that extra jar of peanut butter that wasn't on the receipt, and… I don't know. Full-on body tackle them or something. But, if someone told him to get fucked when they noticed the extra jar of peanut butter?

He couldn't officially do anything to stop them. He had to watch them go.

Thank god for the American justice system, where even criminals could sue the right side of the law.

"These groceries tally up to over a felony amount, so, if you want, you can follow me out and take my license plate number. Pass that over to the cops," I offered, striding right past him and the metal detectors. I didn't care in the slightest that they beeped. Ted scratched at his cheek, looking around for someone to give him instructions on what to do before he mentally shrugged and followed me out.

It was midafternoon, so the roads were busy in Racoon City. Busier than normal on the back roads since the main roads were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. 'Road work' was being done on them. How people bought that excuse was beyond me. I'm really starting to buy into the idea that Umbrella was doing something to the drinking water -- hence the water bottles. Ted followed me out to a truck that I had commandeered for the occasion and watched me awkwardly as I began loading up.

"So, er… you a doomsday prepper or something, Mr…?" He tried to make some small talk, shifting from foot to foot.

"Rudeus Rain, but everyone calls me Rude," I said with a too big of a smile, and his expression told me he didn't miss the pun. "And I prefer the term survivalist."

"... isn't that for, like, camping in the woods and stuff?"

"Maybe. I've never gone camping before, so I wouldn't know," I admitted. If humans were meant to survive in the wilderness then we wouldn't have created air conditioning. My ancestors didn't escape the food chain -- not just rise to the top of it, but outright escape it -- so I could larp living in the olden days when everything was objectively shitter due to the lack of easily accessible hot water and microwavable hot pockets.

Ted fell silent for a moment, watching me load everything up. "Is… there a reason you're bu-... er, stealing so much stuff?" He asked, sounding genuinely wary. Ted struck me as someone rather awkward. Which made him something of an odd choice to be a greeter, but I didn't hire him.

"Because the world will be ending in a couple of days and I need to load up on stuff for the post-apocalypse community that I'm going to be setting up," I explained, sliding the last of the water battles into the bed of the truck before I started tossing all the loose end stuff. I stole a fair bit, so it was taking a quick minute. Ted seemed like he genuinely had no idea how to respond to that. "Zombie apocalypse. Dead people are going to rise up and feast upon the living. It's gonna suck, but I imagine the end of the world is always going to suck. Hey, could you help me with this?" I said, realizing that I forgot about the dog food.

Ted nodded and helped me slide the dog food bag into the truck. "You're going to allow pets?"

"Course," I agreed. "It'd be a pretty big dick move to save someone from being eaten by a corpse and tell them they had to leave the dog or cat behind, right?" I said, throwing in the last of the items. There was a pretty large pile of stuff in the truck by now.

"I guess?"

"Exactly. So, Ted -- I read your name tag," I added when I saw an expression of pure panic when I said his name. "I'm thinking we have something like… I dunno… a day or two before the city goes to shit. You're going to be hearing about a bunch of strange stuff on the news and military evacuations. Don't go there. The military is full of idiots and they will get you killed. You're going to want to come here," I said, passing him my card.

He looked down at it for a moment before accepting it. On it was an address and on the back was a list of recommended supplies to bring. "I don't know-"

"Ted, how long do you think it's been since someone called the cops on me?" I interjected, and now he looked nervous again. "Ten minutes? Fifteen? Raccoon City isn't that big, but it has a solid police force. Do want to know why they aren't coming, Ted?" I asked him and he was starting to pale. "Because they're too busy with calls of unexplainable violence and suspects that won't go down. Not sure if you're on the internet, but you should be seeing some videos floating around."

Closing the bed of my truck, I pushed the buggies over to the gate, leaving Ted staring at the card.

"It's your call, Ted. But, even if you don't show up -- buy a gun and shoot them in the head. See ya," I waved him bye, getting in the truck. Starting it up, I pulled out of the side road to join the flow of traffic… though, not before I heard Ted's parting words.

"Did I just get invited to a cult?"

Hopefully, he would wisen up, but if he didn't, then that was on him. I couldn't save everyone. I just had to save those that I could. I did my best to spread the word. I printed off pamphlets and dropped them off. Did the same for business cards -- which were so much more fucking expensive than the pamphlets. It was half of the reason why I was stuck stealing everything, I had spent my money trying to warn Raccoon City, but they just plugged their ears to it.

It sucked. It honestly, really, really, really sucked. I understood not believing the guy that ranted and raved about the end of the world because no one wanted it to be the end. Hell, people were more concerned about Y2K than they were about the very real apocalypse that was broiling underneath their feet. It was just that I knew I was right. I knew it. I could scream until I was blue in the face, but it wouldn't change anything. Most people simply wouldn't believe me until it was far too late.

Which left me sticking with plan B. If I couldn't stop what was coming then I simply needed to prepare to weather the storm.

Whistling a tune to myself, I saw more 'road work' on my way back. Taking off down a back road, I looped around to where I was planning to set up a base. I wanted to be near a landmark. There were some places that people naturally drifted to when it came to an emergency -- a police station, a hospital, a community center, and so on. I wanted to be near one, but too close and I could quickly find my sanctuary overwhelmed. If not with panicked people, then the dead.

So, I had a checklist of requirements. Some place spacious that could hold a large number of people. Somewhere that was isolated by nature, but also close to a major landmark. Additionally, in case of word of mouth, it needed to be identifiable in a 'I know where that is' kind of way. Between those three, the list got thinned out rather considerably.

Then, in a stroke of brilliance, I realized I had my answer.

Directly across the street from a building I was currently living in was the central station. It wasn't anything as grand as the Central Station in New York, but it wasn't small by any means. More importantly, located directly on top of it was a small shopping mall where you could generally find a number of small appliances. It was pretty much perfect. It was connected to every part of the city, everyone knew where to find a train station… all I really had to do was secure the tunnels.

Something that would be easy enough to do with enough people. In theory, at any rate. I'm sure it would wind up being a lot more complicated than I thought it would be, but as far as bad options went, it was the best of the bunch. Even if setting it up would be a pain in the ass… made more so because some prick stole my parking spot. Again. So, parking the car, I got out, attached a hook to the back of the offending vehicle, and just pulled it out of my parking spot, leaving it in the road.

That could be someone else's problem. I was trying to save the world here. Dick.

Putting the truck in park, I went about the long and arduous process of transferring everything into my apartment. Air bnb's wouldn't be a thing for another twenty years, I had to put my name on a lease and everything. It was a basement apartment -- decent enough in size, but it was rapidly becoming cluttered with all of the supplies I was bringing in. There were stacks and stacks of food, water, blankets, and stuff. I even had a little herb garden -- Green herbs only since I hadn't managed to find a place that sold Red, or any of the other colors.

It wasn't enough to sustain a large number of people for a long time, but it would be more than enough for a start. The ball could start rolling. All of this was about getting in position to make sure there was a ball to start rolling in the first place.

Everything was organized and I had something in the works when it came to transporting everything over when it was the last hours of the world as we knew it. Plus, we still had time. Probably. It was hard to gauge when everything would go to shit down to the last minute, but I figured when the military was calling for mass evacuations that would probably be a good hint. Something that honestly made it feel more daunting. I'd rather know the exact second everything went to hell so I knew how much time I was working with.

A frown tugged at my lips as I finished organizing everything. "I think I've put it off for too long," I admitted. The 'Road Work' was closing in on me. The police were swamped with work. The news said nothing about it, but all the signs were there. Time was running out. My gaze went to an outfit that I had hanging up. A motorbike suit -- thick leather rather than the for-style stuff, complete with a pair of steel toe boots and a motorbike helmet that I hollowed out.

As far as anti-zombie equipment went, it was hardly power armor. Or even a shark suit. But, both were either expensive or something I couldn't get my hands on, so I went with the next best option.

"I gotta do it. Better now than later," I knew, but the first step really was the hardest. Swallowing a sigh, I kicked off my shoes and started undressing until I was down to my boxers. Then I grabbed the body suit that was lined with icepacks and shrugged it on. "Fuuuuuuckkkkkk…~! That's so cold," I hissed, putting it on all the same before I went about putting on the bike suit. It went over the ice packs easily enough, leaving me feeling a bit stiff, but it was manageable. Filling the motorbike helmet up with some icepacks too left it sitting comfortably on my head.

It was cold now, but I knew that once I got moving with it, I would be thankful for it. Better too cold than too hot.

Looking upon my selection, I grabbed my tools for the evening -- a fire axe, a sack filled with some stones, and a gun for emergencies. At my belt, I had some tools and supplies. Slugging it all onto a backpack, I headed back up into the city and completely ignored the odd looks that I got on the street and headed for the manhole that led down into the sewer. Something of note -- sewer tunnels and train tunnels tended to go hand in hand. It was simply more convenient to build a sewer and a train tunnel at the same time, than going back to add one or the other.

Sliding the manhole cover back, I started to climb down, ignoring everyone asking me what in the hell I was doing, and simply closed the hole back up. Climbing down was a little awkward with how stiff my armor was, but I managed to drop down with little issue. Reaching up, I turned on the flashlight attachment I had glued onto my helmet, and hefted my axe.

And much to my dismay, I only had to walk around the bend before I stumbled across the first of my prey.

"You guys are like cockroaches, huh?" I said, my voice muffled by the helmet, but the creature clearly heard me. Before, it shuffled where it stood, lowly moaning. But when I spoke, it turned to me. Its eyes were clouded, and its face bloodless. Dark red blood covered its neck, revealing a gnarly-looking bite wound. Dried blood covered a white business shirt and black blazer, a nametag dangling from it. Daniel… something. I couldn't read the rest of it because of the blood.

What I did see was the Umbrella logo.

Daniel started to shuffle toward me, its steps stiff and uncoordinated. Daniel bared some blood stained teeth, though, telling me that he had bit something. Hopefully not someone. Swallowing thickly, I hefted my axe with white knuckles, considering the space between us. It was shrinking step by step, the zombie's arms stretching out to grab hold of me-

I took a step forward and brought the axe down on its head. I brought the spike down directly on the top of its skull, making it go still before it collapsed to the ground. My axe was freed of the weight when it collapsed at my feet. My heart was pounding like a drum in my chest, adrenaline surging through my veins. My body was already running hot and the icepacks were all that were stopping me from dying of a heatstroke here and now.

"Fuck me, dude," I breathed, breathing deeply. I gave Daniel a quick kick to make sure that he was dead. Bending down, I started checking his pockets and found a wallet. "Oh, black card. Nice," I muttered, thinking I could tap into that before the banks shut down. There was some cash too that I took. Snagging it, I also grabbed the identity card on his blazer -- Daniel Fesshick. "How are you guys ending up in the sewer, huh?"

I knew about the fuck off massive underground complex beneath Raccoon City, so they probably had secret connections in the train and sewer systems. But, somehow, they were spilling out through those connections. From there, all it took was an unlocked door or messing with the water treatment system and the undead could spill up to the surface. I wasn't entirely sure how the entire thing started -- the games didn't exactly go into specifics, or if they did, I completely missed it.

Tucking my loot away, I kicked the body into the ravine so I didn't trip on it if I had to make a quick escape and I continued onward. The sewers were pretty well lit, all things considered. The pathways were, at the very least, but not all of the lights actually worked, leaving large swaths of the sewers nearly pitch black. My flashlight worked wonders for them. What it didn't help was the sounds echoing off the stone walls.

The sound of water… and moaning. Cautiously, I crept forward toward the source, trying to make out the individual moans. It was almost like they were communicating in a weird way. But, as far as I could tell, it was one moaning and two others moaning back because the first one moaned. The echoes slowly got louder until I reached the source of them. I turned off my flashlight and peaked around a corner and my stomach clenched when I saw that there were five of them in total.

Swallowing thickly, I considered my options. Didn't fancy my chances with the axe. I knew my zombie lore -- even the shambling ones were dangerous when they swarmed you, and I wasn't that interested in seeing how well my armor would hold up. Instead, I improvised. Reaching into my bag, I pulled out a stick of butter. Taking one of the stones that I had and mashing it in there, I reached to my belt to pull out a tiny xylophone mallet and tapped the stone.

I felt the magic happen even as it shone with light that quickly faded. A small pull in my gut told me that the spark of magic took hold. Bringing the stick of butter up I tossed it in the air and caught it, "Grease," I whispered before I flung the butter around the corner at the zombies. Two spells took place at the same time -- the butter spread out in a thin ten foot radius. And, at the heart of the radius, the stone released a six second whistle. That drew all five of the zombies' attention and they moved toward it.

Then, almost in unison, they all tripped and fell on their asses.

As soon as they did, I was moving. Hefting my axe, I slammed it down on the head of the closest one, killing it. The other zombies were trying to stand, with some having more success than others. I targeted the downed ones, killing them in a single strong swing while backing off from the ones that got up. One took a step forward and fell again, the grease still taking effect. I wasted no time killing it, and that left a single one that lunged for me. But, proper positioning made sure it never came close.

With a final swing, I buried the edge of the axe in its temple, and-

Congratulations, you have leveled up! Please select your choices!

Time seemed to freeze for a moment, stretching on for an impossible length. It was no less jarring than the first time that I had experienced it -- it was like my mind suddenly went into overdrive and my thoughts were like lightning as my head became filled with… well… A DnD character sheet. I, being a giant fucking nerd, knew it rather well. I eyed the important bits of my character sheet.

Rudeus Raine
Variant Human
Artificer 1
Level 2 (Xp: 300/900)

Strength: 9 (-1)
Dexterity: 15 (+2)
Constitution: 15 (+2)
Intelligence: 17 (+3)
Wisdom: 12 (+1)
Charisma: 8 (-1)

Feats:
Fey Touched: Your exposure to the Feywild's magic has changed you, granting you the following benefits:

• Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
• You learn the misty step spell and one 1st-level spell of your choice. The 1st-level spell must be from the divination or enchantment school of magic. You can cast each of these spells without expending a spell slot. Once you cast either of these spells in this way, you can't cast that spell in this way again until you finish a long rest. You can also cast these spells using spell slots you have of the appropriate level. The spells' spellcasting ability is the ability increased by this feat.

Spells:

Cantrips
Mending (V/S/M): This spell repairs a single break or tear in an object you touch, such as a broken chain link, two halves of a broken key, a torn cloak, or a leaking wineskin. As long as the break or tear is no larger than 1 foot in any dimension, you mend it, leaving no trace of the former damage.

This spell can physically repair a magic item or construct, but the spell can't restore magic to such an object.

Fire Bolt (V/S): You hurl a mote of fire at a creature or object within range.

1st Level
Grease (V/S/M): Slick grease covers the ground in a 10-foot square centered on a point within range and turns it into difficult terrain for the duration.

Detect Poison and Disease (V/S/M) (Fey Touched: Once per Day): For the duration, you can sense the presence and location of poisons, poisonous creatures, and diseases within 30 feet of you. You also identify the kind of poison, poisonous creature, or disease in each case.

The spell can penetrate most barriers, but it is blocked by 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of wood or dirt.

2nd Level
Misty Step (V) (Fey Touched: Once per Day): Briefly surrounded by silvery mist, you teleport up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space that you can see.

Just the important bits, which was still a lot.

I went through my choices, choosing Artificer again, bringing me to level 2 with it. For spells, I picked up Healing Word simply because it was too useful to not pick up. Healing was king, after all. As for the far more important bit, while I had to wait another level to pick my subclass, I did unlock something extremely important to my class -- Artificer infusions. Magical items that I could create to help me on my quest. I had four to choose from a rather long list of things I would like. The four that I picked, however, were: Enhanced Arcane Focus, Enhanced Defense, Spellwrought Tattoo, and the most important one of all, Replicate Magic Item.

Bag of Holding, here I come.

With my decision made, all of a sudden, I was back in real time. It almost felt like I was flung back in my body, and all of a sudden, I felt a little stronger. I'm not exactly sure if I had health points or not, but I did feel hardier. I took in a deep breath and instantly regretted it, practically tasting shit and rot on my tongue. Gagging, I shook my head and looked around. Despite feeling like a solid ten minutes, not even a second had passed in real-time.

"Alright… let's see what you got… and maybe find where you guys are coming from," I remarked to the corpses. These ones were odder. Two men, three women. The women were wearing formal attire with one of them even wearing a lab coat, though I didn't find any identification on her. However, the two men were wearing casual clothes -- pants, sneakers, and hoodies. Which was weird. The scientists and whatever were coming up from the complex, but what were normal people doing in the sewers?

I continued to explore the sewers, careful to mark my progress with arrows on the walls, but try as I might, I couldn't find a single other zombie or where they were coming from. Deciding to cut my losses, I decided to head back up as I felt the ice packs starting to melt. They still had some time left, but I had experienced how hot it was in the suit before I had thought of the icepacks, and I was in no hurry for a repeat.

Heading back up, I pushed the manhole cover back and climbed out of the sewer. I saw the guy whose car I moved, and when I made to head into my apartment, he seemed to know that I moved it. But, wisely, he decided to not bother the man covered in blood after climbing out of the sewer.

"Ugh… This thing is the worst," I decided, setting my axe by the door and taking off my helmet, my hair soaked with sweat. It just didn't breathe. Great protection, but it cooked you. Shrugging it off, a small groan of relief escaped me. It would be decontaminated in the shower with liberal amounts of bleach. "MK. II is going to need some serious improvements. Like built in air conditioning… fuck, should'a gone with Prestidigitation," I muttered to myself, shrugging off the undersuit of ice packs and putting it back in the fridge.

Taking out my contacts and putting on my glasses, I felt pleased with myself for my progress today. I managed to level up. I took my first real step toward combating the incoming apocalypse. I even managed to snag some funding. Now, I just needed to get a shit load of guns and ammo, more food… and maybe a generator, or something. Some board games maybe?

As I made my plans, I grabbed some orange juice from the fridge and poured myself a glass. Something that I nearly choked on when I heard the front door open. I whipped around, half expecting to see Umbrella behind me, sending a black ops squad to take me out. Instead, it was a woman. Her brown hair cut short, wearing a dark blue form fitting top and a pair of dark denim jeans. She was pretty, I quickly noticed.

But that was far less glaring than the gun she leveled in my direction.

"You," Jill Valentine began, a deadly edge in her voice as she closed the door behind her, sealing my only exit, "Are going to tell me exactly how you know so much about the T-virus… and this so-called incoming apocalypse." She decided, her gaze sharp enough to cut as she took notice of the bloodied axe by the door.

I swallowed thickly… "Could I put some pants on first?"

...

Welcome to Best of Intentions, one of two stories that will be taking over the Monday slot now that Never Fade Away has ended. The second story is A Golden Path (Asoiaf/Dune) crossover -- the stories will be updated every other week. So, this week BoI was updated, meaning next week AGP will be updated, and repeat.

The DnD aspects came from withdrawal because I haven't been able to play and I discovered Dimension 20 youtube shorts. The entire idea for this one came from watching this one: Link. For those that can't be bothered to watch, it's addressing the idea that if you live an xp based level up world, if you want to get good at magic, you need to slaughter people instead of hitting the books. I thought it would be a neat leveling system. Resident Evil has plenty of chump xp bags while also offering some high-yield xp monsters in the forms of Nemesis or Mr. X. Making it pretty much perfect to level up in. Playing the magic straight could be a lot of fun because I will be using the Somatic, Verbal, and Material costs for spells. Especially using it to troll Umbrella.

Rudeus only has minimal metaknowledge. He played the remake of the third game, and he's watched the movies. However, he is under the impression that I was before I dug into the lore -- that the movies follow the games. For years, I knew that the movies were different from the games, but I thought it was in a 'change some stuff up to make it work as a movie' kind of way and not glorified fan fiction by a director to make his hot wife look good. So, my mind was blown.

Thats it from me for now. I hope you enjoy!

 

[Ideas-Guy]

"No," Jill answered rather curtly. The gun was unwavering and I had no idea what to do with my hands. Should I keep them raised? But I was holding a glass of OJ, so couldn't that be considered a weapon? Because getting hit in the face with a glass and getting OJ in the eyes were equally painful, in my experience. However, modesty told me that I should be covering up my privates now.

So, compromise. I covered my junk with a hand and kept the glass of OJ high in the air, trying to appear as nonthreatening as possible. I don't think it looked good based on the severe expression Jill was sending my way, slowly entering my apartment like she was entering the belly of the beast. Was she expecting a trap? Ah, shit. I totally should have trapped- actually, no. That was a terrible idea. I forgot to take my daily multivitamin. I'd absolutely forget about a shotgun or beartrap that I set up.

"Erm… Would… you like some juice…?" I tried, watching Jill stalk through my apartment, the business end of the gun never leaving my chest as she checked her corners. I winced when she kicked my bathroom door in, checking it.

"No," Jill snapped at me, also checking my bedroom. I… totally should have cleaned it. Didn't have any reason not to. I just figured it wouldn't matter since, well, the apocalypse. She seemed satisfied that we were alone, and it was only then that she paid any real attention to the piles and piles of loosely organized shit that was filling my apartment up. Finally, she gave me her full attention. "What I want from you are answers. Who are you? Do you work for Umbrella? The T-virus -- tell me everything you know about it. And this outbreak," she half snarled at me.

I swallowed a lump in my throat. "Okay, I can do that, I guess. I'm Rudeus, but most people call me Rude. Because I'm usually- actually, just never mind that. Bad joke," I decided, seeing that Jill wasn't exactly in the laughing mood. Really not how I thought this would happen. For starters, I figured I'd be wearing more than my boxers marked with hearts. "As for the T-virus, I don't really know that much? I know it reanimates the dead, getting bit is certain death, and you gotta shoot them in the head to put them down for good."

Her eyes narrowed, searching my face and my mouth felt parched. This was kind of terrifying. Jill was scary when she was pissed. So, I took a small sip of my OJ to wet my mouth. "As for the outbreak, it's already happened. It really started yesterday, as far as I can tell. That's what all the traffic is about -- the road work? It's a cover for military teams wiping out the undead. There's a quarantine around the city for something like two hundred miles," I half babbled and only stopped when Jill looked like she got punched in the gut.

"What?!" She breathed, jerking the gun at me. "That's… they would tell people. There would be evacuations!" She snapped at me, sounding like she didn't believe it.

"Preaching to the choir, lady. I guess they're worried about the bad press of playing with biological weapons in a city center, or something, but either way they're keeping it on the downlow. I found out about it the hard way -- there are zombies in the sewer. I've been killing them," I added, deciding to neglect to mention that today was the first day that I actually went down. The blood was draining away from her face, leaving Jill pale. "And… well… the military budget is wasted because they're losing control over the situation. Maybe it's because of Umbrella's interference? I don't know. What I do know is that we're two or three days away from the city going to hell in a handbasket."

Jill looked away from me, her eyes darting around and her breathing was starting to get shallow. She almost seemed to stumble, leaning against the wall. The gun lowered ever so slightly, so I added, "Anyway I'm not with Umbrella. And you're not exactly rocking the black ops attire, so I'm guessing you're not here to kill me for opening my big mouth?" That seemed to shock her out of it because she lowered the gun.

"No. No, I'm not with them," she sighed, holstering the gun. "My name is Jill. Jill Valentine. I… I saw one of your pamphlets. I've seen the T-virus in action before and I've been trying to investigate it ever since…" So she tracked me down for answers. Perfectly respectful. Girl power, and all that.

However.

"Does this mean I can put my pants on now?" I requested, and now Jill seemed a little sheepish when I threw a hesitant smile her way.

"Yeah- right, of course," she quickly agreed, gesturing for me to head into the bedroom. I nodded in thanks and headed inside, quickly finding some clean clothes. "All of this stuff then… you're preparing?" She asked me, really starting to look.

"As much as I can," I said, shrugging on some pants, a tank top, and then a turtleneck sweater. It was late September, so it was a little nippy outside. Resting my thick-rimmed glasses back on my face, I stepped out of the bedroom to see that Jill was ready for me. She seemed to relax ever so slightly when she saw me and… I guess she was still prepared for me to attack? "It's not much. Especially for big numbers, but I figured it was a start. I've been trying to spread the word, even if people don't believe it. Get the idea in their heads."

Jill nodded slowly, her gaze flickering over me, sizing me up. "And you chose to stay?" She asked, sounding faintly surprised and I offered a small shrug.

"I don't trust the government to not horribly fuck this up. So, someone's gotta step up," I told her. That seemed to catch her attention. "If you don't mind me asking -- where did you run into the T-Virus at?" I asked her, scratching at my black turtleneck when I saw her expression twist. I could tell that it dredged up memories that she was trying to forget, but I had to ask. Simply because Jill knew more about the T-Virus than me. She knew the people involved.

All the while I asked, I grabbed some materials. I would have preferred more time to do this, but there was only so much time left. I had to make the most of it. I grabbed hold of a square of leather and a piece of string, and I went about turning it into a Bag of Holding -- which was hands down the most useful item in DnD. As I worked, I felt the magic flowing into the leather and string, turning it from an ordinary bag into a bag of folded space. It could hold up to five hundred pounds worth of weight, making it a godsend.

All of my Infusions were chosen with care and forethought. Enhanced Defense would go onto my zombie killing attire for that extra bit of defense. Enhanced Arcane Item would come into play at Level 5 when more of my Artificer abilities came online. But, for now, the most important one of all was Spellwrought tattoo, which allowed me to create a tattoo of a spell. No spell slot needed and, the important bit -- they could be used by anyone.

Which is why I chose Shield for the spell it would house. I'm not entirely sure how AC actually worked in a non-tabletop setting, but having a magic shield between you and the thing trying to kill you sounded like it couldn't not be beneficial.

"Something similar to this," Jill answered after a long minute. "There was an outbreak at a testing lab, and my team was sent to investigate… and act as lab rats for how effective the virus was," she bit the words out. "I've been hunting for answers ever since." She didn't go into detail but I more or less knew the broadstrokes. Resident Evil mansion thing, Albert Wesker being a chuuni blowhard, and a good chunk of her team dying.

"I wish I had more to give you, but you probably know more about those behind this than I do. I just know what's coming -- Raccoon City is going to collapse into total anarchy in a couple of days. The military is going to fumble this all the way to the finish line, and that finish line is the apocalypse. The quarantine will fail, the undead are going to stumble ass backward into towns and cities… then the tipping point comes to pass where there are more walking dead than living people." As I spoke, I put the finishing touches on what amounted to a marble bag. It was smaller than I thought it'd be, but it'd get the job done. I hoped.

I looked over at Jill to see that she wore a tense expression. "That's the worst case scenario, then? Alright," she said, her tone focused. "And you're planning to stop that… by yourself?" She sounded like she didn't know whether to be impressed or laugh.

"Along with the friends I make along the way," I told her with a cheeky smile. "If you want to run, then you can run. I'm staying. Actually, I have some errands I need to run," I admitted, heading to the door. I actually did have errands. The bag of holding had been a choke point in my ability to steal shit, and I really needed to cash out that black card before it got frozen.

Jill let out a small laugh, "I'm not sure I believe you yet, but I'm guessing I'm going to see some reasons to. What are we doing?" Jill asked, and that was some real protagonist energy. And, in response, I pointed out my to-do list near the door, cleverly marked 'Do before the world ends, you fucking slacker.' And even with me managing my time rather well, there was an alarming number of checkboxes left unchecked.

Her expression tightened when she saw some of them. There was a lot of bad and good on the list. Crouching down, I picked up a box of pamphlets, stuffed to the brim with everything one would need to know to survive a zombie apocalypse. "Could you grab one of these? We're going to be passing them out at the hospital and schools," I told her, making Jill hesitate, her eyes still glued to the to-do list.

However, she picked one up all the same. "Hospital and schools?" She asked in a soft voice, stepping out of my apartment and letting me close up behind me- actually, hold up. Reaching in, I grabbed my axe and my gun and shoved them into my bag of holding from behind the door, just out of sight. Mostly because explaining the bag of holding was going to be a whole conversation in itself, and now wasn't the time for tangents.

"Some guy gets bit by some feral dude, so he'll go to the hospital. They'll try to treat him, he flatlines, they forget about him because they're swamped with more cases of the same thing. The corpse reanimates, and the next thing you know, the hospital is overrun," I explained, sliding the boxes of pamphlets in my trunk. I knew my zombie lore. "I-"

"Hey, asshole!" Some guy shouted, and I had enough experience to assume that meant me whenever I heard it. Looking over, I saw it was my neighbor, Greg. He lived in the house above me on the first floor. A man in his late twenties to early thirties, bit of a gut, but with thick arms, it gave him a strongman look. "What the fuck is your problem?! You moved my car in the middle of the fucking street?!" He shouted at me, striding up to me, his face flushed with an angry red.

"Maybe you should stop parking in my spot, you fuckin' dingus," I shot back at him, making him blink. Fun thing about making references to things that wouldn't exist for another couple of years.

Greg's nostrils flared, "Some guy parked in my spot." He defended his douchebaggery.

"Then do what I did and pull the car out of your spot. Or ram it. I don't care. That's not my problem, dude," I told him, closing the bed of the truck. Jill watched the exchange, glancing between us with a serious expression. Wary that it was going to escalate. It had better not, because I paid for that spot and I was willing to escalate all the fucking way.

"I- No, you moved my car and I got a fucking ding in it. And that fucking hook of yours fucked my rear bumper. I want to see some insurance before I call the cops. You fled the scene!" He jabbed a finger at me. I hate big cities. I really, really did.

"Fled the scene?! What, to my apartment, fifteen feet away?!" Oh, I'm about to start throwing some hands.

"That's enough. Both of you," Jill decided to interject, sensing that it was about to escalate when Greg took a threatening step forward. "You -- I'm with the police. Jill Valentine, S.T.A.R.S Alpha team," Jill said, placing a hand on his chest to prevent him from taking a step forward.

Greg, however, proved to be the dense sort. "Yeah right. You seriously paid a hooker to play cop? How much do I gotta pay for you to break out the cuffs?" He snapped at me and, based on Jill's expression, that wasn't the first time that she had heard a remark like that.

"I wouldn't go there if I were you. She can beat you up," I pointed out. Greg's lips peeled back, going to push past Jill, only to find himself on his ass. "Told you so," I jeered, flipping him the bird, earning a sharp look from Jill.

"You need to cool down. And you, Rude, you need to get in the car. If you want to continue the discussion when we get back, then let me know," Jill said, stepping away after she laid the guy out, who was holding a busted nose that dripped blood down his chin.

"Fucking psychos. The two of you," Greg snapped, getting up and walking off. Oh, I foresaw a call from my renter. Well, jokes on her, I wouldn't need the apartment in a few days.

Sliding behind the wheel, Jill let out a frustrated breath. I could tell it bothered her that she lost her cool like that, even if it was totally badass. Starting up the engine, I drove off, heading to the first of our errands. However, as soon as we were moving, Jill spoke up. "Call in bomb threats at every school. Why was that on your to-do list?" She asked me, her tone guarded. I'm not surprised that she had issues with that one, but it was a flash of genius on my part.

"Bomb threats are a mandatory investigation by the police, and school gets called off, and parents come to get their kids. It's a good way to make sure families don't get broken up, which stops parents from freaking out on the streets trying to o find their children," I explained. I felt her gaze on me for a long few seconds, judging my answer, before she settled on a curt nod. The timing would be important. "As for why I'm stopping by today -- I'm raising awareness."

Turning on the radio to fill the tense silence that blossomed between us, the truck was filled with news about the troubles that were plaguing Raccoon City at the moment. It felt like more roads were closed than open, there were some talks about unexplained violence, and even mentions that there could be radiation leaks that the military was investigating. Jill listened closely before she let out a dismissive scoff, "It's all bullshit," she seemed to realize. "How did this start?"

"I genuinely have no idea," I admitted. I'm sure there was some nitty-gritty background lore in a note or something that provided that information, but I didn't remember it. "I know they're coming up from the sewers, but how it's actually spreading, I have no idea. Wish I did." I didn't want to kill zombies so badly that I was willing to let a bunch of innocent people die just so I could kill their corpses for xp.

Jill went silent at that, gazing out of a window that would soon be going to hell. I pulled up to a school and, as expected, I saw a ne'er-do-well patrolling the grounds instead of being in class despite the fact it was the middle of the day. A teenager that was really rocking the 'Nineties Kid' look. Complete with the frosted tips. "Hey, kid, want to make some money?" I called out to him, making him thumb off his cigarette and look at me.

"What do I have to do to get it?" He asked me, his tone wary. And that was totally fair. I was a stranger pulling up to school asking if a teenager wanted to make money. I'm shocked Jill hasn't shot me yet.

"You have to pass these out," I said, getting out of my truck and taking out a box of pamphlets. "Make sure everyone in the school gets one. Slap them everywhere -- notice boards, blackboards, even in the bathroom. Do that, and you'll get a hundred bucks now, and a hundred after the job is done." I said, peeling off a hundred and presenting it to him.

"Yeah, totally dude!" He said, reaching out for the hundred. Too easy, so I pulled it back before he could grab it.

"I'm also going to pay a kid to watch you to make sure you pass them out. And if you don't, I'll pay another kid to kick your ass," I told him with nothing so much as resembling shame. Ah, there went the eagerness. No such thing as a free meal, punk. I knew your tricks. "Deal?" I asked again, presenting the hundred again.

Properly called out, he nodded. "Alright, deal," he said, taking the box from me. Shaking on it, he walked way and I saw him checking out the pamphlets while I got back in my truck.

"Have you tried talking to the police?" Jill asked me, watching the kid go, who glanced back at me with a weirded-out look before shrugging to himself. Good. That was the attitude of a man that was willing to put up with a task he genuinely didn't understand for a paycheck. If he didn't die in the coming days, I saw a prosperous future in middle management.

"Course. Got laughed out of the station, though. These people… no one wants to believe that the world can come to an end, Jill," I pointed out to her. She closed her eyes in response, not arguing the point. "All I- we can do is give the information. When the time comes, and it is too late for them to prepare… at least they'll have it and know what to do."

"I can do a little more than that," Jill decided as we made our way to the hospital. One of them, at least. I had to wonder if they were already dealing with cases of zombie bites. She took out her phone and pressed it to her ear, waiting a few seconds, and… "Chris, where are you?" She started, and I perked up.

Boulder punching Chris?

I feel safer already.

"The airport? Look… I need you to trust me on this, Chris, but don't get on the plane. You'll probably end up wishing you did, but Raccoon City is going to need you… yeah… yeah, it's bad, Chris. I'm going to be calling the other S.T.A.R.S. We're going to need them. I can tell you more when you get here," Jill said, sounding relieved. I genuinely wished that I could share it, but I couldn't.

I was stopped at a redlight and glanced down an alley, and I saw it.

A zombie.

My blood went to ice in my veins the moment that I saw it. The very first one that I had seen on the surface that wasn't in a 'Road work zone.' People walked by it without so much as glancing its way as it was hunched over, seemingly chowing down on a man. Both seemed to be homeless, and half covered by a tarp tent. I gripped my steering wheel with white knuckles for a long moment before quickly pulling off and parking. Jill glanced over at me in surprise until she saw what it was doing when I got out.

I pulled my axe out from my bag of holding, striding up to the zombie and past a handful of people that didn't realize the danger that they were in. The zombie -- a woman with filthy unwashed blonde hair, blood smeared across her face, and clouded blue eyes looked up at me for a split second. With a heave, I buried the axe in her head. Ripping it free, blood splatted across my shoes. My lips pressed into a thin line, I looked to the dead homeless man.

"Did no one hear you scream or did no one care to check?" I asked him, my grip tightening on my axe for a moment. Almost, as if he were trying to respond, his mouth started to move. He was reanimating. I didn't know how long it took for the T-virus to bring you back. Hours, maybe? A day? A hand started to raise up and I brought the axe down on his head, killing him again. I could try to hide the bodies, but it didn't seem to be worth the effort at this point.

Soon enough, there would be more bodies on the streets than anyone knew what to do with.

Ripping my axe free, I strode right past the civilians and tossed my axe in the trunk before getting back in the car. I took in a sharp breath behind the wheel, checking the road, and rejoined the flow of traffic. Jill looked at the bodies, that still went ignored, until we couldn't see them any longer. She swallowed thickly, glancing my way for a long moment. I think it was really starting to hit her now. "Chris Redfield is a solid guy. And I have a few more that I can call up. It might not be much, but it'll be a start."

I took in a deep breath and forced myself to calm down. "Yeah, it'll be a start," I agreed, spotting the hospital just down the road. "Though, for this next bit, you'll probably won't want to be seen with me," I told her, forcing some good cheer into my tone. It was going to suck. It was always going to suck. I knew that going into this whole mess. People were going to die no matter what I did, so I just had to make sure that I saved as many as I possibly could.

I had to take solace in the fact that when people died, it wasn't because of a lack of effort on my part. I did everything I could and I was doing everything possible to save them.

Jill cocked an eyebrow at that, "Why not?" She questioned, seemingly amused by my grin.

"Like I said, best way to make sure people survive is to give them the information that they need. And the best way to do that, is to make it stand out so they remember it when it does go to shit," I told her, coming to a stop and getting out. Popping open another box of pamphlets, I grabbed handfuls of them. "So, I'm going to make a lasting impression while I give it."

Jill leaned against the truck on the other side, glancing at the axe questioningly, but said nothing about it. "By… running around, screaming about the undead?" Jill questioned, looking at the hospital. It hardly looked like hell on earth now, but that wouldn't last. Plus, this would be a good opportunity to see if they're already getting cases. As much as I would like to hope those homeless people were the only undead up here…

I tilted my head, "Oh. That's a great idea. I was just going to run around passing them out, but that's so much better," I decided and Jill visibly regretted giving me the idea. Too late, no take backsies. "In the meantime, we're going to need building materials. Wood and stuff. So, you take the truck and fill it up with whatever you think we'd need." I said, tossing her the keys and the black card. "Don't know the limit to that, so be careful with it. But the cops are busy, so you can just steal whatever you want if it's an issue."

"Great," Jill muttered under her breath before glancing at me. "You're already trusting me with your truck?" She asked, sounding a little suspicious. She really should have expected my response.

"I don't own a truck," I told her, tossing a wink Jill's way before heading to the hospital.

The clock was ticking and every second counted.

 

[Ideas-Guy]

"THE DEAD SHALLL RISSSEEE! FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES IF YOU SEE PEOPLE WITH SUSPICIOUS BITE WOUNDS OR SHOOT THEM IN THE HEAD!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, throwing out pamphlets like they were confetti, causing as much of a ruckus as I possibly could. As it turned out, hospitals don't have much in the way of security, though I did have a mall cop that was chasing me around the hospital. He was lucky he worked in a hospital because I'm pretty sure he was about to be driven to a heart attack. "THERE IS NO CURE ONCE BITTEN! THE SYMPTOMS PRIOR TO DEATH ARE A FEVER, CLOUDY VISION, LIGHTHEADEDNESS, ATTEMPTS OF CANNIBALISM… AND DEATH!"

Memories had to stand out for you to bother to remember it. For the life of me, I couldn't recall reading some random pamphlet that I would pick up out of boredom waiting for the dentist. I'm sure there was some pretty good stuff about oral hygiene in there, but I didn't care so I couldn't retain it. My pamphlets worked under the same principle -- highly useful information, but if no one recalled it or made the connection? Then it was useless.

So, make the memories stand out. Run around screaming and throwing them at people. No one would remember a guy handing them out, but a guy screaming about the end of days and hurling them at you? That was a memory worth recalling.

I flung another handful of papers into a random room as a nurse stepped out to check what in the hell was going on. I think I hit her in the face. "Sorry, my bad!" I called out to her, feeling a little guilty. I was trying to become a nuisance, not assault people. "THE DEAD SHALL RISE! A BULLET IS THE ONLY CURE FOR THE UNDEAD!" I continued to holler, seeing one of the doctors was feeling brave and went for a tackle.

I juked him so badly I realized I missed my calling as an NFL athlete. He hit the ground and I downright danced around him, throwing another handful of pamphlets up. Behind me, I heard someone shout out, "Someone stop him! He's getting away!" I threw another handful in a room as I passed it by, getting a solid idea of the layout of the hospital. It was pretty big, but overall, it was pretty simple. There was an inpatient wing, and an outpatient wing, while the inpatient wing had various wards.

One of them was the maternity ward, which was… a whole ass problem, I decided glancing at the large window that would more or less act as an advertisement for bite-sized snacks when the zombies came. Luckily, only a handful of the crib things had babies in them, but it was still far too many for comfort.

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that the mall cop hadn't caught up to me yet, so I took out a notepad that I stole from the nurse station and continued making my map and added a few notes. Five babies. Assuming that we could carry one per arm, that was three people on carry duty- wait, were those chest harnesses a thing yet? Well, I could just invent them if they weren't. So, that was two people on carrying duty. The hospital would be a mad house, so there would need to be at least… three others on combat duty.

"What about the child ward?" I muttered under my breath, frowning at the notepad. We would need to get the kids out. And we would need to get the necessary medicine for their ongoing treatment. I would be so fucking pissed off if one of these kids had the audacity to die of leukemia or something after I saved them from this unmitigated shit show. The trip to the hospital was going to be a massive operation, no two ways about it. My eyes narrowed to a glare at the sleeping infants, having no idea what was coming. "You know, baby giraffes and horses can run as soon as they're born," I told them.

Predictably, I didn't receive an answer. Couldn't even talk. Literally useless.

"S-stop right t-there," Paul Blart said, red in the face and sweating. I glanced over at him, feeling a little bad.

"You want some water, or something?" I asked him, and that just seemed to piss him off. I'm trying to do a nice thing here. I was the good guy! He went for his mace as he approached, and I quickly made a decision, "Alright, damn, I'll take that as a no! Dick." I said, taking off in a brisk jog and leaving him behind. Zombieland was 110% on point -- cardio saved lives. I hated running in general, but it was a useful skill to have in the apocalypse.

I was running low on pamphlets, so I took my time to explore the hospital. However, that didn't stop them from looking for me. They were tearing up the hospital, and I chose to hide out in a backroom. In a child ward, so, their concern was completely valid, I decided upon turning around to see a kid that looked like he got hit by a truck, after which the truck stopped, then backed up over him for good measure. He looked at me through black eyes, his nose busted, and his lips split. "What happened to your face?" I asked him, checking to see if the coast was clear.

I think the kid's eyes narrowed at me. "What happened to yours?" He asked, and he sounded young. Oh, snarky.

"I was born too good-looking," I said, throwing a cheeky grin his way. The room was a private one, as far as I could tell. Meaning that the kid had been here for a bit seeing as this was part of the inpatient ward. "It's caused me no end of trouble."

"Pretty sure that's because of all the shouting," the kid… Will retorted. I picked up his medical clipboard hanging off his bed and let out a low whistle at his extensive list of injuries. A truck did hit him, if you considered a truck to be two fists and a boot. He was eight years old and brought in after he 'fell down the stairs.' William Evans. Evans. I would remember that last name, I decided. "What were you talking about? The dead coming back? Like… ghosts?" He almost sounded hopeful.

"As in the rotting corpses eating the living kind. It's going to be a whole deal," I told him, ruthlessly crushing that hope. Better that way. None of that 'maybe they're still inside' stuff allowed here. Hesitation was going to get people killed, and while I couldn't do much about a lot of it, I could do this much. "Not fun or particularly wholesome. So, while you've been laying around after your dad beat the shit out of you, you hear anything interesting?"

Immediately, the kid bristled. "My dad didn't hit me," he protested. No. No, he definitely did. Good to know.

"Really? My bad. So, have you heard anything interesting after getting laid up by some stairs that beat the shit out of you?" I asked him, making Will glare at me. At least I think he was. It was kind of hard to tell with the twin shiners. His lips pressed into a thin line, chewing on something that he clearly wanted to say. I gave him a moment, but he swallowed it down.

"There have been some weird people," Will admitted after a moment. "The nurses are pretty worried about them. They say that they're really confused and they keep trying to bite people? Are… are they?" He questioned, paling when I nodded to answer his question.

"Yup. Sounds like it," I confirmed, frowning. That… wasn't good. I was holding out hope that the homeless couple would be a one-off. I knew it wouldn't be, but I had harbored hope.

Will started to look scared, "I need to go back home. I- my sister! She's all alone with my dad, and they-" I held up a hand, forestalling any protests. That… well…

"In that case, I can work a little magic to get you out of here. Better now than when shit's going down," I rationalized. I don't think he would be going far on some busted ribs, even if I really didn't like the idea of sending him back to his dad. Will tried to give me a weird look, but most of his face was swollen, so it didn't really work. Sending a smirk his way, I wiggled my fingers in his direction, "Oggity boggity boo," I intoned.

With the words, I cast Cure Wounds by touching his arm. In response, the black eyes faded away, the split lip smoothed over and even his nose straightened out. Not sure if I did anything for the ribs, but I'm pretty sure that Cure Wounds took care of it. Will gaped at me, then at himself, then at me again. "Y-you-you're a wizard?!" He exclaimed as I tossed a wink his way, having done my bit and burning one of my first level spell slots for the day.

"I am a man of mystery, kid," I told him, passing a pamphlet to him. "Spread the word and take care of that sister of yours," I told him, peeking my head out of the room to see that the coast was clear. I saw that he was still gaping at me as I stepped out, and I think he was going to be just fine. Now, with my good deed for the day done, time to stir up some trouble. I took off running, looking for someone in particular.

I had only ever played the Resident Evil 3 Remake before I found myself here. I also had a pretty good idea of the future plotline because of the movies -- Raccoon City gets nuked, the apocalypse happens, and Umbrella is pants on the head stupid. And, at some point, there would be a dommy mommy vampire lady. Soon, hopefully. But, RE3 was the one I needed to know about the most because it gave me just enough knowledge to have a very vague idea of what I was doing.

This world wasn't the game. There were no convenient yellow boxes that had loot and guns in them. The little gem thing in the train station didn't give gun attachments, a grenade, and a police-issued hip pouch. Shockingly. However, as far as I could tell, things in the broad strokes were still true.

On the flip side, I wasn't seeing a hair of Alice. This wasn't the only major hospital in Raccoon city, but given that it was the only hospital that was connected to the Nest, I had figured this was where they were keeping her. Possible behind the 'mystery door' that the rest of the staff who weren't in Umbrella's pocket weren't allowed to go beyond. Possibly in the Nest itself.

The movies probably moved some stuff around. As it happened when you changed one form of media to another -- I hated it every time, but I understood why movies or shows couldn't be a one for one of my favorite books. The same applied to game adaptations. Some things got smoothed over, some things got condensed, other things got switched up. Like Nemesis, who chased Alice in the movies and Jill in the game.

So, I wasn't that worried that I wasn't seeing her yet. Even if her psionics would be extremely useful in the coming days. So long as I had an easy way to get to her when shit was going down I could call it margin for error. That being said, I zeroed in on my next target.

It was pretty easy to spot Brad… Bard? Dr. Bard. A portly man in his late forties, his hair thinning to the point of nonexistence. Striding up to him with a smile on my face, I stole a paperclip from a nearby desk and shoved it in his face. "Mr. Brad, any opinions on the lack of a state of emergency for the very real crisis that this city faces?!" I asked him, making him just about jump a foot in the air.

A spark of magic entered the paperclip, making it an infusion. Just in time, too, "Get away from me, you lunatic!" Six words. Perfect. As he stumbled a step back, a hand drifted up to grab his keycard.

"Not the answer I wanted, but the one I expected. Try not to get assassinated like a dickhead," I gave him forewarning, making him flinch. Then I flung a stack of pamphlets in his face just as Paul Blart caught sight of me.

"Get back here!" He shouted while Dr. Bard sputtered.

"YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!"

…

"Jill, you trust this guy?" Chris asked her and Jill was forced to consider the question as she was looking at blowing her savings on aluminum, spools of fencing, and wood. Given that Rude had stolen a truck, she wasn't going to trust that card he gave her. The cashier was giving her odd looks, but said nothing as Jill was silent for a long moment. Her gaze flickered to the trashy magazines that were in front of the conveyer belt, seeing one of the pamphlets that Rude was giving out tucked in front of every single magazine. At least until another employee started going through the rack and throwing them all in the trash can.

Did she trust him?

"No," Jill confessed after a long moment of consideration. She hadn't really believed him until those homeless people. He clearly knew about the T-virus, but she was half certain that the outbreak was something he… Jill didn't know. Made up, or something. Perhaps simply because that's what she wanted to believe. She'd take the mansion all over again if it meant what happened there wouldn't happen to the city. "But, he hasn't given me any reason to distrust him."

Jill didn't think she had it in her to trust anyone that wasn't in Stars anymore. Before Wesker, Jill would have said she trusted him. He followed through. He stepped up to the plate. Rude hadn't done anything to make Jill distrust him, she just didn't have a lot of trust to give anymore. Worse, the people she still trusted could be counted on one hand with some fingers left over.

Rebecca, Brad, and Chris.

"I hear you. So, he checks out? The plan is good?" Chris asked, already on his way back. He got himself suspended from the force just so he could go to Europe to investigate Umbrella there, but this was more pressing. If-...No. There was an outbreak of the T-Virus. This… this was going to be so much worse than the mansion.

"He checks out. As for the plan -- I'd call it the best of a bad situation," Jill admitted, handing over her card to pay for everything. Yikes. Being in Stars paid well, but that was a decent chunk of change. "I saw his to-do list. It was thorough. He's thought about pretty much everything that can be done with the resources that he has."

"Can we stop it?" Chris asked, his tone even but it sounded like he suspected the answer already.

Jill wanted to say yes. Desperately. But, the idealistic girl died in the mansion. She knew what this disease could do. What it would do. People that knew what they were doing ended up dying to it. Civilians didn't stand a chance. "We're in damage control, Chris." The confession was bitter because she ran through the option in her head. All of the scenarios.

Going to the police? Maybe they could get some of them on board, but even with all, it wouldn't be enough. The military was losing its grip over the situation. Start forcing an evacuation? That could work, but how could you force a city to evacuate? The military wouldn't believe how bad it could get. She could try screaming from the rooftops, but who would believe her when the government was actively keeping it quiet?

People wouldn't believe that they were in danger until they were fighting for their lives. Jill ran through every possibility, every course of action, and the current course was the one that was realistic. Mitigating the damage done. That's the most they could hope for.

"Fuck," Chris summarized rather aptly. "I'm going to be calling Kendo. Secure some weapons for us." Another thing that was on the to-do list.

"I'm going to get who we can in the force, but it won't be much. Short of getting Big Iron on the same page, we'll be lucky to get more than a few squads, if that." Irons was the police commissioner and a blatantly corrupt one at that. How involved he was with Umbrella was up in the air at the moment, but it was safe to assume the worst. Just as she had to assume that the police wouldn't just rally around her word.

After the mansion, Stars had been gutted. Rebecca left Raccoon City entirely, Brad was a functioning alcoholic, Chris punched out their CO for the sake of the investigation, and she… she was on medical leave, officially. If she called about the dead rising, they'd think she cracked. And maybe that wasn't far from the truth, but the point was that they wouldn't believe her. Not wholesale. Not enough to pull the situation from the brink.

"Rebecca?" Chris floated the idea.

Jill's lips thinned as she pushed the supplies out to the truck. The stolen truck. Rude really was a character, alright. "I say that we leave her out of it. She's tough, but she's still just a kid." Eighteen. Rebecca Chambers was a certified genius that graduated college by the time Jill had graduated highschool. She was scouted hard into Stars as a demolitions expert, and less than a year later, her squad was dead. "She's back at school fighting in her own way. We could use her skills, but…" but, Jill didn't want Rebecca anywhere near this mess. She was studying virology and in a few years, maybe she could create a silver bullet that could kill Umbrella forever.

"She's made of sterner stuff than you're giving her credit for, but… yeah, I don't want her near this shit show if I can help it," Chris agreed. "And speaking of shit shows -- how are you doing?" Jill managed a small laugh at that as she loaded everything up.

The truth was? "I would have missed the outbreak if I didn't run out of milk," Jill confessed. She hadn't left her apartment in days. The investigation into Umbrella stalled out into a sprawling series of dead ends. She had just been counting down the days before she would leave Raccoon City entirely, and she hadn't had a single good night's sleep in months. She would have stayed in that room until the end if it wasn't for the fact that cereal was the only food she had left, and she wasn't desperate enough to use water to eat it. "Stumbled across one of Rude's posters about the T-Virus. Felt like I got punched in the gut when I saw it."

"Posters?" Chris echoed, sounding surprised as Jill finished loading up the bed of the truck.

"He's been slapping them around all over the city. I thought it was stupid at first, but… I don't know." It seemed so inefficient. Pointless, even. But Jill saw it for what it was now -- desperation. Throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the problem and hoping something stuck.

Chris was silent for a moment. "And how did he find out about the T-Virus?" He questioned, a frown in his voice.

"He says that he stumbled across them in the sewers," Jill answered, also finding it suspicious. "He knows more than he's letting on. Even if he knew about what the T-Virus did, he wouldn't know what it's called. Or exactly how it works. But, his record is clean as far as I can tell. And even if it wasn't… he's not a bad guy." That was the verdict she came to after a brief interaction with him. Even if there was more to Rude, that first impression of him wouldn't change -- a guy trying to hold back the apocalypse by himself because he knew no one would believe him.

He stayed when anyone with a couple of brain cells would have taken those supplies, found a bunker, and left the world to meet its grizzley end. For that and that alone, Rude earned her respect.

"I'll take your word for it," Chris decided, having his own sets of doubts. "I'll be in by tonight. Hold down the fort for me," he said, ending the call as Jill slid into the truck. Snapping the phone shut, Jill let out a breath and rested her forehead against the steering wheel for a moment. The sheer weight of the situation bearing down on her. They were doing what they could. It was just a question of if it would be enough-

Jill heard a shout in the parking lot, making her head snap up to the source of it. A car in front of her came to an abrupt stop, a person crumpled In front of the bumper with the driver getting out. It was a bystander that had shouted, rushing to the person's side. Jill felt it in her gut. She knew exactly what this was. "Get away!" Jill shouted, throwing open her door and yanking out her gun. "Get away from them-"

The fallen person lunged upward and Jill reacted on instinct. Just before the zombie could take a bite out of the good Samaritan, her pistol was up and she pulled the trigger, threading the needle and popping the zombie in the head. Their head snapped to the side, and the shouts became panicked screaming. "I'm RCPD!" Jill announced, thankful that she remembered her badge and kept it on her belt. The good Samaritan and the guy that hit the zombie with their car looked at her with fear and shock. "Did it bite you?"

"Y-you killed that woman!" The Good Samaritan protested, looking down at the corpse and it was only then that he noticed something. She had been dead beforehand. A chunk ripped out of her throat with blood covering the front of her blouse. Jill knew that meant another zombie was out and about, but she didn't see it.

Jill licked her lips, her blood turning to ice in her veins. That was the second one she saw today. How many more would there be? How long until two became two hundred? Then two thousand? Then two hundred thousand? There were five hundred thousand people in Raccoon City. How many could they realistically save?

"I want your fucking badge number!" The driver demanded, going from shocked to angry. Jill didn't have time for this, she realized. It was already starting.

It was already too late.

Jill raised her gun into the air and poped a shot, startling the man and the bystanders, "All of you, go home and stay there! Bar the doors until a police or military unit comes to escort you to a safe zone!" Jill shouted, wondering how many would actually do what she said. They seemed confused. Uncertain. Worse, they didn't believe her. Jill closed her eyes and marched back to the truck, biting her lip as she threw it in reverse and left the scene behind her. She gripped the wheel with white knuckles, memories returning in full force.

Fear gripped her heart and gave it a savage squeeze. As soon as she was back on the streets, her eyes were darting around -- looking for any other shambling corpses that others dismissed as someone that was drunk or high. Everyone was a suspect in her mind, and there was no worse feeling in the world when she caught eye of another one. People were giving them a wide berth and worried looks, but a zombie stumbled forward. It looked drunk rather than dead, with no rot or visible injuries, but there was no mistaking that blank and vacant gaze. It was someone that was infected and the T-Virus was killing them, but they hadn't died to reanimate yet.

She made a snap decision. With pinpoint accuracy, Jill fired her pistol, catching it in the side of the head, much to the horror of the bystanders. The zombie dropped dead and Jill swerved into incoming traffic to skip a light to flee the scene of the crime.

It was getting worse. Three. That was three.

Jill's heart felt like it could belong to a hummingbird with how fast it was beating as she pulled up to Rude's apartment. That guy she laid out had parked his car back in the spot with a 'fuck you' sign tapped into the car. Jill grit her teeth, ruthlessly crushing a surge of anger and instead parked across the street. Pounding a hand at the door, to her immense relief, Rude was inside. "Sup-"

"There are more of them," Jill stated, entering his apartment. "I killed two on my way back."

"Ah," Rude began, blinking behind his thick rimmed glasses. "That's not good, is it?" He muttered, closing the door behind her. She turned to glare at him for pointing out the obvious. Rude wasn't exactly who she had pictured when she imagined the type of guy that'd try to out stubborn the end of the world. Honestly, she pictured Chris for that. Someone large, physically imposing, and movie star handsome.

Rude was… well… he looked like a nerd. Honestly, he looked like someone who got bullied in high school for playing Dungeons and Dragons. He was on the scrawny side, and tall enough that he came across as lanky rather than imposing. He was handsome enough -- olive toned skin, dark hair, dark green eyes with a strong jawline… but he looked like a guy on the street she'd pass and never give a second glance to.

And now he was giving her a dull look that made her want to punch him. It was a look that said, 'why are you panicking?' "We have to get on top of this. Get the police on board. Get the military on board. Evacuations need to start- we don't have enough time. There's no way we can get everything done-," Jill began while Rude walked over to his freezer to pull out… ice cream sandwiches? She caught the one that he tossed her. "What is this?"

"Ice cream sandwich. They're pretty good," Rude told her, sounding ambivalent about everything that she just said. "Jill -- I want you to listen very carefully to what I'm about to say." He began, and Jill swallowed a retort before he continued. "We were never going to have enough time."

That was a slap to the face, "What-"

"The plan was never going to work. It couldn't ever work. For it to work, everything would need to go perfectly a hundred percent of the time. Everyone would need to be exactly where they need to be and do exactly what they need to do. There would need to be absolute cohesion, no panic involved or infighting. Everyone would need to act in the interest of others instead of saving themselves. It wasn't ever feasible in the first place. I'm sorry if I gave you that impression," Rude continued, sounding as serious as he ever did. Even when he was being serious, he acted flippant. And now she saw the spine under all the layers of sarcasm.

A lump formed in Jill's throat. "Then what is all of this for?" She demanded, gesturing wildly at his apartment. All of the supplies, all of the effort, a to-do list with a thousand and one uncheckmarked boxes.

"The plan isn't going to work, but it won't be because we didn't do everything that we could to make it work," he told her, his tone blunt as could be. "We'll do our best. We'll do what we can to save as many as we can. That's all we can do."

The words sounded so much like the ones she just told Chris not an hour before. That they were in damage control, not prevention. However… with this… at best, they could save a fraction of Raccoon City. That would mean tens of thousands dead. How many could they really save? A thousand? Ten thousand? A few hundred? Out of a city that had over a hundred thousand people?

"So, take a breath and eat your ice cream," Rude said, pointedly taking a bite out of his, no evidence of panic on his face. Just resigned acceptance. "We're going to start building up the defenses and securing supplies…"

"Because this time tomorrow, this city is going to be on fire."

...

This story started out as a placeholder, so you'll be enjoying weekly updates for a couple of weeks. At least until the block of chapters that were on my patreon trickle down. On another note, A Golden Path is now live. It's a Asoiaf/Dune crossover, so if that interest you, then click the link and give it a read!

The next chapter is currently available on my Patreon and Subscribe Star, so if you want to read it a week early, all it takes is a single dollar in the tip jar. Or, for five dollars, you can read the chapter after that two weeks before its public release! I hope you enjoyed!

 

[Ideas-Guy]

"I cannot believe this is working," Jill marveled as I fought to keep a smirk off of my face, adjusting my hard hat and my bright orange reflective vest as I finished tying off the caution tape to some of those orange and white barrel things. I was blocking off an entrance to the metro station, and it was working like a charm. People saw the caution tape and decided to move on to the next station.

"What's more likely -- that construction is actually being done or that two random people just decided to block off the metro?" I asked Jill, cocking an eyebrow. She looked like she wanted to argue the point, but she couldn't. "No one questions a man in a reflective vest carrying a ladder. No one will bat an eye," I promised. And, so far, I had been proven right. We had shut down a lane of traffic at the nearest stops to the central station. We couldn't completely block off all traffic though, simply because that would cause enough of an inconvenience that someone would complain enough to warrant a response.

But it worked just fine in any case.

Enough that we went to work. The yellow tape was just the start. While I broke out my tools and materials, Jill went about setting up the actual defenses. We stole some of the chain link fence sections and some orange and white barricades to set up a perimeter around the exit. The barricades went behind the fencing to help make sure that they didn't topple over in case the numbers got out of hand. We got some odd looks from the people passing by, but none commented. Such was the power of a reflective vest.

That left me free to beef up the defenses inside of the actual station stop. None were particularly big because we were so close to the central station, but they were still sizable -- the weird spinning bar things numbered a dozen across. Alone, those wouldn't stop any zombies, so I went about making some additions to them. As an Artificer, I was drowning in tool proficiencies and one of them was smithing tools.

And it was rather generous with what it considered a smithing tool. I thought I'd have to break out the forge and hammer to build the barricade, but all I needed was a blowtorch and a mask. I'm guessing it was because welding was a more modern aspect of smithing. Not really sure and I didn't worry too much about it on account of how convenient it was. My welding wasn't exactly godly, but it was good enough for a rush job. I added bars above the rotating things, making a makeshift wall.

Creating a singular 'doorway' I removed one of the spinny things and put up a chain link door. A stopgap for the moment. We could look for upgrades when the clock wasn't actively working against us.

And, from there, it was repeating the process for all the other stops. There were only six of them nearby, but it wasn't exactly fast work. Hours ticked by as I secured the exits and wrapped them up with yellow caution tape. They earned a bunch of confused glances, but no one actually said anything about it. Both Jill and I finished our work near midnight, and secured the materials to continue building them.

It was then that a car pulled up on the side of the road and a brick shit house of a man stepped out of it. He was tall, though about an inch shorter than me, at 6'1. His dark hair was cut short with a five o'clock shadow clinging to a strong jawline. He was handsome. If I had to summarize him in a single word…then 'Jock' fit him best. He looked like the kind of guy that was the quarterback of the football team and fucked the prom queen in the back of an unnecessarily expensive car. Despite that, he walked up and greeted me with a friendly smile, "Chris Redfield."

"Rudeus Rain, but everyone calls me Rude," I shook his hand after taking off a thick glove. He had a firm grip without squeezing down like a macho asshole. "Thanks for coming. If I were you, then I probably would have kept flying out."

To that, Chris' smile grew. "If that were true, then none of us would be here. Except for Jill," he said, inclining his head to me. It was then that Jill walked up the steps and his eyebrows shot up, "Planning a career change, Jill?"

Jill seemed immensely relieved to see him, taking off the hard hat. "Just might after this. Glad you made it."

"Wasn't easy. There's a massive quarantine around the city that's diverting traffic -- they're not letting anyone into the city, for better or worse. But, it's nothing outright. Military personnel disguised as beat cops, roads closing because of sinkholes, and so on. Back roads are still open for those that know how to find them." Chris explained and I nodded.

"Is there no way to call them in?" Jill questioned, and to that, I answered.

"The government's already decided that it wants to secure its image over preserving life. I'm sure part of that is they have no idea what they're dealing with, but… well, Umbrella is a bioweapon arms dealer. If they aren't taking it seriously just from that, then I wouldn't trust them to find their own ass with both hands and a map." It wasn't what anyone wanted to hear, but it was the unfiltered truth. The Cold War ended half a decade ago, but most of the shot callers during that era were still in the seats of Congress.

Controlling perception and the Red Scare decision making was still a guiding principle.

"He's not wrong. As much as I would like an army of marines to scoop me up bridal style to rescue us from this mess, we shouldn't count on them," Chris agreed. "Looks like you've already started securing the perimeter and supplies. I talked to Kendo about munitions -- he's got his doubts, but he's willing to hear us out. Jill, you should reach out to Raymond. He's always been sweet on you, and he hates Irons more than we do."

"I'll start calling in bomb threats and kidnapping babies from the hospital," I informed, making Chris do a double take in my direction.

Jill rolled her eyes at my antics, "It's to prevent kids from going to school and staying with their families. As for the babies…" she looked at me and I shrugged.

"Babies are little noise and shit factories, but I don't hate them enough to let them get eaten by undead," I told them both bluntly, earning a wince from the both of them. "As soon as we get this taken care of, we need to start raiding for supplies. Before the looting gets out of control," I said, reaching into my bag of holding and pulling out a map that I had been using. It was a map of Raccoon City, and it was covered in markings denoting places we needed to loot -- complete with a color code of necessity. Medicine and weapons were red, food and general supplies in yellow, and general stuff to make living in a cramped series of tunnels suck a little less in green.

Chris blinked at the map, but his focus was really zeroing in on the bag of holding. "Er, how did-"

"Oh yeah -- I forgot to mention that. It's a bag of holding, it can carry up to five hundred pounds worth of stuff without changing weight. It's folded space. Don't worry about it," I said, and on second thought, I reached into the bag up to my elbow to find something I tossed in there.

Jill frowned at me, her eyebrows drawing together, "That's how you carried the axe?!" She blurted, dumbfounded.

"What kind of sci-fi bullshit is this?" Chris asked me, his jaw dropping as I found what I was looking for. A sticker.

No sci-fi bullshit. Magic. However, I knew that answer would just raise more questions. So, instead, I lied. "Nanomachines," I told him, trying to keep my amusement out of my voice. I could tell that he didn't even know what those were. "Tiny, microscopic robots that are invisible to the naked eye. I'm using them to create a folded space, and this. Jill, your arm please," I said, and she gave me the weirdest look.

But, hesitantly, she offered her arm. I took off the film, wet a cloth with a water bottle in the bag of holding, and pressed the stick-on tattoo onto the back of her wrist. "This is another function. Whenever you are about to take a big hit, throw your arm out to block it, and the nanomachines will generate a force field to protect you," All blatant bullshit, but it was bullshit that was a lot easier to explain magic, how I had it, why I had it, and why no one else did. Nanomachines were hard to wrap your head around, but in comparison to a disease that reanimated the dead?

It was a lie that was grounded in reality.

"That is… some serious sci-fi shit. How many of those do you have?" Chris questioned, looking curiously at the smiley face that was on Jill's shoulder.

"I only have enough for the bag and the tattoo. For now," I told him. Then I made a snap decision and tossed him the bag. "Use that to carry the guns in."

"Where did you even get this stuff? Why didn't you ever mention it before?" Jill questioned, poking at the Spellwrought tattoo in curiosity and alarm. It should still work, since it was only the ink that needed to be infused with magic. Though, it did open itself up to being damaged. It was worth the trade off, I think, because I highly doubt that I was going to be able to convince either Jill or Chris to let me come near them with a needle.

"You never asked, and I said don't worry about it. We'll meet up here in an hour, alright?" I said, giving them a thumbs up and started walking away.

"Rude! Answer the question Rude!"

…

Despite what I said, I did have some errands to run before I could start calling in bomb threats at schools and kidnapping babies. Mostly because school wasn't open yet, and kidnapping babies was one of those things you wanted to do last minute because cops took it rather seriously. However, those errands weren't something that I could do with Jill around. Or Chris. Mostly on account that I wouldn't be able to explain it in a way that they would understand.

Spell Components.

Some would be a whole lot easier to procure than others. Take Witch Bolt for an example -- the spell component that it required was a burnt twig from a tree that had been struck by lightning. That wasn't exactly something that I could get my hands on. It wasn't something I could easily buy online either because Amazon wasn't a thing yet. The only thing I found was weird witch websites that I couldn't guarantee hadn't just burnt some twigs.

Normally, a DM would wave off the components simply because it was too much of a pain in the ass to actually keep up with. If they did, they treated it like gold requirements that you had to spend a bit to acquire.

However, the more problematic materials in DnD, such as diamonds, could be pretty easily acquired. That much I proved when I took a baseball bat to the glass pane of a jewelry shop, ignoring the alarm that started blaring, and helped myself to the jewelry hidden behind the counters. Diamonds, gold dust, jewel dust, and types -- all of them had a set amount. A diamond that cost 100 gp, or gold dust that cost 25 gp. So on and so on. A huge pain in the ass playing, but when you could freely commit crimes without worry about game balance?

Easy peasy.

"Revify spam, here I come," I muttered, idly wishing that I kept the bag of holding as I shoved jewelry into a bag. Ironically enough, spells like Fireball would end up being more costly for me. I'm sure I could get my hands on some bat guano, but I had absolutely no idea where. Licorice root would also be bit of a pain, but I'm sure I could find a Whole Foods that would carry that special brand of healthy bullshit.

Slinging a bag over my shoulder, I turned on a heel and- "Seriously?" I demanded, seeing a cop appear in the busted out window, leveling a gun at me. "Of all the shit that's going on tonight, you have the time to bother with a simple robbery?"

"Get on the ground, now! Drop the bag and put your hands above your head!" The cop barked at me over the sound of the wailing alarm. His expression was pale and he had some dark bags underneath his eyes. He looked like a guy that was already exhausted before being straddled with an allnighter. "Hands! Put your hands in the air!" He added, and I was so extremely annoyed right now. Of all the odds. Would Jill and Chris be able to bail me out if I wound up in a cell?

"Fuck. Fine! Fine, take me in, you absolute dick. I'm only trying to save the world," I muttered underneath my breath, tossing the bag on the ground before putting my hands up. Really didn't feel like testing how my AC worked with bullets. The cop approached slowly, his eyes darting around everywhere but behind him. It was then that I saw that a cop wasn't the only one drawn by the blaring alarm. A corpse was shambling across the street, between the few bystanders that were on the road. Her teeth were bloody and I saw a huge chunk was taken out of her upper thigh with her skirt missing.

I could take advantage of that. "Behind you! Dude! Cop-Guy, behind you! There's someone behind you!" I started, my voice getting louder and more frantic as the cop approached, not looking behind him. The zombie stumbled forward, seemingly fixated on the cop, who refused to not have the gun pointed directly at my face.

"I'm not that stupid-" he started and I made a snap decision. I slapped the gun away, hearing it go off in my ear and something hit my shoulder, but I ignored it for now. Lunging to my feet, I shoulder-checked the cop, knocking him out of the way for the zombie that lunged for him. The zombie tripped over my bag, falling on its face. The cop scrambled to his feet, looking at me with wide eyes for a moment before he pointed it at the woman. "M-Ma'am? Are you alright-" He started, going to pick her up but keeping the gun pointed in my general direction.

"Don't-" I started, going for the gun again, but it was too late this time. The zombie lashed out, biting the offered hand and the cop screamed in agony. Fuck. God damn it. Fucking fuck. Lunging forward, with a blood-soaked hand I ripped the gun out of his. Taking aim, I shot the woman in the back of the head, letting him rip his hand free and I saw he was missing a finger. The cop looked up at me with a bloodless face, holding up a hand as if to wave me off…

"I'm so sorry," I told him and pulled the trigger. A bullet ripped through his forehead, splattering blood across a display case. I tried. I did my best. I did what I could, but fuck, that stung. I-

The familiar sensation struck me. Time seemed to wrap, a single millisecond stretching on and on while I found myself looking at my character sheet. Looks like killing the cop was enough to push me over the edge and level up.

I made my choices quickly. Another level in Artificer was taken, bringing me up to level three in the class and unlocking a choice of my subclass. I had waffled between the big three a fair bit -- the Armor artificer was appealing simply because of the defensive benefits. There was going to be truly staggering amounts of danger, and encasing myself in an iron-man suit sounded extremely reassuring. However, I had so many other options to protect myself in addition to the fact that I really would need to hit a lot harder if I wanted to throw down with creatures like Nemesis or Mr. X.

So, it was really a choice between Artillerist and Battle Smith.

More dakka was the deciding factor, leading me to choose Artillerist. The class features tilted the scales in its favor -- Eldritch Cannon was going to be extremely useful. It was basically a battle bot that could spit fire, heals, and projectiles. Even better, it was something independent of me. In game terms, it used a bonus action for me to fire it and control it, but in reality, it was a battle bot that I could control with my mind while I was also attacking something.

With that choice made, I went through my spell list and saw some options open up. With the components needed for the spells to work, I quickly made my selection.

Rudeus Rain
Variant Human
Artificer 3
Level 3 (Xp: 900/2700)

Strength: 9 (-1)
Dexterity: 15 (+2)
Constitution: 16 (+3)
Intelligence: 17 (+3)
Wisdom: 12 (+1)
Charisma: 8 (-1)

Feats:
Fey Touched: Your exposure to the Feywild's magic has changed you, granting you the following benefits:

• Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
• You learn the misty step spell and one 1st-level spell of your choice. The 1st-level spell must be from the divination or enchantment school of magic. You can cast each of these spells without expending a spell slot. Once you cast either of these spells in this way, you can't cast that spell in this way again until you finish a long rest. You can also cast these spells using spell slots you have of the appropriate level. The spells' spellcasting ability is the ability increased by this feat.

Spells:

Cantrips
Mending (V/S/M): This spell repairs a single break or tear in an object you touch, such as a broken chain link, two halves of a broken key, a torn cloak, or a leaking wineskin. As long as the break or tear is no larger than 1 foot in any dimension, you mend it, leaving no trace of the former damage.

Spare the Dying (V, S): You touch a living creature that has 0 hit points. The creature becomes stable. This spell has no effect on undead or constructs.

Fire Bolt (V/S): You hurl a mote of fire at a creature or object within range. Make a ranged spell attack against the target. On a hit, the target takes 1d10 fire damage. A flammable object hit by this spell ignites if it isn't being worn or carried.

1st Level
Catapult: Choose one object weighing 1 to 5 pounds within range that isn't being worn or carried. The object flies in a straight line up to 90 feet in a direction you choose before falling to the ground, stopping early if it impacts against a solid surface. If the object would strike a creature, that creature must make a Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, the object strikes the target and stops moving. When the object strikes something, the object and what it strikes each take 3d8 bludgeoning damage.

Cure Wounds (V/S): A creature you touch regains a number of hit points equal to 1d8 + your spellcasting ability modifier. This spell has no effect on undead or constructs.

Detect Poison and Disease (V/S) (Fey Touched: Once per Day): For the duration, you can sense the presence and location of poisons, poisonous creatures, and diseases within 30 feet of you. You also identify the kind of poison, poisonous creature, or disease in each case.

The spell can penetrate most barriers, but it is blocked by 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of wood or dirt.

Magic Missile (V/S): You create three glowing darts of magical force. Each dart hits a creature of your choice that you can see within range. A dart deals 1d4 + 1 force damage to its target. The darts all strike simultaneously, and you can direct them to hit one creature or several.

Longstrider (V/S/M): You touch a creature. The target's speed increases by 10 feet until the spell ends.

Feather Fall (V/M): Choose up to five falling creatures within range. A falling creature's rate of descent slows to 60 feet per round until the spell ends. If the creature lands before the spell ends, it takes no falling damage and can land on its feet, and the spell ends for that creature.

Grease (V/S/M): Slick grease covers the ground in a 10-foot square centered on a point within range and turns it into difficult terrain for the duration.

When the grease appears, each creature standing in its area must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or fall prone. A creature that enters the area or ends its turn there must also succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or fall prone.

Thunderwave (V/S): A wave of thunderous force sweeps out from you. Each creature in a 15-foot cube originating from you must make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, a creature takes 2d8 thunder damage and is pushed 10 feet away from you. On a successful save, the creature takes half as much damage and isn't pushed.

In addition, unsecured objects that are completely within the area of effect are automatically pushed 10 feet away from you by the spell's effect, and the spell emits a thunderous boom audible out to 300 feet.

Tasha's Caustic Brew (V/S/M): A stream of acid emanates from you in a line 30 feet long and 5 feet wide in a direction you choose. Each creature in the line must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or be covered in acid for the spell's duration or until a creature uses its action to scrape or wash the acid off itself or another creature. A creature covered in the acid takes 2d4 acid damage at start of each of its turns.

2nd Level

Misty Step (V) (Fey Touched: Once per Day): Briefly surrounded by silvery mist, you teleport up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space that you can see.

Utility spells were a lot more useful in this situation. Being able to run as fast as an Olympic athlete? Being able to make a quick escape out of a building and not going splat? Being able to disguise my appearance in a pinch to pass myself off as someone else? All extremely useful spells. In comparison, the damage spells were almost lacking -- Caustic Brew would be good for hitting a group of undead. Thunderwave was a spell that Artificers gained as they leveled, so I couldn't see it being used much, but it did seem like a good way to gain the undead's attention.

Then, I was back. Time resumed its normal pace, and- "Oh, shit, I got shot," I breathed, a hand going to my shoulder to find that my sleeve was completely soaked with blood. Holy shit. Oh fuck. God fucking damn, that fucking hurt like a fucking motherfucker. I tried to take in a breath, but, shockingly, getting shot really fucking hurt! Why did it burn so much?! "Ah, fucking fuuuuuuckkk…! C-Cure Wounds!" I cast on myself, expending a spell slot and instantly, I felt the pain vanish immediately.

Tenderly, I poked around at the wound to find that the flesh had smoothed over. I was healed. Picking that spell was the single greatest decision that I have ever made, I decided.

I looked at the dead cop, guilt churning away in my gut. "Sorry. I tried," I told him, reaching down and grabbing my hard-won loot before heading out. The people beat feet when they heard the gunshots, leaving me to leave the jewelry store. When I did, I saw that there was more undead on the road, two more of them were shambling toward me with their arms raised. No blood on them, or signs of infection.

I raised my newfound pistol, "I might have been wrong about when everything goes to shit." That was a worrying thought. I pulled the trigger twice and the two zombies fell to the ground. Firearm proficiency made me a pretty decent shot. Hardly a deadeye that could shoot the wings off of a fly from a mile out, but I could reliably hit a target. Swallowing thickly, I tossed the loot into the car that I stole specifically for this excursion. Looking down the street, I saw no one else.

Sliding into the car, I turned the key and I was hit with more bad news coming from the radio station I had on. "-thing going on in the stadium! A riot seems to have broken out! I-I suppose the Raccoon Rascals sure hate that they're down three points!" An announcer continued, catching my attention, an edge of fear in his voice. "Oh my god, is that guy- he's eating that woman!" He exclaimed and my jaw dropped.

"There's a baseball game happening tonight?" I breathed, having completely missed that. I'm such a nerd I completely forgot that baseball even existed. Oh, that wasn't good. That wasn't good at all. That was a lot of people in an enclosed space making a shit ton of noise with absolutely no idea what was going on. Swallowing a lump in my throat, I stomped on the gas as the radio host cut himself off, and I completely ignored every rule of the law to drive to the stadium. With my other hand, I took out a phone and dialed one.

Jill didn't take any time at all to pick up.

"We fucked up."

…

Chris Redfield felt like he was in his element, despite the horrors that were incoming. He found his element back in the airforce as a high risk pilot -- whenever an emergency evac was needed, he was the one that flew out to rescue his guys from whatever mess they managed to land themselves in. It's what he would have spent his career doing if he had any say in it, but a few too many headbutts with his commanding officer saw him discharged.

It was then that he was scouted into the Special Tactics And Rescue Service - S.T.A.R.S. An elite division of the police force that was tasked with handling dangerous situations, with a lot of elbow room for private investigations. It was perfect for him, and he took to it like a fish to water. Right up until the mansion where everything first went to hell.

Yet, despite the incoming flood of it coming his way now, Chris didn't find himself nervous. He wasn't scared. He was focused and ready, the pressure making him into the best possible version of himself. "It's good to see you, Kendo," Chris greeted an old friend.

Kendo was the best gunsmith in the city. A man in his late thirties, with a close beard and a bit of a gut. However, everyone in the police force, especially S.T.A.R.S, knew that you came to Kendo when you needed guns. If he didn't have something in stock, then he knew how to get it or how to make it. Kendo offered a tired smile, shaking his hand. "Good to see you, Chris. Wish it was under better circumstances, though."

"Believe me, I wish this was a social visit," Chris agreed, entering the shop and was greeted with the scent of steel and gun oil.

Kendo's brow furrowed as he looked at Chris, doubt shining in his eyes, "I trust you, Chris, but you're asking for a lot. A whole lot. This could ruin me. Best I could hope for is that they revoke my license but, realistically, I'm going to be looking at jail time." Kendo stated outright, and despite his clear reservations and the risk he was taking, Chris noticed that the store was broken down. Weapons were in crates, all of the ammo in the store was stacked up, and the attachments were sorted.

Chris was a little humbled by the trust that Kendo was showing, because he was right. If Chris was lying, then Kendo would be facing up to life in the slammer. Unfortunately for everyone, Chris was telling the truth. "These things wiped out Bravo team a few months back. Nearly killed Alpha team. And now they're in the city, and no one is prepared for it. I wish it wasn't the case, but we're going to need these." To that, Kendo's forehead creased with worry lines.

"So, that crazy guy was telling the truth then? Came in here, flung a bunch of papers in my face screaming about the end times -- he was right?" Kendo questioned, and… sounds like Rude really had a method of doing things. Chris offered a small nod and Kendo dragged a hand down his face, "Shit. I should have bought more ammo like he said."

"Couldn't have known, and you're doing enough. Do you know where to go?" Chris asked, approaching the stacks of ammo. He grabbed a case and took out the small burlap sack that honestly looked like it was about to fall a part. But, true to what Rude said, when he pushed the ammo into the bag, it sunk in it like it wasn't even there. Something that didn't go unnoticed by Kendo, whose jaw dropped at the sight.

"I-... yeah, central station. What is that?" Kendo asked, and Chris shoved another box of ammo into the sack. Again, it just fell into it and vanished from sight, but when he reached in, he easily found the box.

That was the question. Rude became a lot more suspicious with this thing. It was like something right out of Star Trek or Star Wars. Nanomachines. That's not something that a civilian would be able to get his hands on. There was a lot more to Rude than met the eye, but for now, he was picking up a shovel when an ocean of shit was pouring their way. No- more than that. He was the first one to spot the ocean of shit, and the first to pick up a shovel.

Suspicious or not, Rude had earned himself the benefit of the doubt.

"It's something the crazy guy gave me. Should help us transport all of this," Chris started, loading up on ammo. The guns could go in the truck that Jill gave him. When she got one, Chris had no idea. However, it was then that his phone started ringing. Picking it up, he didn't get a chance to say anything before Jill's panicked voice reached his ear.

"People are turning in the stadium! It's the Rascals versus the Sharks," Jill told him and Chris felt like someone punched him in the gut. The baseball tournament. The Rascals hadn't reached the finals in the better part of twenty years, and it was against the Sharks, Raccoon City's rival. Worse, it was a homegame. The turnout was going to be absolutely massive. How could they have missed this?

"I'm on my way. Does Rude know?" Chris said, snapping to attention. This was an utter disaster. People would be trampling over themselves to escape the stadium, but there was only so many people that could squeeze through the doors. A lot of people would be turned in that stadium, and then those dead would spill out into the city like a flood.

"He's on his way already. I'm coordinating with the police now, but we need feet on the ground," Jill told him and Kendo started to look nervous. Jill ended the call and Chris turned to him.

"Get your daughter and yourself to central station. Hold up there," Chris told him, earning a serious nod from Kendo. With that, Chris stormed out of the gunshop, throwing himself into the driver's seat, and he only just barely noticed Kendo throwing some weapons in the bed of the truck before he sped off in the direction of the stadium. He swerved around cars, jumped up onto the sidewalk more than once, and it was nothing short of a relief when he found some flashing lights on his tail when he came to a screeching halt.

Rude was standing in front of a set of doors -- the entire wall was covered in them, and people were streaming out of them by the dozen. He stood like a rock in face of a raging river, his gun out and taking shots at those that came out. And it was then that Chris realized that not everyone that was coming out of the stadium was still human. Bodies dropped, some of them feasting on a person that hadn't managed to get away in time.

"RCPD! RCPD!" Chris shouted, getting out of the truck and flashing his badge. To his relief, he did recognize the cops that were trying to chase him down. Marvin Branagh, a good cop that was well on his way to becoming a detective. The only thing holding him back was a budget. "Marvin! We have to shoot the infected in the head. Catch!"

Marvin sputtered, catching an assault rifle that Chris threw his way. "Chris- what are you-" he began, only to snap his mouth with a click when he caught sight of a woman getting her throat ripped out by a zombie. A split second later, it was shot in the head by Rude.

It was only then that Chris noticed the… thing in front of Rude, when Chris went to stand next to him to hold the line. Directly in front of him was a… well, a little robot. It had six legs that that secured it to the ground, which all connected to a small base that had a railgun looking thing secured to it. Every six seconds or so, it would fire a shot that impacted a zombie, striking them with enough force that even if it didn't hit them in the head, they still dropped. "What is that?!"

"Don't worry about it," Rude dismissed the question. "Do you have any more ammo? I'm out," He said, and Chris tossed him the bag as he picked up where Rude left off. There were more dead than living that were coming out of the stadium now. And there were dozen upon dozens of them. For this single entrance.

Rude reached in, grabbing a box of ammo, and began loading up while Marvin approached from behind, holding the line with them. "You better not get me fired, Chris!" He protested even as he began opening fire.

"Getting fired is the least of your worries now, Marvin," Chris told him, being brutally honest. "Rude, how did we miss this?" Rude had been so on top of things. He seemed to have everything covered. Enough so that Chris didn't feel the need to press him on the plan.

"Do I look like I have ever played a sport in my life?!" Rude protested the question, still loading a mag before sliding it into the gun, loading a bullet in the chamber, and started firing at the seemingly never ending horde of zombies coming out of the stadium. They were keeping them at bay, but only here. Only at this entrance. And, in response to that question, Chris glanced at him.

Yeah. Fair enough. "We can't hold here!" Chris warned, seeing that the dead were slowly encroaching. If not from directly in front of them, then from the sides. It was only a matter of time before they were overrun. No other way to say it. And, in response, the spider-bot skittered forward toward the veritable sea of undead and belched a gust of fire that streamed over the corpses, igniting them. It didn't stop them from marching forward, but it was burning them up. It'd be tough to move when your muscles were charcoal.

Almost as if to agree with them, something landed directly behind him. Chris felt the vibrations rush through his feet, making him whip around to-

"What the fuck?" Chris breathed, looking up at a massive creature that stood closer to ten feet tall than not, his face stapled together without the lips and wrapped in black cloth. The Umbrella logo on it was impossible to mistake, however. With that alone, he knew it was nothing but trouble even before it took a threatening step forward from the small crater it made with its landing.

"Oh shi- worry about that, Chris! Definitely worry about that!" Rude yelped from behind him.

"STARS!" It growled, striding toward Chris.

Well… this wasn't good.

...

The next chapter is currently available on my Patreon and Subscribe Star, so if you want to read it a week early, all it takes is a single dollar in the tip jar. Or, for five dollars, you can read the chapter after that two weeks before its public release! I hope you enjoyed!

 

[Ideas-Guy]

Oh, he was big. Oh, he was scary. Oh, he was big and scary and this entire situation was not part of the plan! I thought Nemesis would be hunting Jill -- it's why I gave her the tattoo. Why was he here!? Right now, appearing as if he fell out of the sky almost directly on top of us with pinpoint accuracy. When we were already dealing with a huge snafu in the plan in the form of thousands of undead that would soon start pouring into the city, and we were just a small cork trying to hold back that flood. I'm not exactly sure what the worst case scenario would have looked like…

But, now that I think about it, it probably would have looked a lot like this.

"Oh shi- worry about that, Chris! Definitely worry about that!" I courageously yelled at the large man standing between me and the much larger monster.

"I'm worried!" Chris shot back, dropping to a knee and opening fire on the creature. The bullets from his assault rifle seemed to bounce off of its thick hide, and it hardly noticed as it strode through the gunfire. I made a snap decision, wheeling my Eldritch Cannon around and sending it up to Nemesis while I continued to fire at the undead. I had leveled up again, just before Chris arrived. The zombies were 50xp apiece, and there were a lot of them. I was tearing through the early levels like they were nothing.

The difference between level 3 and level 4 was 1,800xp. Which was thirty-six zombies, and I had killed a lot more than that standing here.

And I, foolishly, chose the Keen Mind feat. Got a little boost in intelligence, but more importantly, I could recall everything I had seen or heard in the past month. In game mechanics, that was used for using the DM to tell you things you had forgotten, but in real life? After a huge blunder like this? I thought it was a stroke of brilliance. In reality, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that I was the biggest dumbass on the face of the planet, because my big brain wasn't going to do much to Nemesis.

My Eldritch Cannon did, though. The railgun on it bucked back, the projectile slamming into Nemesis' chest with enough force to knock him back a solid five feet, his chest caving inward ever so slightly. However, the creature was hardly daunted. Chris was impressed, though, so there was that. "That thing packs a punch!"

"We have to move!" Marvin shouted out, the dead incoming. We could barely hold them off between the four of us, but with my Cannon and Chris dealing with Nemesis, they were quickly swarming us. The night air was filled with the sounds of moaning and groaning, so many of them that the gunshots almost seemed quiet in comparison. The zombies carried the scent of blood and shit, and with so many, I could practically taste both on my tongue.

Marvin was right. "The truck! Get in the truck!" I decided, abandoning my position as I grabbed the bag of holding while squeezing a few shots. And I really wish it was that easy, but Nemesis wasn't content to leave us be. Disgusting fleshy tendrils emerged from the monster's back, lashing out at Chris, who dove underneath it to roll to his feet. I squeezed a shot off at a zombie that lunged for him from behind, killing it, but Chris' attention was solely on the Nemesis. The creature tried to take another step, but another blast from my Cannon caught it in the leg, driving it to a knee.

I switched modes, and it took a terribly long six seconds. The barrel on my Cannon was dyed with a red light -- I went with a good old fashioned RGB color scheme. Naturally, red was for fire. Flames belched out of the Cannon, splashing over Nemesis as he lashed out. I threw myself to the side, but it wasn't enough to save me from getting swiped by the tentacle. It felt like I got hit by a baseball bat from a professional league player, knocking me down the steps and sending me tumbling.

My arm was broken, I realized, coming to a stop with a muffled 'oof'. If not because of the throbbing pain, then because I'm pretty sure a bone was sticking out of my arm. Leveling up didn't restore my spell slots. After healing the kid, then healing myself after getting shot… I only had the one left. I wouldn't get more until I had a long rest, but I didn't see that happening any time soon.

"Rude!" Chris shouted, and I suddenly found myself picked up by him, him throwing one of my arms over his shoulders as he half dragged me to the car while he unloaded bullets into Nemesis. I was blinded by pain. I thought the adrenaline would help, but every step was nothing short of pure agony. Did he break some of my ribs too?

"We have to kill it!" I shouted at him, knowing that it was true. I was completely unprepared for it. I thought I would have at least enough time to get my Arcane Firearm -- the thing I was building my whole class around. "It's as weak as it's ever going to be, we need to kill it here. And now," I decided, making a snap decision. I heard Nemesis roaring behind us and I looked over just in time to shove Chris out of the way. In response, I felt a punch in my back and looking down at it-

"That's so fucking gross!" I exclaimed, more horrified than anything. My Cannon took another shot at Nemesis, making it roar in frustration and hopefully, a shit ton of pain as the offending tendril that was squirming in my gut was ripped out. I dropped to my knees, rolling down the rest of the stairs and coming to a stop at the bottom. Shit. Did I just get infected? That wasn't good. That wasn't good at all.

Wait, when Jill got infected, she started spasming and foaming from the mouth. I was just bleeding out with my insides trying to become outsides. Was I fine? Well, I wasn't fine but was I not infected?

Regardless, there wasn't any choice now. "Cure Wounds," I decided, using the last one on myself. Best spell choice I could have made, I decided. Though, it was rather icky feeling my bone slide itself back into place, mending, while my organs shifted back where they were supposed to be. And, almost as in punishment for it, Nemesis finally lashed out at my Cannon that was drawing its attention and gave it a swift kick. It flew through the air, bouncing off the truck and landing in a heap. Sparks flew off my creation, but with three legs remaining, it pushed itself up.

I really needed to name it. It had guts.

Pushing myself to my feet, I saw Chris and Marvin firing at Nemesis, who was slowly being surrounded by undead. They ignored the creature, it registering as dead to them with their stunted senses, even as it blazed with fire. It had taken a few hard knocks despite my panic. It was durable, but not invincible. We could kill it if we overwhelmed it. Better now when it was comparatively weak than when it was a massive sludge monster and we needed a rail gun.

I shot at Nemesis again, this time catching it in the head, but it still was standing. The flesh gave away, revealing hints of skull, but other than that, it was fine. And with a lone black eye it only had eyes for Chris despite everything that we were throwing its way. It lumbered forward, splattering the brains of a zombie with the back of its fist, and in a low grumbling voice that was more of a growl, it uttered, "Stars!"

"Get to the car!" I shouted at the two of them, the zombies closing in on them even as Nemesis did. Grabbing the bag of holding, I hurled it at Nemesis, cutting my connection to the bag just as it hit his chest. True to form, the leather became normal leather, bursting at the seams as heaps of ammo exploded out of it with enough force that Nemesis stumbled a step back. The fire that clung to his body, ignited the bullets as Marvin and Chris threw themselves down the stairs.

The bullets exploded, acting like an explosive with how many of them there were. They tore into Nemesis but all of us were rushing into the car. I slid into the driver's seat, looking at him. He still stood, the flames flickering around him in a cloud of smoke from entire boxes of bullets. The undead were swarming forward, stumbling or falling down the steps. There were hundreds of them. Thousands, even. And they stumbled past Nemesis, who seemed to glower at us through the smoke and the fire.

"I thought you were dead!" Chris exclaimed as I slammed a foot on the gas the moment Marvin was in the back, and we started speeding away just as the first undead hands slammed against the truck. My Cannon sat between us, occasionally sparking with a grinding sound. Chris glanced at it, worried that it would blow up. And there was, admittedly, a non-zero chance that it might. "How are you-"

"Nanomachines," I threw out an answer, not really wanting to get into it now. "The answer will always be nanomachines."

"What was that thing? What were those things?!" Marvin demanded, sounding panicked.

"Big. Angry. Pissed off at Chris," I threw out adjectives as my mind raced a thousand miles a second. As we raced down the street, I saw the panicked and terrified people fleeing, most of which looked like they escaped from the stadium. My stomach clenched when I saw blood. They were bitten. Should I… no… no, it was way, way, way too late to hope for a contained outbreak. I need to refocus. The outbreak had happened -- I could only guess how many people had been bit at the stadium but managed to escape. Not great.

Nemesis was here. Also not great.

The plan had to be adapted, but the bones of it were still good. "Get Jill on the phone, we need to get the central station up and running."

"And us?" Chris asked, looking in the rearview mirror for Nemesis.

"We need to go to the hospital. Kill the zombies that are there, save who we can, and loot a shit ton of medical supplies." I said, forcing myself to calm down as I laid on my horn when I encountered traffic, and the sidewalks were full of people fleeing. The doctors would be able to get a grip on the infection -- easily singling out those that were bitten or infected. More than that, though, was the vaccine. And, possibly, Alice?

It was better to get it now than later, I decided. Just in case I was infected. My poor sweater. And my poor insides.

Marvin seemed to have a revelation in the back seat. "You're that crazy guy everyone has been talking about?!" He blurted out, looking at me while I looked for an opportunity to swerve around the traffic while Chris got on the phone.

"I wish I was just crazy. Unfortunately, I'm something far worse. I'm right," I told him, seeing a break in it and I drove up on the sidewalk to go around the long line of traffic. Ah. There had been a car crash at the intersection, and a bad one from the looks of it. Marvin didn't have a response to that, and I took the opportunity to reach into my pocket and take out one of the stickers I had on hand. With the destruction of my bag of holding, I had opened up an infusion slot and it was going to the Spellwrought tattoo.

Wetting the tattoo with the blood that was still soaked into my sweater, I infused it to my skin. As I did, Chris looked over at me. "Jill's at the station with a handful of cops, trying to get everything in order but just about everyone is being called out to deal with the undead-" Chris started, only to be cut off abruptly as something landed directly in front of us. I slammed on my brakes, the truck screeching to a halt but we were going too fast and still slammed into Nemesis.

It was still on fire and took the hit like a champ, his feet digging into the ground as he caught the front bumper. "Oh, shit!" I helped, my eyes going wide and a second later, the tenderil erupted from Nemesis' back, lunging forward at Marvin and me. No sooner than they had busted through the front windshield, I threw up the Shield and the tendrils bounced off of it. Directly where my heart would be. My Eldritch Cannon leapt up onto the dashboard, bracing for a split second before firing a blast that knocked Nemesis back, and I heard the painful cracking of ribs.

Nemesis was knocked back, but the Shield blinked out of existence a second later while the stick-on tattoo burned up.

"Get us out of here!" Marvin exclaimed while I slammed the car into reverse a couple dozen feet before throwing up the emergency break.

"Hit him!" Chris shouted, a bump on his forehead from the impact. He kept one hand on the dash and took his time to buckle his seatbelt. Stomping on the gas, I burned the tires out while my Cannon made another shot, striking Nemesis again. It was knocked back a few feet, but it looked like it was learning to lean into the blows. Its skin was charred, its chest had holes and chunks ripped out, and it had a bad limp, but all the same, it was marching forward. And, to my horror, its gait was getting stronger.

As the truck lurched forward, my Cannon fired another shot, then another, and just before we connected, the barrel shifted to green. I felt myself growing stronger as temp hp was given to all three of us in anticipation for the crash. The very last shot knocked Nemesis off balance, opening a perfect opportunity to catch it in the stomach and drive forward. I put the pedal to the metal, the engine roaring back at Nemesis as it lunged for us inside of the truck. "Ew, ew, ew, ew-!" I shouted as it tried to grab hold of me, only to be abruptly cut off when we slammed into something.

The next thing I knew, it felt like I got kicked by a horse when the airbag triggered. The breath was knocked from my lungs, but overall, I felt okay. The temp hp ate the damage, and my Cannon, miraculously, managed to survive the crash too. It gave a grinding warble before popping some sparks, looking like it was on its very last set of legs. Literally, since all but two legs were completely busted.

More importantly, Nemesis looked out of it. It was slumped over the hood of the car, its hands half in the truck. I swallowed thickly before I opened the door, hearing the moaning and groaning of Chris and Marvin. "This sucks," I decided, half falling out of the car with my Eldritch Cannon tucked under my arm. I was completely out of spell slots. I needed to get my hands on more stick-on tattoos. My plan was in shambles. And as I looked around to see where we crashed, I saw that we had slammed Nemesis into a brick wall.

"Is it dead yet?" Marvin asked, leveling a gun at it while I switched my Cannon to gun mode.

Almost as if to respond, Nemesis let out a low growl before lifting its head up-

My Cannon shot it. Its face smashed inward before slumping forward. Didn't stop me from shooting it again. And again. And another time. Or five more times after that. Or setting it on fire. It was that last bit that had Chris pulling at my shoulder, "We got to go."

"It's not dead yet," I told him. I had no idea what kind of challenge rating this thing would have, but it had approximately three motherfuckin' shit loads of HP. I knew it wasn't dead simply because if it was, then I would have leveled up twice over. The thing was stupidly tough.

"I know, but the car is going to blow!" Chris warned me, dragging me away from pummeling the monster into non-existence. I really needed to rethink my build. When could I get Disintegrate? Or how about Power Word: Kill? God damn it, I should have been a Wizard. Chris pulled me back, and true to his word, the truck exploded when the gas caught on fire, enveloping Nemesis as it burned. And I would have gone right back to pummeling it, but Chris started shooting at something that wasn't the monster in front of us.

I looked over to see Chris had dropped a zombie. And worse, more were stumbling up the streets. The ones that we hadn't been able to stop in the stadium, I think.

I licked my lips, looking back at Nemesis to see it was being cooked away and pinned by the truck. Then at the undead stumbled our way and I felt a hole open in my stomach. We wouldn't be able to kill it here and now. Meaning that it would be coming back for us stronger and more dangerous and equipped to deal with what we could throw at it. That… that really wasn't good, I decided, having my Cannon latch onto my shoulder with the two legs it had left.

"The hospital," I decided mournfully, knowing that we missed this chance. "We need to go to the hospital."

"Then to the hospital we go," Chris decided, but Marvin cast him a look as we kept ahead of the undead that were slowly filling the streets.

"It kept saying Stars. And it was after you, Chris. Should we really be going to a hospital if all of that didn't kill it?" He asked, and that was a genuinely good question. It was a cruel one based on how Chris grimaced, running ahead of the three of us. He was by far in the best shape. I was already starting to feel a pinch in my side, and it wasn't the side that got tentacled.

"If it follows, then I'll lead it away. Your priority is the civilians, got that?"

"Got it," I told him… but, I was an idiot. I knew the words were a lie as soon as I said them.

…

Unsurprisingly, the general hospital was kind of completely screwed. Not in a 'the dead are pouring out of the hospital' kind of screwed, but more in a 'completely overwhelmed with infected and injured that would soon be turning into the zombies that would be pouring out of the hospital' kind. We entered and the waiting lobby was completely filled with people that were sporting bite wounds and scratches.

It was a tough pill to swallow realizing that I was surrounded by dead people waiting, but I ignored them. Instead, I raised a gun in the air and popped a few shots towards the entrance to make sure I didn't shoot someone above us, making everyone panic. "RCPD! Everyone that was bitten or scratched by some crazy person trying to take a bite out of you, please go to that wall. Everyone with lamer and more mundane illness, please go to that wall."

Dying or not, they were smart enough to do what the man with a gun said. Even if my approach did get some stink eye from Marvin. The infected gathered on one side of the lobby while Chris quickly usurped control over the situation. "We're making arrangements for treatment for all of you, but please remain seated."

While he was doing that, I was moving on. I didn't even need my map. Keen Mind allowed me to recall the layout to the hospital perfectly, and as I entered it properly, I saw the medical staff was absolutely swamped with patients and the ER was practically overrun already. A veritable army of nurses ran between patients with bandages and stitches, injured people screaming. They hadn't even heard the gunshots.

They were utterly screwed, but before we made a scene, we needed to get the kids and the shit factories out. And, more importantly, kill who they had in an isolated ward while they were harmless. I found my way to the babies, who were still slumbering through everything. Making one of those hammock swaddling things, I started loading them up after squeezing a bit of cotton in their ears.

"Ear muffs?" Marvin asked me, as I began to make a vest of babies.

"Tenitus is a lifelong disease that doesn't have a cure," I reminded him, protecting the shit factories ears. "We should all be wearing ear protection right now." I ended up taking three babies and Marvin took another two. And… "You know, for someone that got tossed into the deep end with all of this, you're not doing bad."

"I'm in shock right now," Marvin admitted, pinning me with a sharp look as I adjusted to my new baby weight. God, what a couple of absolutely useless potatoes. "I'm going to have a lot questions for you when we have a minute to ask them," he warned me. It sounded like I needed to delegate that to Chris or Jill. Or generally anyone that wasn't me.

"Well, so long as you wait a little longer," I remarked, leaving the baby incubation room. Or the viewing room. I had no idea what to call it. Whatever it was, the security was pretty lax because we were literally just walking away with a bunch of noise makers. Was it the cop uniform? I needed to steal one of those.

As we left the baby room, I headed to the kid ward and a familiar voice cackled over the intercom. "This is Chris Redfield, RCPD. To any available nurses and doctors, please know that a quarantine is in immediate effect. After the initial wounds sustained from any bite or scratch marks, the patient is to be immediately quarantined." That was one way to do it, I decided, entering the kid's ward.

A kid was laying back in a bed, looking skinny and sickly. He was missing his hair, and the sunken in eyes… chemo, I quickly deduced. "Hey, kid, get out of bed or you're going to die," I told him. He seemed in his mid teens, fifteen or so, but he seemed a little older on account of that whole 'dying' thing. He blinked at me while Marvin shot me a look as he started gathering up the other kids. He even got a nurse helping him.

"I think I'm going to die anyway, so might as well die comfortably," he shot back at me. What was with kids these days? Were they physically incapable of being snarky shits?

"Getting ripped to pieces isn't what I would call comfortable. Come on, up, up, up," I said, approaching him. A quick look at his chart told me that his name was David.

"Get lost, soccer mom," he quickly flipped me off and dug his heels in. "I'm dying no matter what. If that cannibal disease doesn't get me then the leukemia will. So, how about you get fucked?"

Seriously, what was wrong with kids these days? "Okay, there's been a fundamental misunderstanding here -- I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing this for me. You've been rescued. Bask in it. Savor it. However… if you have the fucking audacity to die after I rescued you," I jabbed a finger in his face and narrowed my eyes, "I will beat the shit out of you. Got it?"

David's jaw dropped. He was probably used to people pitying him or something. Oh no, poor David and his mortality. He's dying too soon. He never had a childhood. Sucks to suck, loser.

As if to confirm my suspicions, he openly gaped at me. "Dude. I have leukemia."

"You're about to have a broken nose," I rebuked, and the shock wore off and he seemed more affronted than anything. He lifted his chin defiantly, fire burning in his eyes.

"You? Kick my ass? Not in this life, soccer mom," he spat at me. The door opened to the ward, and I saw Chris entering. Perfect timing.

"Fine. Then I'll get him to kick your ass. Look at him. That's a man that can punch out a boulder and I'm sure he even knows what a touchdown is," I said, gesturing to Chris, and he looked like he desperately wanted to know what he just walked into. He gave me a pointed look, and David just rolled his eyes. Then he noticed something that was sitting on my shoulder.

"Is… that a robot?" David blurted, looking at my cannon. "That's so cool! What's it called?" He asked me, the sullenness all but forgotten.

I gave it a moment of thought. "Dakka," I decided, before glancing at Chris. "Get this punk out of bed. We have one more errand to run here. There's a doctor here with a sci-fi door, and I just know he has connections to Umbrella," I told him, catching his full attention.

"Right. I've scrounged up some nurses and doctors to take with us," Chris informed, and that was a relief. "Spun some yarn about setting up an emergency hospital at the central station. All non-infected will be directed there. Figured it would be a stop gap until we can get some official forces here to have a proper evacuation." Having Chris around certainly threw a wrench in my plans, but I couldn't say it wasn't reassuring that he was here. It was good to have someone on the level taking command of the situation.

I nodded, figuring that was the best that we could do. Marvin and the nurse he snagged went about helping David, which left me and Chris to go to the sifi door. All the while, Chris told me the plan. "There's a substation nearby, so we hop on it. Ride to central station. Fortify there and link up with Jill. Then we can get the ball rolling."

"Makes sense to me," I decided, seeing the sifi door. Reaching into my pocket, I held up a paperclip to speaker, the imbued property I put into the paperclip came into effect. 'Get away from me, you lunatic!' The words from Dr. Bard said to me echoed out of the paperclip.

"Welcome, Dr. Bard," the door greeted me before the door unlocked itself. Chris looked impressed as I swung the doors open.

"Nanomachines?" He ventured and I swallowed a smirk.

"Nanomachines," I agreed, stepping into the private office/ laboratory of Dr. Bard. It was organized chaos, which was probably the best way to call it. Reaching out with a hand, I grabbed a plastic bag. Magic flowed into the plastic bag, turning it into a bag of holding. Infusions were great in a pinch like this -- I just had to slap a magical blueprint on something that fit the criteria. The loss of some ammo certainly sucked, but it was worth it if it got us away from Nemesis. Raccoon City was in a red state, so there would be plenty of ammo to find.

My gaze went to the computer and the papers that were strewn around it while Chris was inspecting everything else, loading up bottles of medicine and ingredients. There was even a red herb! Been looking for those things everywhere. The computer itself was old school, but in todays terms, it was cutting edge -- it was a box monitor and the actual PC was a tower. Unplugging it, I started shoving it into the bag of holding, knowing something of interest would be on it.

Then I continued onward to the back room. In the closet, I saw exactly what I thought I would.

The vaccine.

It was a dark purple liquid located in a syringe that was, in turn, located in a secure case. Tossing that into the bag of holding, a breath that I had been holding eased its way out of me. With this little guy, we could reverse-engineer the vaccine. I might even be able to do it. I had proficiency in medicine, but that didn't necessarily mean I could reverse engineer a vaccine. Especially considering that I knew fuck and all about virology.

"Get everything we need?" Chris asked me from the main room.

Not even close. I was painfully aware of the Nest that was under our feet. There, we could produce more of the vaccine. And there was that giant rail gun that managed to kill Nemesis. I really wanted to strap that onto Dakka, especially with our brief run in. But, just when I was considering the pros and cons, one of the babies in my tactical vest started to fuss. So, I took out my keys and started dangling them in front of his face.

"Yeah, I think so," I answered. I thought I would find Dr. Bard here… but oh well. That guy was a dick and I wasn't going to waste my time looking for him. Not when time just became infinitely more precious. We could always swing back for Alice too.

It would just take some time.

…

It was downright surreal riding the train back. We ended up leaving a skeleton crew back at the hospital, taking a good third of the nurses and doctors that took what they thought they would need to set up a makeshift hospital. People were still riding the trains, completely oblivious to what was happening in the city.

We got a lot of odd looks from various people who got on and off the train. However, those odd looks were quickly directed outward when we arrived at central station and were greeted with a barricade. Those orange and white barricades were set up with more fencing around it, all funneling into a single entrance that was being guarded by police.

"Chris! Rude!" Jill shouted, seeing us on the other side, and there was relief evident in her tone. She waved us through while the other cops began patting people down, checking for bites. Most people in the city still had absolutely no idea what was going on, so there was a lot of friction but that was mostly quelled by how serious the situation was. You could feel it in the air thanks to what seemed like a refugee camp set up in the station with cots set up for people to lay down on.

"Jill," Chris greeted her in return.

"You two look terrible," Jill observed, her eyes flickering to the wound on my shoulder and side, then on Dakka, who was reaching the end of her hour of life. Which left me without her since I had to use a spell slot to resummon her.

"I feel worse," I agreed, looking around the place. "Everything going smoothly here?" I asked her, and thankfully, I earned a nod in response. At least one of us was having as good day.

"I've managed to convince Raymond to take this seriously, but most of the RCPD are trying to contain the dead that just spilled out onto the streets. I've tapped into the radios and… it's not good," Jill admitted.

I nodded, taking a deep breath. It had finally begun. The start of the apocalypse was here. Nemesis was on the prowl, but we had the vaccine. The situation was a disaster, but we were on damage control. Things were… going about as well as I expected, in all honesty. However, taking in that breath revealed something.

"Someone shit their pants," I informed, looking down at my tactical vest of infants. "And I'm not entirely sure it wasn't me."

...

This is the last of the weekly chapters as the backlog on patreon has run out. So, we'll be on the bi-weekly schedule as intended going forward.

Also, I played an Artillerist for about three years in a campaign and we completely missed that little class feature of not needing material components. We always played it as if they were the materials used in an invention/spell. So, it's a case of failed reading comprehension that I never bothered to think any deeper about until it got pointed out to me. For the sake of the story, however, I'm going with what amounts to my homebrew in regards to spell components because I already planned around it. Sorry about that.

The next chapter is currently available on my Patreon and Subscribe Star, so if you want to read it a week early, all it takes is a single dollar in the tip jar. Or, for five dollars, you can read the chapter after that two weeks before its public release! I hope you enjoyed!

 

[Ideas-Guy]

Despite it all, I did manage to snag a long rest. Cure Wounds did nothing to deal with my mental exhaustion, and after the day that we just had, I was utterly spent. I actually felt a bit bad about it when I realized I more or less passed all responsibility over to Jill and the others just so I could catch some z's. You would think that with everything I had to worry about, I would have some trouble sleeping. But no, that was not the case. I slept like a baby and woke up feeling refreshed as the apocalypse began.

My back popped a good dozen times because of the shitty cot that I had fallen asleep in. But, the action also brought my attention to the fact that my sleeve was completely encrusted with blood. Same for my stomach. I felt absolutely disgusting and I don't think I've ever regretted not taking prestidigitation more than I did upon waking up.

Cracking my neck, I looked around to see that I was in the mall above central station. It was a large building filled with dozens of stores that lined the walls. It was hands down the biggest mall in Raccoon City, and it was in prime real estate almost smack dab in the middle of town. There was a lot of noise happening, I quickly noticed, rubbing gunk out of my eyes. There were a lot of people here. And when I said a lot, I meant a lot of people. The central area of the mall was filled with long rows of cots that were set up for people to sleep in. Some people even put up some curtains to give the illusion of privacy.

Groping around, I found my glasses on the floor next to the battered remnants of Dakka. I would resurrect her soon enough. Preferably with better materials than the aluminum I found and used in a pinch last time.

"Well, everyone's not on fire. They can wait for me to get a shower," I decided, standing up and popping my back a few more times. My poor spine. I glanced around to see that a shower wasn't in the cards yet, leading me to head to the front door.

The metal grates were down on all but one of the doors. Which luckily had an airlock between them. Those doors, in turn, were guarded by a couple of twitchy looking cops. "Sir, we can send out a rescue team if you have any relatives in the city. But, please, stay inside during the ongoing emergency.

"Thanks, but I'm just going to get a shower," I said, waving him off. And pushing through the first set of doors.

"Sir! The city is in a state of emergency! I'm afraid that I must insist that you stay inside where it's safe!" The cop continued to protest, but it was the guard on the inside of the double doors that recognized me.

"You're that crazy guy!" He blurted as soon as he saw me. I was famous? Cool.

"Not crazy, but very filthy at the moment. I'll be fine," I said, but I saw that wasn't convincing anyone. "Look, I knew about this shit show way before any of you did. Despite me screaming at the top of my lungs about it. So, who do you think is more prepared for that mess out there?" I asked them, cocking an eyebrow. It was a trick question. The answer was them. It was totally them. They were physically fit and stuff. The most impressive muscle on me was my brain, and that was a zombie's favorite snack.

But the fools fell into the trap. "Er, right. If you're sure, but, er, I think that Captain would like a word with you?" The fettering cop remarked, and to that, I waved him off.

"I'll be across the street if it's so important," I said, stepping out of the mall. There was a barricade set up around the entrance to the mall, and the shutters were pulled down but there was a message spray painted on them. Safety Here. There were a few people that were hidden outside, who looked at me cautiously as I ventured out into the city.

It almost looked normal, I thought, heading to my house up the road. There were people driving on the streets, but their cars were stuffed full of supplies. They were laying on the horns when they found themselves in bumper-to-bumper traffic. There was little to no foot traffic on the streets, leaving me to having a sidewalk all to myself. However, looking at the windows, I saw a lot of eyes that were peering out.

If I closed my eyes, I could almost pretend that the city was still the same. Well, I could have until I passed by a car that was left with the engine running and blood smeared across the busted in windows. The radio playing an emergency message, "This is not a drill. Please stay indoors until you are evacuated to a security point. The police and military will be doing door to door checks to escort you there. Please, do not open your door under any other circumstances-" I didn't see a dead body near the car, even if it was enough blood to kill a man.

My eyes narrowed when I saw the car in my parking spot, or, more specifically, the massive middle finger. What an absolute dick. I had better-

"Oh," I muttered, seeing my neighbor in the driver's seat of the car. He was scratching at the window, his white shirt covered in blood from a bite wound on his shoulder. That was… "Kind of a downer," I decided, approaching the car. There was a fire poker near the door. I don't even think these buildings had chimneys. What a pretentious douchebag. Coming to a stop, I picked the fire poker up and glanced at my neighbor. He looked like he was trying to get away in his pajamas but got bit.

I was tempted to call this karma for stealing my parking spot, but that seemed a bit much. "You were a dick, but you didn't deserve this," I told him, raising my gun and pulling the trigger. His head snapped back, and time went still.

Level five. I was burning through the levels, and after last night, I could feel how under-leveled I was to deal with stuff like Nemesis. I threw absolutely everything I had at him and he just ate it and asked for more. It was nothing short of dumb luck that we were still alive right now. If I hadn't uninfused the bag of holding, if I didn't infused the Spellwrought tattoo… everyone in that car would be dead right now.

My selection this time was easy enough. I gained access to second-level spells, and gained two second-level spell slots -- meaning more heals and summoning Dakka. I gained the Scorching Ray and Shatter spells upon reaching level 5, but I also took the time to swap out Grease for Spiderweb. They were both area control spells, and while Spiderweb needed actual spiderwebs as a spell component, the webs themselves could be used to create fires. Something very useful when I had a flamethrower.

However, the main feature that I was looking forward to was Arcane Firearm. But, first, a shower.

Heading into my apartment, I saw that everything was still there. So, I hadn't been ransacked and everything wasn't where it actually needed to be. Putting that off for the moment, I peeled off my sweater and pants, stepping into the shower and… "That's the stuff," I decided, feeling a blast of hot water wash over me. The water turned murky and I ended up having to use my nails to scrape off the dried blood. In doing so, I saw that I hadn't emerged from the night without a few reminders.

On my shoulder, around my collar bone, was a scar from where I got shot. On my side, just under my ribs, was another from where I got tentacled. There was even a pale line on my arm from where it broke. They weren't glaring, but it was a very stark reminder that Cure Wounds was not a Greater Restoration. There were injuries that I might not be able to shake off.

Feeling refreshed, I stepped out the shower and went about getting dressed. Decided on another turtle neck since the extra fabric could, in theory, protect my neck. With my hair still drying, I went into my bedroom and grabbed the notebook that I had tapped underneath the dresser.

"Finally," I muttered, looking at some designs that I had sketched out. They weren't very good. I didn't have proficiency in art. However, it was pretty clear what it was -- a gun. My Arcane Gun. One that I would need to build from scratch. I could see in my head what the final product would look like, but I also knew that it would be some time before I got to see that final product. I would need time, revisions, tests, and as my abilities increased, I could look to improving the models.

Being an Artificer was one part magic bullshit and one part physics, I decided, taking a set at my cluttered kitchen table. I had the pieces that would be my arcane gun laid out, and it was simply a matter of assembling them. Which was pretty easy all things considered. The easiest way to describe being an Artificer was using magic to bend the rules of physics. What I was creating shouldn't work, yet it would simply because the hard unyielding rules of reality were bent or outright ignored.

To that end, everything that I created half worked because I wanted it to and half because I knew what I was doing. And, to be completely honest, that was actually a huge issue for me. Assuming that I hit level 20 as an Artificer, that left me with six attunement slots and six infusions. In theory, that math checked out. Made total sense. However, there were a lot of extremely good magical items that I could create.

The core aspect of an Artificer is the creation of magic items beyond infusions.

One bag of holding? How about a hundred bags of holding? A ring of Protection? How about one for each finger ontop of a Cloak of Protection? A Belt of Hill Giant's Strength? Barrier Tattoo. Ring of Regeneration. Spell Gem. There were a lot of items I coveted, but I was stuck at six attunement slots. Even if I only could use six at a time, I should spread the love around. Give some items to Jill and Chris.

I could make the items. I could always make the items, but there was a world of difference between a level 1 Artificer and a level 5 Artificer, much less a level 20.

"The roadblock has been removed," I muttered to myself, sliding in the trigger and feeling it click in place. The roadblock was that I hadn't unlocked the class features yet, but now I have. If this were a campaign, I could do something like spend a month of time and roll high enough arcana checks to figure out how to create a permanent version. Then roll some checks to see how the creation progress went to actually create it.

I had proficiency in Arcane, so, in theory, I could, maybe, possibly, start figuring out how this stuff worked. Likewise, I wasn't bound by the hard rules of DnD. Probably. So, in theory, there was nothing stopping me from figuring out… say… how to disperse the T-virus vaccine with Dakka in heal-bot mode. Or up her damage by getting my hands on the blueprints of that railgun down in the Hive to scale them down.

Those things were for game balance. And I had absolutely no intention playing fair.

The only issue for all of it was the fact that it all would take time. Time to figure things out. Time to build it. Time to get the ball rolling. And, quite frankly, time felt like it was the one thing that I didn't have.

"Still, glad I got this done," I said, holding up my Arcane Firearm. It had a little weight to it -- but, that was mostly because of the steel blocks it was made of. Each one was inscribed with a rune, marking it with a spell that would shift into the 'barrel' of the gun to shoot out of.

Then I smiled to myself, "Thank you, Control. I'm just gonna shamelessly steal your intellectual property," I muttered. I stole the design for the Service Weapon after all. I tested the weight and took aim down the sights. With a thought, the blocks shifted as the cantrip Fire Bolt was selected. They rearranged themselves again when I aimed Shatter, then again when I chose Caustic Brew, and then back to Fire Bolt. Any spell -- any Artificer spell, rather -- would be stronger coming out of this gun.

Getting up, I grabbed the holster that I got for the occasion and slid my gun in, leaving it just under my arm at my ribs. Then I brought my attention to Dakka. Or, rather, the materials that I was hoping would become Dakka.

I could make an Eldritch Cannon out of anything. I could make it out of sticks and stones as easily as I could make it out of adamantine or something. All I had to do was will it into existence and Dakka would assemble herself with the materials that were available. That's because Dakka was more of an Infusion than a magic item -- I could just slap a magical blueprint onto something, and bingo presto: Dakka. But, I was hoping to… mitigate that a bit by lugging around a dedicated body. With it, I could see how Dakka reacted with better materials or if the modifications I made would work.

It stood to reason that it was possible. Afterall, Dakka getting locked at the same hp when she was made out of wood as she was when she was made of steel didn't really track. That, I figured, was a game balancing factor. So, with stronger materials, I could give her more hp. Upgrade the weapon and she could hit harder. Perhaps, I could even extend the lifespan of Dakka beyond a single hour.

The equipment was steel blocks, just like I made my gun out of. It was basically some stuff I got from a hardware store because I lacked the means to actually forge Dakka's body. All together, it was about ten pounds worth of metal, so fairly light all things considered. Grabbing it, I attached it to the holster around my shoulders on my back, finding that it fit somewhat uncomfortably between my shoulder blades. All that was left was grabbing some stick-on tattoos to shove in my pocket for emergencies.

Feeling a lot better, I stepped outside to see that the earlier gunshot had attracted some attention. A zombie stumbled around the car, as if looking for the source. I saw a half dozen more coming up the road directly in front of me, and three more coming from the left. They were coming out in force now. Taking out my gun, I leveled it at the first zombie and pulled the trigger, sending out a blast of Fire Bolt that punched the zombie in the chest. The flames began to spark up, consuming the corpse's hair and clothing until it was completely engulfed in flame.

The stench of burnt hair filled my nostrils as I crinkled my nose in disgust. However, even as the corpse shambled forward, raising its hands to lunge for me, its skin blackened and thick greasy black smoke came off of it when the fire really got going. It reached the small fence, still going for me as it burned. Tumbling over it, it collapsed to the ground and didn't get up again.

"Ten seconds," I muttered to myself, having counted it out. Fire Bolt was a cantrip, meaning that I could cast it endlessly. So, in theory, I had unlimited ammo. The issue being was the cantrips didn't seem to hit as hard as a bullet, and I could only fire every six seconds. A six second delay could very well be the difference between life and death in a pinch. Holstering my gun, I took out my notebook and made a small note of that. Stepping past the still burning body, I resisted the urge to start burning through my spell slots to see what my other spells would do.

I would have time for experimentation after Nemesis and Mr. X were dealt with. When things… settled, for lack of a better word.

Taking aim with my gun, I fired a handful of other firebolts at the incoming zombies. The gun didn't have much in the way of recoil, but there was some as a small pebble like blast of fire erupted from the barrel, expanding in size and leaving behind a trail of smoke before impacting the zombies.

Headshots killed them a lot faster. Near instantly like a bullet to the head. I'm not sure if damage rolls were a thing for me, but it was representative. With an Arcane Firearm, any spell that came from my Artificer class -- including cantrips -- received 1d8 additional damage. As a Level 5, my cantrips were upgraded so Firebolt now did 2d10 damage. That translated into some potent flames and with a headshot, the brain was flash burned. Hitting the body flash burned the flesh and ignited the corpses, as I saw before, and they burned hot enough to cook the brain in the skull in a few seconds.

Deciding to clear the street, as I took aim at the final shambling corpses, the kill was stolen from me as a loud pop filled the air. Glancing over at the source, I saw that it was Jill, who was carrying an assault rifle. She was joined by Chris, and some other guy that I didn't know. He seemed to be in his late thirties to early forties, brown hair cut military style and clean shaven.

All three of them were wearing some kind of flack vest. Chris was wearing some on his arms in addition to a vest, while Jill had a simple vest and I noticed that she had a black hat on that said RCPD. She looked good in it. Ah, well, in any case, it was good to see that the two of them hadn't been reduced to paste while I was taking a nap.

"Kill thief," I accused Jill as they approached, looking them over. They weren't dressed like cops, but they wore the logo on several places, like on a jacket or hat.

"What are you doing out here, Rude? And what is that thing?" Jill asked, lowering her rifle as she glanced at the burnt bodies that still smoked. I gave my arcane gun a little wave, making her eyes narrow into slits when she saw how odd it appeared.

"Picking up some things. Seems like everything went straight to hell the moment I closed my eyes," I remarked, holstering my gun. "I hate to ask, but the big guy -- he make another appearance?"

To that, Chris shook his head, "No. You were right, though -- we didn't kill him. We checked the body, but it was gone. No sign of where it went, so Jill and I have been patrolling outside of the safety points to make sure we don't drag trouble their way." Chris explained, and that was a relief and about the expected reaction I thought they would have. It was better this way, as harsh as it might sound. Nemesis would absolutely be coming for Jill and Chris, no matter where they were. Them being isolated put them in more danger, but it also meant that there was less chance of collateral damage when it did come for them.

I nodded, having expected that much before the third man stepped forward, offering a hand. "I'm Deputy Chief Raymond Dogulas. It's good to finally meet you, Rude. You saved a lot of lives -- between the posters, papers, and securing the entrances… I'm speaking on behalf of the city when I say we'd be much worse off if you didn't do what you did," he told me earnestly as he shook my hand.

That was a little embarrassing. "Yeah, well… don't tell anyone. I have a reputation to maintain," I told him, feeling a little uncomfortable with the genuine respect he seemed to have. It was far easier when people looked at me like I was an asshole because I usually was acting like one. "If you're the big cheese, then what are you doing out here?"

"Big cheese?" Chris questioned.

"For you, actually. I'm told you have access to… nanomachines? That they could help protect people, even heal them. We've managed to secure central station, but most of the city is left unprotected. I… I don't even know how bad the situation is. I have my men putting up barricades and organizing evacuations to safety points like the police HQ, but it's not enough," Raymond began, and I knew this was coming. I knew from the very start.

I let out a small sigh, "I wish I could help you out with that, but I can't. I have hard limits that I'm trying to break -- the long and short of it is that I can only control one machine at a time at the moment, and they're directly linked to me. If I could hand over a drone army, I would, but I have no idea if it's possible. Same for the bag and the tattoos -- I can create two of them, but they're maintained by me."

I really wish that I was in a position to start slinging out drone armies and have magical items out the ass. I really wish I could hand out spellwrought tattoos like they were candy on top of rings of regeneration or invisibility cloaks. I really, really, really did. Wishing had nothing to do with it, though -- I couldn't. Maybe, sometime in the future, that wouldn't be true. In the here and now, despite how badly we needed it… it was very true.

Those things took a lot more time than we had available to us.

The answer visibly deflated Raymond, though he didn't seem particularly surprised by the answer. However, it was Jill that spoke up, "And how exactly do you have these nanomachines?" She asked, her tone suspicious as she leveled a look at me that screamed 'no bullshit, please.' The please may or may not be a figment of my imagination.

I had an answer for that too. "Oh, I was a lab rat for Umbrella," I answered, offering a small shrug of my shoulders and Jill went still. "At least I think I was. I'm not really sure, to be honest. I think I might have been an official experiment that got shut down, then I got continued anyway by some guy in his basement." It was all bullshit, but it was plausible bullshit. Umbrella was into some weird stuff, so nanomachines that were… I don't know, biological dependent sounded like something they would get into.

It worked as a backstory to explain all the shenanigans that I would be getting into. I didn't particularly like lying. Especially about something like this. But, in this, it was the smart move. Honesty would just open up too many cans of worms -- my origins, my power, and… it wasn't particularly believable when it came right down to it. The isekai genre wouldn't even exist for another ten to fifteen years.

Worse still, everything I said, I knew, would eventually funnel to Umbrella. They might not have bothered with me back when I was screaming until I was blue in the face and slapping posters and pamphlets on every available surface but they were going to take notice of me now. They were going to investigate. They were going to retrace my steps. They were going to ask the who, the where, the how, and the why.

So, all the better to send them chasing after their own tail while keeping some aces up my sleeve.

"Then that got shut down when Umbrella realized that they were embezzling money, they got scrubbed and tried to scrub me, only to botch the job. Got out, found my way to Raccoon City, and… yeah. Here we are, standing in the middle of a road during a zombie apocalypse," I continued and I could read Jill's expression too easily. "I don't keep it hidden because I'm ashamed of it, or anything. Pity is annoying and I can't be bothered with it, so don't. I don't pity myself, so you don't have any reason to."

That got her to close her eyes for a moment before nodding, "Well, it explains why you're such an asshole." She decided, taking a breath and the pity was gone. Good.

"Well, so long as you're using it at their expense, I can't complain," Chris decided, offering a small nod in my direction. "That how you knew about Bard?"

"No. I'm just very distrustful of authority figures. And any time I see anything remotely suspicious, I just assume Umbrella. I'm usually right. Plus, he's a renowned virologist in Raccoon City, which is practically Umbrella's home turf, so I just figured that he and any other notable figure works for them," I told him, making Chris blink. "Like how the Mayor and police chief are probably in their pocket."

Raymond looked at Jill and Chris, both of whom seemed like they were trying really hard to argue the logic, but couldn't because they suspected I was right. Glancing at me, he said, "I… it's tough to believe, but I think you've more than earned the benefit of the doubt."

That was convenient. "Alright, so, are you three doing anything right now?" I asked, looking at the three of them. From the brief glance that I got after waking up from my nap, I saw that the actual organization of the safe haven was largely out of my hands. Which was a very good thing for me, as far as I was concerned. It meant that I wouldn't be involved in the nitty-gritty details that would take my attention away from more important tasks -- like killing zombies, or figuring out how to mass produce the vaccine. Or killing Nemesis.

Raymond gave me a hesitant look, "I have to continue organizing the safe havens. I only came out here to see if the technology that you use is mass-producible." So he was heading back then? Perfect.

"I stole a computer," I said, reaching into my bag of holding and the gallon bag opened up to let me pull the tower case out. With a light toss, I gave it to Raymond. "I have no idea how to hack things, so you're going to want to get someone on that. I'm guessing there are probably some Umbrella secrets located on the harddrive." I told him before jabbing a thumb over my shoulder at the apartment. "And there's a bunch of supplies that I was gathering in there -- a lot of bottled water and canned food."

Raymond seemed pretty caught up on the whole 'stolen computer pulled out of a too-small bag' thing, but he showed that he had his priorities in order when I said food and water. Raymond seemed to have his head screwed on straight, for better or worse. I was a little worried about how things would shake out, and while it did seem too early to say that I could trust him with everyone's safety, he was making generally a good first impression.

"Probably?" He questioned, his eyebrows raising to his hairline.

"It was hidden behind a sci-fi door. And at the general hospital, there was a secret room general staff weren't allowed behind. Meaning Umbrella is involved," I stated with certainty. Both Chris and Jill looked like they wanted to argue the point on principle again, but they realized that I was right. "Also, if Irons starts acting suspicious, you should shoot him."

"Er-"

"Or don't. I'll do it at some point. Anyway," I continued on, looking at Chris and Jill, "Since you both have a fuck off big monster hunting you, we need to set up a safe house for you. Before we do that, though, now that the city is past the point of no return… we need to start luring out zombies and killing them en masse. Draw them into locations that have already been evacuated then kill them all."

That caught their attention more than the casual mention of murder. Or killing, since murder kind of implied that he didn't have it coming.

It was Jill that spoke up. "What do you have in mind?" She asked, her tone faintly wary when she saw my smile.

Power leveling, here I come.

 

[Ideas-Guy]

To summarize the situation in Raccoon City -- shit was fucked. Shit was fucked bad. It was honestly shocking how the city could go from a little messed up to an unmitigated, ass-blasting shit show over the course of eight hours or so. The police, led by Raymond, had managed to evacuate a large swath around central station, but everything beyond the immediate block?

Pure, uncontrolled, absolute chaos. Yet, at the very same time, there were people going about their day. They walked along the street, completely oblivious to everything that was happening.

It wasn't the age of information. Not really. Not yet. People weren't walking around with a computer in their pockets that tapped into the internet for news to be delivered to them instantly and constantly like people would be in the early two thousands. Meaning that if they didn't listen to the radio or watch the TV, they would have absolutely no idea what they were walking into. And I saw no greater evidence of that fact when we saw onlookers trying to call 911 when they saw looting or someone being attacked.

In a perfect world, everyone would have heard the emergency broadcast, and they would stay indoors. Everyone. However, we didn't live in a perfect world -- as evident of the ongoing apocalypse -- and while the people that just didn't get the message were a problem, a far greater one was the looters. People love a state of emergency. With all the cops dealing with something, it just made it the perfect opportunity to steal that 28 inch tube TV that you had been eying. Or a PS1.

The looters were like gas on a fire, making something that could, in theory, with some finesse and a dash of competence, be salvaged into something that could only be described as an absolute disaster. It was a mess. I would need to flip through a thesaurus to find some better words to describe it because all the ones that I knew fell dreadfully short. There were sporadic groups of police trying to seal up back alleys, or making attempts to evacuate people that had no idea what they were doing. Some were even arresting looters, completely oblivious to what they should be doing.

"You, you, you!" Jill shouted, grabbing hold of the police officers who had a half dozen men laying on the ground with their hands cuffed behind their backs. Gunshots rang out in the air, but they were a distant thing. What was far closer were screams of people panicking. Chris and I took up positions, looking down at the source to see undead chasing a handful of people. There were dozens and dozens of undead in the streets, coming out in force as they spilled out after tipping over a fence. "Guns up, aim for the head but if you can't, then hit the legs or center mass," Jill shouted at the three stunned cops.

I started firing, Fire Bolt slamming into the zombies as I pulled the trigger. They went up, their flesh flash burning while their clothing ignited. The people running panicked, tucking down and I saw one turn around to flee back towards the zombies, thinking we were shooting at him. I frowned when I saw him get bit, falling to the zombies that tore into him while the rest surged forward.

The men that were being arrested saw their chance and booked it, making two of the cops turn their attention back to them. They ended up giving chase, and it was when they diverted into an alley and screaming began, I knew that more dead were coming our way.

"We can't evacuate anyone like this!" I shouted out over the sounds of gunfire. Chris was scoring headshot after headshot, dropping as many as he could as fast as he could. A slight design flaw, I decided, pulling the trigger again. I needed to look into figuring out how to shoot a projectile from my gun. The cantrip wasn't cutting it with a small horde, even if it did have unlimited ammo. And, given that we had a very long day ahead of us while Nemesis was on the prowl, burning spell slots seemed counterintuitive.

"We know!" Jill snapped at me, dropping to a knee and firing at the zombies that stumbled out of the back alley.

There was no organization. No one really knew what they were supposed to be doing and it became an absolute mess. And those that did have a general idea were completely overrun by panicked people. I always had to suspend my disbelief when it came to stuff like the Walking Dead -- if there were fast zombies, then yeah, sure, I could understand. But slow ones? How could the military possibly lose?

The answer was people. People were stupid. Everyone liked to imagine that they would be the cool calm collected badass in an emergency but the fact of the matter was that the moment their safety was threatened, most people panicked like a chicken with its head cut off. And that really threw a massive wrench in my plans to start power leveling.

"Rude, you need to break out that drone!" Chris exclaimed, popping in a new magazine. More undead were being attacked to the clusterfuck of noise.

"We need to fall back," Jill decided, grabbing Chris by his tac-vest to lead us away from the undead that were pouring through the back alley. Slowly, we fell back to the middle of the street and I crushed the impulse to do exactly what Chris suggested. I only had the drone for an hour, and I would need to burn a spell slot to bring it back. I had six, meaning that I had Dakka for a total of seven hours. I had to use her sparingly and where it would matter the most.

Instead, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out an infusion. "Cover your ears," I shot back, lobbing it at the dead where they were starting to converge. For a moment, the paperclip was silent. Then, Dr. Bard's voice rang out as high as I could crank the volume.

"GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU LUNATIC!"

Just as I hoped, the dead were drawn to it as I looped the sound. It muffled the sounds of gunfire, though not enough that some dead didn't draw attention to us. Wincing through the sound, we fired up on the dead, dropping bodies. Pure dumb luck ended up working out for me because they were so tightly compressed that when I ignited one, the fire spread. And, to be honest, it was a really good thing that I didn't have the fireball spell. I doubt I could have resisted using it.

When that pocket of undead were cleared out, the condition for the infusion wasn't met any longer and it fell silent. "We- where did the other cop go?" I asked, looking back and not seeing him anywhere.

"What was that thing?" Chris asked, trying to get rid of the ringing in his ears.

"A recorder in a paperclip," I answered, not seeing so much as a hair of the third cop. Did he seriously run away? Protect and serve my ass. "And, one second…" I said, reaching into my pocket to pull out a stone. Pressing it to my lips, I whispered what I wanted it to say and threw it forward.

"IF YOU WANT TO LIVE THEN FOLLOW US," the stone shouted in my voice. The six-second timer was a bit limiting, but it was enough to get the message across.

My power really liked the six second rule of combat. I don't think it was insurmountable, but I was finding that where it could, it drifted to the established six second rule of a round of combat. Probably because this whole encounter could be considered combat.

"That's convenient," Jill remarked, waving over a handful of shell-shocked survivors that seemed to have absolutely no idea what was going on. I took a quick look at them to see that they all seemed fine, but panicked when they saw more undead shambling our way. "Stick close to us. We're going to take you someplace safe," Jill promised while I reached into my backpack.

I had been saving it since I could only use it once a day, but if we were going to send back survivors, then we needed to know if they were infected or not. I refused to fall for the 'random asshole hides infection that causes the safe haven to collapse from within' trope. Which is why chose Detect Poison and Disease when I chose my Fey-Touched feat.

Producing a single yew leaf, I held it aloft before then, "Hippty skippity doo," I intoned like the words were somehow sacred instead of pure gibberish.

"What-" Jill began, cutting herself off when she saw my eyes glowing.

"You're coming down with a cold, so you're going to want to take some medicine for that. And you -- it's eight in the morning, it's too early to be drinking. Unless you spent all night drinking, then it's perfectly okay," I told the small group of people that were looking at me with more confusion than fear now. The one I was speaking to looked shocked for a moment, then shot his wife a nervous look -- and I was betting she was his wife based on the look that she was giving him. Someone had a drinking problem~!

Chris looked at me, "Nanomachines?" He ventured and I smiled.

"Nanomachines. They're not infected," I confirmed. That got a small breath of relief from Chris, only it was lost when the infusion was triggered by more undead nearing it.

So began our attempts to organize the block in an evacuation. The good news was that the screaming managed to get a lot of people's attention. Naturally, when they saw people gathering up, they would follow the leader because people were sheep. They ventured out of their homes onto the road, either joining us outright or getting scared and running back inside.

Naturally, the roaring and the sounds of people were drawing the attention of the dead too. Despite my reluctance, I was forced to utilize Dakka just to keep up with the dead that seemed to pour out of every nook and cranny. The people that we were escorting back to the station were of absolutely no help, doing nothing but screaming, crying, and shitting themselves at the sign of every shambling corpse.

More than once, they ran. Straight up fled. Away from the people that were trying to save their lives. And, worse, more often than not, they took a few others with them because when people saw people running, they felt the need to run too. We were forced to watch them go because if we chased after then a massive hole got opened up in our defenses. We escorted a hundred-odd people back to the central station, and a walk that should have taken five minutes took closer to thirty.

It was everything we could do. I knew that. I wore that on my chin, but it made it extremely clear that the rest of the city was absolutely screwed. We fought like hell to save a hundred people and probably twice that many were dying and going to raise back up. It was very different seeing it in person than knowing it in theory -- it was like we could physically feel Raccoon City falling into chaos. We were fighting, clawing, grasping for whatever we could but it would only be a small fraction of a much larger whole.

I saw it on both Jill and Chris' faces when we finally did make it back to central station. Jill and Chris loaded up on ammo, their expressions grim. This was their city. They were police officers and, more than that, they were fundamentally good people. In a much better world, in a much kinder world, their efforts would be rewarded. Everyone would be saved and we could all fuck off right into the sunset.

"Here, have some trail mix," I said, offering a bag of it to Jill, who looked surprised by the sudden offer. "People talk crap about stress eating, but it's only a problem if you sit on your butt all day. So, have some -- or you'll end up with headaches later," I advised.

"Oh, thanks- wait, did you take out all of the raisins?" Chris said, helping himself before inspect the handful that he snagged.

"Of course I did. Someone told me raisins are basically just the grape equivalent of old people and I've never been able to get the image out of my head," I told him, making Chris grimace.

His nose scrunched up, "Why would you do that to me?" He asked, and good. The image was in his head now. Maybe, hopefully soon, it would spread so people would stop putting raisins in cereal. Raisin brand crunch? Delicious. Know what would make it even better? Take out the raisins entirely.

"Because misery loves company," I told him unrepentantly. "Come on. I have about five minutes left being able to detect the disease," I said, tossing the rest of the trail-mix to Jill. She caught it, but she didn't look happy about it. She was focused, but her lack of engagement seemed more sullen to me. Angry, even. Not at me -- I think -- but at the entire situation and our lack of control. She had been very brief with details about the memories this was dredging up, but I got the impression this was ripping open some barely healed wounds.

I wish a Cure Wounds could heal some mental damage, but no such luck. And, I hated to say it, but… she would have to deal with it for now. There wasn't any time for any of us to deal with our shit. In the days that followed, when we saved everyone that we could save, then we could take a moment to breathe and deal with deep seeded traumas.

"How does that thing work?" Jill questioned, her voice tense as we quickly ran through the streets. "Why does it only work for thirty minutes?"

"Serious eye damage," I answered, tapping my glasses as we ran. The sounds of gunshots caught our attention and Chris led the way to finding the source. "Once a day for thirty minutes, and I can only do it for thirty minutes instead of chunks of time," I elaborated. I was putting some serious consideration putting some levels into the Wizard class. It would grant me access to some better spells, but I'm not entirely sure it was a good idea.

Wizards needed to learn magic spells by copying them into their grimoire. Magic wasn't real in this world. Meaning, like my future magic items, I would have to puzzle them out from scratch. And that… they would spread me rather thin in a time when time was the most valuable thing that I had, regardless of how useful it might be.

"It's useful while we have it, but don't rely on it. Gotcha," Jill heard what I was saying as we rounded a corner. I wasn't at all surprised to see undead shambling down the roads anymore -- even in the immediate perimeter of central station, you could easily find a handful. What I didn't expect was to see a good thirty of them swarming around what looked to be an coffee shop. They were battering at the glass windows and door, the screaming coming from within told us that some people got chased inside.

Surprisingly, there were a handful of corpses leading up to the door. Three of them, and we heard about five shots in total.

The three of us immediately opened fire on the small horde of undead, dropping the corpses. Jill and Chris were essentially a walking wall of gunfire with damn near aimbot levels of accuracy. It was actually stunning to watch. I'm guessing that they got a lot of practice in. Me, on the other hand, I went with fire and ignited a good dozen zombies, dousing them with what amounted to napalm. It took a few seconds for them to cook through, but soon enough they were collapsing in heaps.

Leaving us to enter the coffee shop- "Ted?" I blurted, recognizing the Walmart greeter that I met just before the city went to hell. He poked his head up from behind the counter, a gun in his hand.

"You're- You're Rude!" Ted returned with evident relief, standing up to his full height. That seemed to encourage the others. I saw a pistol in Ted's hands, but he didn't seem that comfortable with it, even if he was showing proper trigger discipline. "You were right! About everything! I-I should have listened to you back then, but- you're pamphlets and cards saved our asses. I went for the head, just like you said!" So, the pamphlets weren't a waste of money after all?

I was glad for it. I was happy that Ted listened and had made it. He acted decisively and calmly under pressure, and he was damn close to the finish line. He even managed to bring a dozen people with him -- some of which I even recognized as people that pulled a runner from us. It was real leadership material. Walmart absolutely wasted him.

There was just one issue.

My gaze slid to a middle aged man who sat in the floor, leaning against the wall as sweat dripped down his face. It could just be the adrenaline -- that stuff messed you up after it left your system. I might have believed it if it wasn't for the fact that he was registering as infected with a disease. The T-Virus.

"I'm glad you made it this far, Ted." I waved him off, my eyes on the man. I didn't see any visual signs of injuries. He was wearing expensive shorts, loafers with high top socks, and a bowling shirt. He didn't seem like he was bit, but they could be hidden. "Have you checked everyone for bites?" I asked Ted while everyone else in the room seemed to be looking at me with awe. I see Ted was acting like my hypeman.

To that, Ted nodded. "None of us are bitten or scratched. I made sure of it, Mr. Rude." He sounded absolutely certain of it.

"Just call me Rude," I muttered, my gaze going to Jill, who caught it before I glanced back at the guy. "Are you absolutely sure that none of you have been bitten?" I was trying to play it cool, but I saw some suspicion.

"Of course! But, erm, if you want to check-" Ted started getting freaky and immediately started taking his shirt off. It was Chris that stopped him.

"A quick frisk should be fine," Chris said, and it made sense. Pain was the body's warning system, and it was a lot harder to shrug that stuff off than people realized. A flinch would give away a bite wound, as would a bandage or a damp spot on the clothing. Ted eagerly proved that he wasn't bitten and I frisked him down. It was Jill that frisked the infected guy -- I watched his face carefully. He didn't flinch. Jill met my gaze when she was done and shook her head.

What the hell? The guy was infected. He looked physically ill. And so far, Detect Poison and Disease hasn't led me astray. If he wasn't bitten, then how in the hell did he get infected?

"Can we go to central station now? Please? I… I don't want to be out here anymore," Ted requested, his voice a bit weak when he saw more zombies drawn in by the noise we created.

There was no way I could in good conscience send this guy to the one established safe zone we had. It was just too much of a risk. Even if we did something like sticking a post-it note to his forehead about sticking him in a quarantine until his symptoms made it clear what was wrong with him. That was just kicking the issue down the road so some other poor sap would do what I was considering.

I had regrets. One of them was the police officer who tried to arrest me and got bit. I didn't regret killing him, per se, but I regretted that I hadn't been able to save him. If I had nutted up before the very last minute, maybe I could have reached high enough of a level that I didn't have to kill him. Or, if I had been more proactive, maybe I could have already had the vaccine and I could have given it to him.

This situation was different.

I had Lesser Restoration. I could save his life.

The smart thing to do, I knew, was to let him die. He was some old man that I didn't know and I genuinely doubt that he would be able to help much with the ongoing apocalypse. I only had so many spell slots. There were only so many people that I could save. Cold logic dictated that I should reserve them for emergencies because I knew emergencies were coming. Reserve them because Jill could get infected. Chris. Myself. All of whom were far more important than some random old guy whose name I didn't even know.

Yet, all the same, my Arcane Weapon shifted to Lesser Restoration and I aimed it at the guy.

"Wait, no-!" He exclaimed, throwing up his hands before I shot him with Lesser Restoration.

It was objectively speaking the worst possible move I could have made, I acknowledged fully. But I was a selfish person.

I didn't want to be the kind of person who could let someone die just because it was inconvenient to save them.

"That was a little booster shot. You were under the weather," I said as the old man sputtered, pissed off to hell and back that I saved his life. The effect was pretty immediate -- he looked like warmed over death, now he just looked like he had one foot in the grave. More importantly, I didn't sense the T-Virus in him anymore. "But we need to stick you in a quarantine, just to be safe." Just in case the T-Virus was wonky when it came to interacting with magic. I didn't think it would be the case, but it was better safe than sorry.

The old man glowered at me, "It's allergies. I'm fine," he protested, looking like he was about ready to take a swing.

"We have a lot of people sharing a cramped space and we already have an epidemic going on if you hadn't noticed," I was trying to be polite about it.

The dickhead glowered at me, "I'm not sick!"

"You're about to be unconscious, you mouth breathing moron-" I started to reply, but Jill smoothly interjected.

"You're going in quarantine or you're staying here," she decided in a no nonsense tone. That brought him up short. Ohh~! Fucking get him, Jill! Show him who's the boss! He looked like the kind of guy that was vaguely sexist, but in the 'product of his time' kind of way. "Is that understood?"

He worked his jaw but offered a curt nod. He shot a look at me and I flipped him off.

The next mission became escorting the group back to the central station, who welcomed them with open arms. Ted proved a little clingy, though.

He swept me up in a hug and crushed me to his chest, "You saved my life. Thank you. Thank you so much. You're a saint!" There was a sob in his throat that I didn't at all know how to deal with, so I awkwardly patted his back.

"It's fine. You, ah, paid it forward. Just stay safe, alright?" I offered, thinking Ted was a decent dude. He sniffed, wiping off his eyes and waved me goodbye as he headed into the station. As soon as they were gone, I said, "That old guy was infected with the T-Virus. I'm certain about it. That booster shot probably saved him, but that doesn't explain how he got infected in the first place."

"He didn't have any bites," Jill replied, not arguing, but pointing it out. I… felt a little odd that she wasn't mentioning the whole booster shot thing. I was expecting to get grilled about that.

"T-Virus doesn't just infect through bites. He could have slept with someone that was infected," Chris pointed out and I tried not to show my surprise at how easily they took me for it at my word. I didn't have any solid proof that he was infected.

Jill frowned, "Having a chunk bitten out of you would kill the mood." Also true, I imagined.

I pursed my lips in thought, my mind racing… "How did half a stadium full of people suddenly get infected?" I questioned, catching both of their attention. Everything was such a chaotic mess that I never stopped to think about it. I figured one zombie got in, bit someone, then the entire thing spiraled out of control. But that didn't make any sense -- it wasn't physically possible, even. Not on such a short time frame. Hundreds of people would have had to die, then get reanimated before chowing down on the fleeing people.

It only made sense if hundreds of people were already infected when they went to the game. Would people go if they got bitten? Maybe? Or maybe they just felt a little under the weather, but not enough to not go to the stadium? Where they turned and kicked off this entire mess… the latter was more plausible, but it ran into the same issue.

How did they get infected in the first place?

"You think it's airborne?" Chris ventured but Jill was frowning deeply, an expression of dawning horror finding its way onto her face. I think she had our answer.

"There were undead in the sewers before this," she breathed, looking at me like that was supposed to mean anything. "Rude. The water treatment plant for the city is connected to the sewers."

Oh.

Ohh…

Oh.

Fuck me.

That was so not good. That wasn't good at all.

"We have to do something about that. It's more important than just evacuations -- Chris, what water do you think these people are going to drink?" I asked Chris when he went to interject. The people trying to flee were in more immediate danger. Hands down. However, all it took was one person getting infected and hiding their symptoms. Then it would be too late. Everyone in the safe zone would be in danger.

"It's too late to save the water. Who knows what's floating in it now, and I wouldn't trust any Aquatab to kill the T-Virus," Jill seemed to agree. There was no point in saving people if they were being brought to danger.

"We have to split up," Chris decided, looking between us. That seemed like a bad call.

"Have you never seen an episode of Scooby Doo? That's a terrible idea. Especially when there's a giant monster out to kill you two," I reminded.

"That's exactly why we need to split up. There's one other member of STARS in the city -- Brad. I'll link up with him, if I can, and draw that creature away from you while you're saving the water supply. I'll spread word about the tainted water and delayed symptoms. I'm leaving the dirty work for you two," he said, throwing a charming grin our way.

I didn't like that plan. I didn't like that plan at all. I threw everything I had at Nemesis, and it got up and fucked off to adapt to everything I had thrown at it. It was meaner and tougher and I did not like the idea of Chris facing it solo. However, Jill rapped a fist against his, seeing the value in the plan.

Damn it.

"I want it on record that I told you this was a bad idea," I decided, accepting it for what it was. Do as much as I could but recognize that I couldn't do everything -- that was how I got through this. I wasn't a messiah who could save everyone and make it all sunshine and rainbows. As much as I didn't like it, Chris wasn't wrong about our priorities and I had to have a little faith that he could take care of himself.

In response, he flashed me a smirk and thumped me on the shoulder. "Don't worry. There's an even shot that it comes after you, you know." Oh, I didn't even think about that. Suddenly, I felt a lot more nervous about this venture.

"I… should probably go get my suit from the apartment-" I began, thinking that it would offer at least a little protection.

"Bad idea. That thing will slow you down, overheat you, and give you a false sense of protection," Jill immediately vetoed the idea.

My face pinched, "I worked really hard on that, you know." To that, Jill gave me a huff and a small smile before grabbing me by the sweater. I met Chris' gaze and returned the nod that he sent my way. He was a super cop. He could probably take care of himself better than I could. Actually, there was no probably about it.

So, I needed to have a little faith that things would work out.

After all, it wasn't like everything could go wrong, could it?

...

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[Ideas-Guy]

"I'm not wading through filthy toilet water without some protection," I argued as I suited up back at my apartment. There was a lot of nasty stuff down in the sewers on a normal day, much less the crap that Umbrella had been throwing in it. I knew of at least one genetic abomination that was currently swimming through the refuse and knowing my luck, it wouldn't just be the one.

"You're going to get yourself killed if you can't run away," Jill argued through the door while inspecting the alpha version of my protective suit. It wasn't great -- rubber insulated overalls with kevlar over the legs and a leather jacket that was reinforced with duct tape. Covering my head was a motorcycle helmet with a flashlight attached, with a visor to protect my face. "The biggest advantage we have is our mobility."

"Against shamblers, sure," I replied, putting on the overalls and jacket before further reinforcing them with kevlar. I understood the argument, I did, and I knew that the suit would be a pain to run in and probably wouldn't do much if I was caught by something big, but that could be mitigated with an easy removal. And I was far more worried about all the small nasties we would find in the sewers than the big ones. Plus between the two of us and Dakka, I didn't see us doing a lot of running away. "But that's not all that we're dealing with, you know? Umbrella is going to do what they do best and make a bad situation worse."

There was a small pause on the other side of the door. "You… might have a point there. Are you worried about the virus mutating?"

"That's what it does best, and those mouth breathing morons in Umbrella's science division are going to be patting themselves on the back for 'taking advantage of a bad situation' to gather data for their next pet monster," I said, opening the door to find Jill looking at my still depressingly incomplete to-do list. There were minor things that could be managed, but the window was rapidly closing for other things, like evacuating retirement homes. Jill glanced over at me just in time to catch some kevlar padding for her arms and legs.

"You look ridiculous," Jill noted, inspecting me before looking down at the kevlar.

"Better than looking good as a corpse," I replied and Jill inclined her head, giving me the point while she strapped the protection on with practiced ease. Meanwhile, I cracked open one of the crates that were stacked up in my apartment that was helpfully labeled 'sewer adventures.' Inside of it were maps of the sewers, as up to date as I could find as of a year ago.

Given there were no super secret massive underground bases on them I doubted their validity a bit, but they were good enough for public use.

There was also a list of recommended equipment for urban spelunking. Reading it over, I gave myself a pat on the back for my foresight, and cracked open my arsenal of weapons. I had to love red states for their 'bigger is better' approach to gun laws. Even Jill seemed impressed when I started taking out barrel drums for shotguns and laying them on the table.

I passed her a stack of drum magazines, "These are loaded with custom rounds -- Dragonsbreath, slugs, and explosive. These here are your run of the mill buckshot," I said, sliding an equally large stack of normal ammo while she inspected the automatic shotgun. "It's going to be close quarters in an enclosed space."

"That's not why I'm giving you this look- wait, is that a grenade launcher?" Jill blurted, glancing over my shoulder into my gun cabinet. I did the same to see the grenade launcher leaning against an AK-47 before looking back at Jill to see that she was giving me a dull look. "Where did you even get one of those?"

I stole it from the military. It was shocking what they would just leave around. "Don't worry about it," I said, but now that she brought it up… yeah, grenade launcher. Perfect. Grabbing it, I began to fill the cylinder chamber with some stolen explosive rounds.

Jill was shaking her head, torn between amusement and exasperation. "You only say that about stuff I should be worried about," she pointed out before taking the grenade launcher from me. "Have you ever operated one of these before?"

It didn't seem wise to admit that before I found myself here, I hadn't even used a gun before. If it wasn't for the local gun range… "Fair point. Dakka will take point, then me, then you in case we have to blow something up," I decided, loading up some buckshot into the shotgun while the rest of the ammo vanished into my Bag of Holding. Between it, and my Arcane Weapon, I was feeling pretty solid.

I'd have to burn through a spell slot to bring back Dakka, but I could accept that. With some luck, maybe I could polish off level six. It was a decent level -- it gave me another spell slot, but more importantly, it gave me access to more infusions. The most important of them all being the spell refueling ring that would give me a spell slot back once a day.

It was, however, another stark reminder of my class. Time was my biggest bottleneck. If I just had a couple more days, I could have been so much better prepared. If I had spent more time leveling beforehand…

No. There was no point in dwelling on what could have been. I needed to focus on how things were and what I could do now to make sure they went my way.

"Sounds like a plan. With how things are up top, and with that thing chasing me, it'd be best to head through the sewers," Jill decided, already locked and loaded. There was a pistol strapped to her thigh, my grenade launcher hanging off her shoulder, and a shotgun in her hands. Between her and Dakka, I really didn't see the need to do much running in the near future.

She looked at me, and I supposed that between the two of us I was the expert on exploring sewers, so I hastily shoved in the tools that were left in the crate -- chain cutters, bolt cutters, battery packs, and a couple of emergency flashlights. Heading outside, I popped open the manhole while Jill stood guard, checked to make sure there were no surprises waiting for us, turned on my headlamp and started climbing down.

It felt weird being back in the sewers. It hadn't been that long since I was first down here killing zombies to grind out my first level. Here I was again, back at it. You'd think I'd be braver, but I had to say, the long dark shadows didn't help my nerves when I knew there were going to be more zombies down here than ever. Jill made her way down behind me after replacing the manhole while I rolled my shoulders, getting Dakka comfortable and ready to use.

"Okay, maybe the headlight wasn't a bad idea," Jill remarked and I just grinned before reaching into my Bag of Holding to pass her one. She rolled her eyes as she chuckled, replacing the hat she wore with a much more functional, if less appealing, hard hat. "You know where you're going?"

"More or less," I said, taking point as we began making our way through the sewers. I immediately regretted not bringing some nose plugs, because the stench was awful. "Smells a lot worse than when I was last here," I said, my shotgun braced against my shoulder as I peeked around a corner to see… Daniel. The very first zombie that I had killed. It looked like the rats had gotten to him, because he was mostly scraps of flesh clinging to bone now.

"Thousands of corpses would do that," Jill replied. There was a small beat of silence as we walked near soundlessly. I could hear the sounds of splashing echoing down the tunnels. And groaning. I kept a keen ear out, trying to locate them, but it was next to impossible with how the sound was bouncing off the grimy concrete. I tried to take comfort in that -- I wasn't entirely sure how stuff like perception checks or passive perception worked with me, but I'm guessing that if I couldn't tell where a sound was coming from, odds were a half rotten corpse couldn't either. "How many?"

"What?" I asked, making my way up to where I had hit level two.

"How many people do you think have died already?" Jill questioned and I could hear the frown in her voice.

It wasn't a question that I liked thinking about, but I'm pretty sure I had a solid estimate. "I'd say ten thousand. Maybe twenty. Not that bad, all things considered," I ventured. It was still a lot of dead people, and a lot of reanimated corpses, but Raccoon City had a population of around a hundred thousand. "It'll be more with the riots and general chaos, but… thanks to Raymond and Marvin we might have enough of the police force to actually put a lid on the destruction. The military will be less likely to pull out and so long as we keep things contained, we can avoid getting nuked."

I heard Jill stumble behind me. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that she wore an open grimace but she didn't seem surprised. "They would do that, wouldn't they?"

"It'd be a real convenient way for Umbrella to get rid of any evidence…" I said, trailing off as I turned the corner to where I had leveled up. "Speakin' of getting rid of evidence -- I killed a half dozen zombies here like a day ago. Where are they?" I asked, barely seeing a trace of them. There was a stain from my Grease spell, and some of the other stains looked like they could be blood. But the actual bodies were all gone.

My lips thinned as I started to look around for those drainage things that were on the walls in the game. There weren't any, but I was seeing some damage to the concrete. Something big and heavy had come this way. I'm not entirely sure what they were called in the game, but those white tadpole looking things were at the top of my suspect list.

"I'm guessing we'll find out soon enough," Jill remarked, changing out her ammo type from buckshot to explosive. "Do you really think we'll be able to save seventy thousand people?" She as the barrel magazine clicked home. "I was on the streets last night. It's just… dead people, everywhere I looked."

The admission was quiet, as was the fear in her voice.

I wished I had something to say that would convince her that everything was going to be just fine, but the truth of the matter was that I was as much in the dark as she was. But it felt wrong to say so.

"It all depends on how this next part goes. I never managed to make any solid plans for this part -- the churn. Everything is a mess, a bunch of pieces are in the air, and the outcome depends on how a lot of them fall." The biggest wild card was Umbrella. They had ways of making the situation a great deal worse than it already was.

It also depended on what the General recommended to the President, Kirk Talon. If they had hope that this could be contained, then they'd send in the marines en-masse. They'd retake the city. It wouldn't be bloodless, but it was doable. However, what weighed the scales in our favor was the number of civilians that were still alive and fighting back.

I wouldn't blame the President if he nuked Raccoon City when it's population was ninety-nine thousand shambling corpses and a couple hundred civilians, all spread out through the city… I didn't like it. It didn't sit well with me. I didn't think I would have what it took to make the call myself, but I could understand why the President would push the big red button if things got that bad.

"So, why aren't we evacuating?" Jill questioned as we pressed on. "Why act like we're in this for the long haul?" I wasn't really sure where the interrogation was coming from, but it was a fair question.

My lips thinned and not for the first time, I wish I knew more about the Resident Evil series. I had watched all the movies, but some of them… it had been years since I did. "I'm worried about what happens when you drop the sun on a virus that's whole shtick is adaptation," I admitted. My knowledge of Resident Evil got spotty after Raccoon City, but what I did know was that the world ended. Things got pretty weird in the movies with Alice developing psionic powers, but this was the same setting that had super mutant undead people.

From the sound of it, I just gave Jill a new fear. "It could adapt?"

"Or worse. It could spread," I replied, my tone grim. The details on exactly how were spotty -- I wasn't even sure if it was ever directly stated. I just knew that they dropped a nuke, and then the world started dying. I had no intention of living in a Mad Max nightmare, so if I wanted to save the world, I had to contain the virus here. "There's this stuff called Cesium 137 that only appeared after the first nuclear bomb dropped. Doesn't really do anything for the most part, and it's a way to test to see if stuff like old wine really is old wine because it spread all over the place, but it won't be present in anything vacuum sealed. My worry is that the same thing will happen with the T-Virus."

There was a beat of silence, before I heard a whispered, "Fuck."

"When the military pulls their heads out of their asses, we can start evacuating the civilians. The metro connects up to Louisville, and it's a three hour round trip. Sick people, old people, kids, and the people who just aren't cut out for this," I continued. Keen Mind made itself known as I could perfectly recall the map of the sewers with no difficulty at all. Hell, I could recall the map of the sewers that Jill had wandered through in the game and compare the locations to the complete map to discover that it was halfway across the city.

Hopefully that meant we had an unbothered trek to one of the three water treatment plants of Raccoon City. All of which were pretty small, which was why there were three of them.

"The military sees that the evac isn't a shit show, that we have clear safe points and exclusion zones… no nuke, and the world is saved," I finished. There were a couple of things I could do to sweeten the pot. One of which was probably right under my feet -- the Nest.

"Provided Umbrella doesn't mess anything up," Jill added and I chuckled without any humor.

"Yeah. Provided that they don't mess anything up," I agreed. A tall order, considering that making messes is what Umbrella did best.

With that, the conversation lapsed as Jill mulled over everything I just said. I hadn't exactly kept the stakes hidden from her, but I could understand it all feeling a great deal more real now. I went through the same thing when I first arrived in this world not that long ago. With my half remembered memories it had already seemed like a herculean task, but with Keen Mind, I now knew exactly how fucked we were.

I knew more about Resident Evil than I thought I did. The lore that I had skipped through or didn't really read was suddenly remembered with perfect clarity. I still didn't know for certain how exactly the outbreak started, but I knew some of the names involved. Up to and including US Senators. My memories of the movies were still pretty spotty, as they were well beyond the one month limit to my memory.

There were also mentions of things -- links that I didn't click on when I was looking something up on a wiki. But that was an issue for another time.

Slowly, as we closed in on the first water treatment plant, the air in the sewer got worse. The stench was already rancid to the point that it burned my nose, but it slowly started to smell more like putrid rot and I nearly gagged. I had to borrow an old humming trick to stop myself, and it was just a warning of what was to come.

Turning a corner, I recoiled at the sight of one of the cisterns where water was held until it could be treated. The water was black, almost like sludge, but more alarming was what was emerging from the water. I wasn't even sure how to describe it -- it looked like piles of rotten meat that had congealed into a singular mass. There were pieces of corpses sticking out of the interconnected web of flesh piles that seemed to be slowly growing over the concrete walls.

I had no idea what this was, I realized, and it was like getting dunked into ice cold water. My heart seized in my chest, lurching against my ribs to the point it was painful. There wasn't anything like this in RE3 or the movies.

"Walkway is blocked," Jill noted, sounding far more calm about this than I felt. She pointed her flashlight at the large fleshmass that had engulfed the walkway that would have let us walk above the disgusting filth.

I licked my lips and swallowed my nerves, "The overalls aren't so stupid now, are they?"

"No one likes a sore winner, Rude," Jill sighed, knowing what we had to do. It was absolutely vile, but we had to walk through the rotwater.

Taking a breath, I hopped down in it, and sank up to my waist. My clothing under the overalls remained dry, but I would probably burn them after this just to be sure. Shoulder my shotgun, I walked forward while Jill followed me and I heard her swallow a gag as she did so. I ignored it in favor of watching my surroundings, inspecting the rot piles, seeing the veins of flesh that seemed to connect them.

It was then that I realized what it was.

"This is a nest," I whispered and, as if to agree with me, the inhabitants woke up to find an intruder in their home.

A creature- a monster ripped itself from the flesh pile with an awful shlucking sound that was accompanied by the sound of meat tearing. The filthy water splashed as the monster opened a single massive eye that seemed to glow in the low light. The rest of it was an amalgamation of flesh -- it wasn't quite humanoid, but it was made out of their parts. It almost looked like a crab made out of rotting meat, I thought, black slime water splashing over my visor as it raised an oversized claw with bone protrusions.

My shotgun bucked against my shoulder, the explosive ammo in the chamber striking the massive eye right in the pupil. The creature roared, recoiling from the injury before a half second later, the explosive embedded in the shot exploded. Meat and stale blood rained down on us as the monster collapsed in a heap, breaking apart now that whatever was holding it together was dead.

"Aim for the eye!" I shouted as the nest woke up around us, Jill whipping around as a creature ripped itself free behind us. I fired another shot at another monster, seeing three of them wake up in front of us. It was tempting to summon Dakka, but the situation wasn't completely out of hand.

Yet.

Clenching my jaw, I trusted Jill to have my back and fired at the nearest creature. It seemed to understand that it's eye was a weak point so it angled it away from me. That was fine. I had hand-crafted the explosive ammo to deal with Nemesis, and as freaky as these things were, they weren't Nemesis tough. A claw exploded off the monster, exposing its torso and another three shells into it blew it apart without even needing to hit the eye. The second monster hissed at me, a warbled hellish sound.

I stepped forward to meet it. A shotgun blast took off its oversized claw, and as it recoiled, a second shot destroyed its eye.

The third corpse crab, however, was already bearing down on me. Making a snap decision, I braced to take the hit. The massive claw raced down towards me and it seemed to get a lot bigger the closer it got. I could see the shattered bones that protruded from the club of rotten sinew -- broken ribs and femurs. However, Shield blocked the attack, acting as a physical barrier, and the Spellwrought tattoo on the inside of my wrist vanished.

With the monster exposed, I fired a shot at its eye and the second that it exploded, I felt myself cross the threshold to Level 6. The monsters had to be worth a decent amount of exp, I reasoned as I made my choices as fast as I could, knowing that we weren't out of the woods yet.

There wasn't much to choose from beyond the Infusions and a new spell slot opening up. Most of my choices were already made, but I quickly made a snap decision to trade out Mending for Prestidigitation. If only because of the smell.

My second choice was for the new Infusions. The Spell-Refueling Ring was a must have. My second choice was more situational. I only had so many attunement slots, and I could only have so many active Infusions at a time. I was a bit lucky, though -- I could switch out my learned Infusions when I leveled up, much like I did spells. So, it wasn't a permanent decision.

My second Infusion was Alchemy Jug. A jug that could produce a limited amount of any substance poured into it.

Like, for example, the T-Virus vaccine.

My final choice was a spell. I already had Lesser Restoration, and I wouldn't get Revivify until I got access to 3rd Level spells. For now, for the sake of utility, I chose Enlarge/Reduce. Being able to adjust my size in a pinch sounded lovely.

With my choices made, time resumed and I slammed back into my body. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Jill finishing off the last crab. The very next thing I did was use Prestidigitation, silently lamenting that I hadn't chosen the spell until now. The stench instantly vanished and I found that I could breathe again. Jill noticed it too, glancing back at me with suspicion in her eyes.

"Nanomachines?" She asked with a sigh and I cracked a smile despite the situation.

"Nanomachines," I agreed. "We need to check out the water treatment area. I don't like the fact that these things were so close," I said, pushing through the breaking down corpses with a shiver. I didn't like these things at all. I thought I had a decent enough handle at what this city could throw at me -- zombie dogs? Okay. Zombies? Sure. Giant lizard things? Got it. Spider things? Ew, but I can squish 'em. Massive tadpoles? I can handle it. Nemesis? I'd prefer not to, but I already had a plan.

These crab monsters? I had no clue what they were, why they were here or how they got here.

I especially didn't like the look of that eye.

Reaching the other side of the reservoir, I helped Jill up, who let out a groan of disgust when she saw that the disgusting water was clinging to her. Deciding to help her out, I cast Prestidigitation again and a grunt of surprise escaped her as the water ran off her body and pooled at her feet, leaving her clean and dry. "That's convenient," she remarked. "Thanks."

"What I'm here for," I said, starting the trek over to where the water treatment plant was. Since we were heading to it through the water tunnels the path was a lot straighter, so it was only a short few minutes of walking before I discovered my fears were well founded.

The water treatment plant was filled with… gunk. There weren't piles of rotting meat or anything, but the water was absolutely filthy, complete with dead rats floating in it. Climbing up via an emergency ladder, I leaned on the railing to get a better look… and it was pretty bad. "The other two can't be much better," I realized, my stomach clenching. "Oh. Crap. I showered with this water. I brushed my teeth. Ugh, I think I'm going to puke…!"

Jill's lips curled into a frown, "Something has been living in it. Look," She urged, bringing me to one of the flood gates and I saw that she was right. Something had bent the metal bars until they had all but pressed into the ceiling. Something big had crawled through that gate, and I was coming up with nothing that could fit the bill. Only Nemesis could, and he only got that big towards the end.

"Scary, but we have to do something about the water," I said, my grip tightening around the railing. If something was living down here in what had to be a couple tons of filthy runoff water, then that could explain how the T-Virus got into the water system. It would also explain how it was so… hit and miss. If it was just traces of the virus, with each water treatment plant connected to a third of the city, then it explained how some people got infected and others didn't. There were probably other factors, of course -- distance, the size of the boiler, whether someone drank straight from the tap, if they used hot or cold water, and so on.

"That's a given. What, though?" Jill prompted and I looked over at the monitoring room that overlooked the pool. She followed my gaze, and we both headed up and soon found an old school computer system that had a readout on the water's condition in various parts of the sewer. Unsurprisingly, it was all in the red.

Taking a seat in a chair, I used the keyboard that was built into the desk to start going through screens. The setup was from the early eighties, back when computers were still the size of a room. Raccoon City got the bleeding edge of the time, so it was only down to the size of a dresser. And, what I found made my eyes narrow.

"There's a purge function," I observed with a frown in my voice. That, I was fairly certain, wasn't normal. "It'll clear out the water and cycle it."

"Would that be enough?" Jill asked and I shook my head.

"No -- normally, the reservoirs on standby would be used to flush this crap out, but with how filthy the water is… best case, what's in the pipes is cleaner." I said, a plan forming and I started to fly through the menus. To my relief, all three treatment plants were on the same system and could talk to each other. "I'm going to shut the other two treatment plants down and run a bypass. That should give us enough clean water to get rid of this crap, and I'll concentrate it along the rail network."

Water pipelines tended to follow the metro network in big cities because it was convenient. They were already digging big tunnels underground, after all.

"That's not going to stop it from getting reinfected," Jill pointed out, and she was right about that.

"I'll need to create a filter," I reasoned. "Something to protect this treatment plant, something to clean whatever water does get into the pipes on the chance of lingering infection… and probably another filter back at Central Station." We had water bottles, so we could survive for a little bit, but water was too valuable a resource. Seventy thousand people would go through our reserves in a flash. "Of course, people are going to bitch about it."

"I'd rather them complain than be dead," Jill decided. "How long will this take?"

"To build the filter? An hour, maybe. Issue is that when we purge the system, it's going to get loud. And I'm worried about whatever is living here getting pissed off at us for wrecking his home," I said and, to that, Jill grimaced.

"So, things will get loud. I can handle the loud if you can handle this," Jill said and I got up, heading to the supply closet and opening it. Inside were a lot of chemicals -- industrial amounts. It wasn't everything that I wanted, but it was enough that I could make do.

"Should be," I replied before I started grabbing things. Reaching into my Bag of Holding, I pulled out my Alchemist Tool. Or, in this case, a chemistry set.

It was there that I was reminded again that time was the greatest weakness to my class. Infusions were short cuts. A design that was built on a single cornerstone -- my magic. If I removed the Infusion, then the magic left the item. A real magic item, however, was self sustaining. For that reason, it was independent of my Infusions.

The issue there, however, was time. Magic items needed time to make. Sometimes days of uninterrupted labor. Sometimes it required special materials, of which I was shit out of luck for some. I very much doubted that I was going to find any hill giants to create a Belt of Hill Giant Strength with. Though, I could probably substitute some materials. Maybe.

I could create an Alchemy Jug pretty easily. I would need to shape the clay, inscribe it, wait for it to dry, glaze it with a special magical compound, fire it, and that was it. But, again, that took time. Instead, I was forced to turn the canister with the vaccine into an Alchemy Jug. It could produce up to a gallon a day.

Well in excess of what I needed. I barely needed more than six ounces.

Infusions were instant. Only limited by the number of them I could sustain at a time. At Level 6, I got three of them. So, Bag of Holding, Spellwrought, and Spell-Refueling Ring once I was done with the Jug.

"Hey, Rude?" Jill spoke up, watching me as I got everything ready to make the filter. I would just need to replace them with whatever they had in the pipes now.

"Hm?" I hummed, watching as the chemicals boiled over a flask, straining in to a tube, and then a pale pink fiber began to curl into itself in the framework for an industrial grade water filter.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but… are you… actually smart?" Jill questioned and I paused, looking away from my work to see her watching me.

"...How exactly am I supposed to take that?" I asked flatly, cocking an eyebrow.

"Half the time you run around the place screaming, so you can't blame me for being surprised," she shot back at me, somewhat apologetically. To that, I just huffed and rolled my eyes. "It's weird seeing you do… science. You even look like you know what you're doing," she admitted.

Fair enough, I suppose. "I didn't go to school for it, if that's what you're asking. I'm self-taught, but I could be blind, drunk, and recovering from a lobotomy and I'd still out-do those hacks in Umbrella."

My intelligence was weird. I didn't feel any smarter as my Int stat went up. I didn't suddenly become Lex Luthor or anything, who could play 8D chess and plan a hundred thousand steps ahead with a million contingencies and a million contingencies for each of those contingencies. I did find that I understood things easier though. Learning was simpler. As was applying what I learned.

I'm not sure if there were some skill checks that I was passing, or if I was just generally less stupid than I was at the start. In general, though, it was me applying what I knew and utilizing my tool proficiency. The result, after about forty minutes, was a magic filter that could purify any traces of the T-Virus that passed through it. The mesh was pinkish from the vaccine that was mixed in.

Making it was only so easy because I had access to the vaccine. It was doing most of the leg work. The rest was just making the filter itself.

"Well, you'll have to get used to it. Once everything is less of a chaotic cluster fuck, I'm going to take a step back and really start cranking out what we need," I swore. That was the reason why I chose Artificer over something like Wizard.

Jill chuckled, "Let's see you put your money where your mouth is before you start bragging," She said and I did exactly that.

Initiating the purge on the treatment plant, I heard an alarm going off shortly before the water began to move. It was utterly disgusting, especially when it got to the bottom and I saw the zombies that had fallen in and sunk to the bottom. All of the waste water was pumped out into the reservoirs, which probably pumped that filth into the overflow chambers. Once the water was empty, I headed down to replace the filter while Jill was on overwatch.

I secured the filters to the intake and the outage pipes, meaning that the water coming and going from the treatment plant was double tested for the T-Virus.

It was as I was securing them that I heard it. A low, deep, rhythmic rumbling. Instantly, my gaze snapped to the busted in gate, but that was the wrong place to look I learned when Jill called out to me.

"Rude! We have company!" Jill shouted a split second before I heard her shotgun go off. In haste, I scrambled up the ladder to help her out and it was then that I saw what she meant.

Striding through the door, built like a brick shit house at seven feet tall, was a gray skinned man wearing a black trench coat and a fedora. No- not a man. A corpse. A zombie.

One whose milky white eyes zeroed in on me as it began to march with a terrible purpose.

...

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[veteranMortal]

lycanthromancer has been infracted under rule 2: don't be hateful
It is absolutely unacceptable to equate a group of people with "blood-sucking bedbugs" and advocate for their extermination.

 

[Ideas-Guy]

It wasn't often that I locked up. When it came to fight or flight, I leaned pretty unilaterally 'fight' in most circumstances. The last time I froze like a deer in headlights was when I first arrived in this world. Initially, I thought I had been kidnapped or something and it was only when I went to the hospital to make sure that I still had all of my internal organs that I saw the Umbrella logo. It wasn't that I was afraid of Umbrella exactly, but more that the terrifying implications and the memories of a horrific future slammed into me like a brick.

Seeing Mr. X approaching me with a steady confident gait was terrifying. I knew about the creature mostly through the 'X gonna give it to you' meme, a clip of future Leon Kennedy going to fight three of them with a knife, and… other forms of media. I wasn't sure where exactly he ranked up against Nemesis, but as far as monsters go… if this was a game of DnD, I'd be giving the DM some serious stink eye for being so trigger happy with high CR monsters.

Then, I took a breath and my mind shifted into the highest gear that it had. "Jill! Get away from him! He's big but slow!" I called out, and it was as if I became hyper aware of my surroundings in that moment. I could feel my back getting pressed into a corner, and I didn't like it. But, as inconvenient as it was, this wasn't unexpected. It was only a matter of time before Umbrella sent something or someone after me.

For all of my efforts of spreading awareness, I hadn't really convinced anyone of the incoming apocalypse. The information I leaked, while alarming, wouldn't have any real impact on Umbrella. What I expected was to eventually be picked up by a black ops squad to get interrogated about how I knew what I did. From there, I would have used the opportunity to try to convince Umbrella's mouth breathing higher ups to not fuck around or they were going to be spending the next ten to twenty years trapped in underground bunkers while the virus burned itself out.

But, no black ops ever came. But now that I was running around with claims of access to nanomachines, a little robot, and the vaccine… it seemed that Umbrella had finally decided to put me in their crosshairs. And they'd brought out the big guns to make sure the job got done.

Mr. X strode towards me while Jill backed off, taking shots with her shotgun that Mr. X just ate them like they were a summer's breeze. He very well might be more durable than Nemesis, which was a whole problem. But he wasn't the only one.

I made a snap decision, "Jill! The vaccine! Grab it," I instructed before I took two steps back and slid down the ladder back into the criscen. "Activate a purge!" I added, a plan rapidly coming together as I changed my ammo load out to slugs. Popping one into the side of Mr. X's head was enough to convince him into what I wanted him to do. Mr. X was like a machine made out of meat. There might be some intelligence in there, but it was animalistic at best.

So, without little prompting, Mr. X jumped into the pool area with me. I felt a vibration travel up my feet, and my heart really started to pound at my ribs when he rose to his full height. He utterly towered over me and, without pause, he started to march forward.

"Rude!" Jill called out from above, getting out the grenade launcher. I held her off with a hand, prioritizing as I slowly gave up ground while Mr. X marched forward with a determined unstoppable gait.

"I'll be fine. Get everything started and I'll be right up," I said, firing at Mr. X and he really just took the slugs like they were nothing. One slammed against his forehead, knocking his hat off, but beyond snapping his head back ever so slightly, he was undaunted. His pace was slow, but with his massive legs, he crossed the distance terrifyingly quick. I could tell Jill was pissed, but she did what I asked.

Without Mr. X in the way, she managed to run into the control area to grab the vaccine before I saw her looking over the controls. I backed off slowly, tempted to bring out Dakka, but I didn't want to burn a spell slot. I had to remind myself that while Mr. X was terrifying in appearance, he was far more manageable than Nemesis. Slow. Predictable. It'd be a problem if I got in his reach or was cornered, but so long as I kept my cool… that shouldn't happen.

Then, almost as if to disagree with me, I heard something echoing down tunnel. At first, I thought it was Jill doing something, but when the sound was accompanied by a low hiss and the crunching of concrete, I managed to tear my eyes away from Mr. X to look down the tunnel itself.

Just in time to see two glimmering beady eyes looking back at me in the distance. A split second before the creature's maw opened so large it practically filled the tunnel itself and it raced forward to swallow me whole.

"Oh, fu-" I cursed, throwing myself to the side just in time as the monster erupted from the tunnel, sending a shower of dust and rubble over me. I was quick to roll to my feet and the fact the monster was between me and Mr. X was a cold comfort. The monster was massive, easily twenty to thirty feet in length, covered in albino white scales. The shape of it, however, made it clear what the monster was. "That's a fucking alligator?!" I couldn't stop myself from exclaiming.

Oh my god. I came down here as a level 1.

And what the hell, Umbrella?! How many science experiments are you going to unleash in this city?!

In hindsight, shouting in the presence of a predator that reached the peak of its evolution some ten million years ago before getting super enhanced by a couple of mad scientists wasn't my wisest decision. And the fact that it wasn't my dumbest really made me start to rethink my life a bit, but there wasn't any time to because the titanic Alligator swirled around to face me, tail smacking into Mr. X hard enough that he went flying.

And, worse, the tail raked against the far wall where the ladder was and the feeble iron didn't stand a chance. It was half ripped out of the wall, along with chunks of concrete.

Okay.

Alright.

I might die here.

Might as well go down swinging.

A hand dipped into my bag of holding even as I activated Dakka in her shoulder mount mode. The Alligator lunged at me, and this close, it felt like a semi-truck was out to isekai me again. However, a belch of flames from Dakka managed to dissuade the massive monster, at least temporarily. Enough to jerk it's head to the side enough that I could jump to the side, even as I tossed in my drum of explosive ammo. The creature rushed past me, carried by its own momentum until it slammed into the wall.

There wasn't any time to stand idle, however, as Mr. X was marching towards me as I rolled to my feet.

Dakka fired a shot that struck him square on the chest, knocking him on the back foot. A second later, a grenade struck him and exploded, knocking him onto his back. Above, I saw Jill with the grenade launcher. She fired another shot at the Alligator and I heard a hiss that turned my legs to jelly. "You need to get out of there before it floods!" She reminded me and, as if to agree with her, the water began to pump into the pit that I was trapped inside of with two monsters.

The Alligator's size worked against it ever so slightly, I noticed. The cistern was large enough for it to turn around and get comfortable, but it was just small enough that making tight turns was a pain. Not enough to stop it, but enough to make it slow. As it did so, wheeling around, I glanced up at the railing above it. The gap was there. If I was a NBA athlete, maybe I could make that jump, but…

"Try to shut off the purge! I don't want to taint the water," I said, watching as Mr. X got up, and man, he really was built like a tank.

"Rude-" Jill started this, but I gave her a thumbs up and a grin that was only mostly faked.

"I'm good. I have a plan," I said, watching both the alligator and Mr. X. Between the two, I was far more worried about the alligator. But, Mr. X was adding pressure that I really didn't need. If it was just one of them, I'm pretty sure that I could out maneuver them and escape. Both? That was a tall order.

So, I had to remove one from play. And I had just the thing.

I'm pretty sure that Jill didn't believe me, but she decided to have a little trust. The water started flowing over my ankles as I took a low steadying breath, slowly shifting myself in position. The alligator finished turning itself around, while Mr. X was taking freakishly huge strides towards me. I only had one shot at this, so I had to make it count. I couldn't afford to play conservatively.

I cast Expeditious Retreat upon myself, essentially doubling my speed when I was hauling ass. Dakka took aim, ready to make some adjustments if needed.

The alligator seemed to sense some kind of change in me, but it was an animal. A predator. And I'm guessing it was pissed off that I wrecked it's home. So, with a low hiss, it launched itself forward, and I took a moment to note that I still saw the explosive drum wedged between two teeth. But, that's not what my goal was.

Mr. X closed in, a hand reached out to me and I also noticed that his hand was large enough to crush my skull in his palm. The alligator closed in from behind, a gaping maw so large that it could swallow Mr. X whole.

And that was exactly the plan.

Dakka fired, stumbling Mr. X while I used my daily use of Misty Step. My vision turned a silvery white as I felt a pull in my gut. Teleportation was weird, I decided, only taking a single step yet I traveled a good thirty feet behind the charging alligator. Mr. X just barely missed me, and he was too late to react to the Alligator attacking him from behind. The alligator, however, only knew that it had bitten into someone and started chowing down. It spasmed a bit, and I took that as a sign that Mr. X wasn't content with being a meal, but none of that was my problem.

I dashed forward, sprinting towards the back of the Alligator as it thrashed. If I thought about what I was doing, I'd probably screw it up. So, for that reason, I only realized how stupid this was when I was sprinting up the length of the alligator, and it threw its head back, feeling me there. Which made its head a perfect ramp to jump to the railing.

Sailing through the air, a hole opened up in my gut when I realized I was going to be short a couple of inches. At least, until Jill's hand caught my wrist, banging me against the railing, before starting to pull me up with a heave. I scrambled up the railing, glancing down to see a very pissed off Alligator that had already eaten Mr. X by the looks of things. "Move! Move!" I shouted, realizing what it was about to do the moment that Jill pulled me up.

Without so much as a thought, I cast Expeditious Retreat on Jill, and even with it, it was a close save when the Alligator lunged up, its maw clamping down on the railing and pulling as it stood on its back legs.

"I opened something up with the controls! This way!" Jill decided, and I realized she was right and we both made a mad dash away from the alligator. A wall that had previously been there wasn't. I spotted an immediate issue that it was a wide open space on the other side, but given that there was a dinosaur behind us I wasn't in the mood to complain. We sprinted across the threshold, the railing wobbling while the Alligator gave chase.

The hidden space concealed a railcar that descended into a hole in the ground. It was pitch black at the bottom, making it impossible to tell how far down it went.

My mind leapt to a conclusion. "This leads down to the Hive," I said, pulling ahead to the railcar. The door was closed, an icon flashing red before a computerized voice said, "ID wristband required."

The wristbands, I thought, reached into the bag of holding to pull out one of the wristbands I had looted from a corpse. I had no idea what they were, but I thought that they seemed important.

"Uhh… Rude…!" Jill exclaimed a split second before there was an ear piercing sound of metal rending. I looked over, completely missing the railcar accepting the ID wristband because I was too busy picking up my jaw upon seeing the alligator climbing up into the hole we escaped through and was forcing itself through it.

It snapped its jaws in our direction and I hastily grabbed Jill, pulling her into the railcar and rushing to the controls. Slamming the crank forward as far as it would go, I felt the railcar start to move and carry us down to the Hive. Where, honestly, we probably had more problems waiting for us. This wasn't how I wanted to get into the Hive.

I foolishly believed we got away, right up until the railcar shook as something massive slammed into it. I was slammed into the wall, while Jill managed to grab hold of a handrail. The sound of tearing metal echoed out even before the back end of the railcar started to crumple inward. The railcar surged forward, the few extra tons of the Alligator causing it to get knocked off the rails and we were left skiddinding down the way.

"Today is just not my day," I decided, switching Dakka to health mode because I got the feeling the temp HP would be needed. At the same time, I reached out to Jill while the Alligator tore a chunk out of the railcar and spat it out by flinging it to the side. "Take my hand!"

Jill didn't hesitate. She leapt forward just as the railcar began to shift to the side, metal squealing in showers of sparks that we left in our wake. She flew through the air before I caught her hand, bringing her in close while I considered our next move with the precious seconds we had left before we met an abrupt crash landing. I had two spell slots left, which was enough for something. Expeditious Retreat was still active too.

The real issue was the Alligator that was clinging to the railcar, determined to force its maw inside to snack on the two of us. It was then that I knew what we had to do.

"Jill! Upper right side in the back!" I exclaimed, holding on for dear life and we were lucky that's all I needed to say for Jill to understand what the plan was. She hefted the grenade launcher, taking aim as the Alligator surged closer, treating steel like it was soft aluminum. The grenade sailed forth at the Alligator's back teeth, precisely where my explosive drum magazine was wedged. The grenade went off, causing a chain reaction and the next thing I knew, there was an explosion of gore.

I didn't stay to see it because, as the railcar started to flip without the Alligator acting as a counterbalance, I sprinted forth and cast Feather Fall on the both of us, burning my last spell slot, as we jumped from the railcar. Jill was shouting in panic as we fell, letting loose a spew of curses, right up until we were about to hit the ground. Then, we inexplicably slowed down, hovering off the ground for a short second, before touching down just as the corpse of the Alligator and the railcar slammed into the welcome area of the Hive.

The ground rumbled a bit, shaking from the collision, but…

"Would you look at that? We lived. Gotta say, I didn't see that coming," I admitted, the adrenaline starting to leave my veins as I let go of Jill. We stood on the incline that the rail traveled down, and I thankfully saw a service ladder to climb up to where we should have gotten off.

"What did you do to piss that thing off that much?" Jill breathed, taking a seat on the incline as she caught her breath.

"You mean what did we do," I corrected, "And we destroyed its crib." To that, Jill just snorted, shaking her head.

"You also teleported. And we flew," she noted, glancing up at me and, to that, I could only grimace.

"That's a one time thing, I'm afraid. I've officially run out of tricks up my sleeve." I had hoped that killing the Alligator might be enough for a level, but no such luck. That revealed the downside of an exp based leveling system because that was 100% a milestone level right there. Instead, I was about a third of my way to level 7. So, the Alligator had a challenge rating of around CR 6, netting me 2,700 exp for a single kill. Not bad considering I would have had to kill 54 zombies for the same amount of exp.

I expected more questions from Jill. I really did. Some of what I was doing was pretty far outside of the realm of what nanobots were feasibly capable of. So, either Jill had fully bought the nanobot excuse and decided not to bother thinking about it any further -- doubtful, on account of that whole 'elite police officer' thing. Or, she was just taking me on faith. And that was a little humbling, if I was being honest.

"No more miracles out of your ass then. We'll just have to make do," she decided, standing up and checking her ammo for her shotgun. "Don't suppose you know anything about this place?"

I glanced at the wreckage of the railcar and the corpse of the Alligator. They did both more and less damage than I expected to see. Less in the sense the platform was mostly intact. More in the sense of… well, the place had just gotten a new paint job in the form of a crimson red. "Not as much as I would like," I admitted. "I knew it existed, and that Umbrella was doing moronic experiments down here. But, that's about it."

There were a couple of things I was hoping to find down here, however -- the railgun, more vaccines, and Alice. Between the three of those things, we would be golden.

"Didn't know this was here, though. The entrance I did know about was underneath the hospital," I added and Jill cocked an eyebrow in my direction while we started heading into the Hive. "Secret door that only Umbrella personnel could enter. Dead give away."

That got Jill to roll her eyes with exasperation because she couldn't even doubt me at this point. Climbing up onto the platform, I tried not to slip as everything was covered in a layer of gore. The front door, however, was still intact and putting the ID wristband on my wrist, the same synthetic voice greeted me. "Welcome, Dr. Kendall."

I was really hoping I wasn't going to be dealing with a schizo murderous loli AI, I thought as the doors slid open to find that things down in the Hive were every bit as fucked as they had been up top. Bloodstains on the wall, busted out light, and the noise of the door opening attracted a zombie that stumbled out of a receptionist area. Dakka fired a shot, blasting the head open.

"We should be able to find vaccines down here. We get them up top, and I might be able to work my magic to produce more." I said as we started to clear the area. Either this place would have the chemicals necessary to make a vaccine, or failing that, I could make more Alchemy Jugs. "Might be best to grab what data we can while we're down here too. Even if it doesn't have something related to a vaccine, I'm sure it'll be useful in the court dates to come."

"Smart," Jill acknowledged. "And we're clear," she said. Meaning this lobby area was as safe as we were going to get. She glanced my way as we went up to the next door and shared a nod. I approached with my shotgun raised and Dakka on my shoulder, making the door slide open to reveal a long hallway that was dark except for some emergency lights lining the floor and walls.

Activating my headlamp, the area was washed in more light, showing an absolute bloodbath had happened here. And, from the sounds of it, there was still a feast going on in the cafeteria. Turning off my headlamp before it gave us away, we approached silently towards the nearest door. Peeking inside revealed an odd dozen zombies that were snacking on a few corpses. I glanced at Jill, who nodded.

Shifting Dakka to full body mode, I had her remain behind on vigilance mode to make sure that nothing got the drop on us from behind. With our backs covered, the two of us went in and started blasting, dropping the corpses with what was becoming practiced ease.

It only took a short minute for the cafeteria to be cleared and, once it was, I found myself eyeing a vending machine.

Fishing some cash out of one of the zombies wallets, I fed a ten into the vending machine. "How do you take your coffee?" I asked her, and I could feel Jill's disbelieving stare on my back.

Didn't stop her from answering though, "Black, no sugar."

"Gross," I remarked, a paper cup dropping down before piping hot black coffee filled it. Once it was full, I passed it to Jill, who took a deep sip despite the heat and let out a shuddering breath of pure relief.

"That's exactly what I needed," Jill sighed before shooting me a look. "A double sweet mint mocha latte?" She questioned and I smiled unrepentantly.

"Life is short and bitter, Jill. Coffee should at least be sweet," I replied and Jill snorted into her cup while mine was topped up. I needed to make one of these things-- it even had whip cream. Once it was done, I took a sip and licked off the whip cream stache that it left behind. "Hmm… that's good coffee."

"I'm not even sure you can call that coffee. It's caffeinated sugar and milk."

"It's delicious caffeinated sugar and milk. Now, stop judging my taste, or I'll start judging your sad bean juice," I warned and that got a small laugh out of her. Then another more genuine one as she shook her head.

"You're something else, Rude," she said, catching my attention. "We're trapped beneath the city in an underground lab filled with undead, we just about got eaten by a giant monster, Umbrella sent another monster after you, and we're in a race against the clock to stop the world from ending. And now you're standing there calling coffee sad bean juice. Does none of this shit get under your skin?" She asked, and I felt like that was a genuine, earnest question.

I pursed my lips and shrugged, "Honestly, it's mostly that I'm beating out most of my expectations. I figured I'd be dead by now," I admitted, taking a sip from my latte. "Probably because of Umbrella sending a hit squad after me, or something. Instead, we managed to secure a base of operations, we have a vaccine for the T-Virus, and we're in their house about to ransack it for everything it's worth. So… the secret to my chipper is to keep your expectations low, so you'll always be pleasantly surprised."

Jill held my gaze for a long searching second before she let out a small huff of amusement before polishing off her coffee and tossing it into a trashcan. "Something to keep in mind, I guess," she acknowledged.

The moment came to an abrupt end, however, when I heard a crackling from the intercom. A woman's voice, but unlike the others, it wasn't artificial. "You two, in the cafeteria," she began, sounding almost breathless. I glanced at the intercom in the corner of the cafeteria before finding a security camera near it. "If either of you want to live… then you need to do exactly what I say."

"Any idea who that is?" Jill asked, and just like that, the tension returned in full force.

I frowned at the camera, "Dunno. Let's go find out."

...

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