Chapter Text
The second Leon S. Kennedy laid eyes on Zeno, he knew he was going to be a massive pain in his ass.
Being a clone of Albert Wesker was bad enough, but the three-piece suit? The leather overcoat? The completely undeserved ego and the gigantic gun (that definitely wasn’t compensating for anything)? Pair all that with the fact that his and Gideon’s obsession with Grace had forced Leon to relive the horrors of Raccoon City, and he wanted nothing more than to rip those stupid sunglasses off Zeno’s face and cram them down his throat.
Then there was the masked soldier following at his custom-loafered heels like a loyal dog.
He wasn’t your average grunt, Leon thought as soon as he clocked him prowling around in the back of the dilapidated East Office. He looked to be male and in excellent shape, but identifying details beyond that were hard to make out due to his attire, which was similar to that of an Umbrella guard. The mask he wore covered his entire face from chin to the top of his forehead and was sleek and angular, leaving only his hair visible. It was cropped short and appeared to be either dark blond or brown; his eyes were obscured by the mask’s red-tinted lenses, but his right ear looked chewed up by scarring.
What stuck out the most to Leon was the soldier’s right arm, or rather the absence of it. In place of a flesh-and-bone limb was a sleek, high-tech looking prosthetic that appeared to move exactly like a real one would. That cost a pretty penny, significantly more than the sniper rifle strapped to his back or any of the other countless weapons on his person. He never seemed to stop moving–except for when Leon fired his gun at Zeno, right after Grace collapsed to the floor unconscious.
“Mr. Kennedy,” Zeno said with no small amount of annoyance after dodging the shots Leon had aimed his way with preternatural speed. “I had a feeling you’d make an appearance. Sorry, but I don’t have time to spare.” The ceiling between them caved in, bringing with it the hulking form of a very familiar gray-skinned Tyrant. As it straightened to its full, intimidating height, Zeno’s pet soldier hopped up onto a nearby desk, dropping into a half-crouch like he was getting ready to pounce. Meanwhile, Zeno picked up Grace, and uttered some sarcastic parting words: “Have fun.”
“I remember you,” Leon said to the Tyrant, firing off a couple of bullets at it even though he knew it wouldn’t do him any good. For the last trigger pull he pivoted, aiming toward the soldier at the same moment he happened to leap forward, and the thunk of the bullet catching the edge of his mask and ripping it away from his face caused both Leon and the Tyrant to pause for a split second. Then Leon was flinging up his hatchet to deflect the massive haymaker aimed for his head, only to get caught in the abdomen by a punch so hard it sent him flying back into the hallway, the breath pushed from his lungs. “Ugh… I remember that, too.”
He pushed himself up and pulled Requiem from its holster, setting his sights on the weakened joists over the Tyrant’s approaching head. In the split second before he pulled the trigger, Leon caught a glimpse of Zeno’s soldier with his mask off… and was startled to realize that he recognized him.
Much like his ear, the right-hand side of his face had been eaten by scarring, but the man staring at him with an expression of shock, confusion, and haunting emptiness was none other than Piers Nivans.
He bolted before Leon could do as much as draw breath to call out, and by then he was out of time; he had no choice but to shoot, crushing the Tyrant under a pile of rubble. He doubted very much that’d hold it for long, if past experience was anything to go by, so he got to his feet and muffled a cough against his arm. His head was spinning, and not just from the Tyrant punch or the blood that spattered past his lips.
Piers Nivans? A dead man who wasn’t so dead after all, clearly conditioned into some sort of brainwashed weapon? The idea should’ve been ridiculous, and yet it wasn’t at all; not with the insane things Leon saw in his day-to-day life. After accepting the notion, his mind immediately jumped to Chris. It had sort of been there anyway, wondering if he’d ever get to seem him and their family again–but now it stretched to the fact that Leon and Chris were married, had been for close to ten years now, and Piers–
Fuck, Chris had been in love with Piers. He’d never said those exact words out loud, but he didn’t need to. Leon could read him like a favorite book, front cover to back and all over again, and it was written on him like the ink of a tragic poem every time someone mentioned his former lieutenant’s name. But… none of that really mattered right now, did it?
Leon could be jealous and insecure later. Right now, he had an FBI agent and a soldier to save.
~***~
Easier said that fucking done, Kennedy, he thought a while later, after (once again) defeating Mr. X and stumbling his way through the orphanage and down into Plant 44’s domain.
But as it turned out, exterminating the world’s most annoying weed was the easy part. The hard part came once he was inside the ARK, figured out where Grace was, and had to fight his way through a bunch of Umbrella grunts. They were sturdier and harder to kill than the desiccated remains of those BSAA soldiers, and with each swing of his hatchet, Leon felt himself growing steadily weaker.
Never let ‘em see you sweat, even as you cut their throats, was the philosophy he was operating under, and it held strong… until he found himself in a glass-walled corridor, face-to-face once more with Piers.
Leon heard an earpiece crackle, but couldn’t pick up the words of the speaker. He did, however, hear Piers’s response: “Not necessary.” His voice was the same as what Leon recalled from their brief encounter in China, though flat and toneless. “I’ll neutralize the target myself.”
Then he was rushing Leon at full speed, which for someone who had survived the C-Virus was fast. Leon raised his handgun and fired off a couple quick shots, but they were dodged, forcing him to draw his hatchet in order to parry the metal fist that came for his head. The blow was enough to send him skidding backward against the tile floor but he locked his knees, managing to keep his arms up against Piers’s brutal strength.
“Fancy meeting you here, Nivans,” Leon said, grunting when an elbow caught him in the chest and countering with a kick. “Don’t suppose you’d wanna do me a favor and remember who you are?”
A snort, but not one that was genuinely amused. More like a parody of it. “I heard you were a smartass,” he replied, then grabbed Leon by his harness and attempted to slam his forehead into Leon’s face. He let out a subhuman growl when Leon got the hatchet between them, pushing at his chest to hold him off, and went along without a care when Leon backed them toward the nearest pane of glass, throwing both of them into the storage room below.
~***~
The Asset barely felt the impact with the concrete floor, shards of glass sticking out of his uniform and causing rapidly healing little cuts on his scalp. Such things were of no consequence when a threat like Leon S. Kennedy was within arm’s reach and required elimination. Speaking of arms, he rolled over and slammed his metal fist into the space where Kennedy had been a second ago, gritting his teeth when he realized the DSO agent had scrambled out of reach.
Only to pause on one knee, coughing up blood against the back of his hand.
The Asset was never one to squander an opportunity and dove forward, tackling Kennedy to the floor and pinning him there with his knees on either side of his hips. He locked his flesh hand around Kennedy’s throat, cutting off his already feeble air supply and causing the agent’s eyes–normally blue, but desaturated to a pale green thanks to the Raccoon City Syndrome–to bug out of his head as he flailed an arm out to try and reach the hatchet he’d dropped, just a little too far away.
The Asset’s metal fist rose, fully intent on beating Kennedy’s pretty (pretty?) face into pulp.
“Piers,” Kennedy choked out, barely able to speak thanks to the fingers crushing his windpipe, “Don’t–don’t d-do this…” There was pleading there, but it was more than that; regret, maybe? Guilt? “What… what would Chris think?”
The Asset’s fist snapped to a stop about two inches from Kennedy’s nose… and above him, Piers Nivans emerged on the surface of his own mind for the first time in thirteen years. When he spoke it was in a voice full of dawning horror, and sounded as if it were coming from far away even though he heard it vibrating inside his own chest: “Leon…?”