h_hollister | (no subject)

He'd told her not to go wandering.

She never was too terribly good at following orders she didn't like or agree with.

The wandering takes her much further afield than her usual haunts of the library, the dining room, his room, the maze, her tower. She's never gotten the full tour out into the further reaches of his castle, and as such has little idea as to what to expect. So it's a surprise when, upon opening an ill-used door, she finds herself outdoors, the shock of the warm air and hazy sunlight making her blink. That door...didn't look like an exterior door...

Of course, it wasn't. It was the door that, once upon a time, had led into the west wing of the castle.

The wing where the fossilized remains of Las Plagas were buried.

In his haste to get to the petrified parasites, Ramon had ordered the villagers to simply tear down and demolish this wing of his castle.

Considering what she knows of him, this must eat at him like a canker now. To destroy his family's home, even just one portion of it...

Stepping gingerly though the pillars of moss-eaten stone and rubble at her feet, she makes her way across to a tall tower, spying several of the glittering gems that litter the place. Hell, maybe that's how she can rebuild his fortune. Just gather up these things until he could take a bath in 'em. There certainly were enough.

Eventually she reaches the tower, the humidity making her shirt stick to her shoulder blades and back, her hair sticking to her face in long, dull-gold strands. She runs the back of her arm across her forehead to clear the sweat from her eyes, and then goes inside.

The interior of the tower is, amazingly, a sort of miniature Hall of Water, with two reflecting pools on either side of a long causeway. But all along the causeway are pillars that have fallen, as well as ovoid cracks in the stone, as if something monstrous had walked there, and the reflecting pools are starting to go green from algae. The smell is incredible, and it's not helped along by the humidity. To her right, an alcove some forty feet tall, with balconies overlooking...nothing. The alcove is empty. Whatever stood there is long gone.

Picking her way across the ruined causeway, occasionally climbing over a fallen pillar, she exits at the far end through a ruined door. Again she finds herself outside, and facing a crevasse some hundred feet across, and who knows how deep. The anemic sunlight doesn't penetrate any further than about ten feet down, leaving a charcoal smudge across the landscape. For just a moment, she's tempted to call her wandering at an end, go back to the library and continue her somewhat fruitless research. But then, she sets her jaw, and pulls out her new PINpoint.

There's hardly any hesitation at all, really. Just something resembling determination, even if she doesn't know why she's so determined. He did warn her. And yet...and yet...

The fact that he could have a major temper tantrum doesn't really occur to her.

Once on the other side of the chasm, she continues her walk, heading toward yet another tower. This one has a large, ornate clock on the top. She glances around. The clock tower is surrounded by high mountains on the far sides, and more of the castle behind her and to the right. This isn't a clock intended to show the time to the village. It's just there. Ostentatiously there, serving no purpose, telling no time. The fact that it's broken and stopped is pretty much incidental.

And, again, there is no bridge to get across to the clock tower. She wonders, momentarily, how the hell Ramon got around to this area before he had a PINpoint.

She doesn't bother to go inside the clock tower, because to the right there IS a bridge leading to more of the castle. She hustles across it, as if afraid that, any second, it'll drop out from under her. In fact, she hits the far side at a dead run, paranoid and out of breath.

Why is she doing this?

Through the large red double doors, she finds herself in a room with a ceiling that has vanished into darkness above her. No candles are lit, no lights are on, the few windows are grimy. The result is a soft, cotton greyness, which causes her to hold her PINpoint aloft for the glow it provides. A winding path spirals up the sides of the room, which she follows.

It's when her foot hits something that goes 'click' and she hears a distant 'glonk' that she remembers WHY Ramon warned her about wandering. Booby traps.

Flinging herself against the wall, she freezes, hoping to god that the booby traps here aren't spikes that jut out of the walls...but there are no tell-tale holes for that to happen. And then there's a splintering noise, a rumbling...and a giant barrel races past her, barely missing her. In fact, it nicks one of her shoes and rolls over her toes, causing her to swear violently before bursting out laughing.

That's just ridiculous. If there's a giant ape at the top of this room, or a plumber dressed in red with a stupid moustache, she will never stop laughing.

Keeping an ear peeled for that 'glonk' noise, and watching her steps with aching toes, she finally reaches the top of the dark room, which gets suddenly less dark. As she turns a corner, she finds that the walls are gone in this area, revealing that overcast sky directly ahead, and the village, and the rest of the castle, far, far below. A panoramic view of the deserted countryside. Although if she squints, she can make out a drifing movement across the entrance courtyard. Ah. The lady demon thing. She can't remember its name right now. Whatever.

She's so caught by this view that she doesn't see the construction elevator nearby for several moments. When she spots it, it's only a few seconds later that she continues her ascent. She's come this far already.

Another path leading up, which ramps up to the top of this odd tower-room. How high she's gone, she has no idea, but the pressure against her ears is a good indicator. Yawning to relieve that pressure, she finally reaches yet another set of enormous double doors.

Which are open.

As if cosmically timed, the sun comes out from behind a cloud, revealing a cave-like room with vines and burn marks on the walls, and a broken balcony looking over a pit strewn with debris.

And a blackened shape spattered across the far wall, which resembles something like a giant flower with pointed petals.

"The Mother Plaga sustained me, brought me back from my death, restored the Left and Right Hands. Then, it perished, its strength gone. It made the ultimate sacrifice for me."

His words come back to her suddenly, and she just knows she's looking at the remains of the Mother Plaga, which Ramon merged with (along with the Left Hand) in his last-ditch effort to kill Leon Kennedy.

The fact that the remains resemble something out of Little Shop of Horrors is so inordinately weird and creepy that she rubs at her chest subconsciously. Are Las Plagas flora? Or fauna? Or could it be that the parasites are just that adaptable, taking on the shape of a giant flower seed-pod to protect its valuable eggs? If that's the case, then how the hell was Ramon able to, erm, generate eggs on his own without a Mother Plaga?

See, this is why she needs to finish her friggin' research. Or, at the very least, sit down with Sharpe and get him to hand over everything S knows about the inner-workings of Las Plagas. Since it apparently took all the...information that Umbrella had gotten off of Ramon.

"What are you?" she asks aloud, addressing what's left of the Mother Plaga, not realizing that her own parasite is chirping and singing and calling out to the corpse. Since she's still so new at this, she still can't quite always tell when the sonics it generates are happening.

"I'm going to find out."

It sounds like both a threat and a promise.