Chapter Text
A/N: Hello, people!
I don't own Resident Evil.
I have no beta.
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Ethan stared down at his hand as the freshly bitten off bits began to grow back. It wasn't painless, and it certainly wasn't clean, but it was something else to witness. One of the few benefits to being a fungal... Mold-thing was that he didn't have to worry about dying or losing limbs because the Mold would always make it grow back. He knew this very well already.
He hadn't taken the realization of his new nature very well in the beginning though. One too many bullets wasted at the time and waking up in the forest too many times, freezing his ass off. Death was not an option for him it seemed. Thankfully, no one else was made aware of just how fucked up he was mentally.
[That's because you refused to listen!] the collective conscious of the Mold hissed at him in disappointment. A cacophony of voices from the various lives it had collected over however long it had existed in this place. Bit creepy but nothing a little exposure therapy wouldn't solve.
Or Stockholm Syndrome, a distant portion of his mind suggested. That works too. We've dealt with that before and it didn't go over too terribly. We can just do it all again, don't worry.
His hand was completely healed within a minute of losing half of it to a wolf-man-thing's ravaged mouth. The fresh skin of his new fingers looked odd besides the old and calloused skin of the rest of his fingers. He could feel the newness of those fingers and the odd tingle of the fresh skin as it interacted with the open air and everything else. It reminded him of the new skin that would grow in under a scab. Gross.
At least he didn't have to fear death in this shithole. His body seemed to literally be incapable of it because the Mold was so powerful, and he'd finally apparently returned to the very source of it all. There was literally Mold everywhere here, deep beneath the surface, so there was a constant source at hand.
Also... the fungus that was his body kept absorbing the remains of everything he killed, which was probably why he was able to regenerate so fast. Like, it wasn't like he was eating the remains or even like, sucking them in somehow, but when they calcified and turned to dust, they seeped into the earth, and he could feel it giving him energy every single time.
Freaky.
[Normal,] the Mold countered in mild offense. [We are what we are and have always been. This is us. We are the norm.]
The Mold was old as sin apparently. The Black God of the soil.
Wonder if we'll sprout mushrooms at some point, that sassy voice in his mind thought up. Maybe we can learn to shoot mushrooms from our fingertips like little bullets! Then we can save on ammo!
"Or maybe we can not sound like a monstrosity for five minutes."
You're boring.
[We are a gift. Appreciate our power. We have been blessed appropriately.]
It'd be cool if the mushroom bullets could explode on contact and cover everything in some kind of poisonous gas! Then anything that dared walk in it would suffer!
"As long as they don't start sprouting out of my skin like some kind of mutated fungal spore bullshit, I don't really care."
It would honestly be the least of his worries at present.
Cute blond man walks in like he owns the place and actually dares to aim a gun at him! Karl Heisenberg was impressed. Not local and with a distinctly American accent to his English. Nice eyelashes and a certainly intense look of madness on his face. "Who the fuck are you?" the man had demanded, eyes bloodshot and hands shaking quite obviously though maybe not in fear like preferred.
Adorable, nonetheless.
This was the man Mother Miranda had mentioned. Certainly not what he'd expected but he was at least pleasantly surprised by the view. Though why she was so wary of him remained to be seen. Seemed like any other generic American man.
"We do so love foreigners here!" Heisenberg jeered, forcing the various metal bits around the room to close in on the man. "I'll make sure to give you a proper welcome."
"Fucking shit," the man mumbled, eyes swinging from metal bit to metal bit, "it's Discount Magneto. Of all the fucking luck." And then his head tilted to the side and his eyes became unfocused. "Or he's a knockoff wizard." And then his voice deepened suddenly. "We have Magneto at Home." He laughed at his own words.
Slightly put off by such abnormal behavior from a human, Heisenberg commenced with the kidnapping. If only to make the man stop talking to himself. He got enough of that shit with Donna and her stupid doll, he didn't want more of it where it wasn't needed.
He ended up greatly regretting not knocking the man out first because he talked to himself the entire way to the meeting and lugging his ass wasn't exactly fast-going. He was a lot heavier than he looked.
"Kinda gives off hobo vibes."
"Nice coat though. It could do with a nice wash but really, it adds to the whole aesthetic."
"Shit! Did I bother hanging the phone up before this shit went down?!"
The man was a mess. If he managed to survive what was to come, Heisenberg wouldn't mind seeing what became of him. Perhaps, if he proved useful, he could be a good ally.
At least an ally that was nice to look at.
Ethan stared down at the unconscious teenagers he'd somehow managed to knock out with the power of fungal persuasion. He didn't really know what to call it so that had to be the best he could come up with. Besides Rose, he'd never been good at naming things. Or comebacks. Or jokes.
These... creature-being-whatevers were all mutated by the Mold. They'd been experimented and were now more Mold than Human, if they'd ever been human to begin with. As the newest Mold-Being and the only one of pure Mold currently around, Ethan got to have the privilege of weird Mold powers and all they could be used to do.
Such as apparently shooting mushrooms from his fingertips and then exploding into a noxious gas upon contact.
I'm a genius! his inner voice declared with glee. I knew it was gonna work!
[ Of course it was going to work. We are the Mold, and we are capable of anything. If we decide to do something, it's only a matter of time before it happens.]
The vampire-like sisters, Bela, Daniela, and Cassandra were passed out on the ground of what he would guess was the foyer. He didn't know how big the castle was or what the difference was between a castle and a townhouse, but he'd just go with his gut instinct here. It was the foyer until further notice.
After narrowly avoiding what no doubt would have been a painful experience being sliced open by their sickles, he was now unsure of what to do. Where did he go? How was he going to find Rose in this place? It looked fucking massive from outside and now he was on the inside and hated it.
[The offspring was never anywhere near here.]
"What?"
[This side of the castle doesn't contain any traces of her. At least, not when she was whole.]
"Excuse me?"
[Offspring has been sectioned into pieces because she was uncooperative. Will be put back together for the ceremony.]
Ethan tried not to let his emotions get the better of him, but honestly, he was suddenly imagining himself just unloading every damn bullet he had on hand, into that blonde bitch's head.
"Can you at least tell what direction Rose would be in?" he asked through gritted teeth, trying to calm himself down.
[Down,] the Mold responded. [Her energy goes down, toward the roots.]
God, was there a dungeon or some shit? It was an old castle, of course there was.
Are we going to kill the blonde bitch? the voice asked eagerly. I want to see if we can remove all of her limbs first and then roast her over a spit!
"My mind changes every other minute, so we'll just have to wait and see," Ethan murmured as he headed deeper into the castle, trying to find a way to get downstairs.
He was perhaps twenty of so feet away when the sound of an opening door echoed along the corridors and the tall woman from before was screaming, "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY DAUGHTERS?!"
Needless to say, he wasn't looking forward to confronting her any time soon. While he hadn't killed them, he doubted they'd be waking up any time soon.
Karl Heisenberg stared at the screen in... enrapt confusion. Ethan Winters was the source of said emotion and the man seemed to be making it his entire life's purpose to be as odd as possible. And coming from someone who was a lab experiment who was forcefully mutated into whatever the fuck he could be considered now, that was not exactly a compliment. An observation perhaps, if he was feeling generous in the moment.
Still, Ethan Winters.
Papa to Rosemary Winters. The supposedly perfect vessel that Miranda had done all of this for.
Every single thing, all for the kid she lost so long ago.
Like, maybe he was heartless or whatever, but he wasn't exactly of the opinion that the woman who kidnapped and tortured children for decades, deserved pity all because she never got over the death of her own spawn. Karl had been removed from his family and turned into this, and then forced into compliance for decades. Pardon him if he was incapable of feeling pity for his kidnapper.
The one good thing happening right now... was that the kid was powerful. And smart. Even at such a young age, she was advanced enough to sense supernatural dangers and act accordingly. She shut herself down the moment Miranda touched her, but remained observant, nonetheless. Able to tell exactly who was near and what they wanted without having to be awake int he physical sense.
She was not cooperating, and Miranda was almost at her wits end over it.
A truly strange occurrence that he'd yet to see before. Miranda's cooing and sweet words had no effect on the child's state. Even though she should be pure Mold and somewhat beholden to Miranda considering the bitch's control over the Mold, she just wasn't budging. Even when Miranda had pretended to be her mother for however long, there was no response.
An odd child.
Supposedly, this was because the mother had been infected with the Mold even while pregnant. Despite supposedly being given a cure at some point. It was hard to believe but it was apparently all true and Miranda knew the full details behind how Rosemary Winters came to be. That was why she claimed the child was perfect for her plans.
But Heisenberg wasn't exactly so convinced. After all, he'd just watched Papa Winters regrow his severed hand in like a minute. Literally. He wasn't even exaggerating due to frustration, that was what happened.
While his secret cameras couldn't catch every single thing that happened all over the village, he was still able to catch the majority of things even if whatever happened in the middle gets cut out because someone moved out of frame.
So, he got to see Ethan entering the view of a camera and Alcina sneaking up on him and chopping his hand off. Both then disappeared from the camera for a bit but there were enough sounds to let him know that she was slicing and dicing things up and Ethan was hauling ass as quickly as he could. He then returned to the gate to grab his severed hand from the lever and when he turned around, the stump Alcina had left behind was sprouting new, blackened flesh!
Everything seemed to slow down in that moment as all of them, even Mega Bitch, watched in a mix of awe and bafflement, as the dark limb grew and grew, until an entirely new hand remained, the black goop lightening until it was the same color as Ethan's skin tone. Ethan turned his wrist back and forth, flexing his fingers a few times and nodded to himself. He then tossed the remaining severed limb behind himself with a shrug and gave Alcina a cheeky wave before running out the newly opened doorway.
Heisenberg got to witness his beloved sister staring down at the severed hand on the ground. "What the hell is he?" Alcina asked herself as she bent low to take up the severed limb, turning it over in confusion to see the clean cut she'd made. All done conveniently in view of the camera that she turned to look at, shocking him for a moment. "Little brother, you better have some insight when I call you," she sneered. And then she was sauntering off, leaving him to wonder how she'd known about the camera, and also wondering if she knew about all of them that he'd hidden in her castle.
Whatever.
More important things going on at the moment.
Ethan Winters could regrow missing limbs. From a weird, black goop that grew out of his skin and turned into said new limb.
Perhaps... Miranda's assumption about Rosemary's mother was false. Maybe it was the father all along.
All that effort to create a vessel for her dead kid and of all the people capable of bringing it into being, it ends up being a man who was infected with what could basically be considering a North American strain of the Mold samples she'd given to those scientists all those years ago. The problem was the project was successful as well as a failure because the Americans managed to usher in five new species of the Mold, but all of them failed the testing requirements for not being perfect enough.
Yet Ethan Winters... he'd been exposed to E-001. Supposedly was infected alongside his wife and went through all hell in Louisiana to find a cure. Perhaps his body was the perfect host for the Mold, unlike all other humans E-001 had infected. His body had assimilated the Mold. Odd, seeing as he'd been infected the least longest out of the total victims.
Yes, Karl Heisenberg was now very curious about Papa Winters. Beyond his pretty face and long eyelashes there was something else at play and he would get to the bottom of it.
"I thought those plants were a little too vibrant compared to everything else out here in the dead of winter," Ethan murmured to himself...themself... whatever. Fact was, in the middle of the snow there had been these oddly bright green plants that seemed to have yellow pollen coming off of them. He'd been wary for good reason.
He had no idea what had been absorbed in his body but God dammit did he wish it would pass soon. His vision was swaying just a little and it was annoying.
"Are we hallucinating?" he asked the open air, because it was getting harder to hear himself thinking to himself, if that made any sense. "Like, more hallucinating than we usually do to be specific. Like, as in we are less distracted by something and more like we're high as fuck?"
HHee heheh hheee heeh hhehehhhheee! the voice cackled. That's some good shit! You never let us smoke weed before; I wonder if it's like this all the time.
"God, I hope not." This isn't fun at all. Weed was supposed to be good, supposedly.
You're boring.
[Offspring is here. Very near. But the mind is too clouded to find her yet.]
Fucking wonderful. He was just running around in circles in his mind and probably wasn't even moving in reality. "Can't we just purge the shit from our system and be on our way?"
The Mold hesitated for a moment, before giving him the answer he was seeking. [In a manner of speaking. The energy required to expel the toxins so aggressively instead of allowing them to run their course, would require much more energy to be absorbed in the very near future. The hunger will be borderline unbearable until you fulfil the requirements.]
Meaning he'd have to kill a lot of those hairy Lycan-man-things around the village and absorb them back into the Mold.
Doable if a bit annoying. He just didn't want to sit here for hours hallucinating when it wasn't even of anything nice like sex or food or that one time, he'd had a daydream about Chris getting pegged by Mia. Some illusions and visions weren't a problem... when he'd willingly chosen to have them.
But none of them chose this experience. The Beneviento chick was not a playmate Ethan was interested in.
It's not as if you were ever interested in the other popular playmates in pop culture.
"Please, stop talking. Just get to it."
Seeing Ethan Winters secreting some odd, green gas from his skin made Heisenberg feel like vomiting. He'd known from personal exploration and experience, that Donna had the entire path leading up to her shitty home, covered in those damn plants. Ethan should be high at a fucking kite, but instead, he was just standing there, speaking to himself as usual and apparently having an argument.
A decision was made, and then the green gas was seeping out of his pores and clouding up the view of the camera.
The human-thing coughed and waved away the cloud of gas around his head. "Disgusting." Another cough. "When I suggested purging, this isn't what I'd exactly had in mind, you know?"
After several moments, the green gas finally seemed to fade, and Ethan Winters looked around himself in awe. "Damn. She really was right here this whole time," he said, staring at the flask holding a part of his daughter's body in it. Donna had left it by the front door for fuck's sake!
"I'm getting the fuck outta here."
"You can't leave!"
Donna appeared in view of the camera, but whatever she was planning to do with Angie, was cut short as Ethan Winters whipped his hand out and apparently threw something at her hard enough to knock her down. He then stuck his tongue out childishly and stalked out the door as if it was nothing, leaving Donna coughing on the floor and Angie screaming about revenge.
"Karl, what is he?" Donna eventually asked the camera in the top right corner of the room.
...WHY DOES EVERYBODY SEEM TO KNOW WHERE HIS SECRET CAMERAS WERE?!
"This way, papa?" Ethan read aloud, staring at the vast collection of signs plastered all over the village now. He'd been at the reservoir for like an hour, maybe two if he was feeling generous with his time. Discount Magneto managed to set up all these metal structures in so little time and even paint messages for him in shitty yellow paint.
He called us, daddy!
"And here I've been called a twink for years," Ethan murmured with a shrug. "Not exactly expected but hey, everyone has things they're into."
Heisenberg's obvious flirting was a bit... odd. After the whole murder attempt upon Ethan's arrival in the village, he wondered how the man's mind brought him to this moment. Or maybe it was another weird fetish of his. One that potentially involved watching people almost die but then not die because they weren't fucking idiots and knew how to pay attention.
[He wasn't trying to kill us though. If he was, we'd be regenerating our whole body right now and not just wandering around.]
"How do you even know that? It's not like he just came out and said all this to you- or rather- us." Could the Mold read everyone's minds perhaps?
Ethan was still confused about the I, Me, My, They, We, Our thing going on inside his head/body. There was his voice and then there was the other voice and then there was the Mold's legion of voices. Like, it was one organism but as a fungus it functioned a bit differently and in fact, absorbed the consciousness of anyone who died while a part of it.
At times it felt like he was alone inside and others it felt too crowded. Was he just Ethan or were they all Ethan? He used to be Ethan only and then Louisiana happened and now he had a little extra going on under the skin. Confusing as hell to say the least. Especially when it all came with extra voices that had their own opinions. He was also 81% sure that the one voice was Eveline in some form.
[Heisenberg is one of ours,] the Mold whispered pleasantly and with an unexpected level of warmth. [We are connected to all of them.]
"I don't get it."
They mean that everyone here is just an experiment of that Miranda bitch and it connects all of them to the Mold because she implanted things inside them and caused them to change into what they are now, dummy, the voice groaned.
[Exactly. The crow has many powers derived from us, but she is not our leader and we do not heed her beck and call. She may exert control over her experiments, but she only knows what we allow her to. We have hidden many things from her keen eyes, and she has remained wary since the beginning.]
"Was this some convoluted way of telling me that Discount Magneto isn't my enemy?"
Precisely.
Great. Wonderful. Whatever.
"I might still shoot him for stabbing me with that metal rod though."
Tit for tat and all that shit. It had hurt even if it healed within seconds. He wasn't exactly looking to experience pain every minute of the damn day after all. Just because he was apparently Knockoff Deadpool now, didn't mean he had to be a reckless idiot about it.
Don't shoot him anywhere useful though, the voice demanded excitedly. We could make much use of him and his flirtations later on!
So no dick shots. Shame. Would have been funny to hear him bitch about it in that weird tone of his.
"Fine but if he's after a good ol' time then he's going to have to earn it."
He could start by getting rid of his stupid hat and taking a shower. That'd be nice. Though to be honest, Ethan wasn't picky.
Heisenberg watched as Ethan approached the stronghold, still talking to himself as he seemed incapable of stopping. He'd just taken down seventy-nine Lycans on his way, been shot with at least four flaming arrows, bitten a few times, as well as sliced up and thrown off a high place once. Yet the fool just got back up over and over again and kept going as if nothing had happened.
The arrows were pulled out without any consideration to how dangerous that could be. The cuts and bites on his back and arms had totally healed already. And the fall from a great height had only stunned him for a few seconds before he was back on his feet again.
The flesh of his hands had turned black again and shined almost as if covered in oil. There was an unnerving air to the way Ethan Winters held himself and talked to thin air as if it was truly answering him back.
"Still don't get why any of this is necessary," he grumbled to himself as he kicked a stray rock out of the way.
He then nodded to himself. "True."
Ethan's progress was halted when a flaming arrow burrowed itself in his left shoulder, and the blond hissed a string of expletives as he whirled around and unloaded nine rounds into the offending Lycan without even bothering to aim. He then stood over the fallen body and let lose four more rounds into the chest just because he apparently felt like it.
"STUPID!" Winters roared in visible rage, giving the body a swift kick as well. "Worth it," he sighed, giving himself a satisfied nod at his handiwork. "I am dramatic, yes," he said softly. "I was a theater kid."
Ethan Winters continued on his way as if none of that had even happened, merely yanking the arrow out of his flesh and tossing it aside like it was nothing but dross.
"Who needs this many fucking... beings guarding one location, for fuck's sake?" Winters demanded to himself, and he stalked down the poorly lit stone corridor. "Seem like Heisenberg's compensating for something."
Karl's jaw dropped at the audacity. Was the American truly accusing him of having a fragile ego? As if the amount of Lycans under his command had anything to do with his dick size!
The human on the screen nodded to himself. "He is short. Maybe this is his way of making himself feel better."
Karl had the intercom on before he could stop himself. "You're barely taller than me, you motherfucker!"
As the shame was wrapping itself around his throat in a lovely fucking chokehold, Ethan Winters nodded to himself a-fucking-gain and said, "He's also a voyeur. We've all got our fetishes I suppose."
Okay, maybe he'd accept that label since it was basically true. But he wasn't watching people because he got off on it or something, he just needed to be aware of everything happening at all times just to preserve his own well-being! He wasn't using the cameras to spy on people bathing or some shit!
"It's that big fucker again, isn't it?" Ethan Winters demanded suddenly as a loud roar caused the speakers to become pitchy with static. Winters looked to be annoyed suddenly, going from relaxed and blasé to pissed off in an instant, fingering the gun he'd foolishly slipped into his coat pocket.
Urias, with his massive battle ax in hand, descended upon the room with no hesitation, and Heisenberg was interested in seeing how Ethan Winters handled him. He was a big fella after all, and taking him down wouldn't be quite so eas-
Oh!
Well...
Rocket Launcher shot to the torso to stun him, five pipe bombs to deal extra damage and additional stunning, and then a single shot to the head with his Magnum. Single-handed aiming by the way. He followed it up with a dramatic juggling trick as he returned said weapon to his pocket.
"Fucking bastard. Payback for hitting me with that damn thing earlier," the man said, lifting up the ax as if it weighed nothing. "This will fetch me a nice price from The Duke."
And then Ethan Winters turned and made deliberate eye contact with the surrounding Lycans all watching from higher up in the room and asked, "You wanna die too? I can sell your remains for more money and then use that money to modify my weapons to make it even easier to kill more of you if you continue to piss me off."
He'd been mowing through Lycans and every other piece of shit Miranda's experiments had managed to create. His body count was over two hundred by now and he wasn't stopping any time soon. Nothing was going to stop him now, and it might even seem like he was egging them on in a sense.
The tired look on Ethan Winters' face was no longer willing to accept nonsense. He was getting annoyed and with that annoyance came out his more violent behavior.
And it's not as if he hadn't been violent until now, but his approach had been more methodical. They were standing between him and his child and were literally attacking him first. He was defending himself for the most part. But occasionally, there were times here and there that he would explode in a fit of rage and waste half a dozen rounds on an already-dead enemy just because they pissed him off and he wanted to vent.
Still, he hadn't been running around, cackling like a madman and shooting every single thing in his line of sight.
Now though... he looked like he wanted those Lycans to be dumb enough to challenge him so he could take his anger out on them. It was a miracle that he hadn't run out of bullets yet considering realistically he had to be running low with that damn merchant being his only supplier.
More and more questions came to mind.
Heisenberg was impressed by Ethan Winters and set to informing the man as swiftly as possible.
"You really are as impressive as expected," he said into the microphone. "I had hoped you wouldn't let me down, Papa."
"I hope you know that if I see you in person, I am going to shoot you for stabbing me earlier," Ethan Winters told the old television set frankly. "I won't aim anywhere that will leave permanent damage, so long as you aren't weak as fuck, but tit for tat, Heisenberg. I shot Lady Dipshit in the hand for slicing off my hand and I'm not about to let the hole you left in my chest go unpunished."
Before Heisenberg could reply something along the lines of mild flirtation and trying to talk the man down because he really didn't need wound recovery in the way of his plans right now, Winters' head turned all the way to the left and his voice shifted once more, becoming higher-pitched and abnormally eager. "Think if we shot Mold bullets at him, our Mold and his Mold would have a reaction?!"
Winters' head snapped to the other side, the light in his eyes fading completely as a myriad of voices spilled from his lips, all speaking the same words slightly out of sync. "Obviously there would be a reaction as there are enough differences in the strains to make one. We were the first, but this body is of a different strain and is carefully assimilating to us. Soon we will evolve again, and our reach will grow infinitely wider... as well as the control we have over such power."
It would not be presumptuous for someone to assume that Karl Heisenberg was deeply uncomfortable by this odd exchange between Ethan Winters and the voices he had in his head.
After all, he'd just confirmed that he was very much like them, but perhaps more advanced because whatever he was exposed to in Louisiana was a better evolved version of the Mutamycete. E-001 was the fifth version in a long line of experiments that came from the samples of the Mutamycete that Miranda had given away for scientific research and potential information. Both Ethan and Mia Winters had been infected, but it seemed that truly, Ethan's body was a better host and took to the infection easily without any seemingly obvious negative effects.
Fascinating.
He pressed the button and spoke into the microphone. "If you truly want to penetrate my poor body with a piece of metal then you're welcome to try, Papa. But you can do that later because we have important business to discuss and I'm certain you'll be much more open to listening when you get your cute little ass over here. The way has already been mapped out for you, so don't keep me waiting."
He had much to prepare for Ethan's arrival.
He also needed to make sure that he was wearing his best sunglasses and best coat.
Just so he looked as imposing as possible of course.
A/N: The first is done!
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CHECK ME OUT ON TUMBLR. HELLY-WATERMELONSMELLINFELLON.