Resident Evil 3: Regeneration
By Carola "Ryûchan" Eriksson

Eight days had passed since Alice's spectacular escape from the Umbrella Corporation with the aid the close-knit group that through trial and fire had become something more than just friends. In their own way, this scarred and ragtag group of survivors had become family.

Eight days had passed since Alice's awakening and the events that followed. Seven days since Jill Valentine and Terri Morales went from just being ridiculed in media for the tape containing Alice's story to being wanted criminals sought by the police. Four days had passed since the lot of them, Alice, Jill, Terri, Angie and L.J, managed to get out of the city and hole up in the unlikeliest of hideouts – an old abandoned Umbrella Corporation research facility no further away than a five hour drive from the city itself. And finally, one day had passed since the transport that, in the extension, was supposed to take the group out of the country had missed the appointed time.

One day since this odd family of ... rebels? Heroes? ...had gone from the already present and adrenaline-pumping frenzy to something edging dangerously close to hysteria.

Well, some of them anyway.

Terri and L.J were convinced they saw dead people, monsters or SWAT-teams in every shadow, and Jill had tripled her efforts to not only reassure the other two but also keep alert and keep the perimeter safe. Unfortunately for the put-upon former S.T.A.R officer, the one she relied on the most... no, the one they ALL relied on the most to keep them safe had suddenly stopped her efforts to do the same.

When half the day had gone by since the appointed time, Alice had simply nodded and turned to her young shadow, Angie, as calm as can be: "They are coming. I won't run." An almost inhumanly calm blink at a young face that also did not reveal any anxiety. "You?"

Angie had, predictably according to Jill, refused to leave as well, the two of them making it clear to Jill, Terri and L.J that they were free to go if they wanted to. Naturally that meant no-one had left, and Jill was ready to scream in frustration because Alice had abandoned all attempts at keeping battle alertness and Jill could not seem to shake or scream or taunt any sense back into her. Instead Alice just spent her time sitting near Angie, staring out into space.

Waiting.

Until the evening on the tenth day, when Alice suddenly stood, cocked her head to the side, and informed in a voice that lacked any of the urgency that by rights it should have held. "They're here."

None of the alarms Jill had rigged surrendered a single squeak of warning, but they had all seen the super-human abilities Alice possessed in action before and so, without question, they raced towards the surface alongside the tall blonde.

Alice herself seemed in no hurry, as keeping their pace with her frightfully enhanced physique equalled something like a companionable jog. It got on Jill's nerves sometimes, the ease by which the other woman did near impossible physical feats without even once appearing to notice that it was not something not even Jill herself, with all her physical conditioning and training, was capable of. The seldom used psychic abilities were worse though, and left all but Angie, who had manifested quite a few herself, shivering and uncomfortable.

Which was not to say that they did not have their uses, or that any one of them had any hope of escaping Umbrella without all the inhuman 'gifts' the company had bestowed upon their unwilling recipient Alice. Angie's abilities were the result of a near lifelong treatment with the T-virus at her father's hands, and although perhaps the Umbrella Corporation had their suspicions regarding the only child of the genius that created their precious virus, it was fairly clear to everyone that they had not yet grasped that what they had there was something akin to a child version of their much coveted Alice.

They reached the surface all too soon, and there, in the dying light, awaited a sight that was the only thing Jill Valentine could have imagined that would have been slightly worse than having the entire area surrounded by a teeming mass of T-virus-infected undead.

There were very few soldiers, strangely enough, only a few standing guard next to the aircraft and then perhaps half a dozen scattered around a familiar and impeccably dressed male. Spotlights were turned on as soon as the group set foot on the concrete area that was the topmost part of the compound, and the lights outlined a horror standing alone in the centre of the concrete field, immobile and waiting.

"Alice!" Angie hissed, suddenly sounding frightened after all.

"I know." Was Alice's quiet reply, along with a small silencing hand movement. The blonde turned her head to pin Jill with a stark stare from over the shoulder, a brief flicker at the child by her side, then back to stare at Jill again. Jill swallowed hard and nodded, carefully pulling Angie to her and backing up several steps as Alice stepped forward.

At the same time the man in the suit spoke up, his voice carrying clear across the distance with the help of loudspeakers on the aircraft behind him. Long, sinewy muscles tensed, and the tension began rolling off Alice in waves. Gone was the supernatural calm, replaced by barely contained animal energy.

"Alice." The words spoken were tainted with a smarminess that the man might not even have been consciously aware of, and a smirk that was as plain to hear as it was to see on his face despite the distance. "Your playtime is over. It is time for your final exam. Are you ready?" The man was amusing himself, and Jill glared at him in Alice's place. Alice did not take her eyes off her opponent.

"You failed your first test, against Nemesis." There was fake regret in his voice at those words. "But we... fixed that glitch in your programming, didn't we?" He nodded as in reply to himself. "You are quite precious, Alice... we have such plans for you. But you need to pass this test. There won't be a third chance for you."

"Either you succeed this time... or your sister takes your place." He lifted his hand displaying a black remote. "Program ALICE, begin end phase. Initiate... program KALI." He pressed the button.

The figure that Alice had slowly been advancing on suddenly shook, once, violently. Then with the hiss of released air the seamless black surface of the bulky thing covering the creature's head, torso and arms revealed cracks. With a small clicking sound, the cracks became interlocking parts that, with a grating metal noise, slid apart and fell heavily to the ground.

The lone figure standing there, unmoving as it watched Alice's suddenly halted approach, was... not what Jill Valentine would have expected. Short, a fair bit shorter than the tall Alice but also some shorter than the more average-height Jill, but quite a bit wider in a dense muscularity that, in other circumstances, would have suggested a lifetime of hard physical training. Bronzed skin, what appeared to be a leather outfit, and longish black hair tied tightly behind the head in something that appeared to be part ponytail, part braid, and all punishment.

Suddenly the figure moved... rolling her head from side to side as if working out a kink.

"Ahhh... that's better." A husky voice purred, and then the woman opened her eyes to give Alice a heavy-lidded gaze and small lopsided grin. "Did ya miss me, babe?"

A brief, winsome and almost involuntary smile stole across Alice's features. "Only every day, Rain."

The two no longer human women grinned at one another and began slowly circling, their eyes never leaving the other's. The soldiers and the man at the aircraft were all focused on the two combatants, and Jill tore her own attention away from Alice to instead carefully nudge the rest of her group further back against the relative shelter of the elevator doors. Considering that Alice had captured a great deal of Jill's attention ever since the tall blonde had come crashing down through a church window and into Jill's life, it was no small feat but somehow Jill succeeded.

"Y'know, I've gotta ask... which life is this for you, anyway? Third?" Rain asked while flexing her hands, still circling.

"Fourth. One that began in a lab... ended in the mansion. The second was with you, began and ended in the mansion." An exchange of strange smiles. "Third began in another lab, ended in a helicopter crash. This, the fourth, began in a lab."

"Makes my two seem puny." Rain grunted. "Where will it end this time?"

A shrug. "Who knows?" A flicker of uncertainty. "How... ?"

A hand gesture and a grimace. "We were all prepped before we were sent to the Hive, apparently. The damn stuff backfired though, I was the only one they could revive after contamination because I turned out to be allergic to the stuff."

"Ouch."

Wry smile. "Yeah, you remember me puking my guts out, huh?"

Black eyes flickered away from blue for a moment. "Boss is getting antsy. Time to move." Still circling each other.

"I'm game if you are."

They stopped moving.

"C'mon... give us a kiss." Rain smirked and held her arms out wide.

"Gladly... bitch!" With wild smiles and even wilder screams Alice charged Rain and locked arms with her. The two spun around wildly several times before Rain hurled Alice away from her and right into two soldiers who were promptly knocked out. Laughing, Rain charged again, ending in a kind of half-toss, half-wrestle combat with Alice.

The remaining soldiers made ready to fire at Alice as soon as she hit the soldiers, but the man in the suit immediately intercepted them and barked an order to hold their fire. Alice and Rain wrestled around, then launched themselves further into the middle of the field by sheer momentum of their fight. They had each other in a firm lock, and once more, stopped to talk.

"So... how are you able to fight all that programming they've crammed in your head?" Rain wanted to know. Alice grinned and shrugged.

"Don't know how or why, exactly... just know that I only take orders from one place." The intense blue gaze swept back to indicate the fair head of Angie peeking out from their meagre cover despite Jill's efforts. "The White Queen."

Rain whistled. "The White Queen huh? Impressive."

"What about you?" Alice smirked.

"Me?" Rain grunted at the same time as the man in the suit barked out "Stop talking and FINISH her!"

Rain rolled her eyes. Then, almost faster than the eye could follow, Rain and Alice released one another... revealing that pressed between them they had managed to hide the weapons of the soldiers Alice had knocked out moments before. A swift motion and both hands came up armed, Alice spinning around to take out the soldiers on her side. Rain calmly turned around and aimed at the man in the suit.

"Shut UP, ya idiot!" She told him, and then made sure he would.

In the melee Jill managed to pick off a few soldiers as Rain finished the rest and Alice sprinted into the aircraft to take care of whoever was still inside. It was swift, brutal, and efficient.

Despite the confusion that followed, and the mistrust felt towards Rain, the group quickly realised that they would not have much time to run before more of the Umbrella Corporation's people would arrive. They stole the aircraft, after a few re-arrangements from Rain and Alice, and got far enough that they could abandon it and hitch a ride with a late-night traveller to get to the place where the flight waited that would take them overseas. The Umbrella Corporation controlled nearly all of the US and also had large holdings in the rest of the world, but... outside of the US the company's control was far from absolute. There were many places, many countries left in the world where Umbrella not only had no resources, but where the government of those countries actively fought not to allow Umbrella to gain control.

There was still some distance to go, but they were heading for one of those countries. They would continue their battle from afar, do their best to bring the truth to light with the aid of resistance groups and what media was still free. They might never be truly out of danger, as troops were easy enough to smuggle in here and there, and accidents could easily be arranged, but their chances would certainly be much better at their destination. There was some hope to cling to yet.

It began as a quiet, anxious flight, with everyone jumping at shadows, even, to some small degree, Alice herself. Eventually endless days of stress took their toll on little Angie, who curled up in her seat and fell asleep covered by Alice's jacket. L.J tried to follow the girl's example, but his was a fitful rest at best, every so often he would twitch and open his eyes to examine his surroundings suspiciously before attempting to settle down again.

Jill Valentine could not settle down at all. Not only had the adrenaline rush not quite cleared her system and made way for fatigue just yet, but she was kept alert observing Alice and her interaction with the newcomer with an increasingly dark expression.

The images burned on the inside of her eyelids, making Jill clench her jaw hard against the urge to gnash her teeth in frustration.

It was as if Alice had been drawn towards Rain after stepping out of the aircraft. She seemed barely able to tear her attention away long enough to cast an intense look in their direction, immediately getting Terri, Angie and L.J's shouts that they were all OK. Then Alice's attention snapped right back to the smaller woman. Rain had not bothered to look their way at all, instead she had been busy scenting the blonde, or so it seemed to Jill, the two of them standing so close and staring at one another in such a way that the heat was palpable even at her distance.

They had all clearly heard Rain's rasping comment to Alice that this was twice now Alice had promised her a kiss, but so far she hadn't delivered. Jill caught the expression on Alice's face then, and nearly bit her tongue right through... as Alice pulled both arms around the shorter woman and proceeded to give her a kiss that would more than make up for any earlier shortcomings.

L.J had whistled and leered a little, while Terri gasped a soft 'oh my!' and then tried to cover Angie's eyes. Jill had done... nothing, but stared in horror as all her hopes of catching Alice's eye burned to ashes before her eyes.

Angie had saved Jill, if by accident, by giggling and telling Terri softly that she was not _that_ young... and besides, she had known this would happen. That comment had caught their attention and forced the girl to explain herself.

Jill didn't know what she had expected, but it certainly hadn't been to hear a fairly comprehensible explanation for what the T-virus does to the human brain functions, nor had she expected it when little Angie then explained that for those that had adapted the virus, assimilated their bodies to it like Alice, Rain and herself had, it was reasonable to assume that their basic, more primitive, instincts would be strongly reinforced. They had all gaped at the girl then, except for Alice of course, who had disentangled from Rain at last and merely gazed at Angie.

The urge to eat, sleep, find a mate, the girl explained while blushing somewhat, and breed, would be extremely strong in Rain and Alice, being that they were the only adults of this new race that Angie considered them to be, and it was quite likely the two women had already been somehow imprinted on each other for some time. Angie then tried to explain the potential consequences of their growing mental abilities, but Jill had stopped listening at that point.

Alice had smiled, a small, mysterious but oh so pleased smile, and bent down to whisper in Rain's ear. Rain had smirked and pulled her arm a little more snugly against Alice waist, causing Jill to wince and look away.

Look right at Terri, for some reason, and the former reporter had a strange look on her face, something compassionate but also something... else. Jill couldn't quite decide what it was, but the brief touch of her hand on Jill's arm was certainly compassionate enough. It was... embarrassing for a supposedly tough and capable woman like Jill to be so transparent, she thought, and she tried to put up an unaffected front.

Something changed in Terri's expression, bringing Jill to realise that Alice had said something that had surprised both Terri and L.J, delighted little Angie, and given Rain the goofiest, round-eyed look of astonishment that Jill had ever seen. Rain had been reduced to sputtering, and then they had all been ordered off to work, getting away from that place as quickly as they could.

It wasn't until later, while Rain and Alice were in the cockpit steering the stolen craft and the rest of them were keeping quiet in the back that Jill found out from Terri that Alice had simply claimed little Angie as their daughter, hers and Rain's, since they were a kind of their own.

Now, hours later and aboard another flight, hopefully heading towards a safer corner of the world for all of them, Alice had tucked the girl into a seat behind herself and Rain, and then the two women had not been able to keep off one another.

Trying not grind her molars to dust, Jill had to admit that it was not as if the two were tearing one another's clothes off, but with the heated looks and the long, intense make-out sessions that neither seemed to care that everyone was witness to, it couldn't have been much worse. In fact, Jill wasn't sure which she dreaded most, watching Alice and Rain come to the point where they shredded clothing despite the fact that they were not alone, or watching the two of them sneak off to the bathroom. She dreaded the moment either women would realise there was a bathroom up front with a lockable door.

Just as Jill was sure Rain and Alice had become completely ignorant of their surroundings in their... heat, Angie made a tiny whimpering sound in her sleep. Immediately Alice shot up and leaned over her seat to stroke the girl's hair and speak to her soothingly. Even Rain leaned over, awkwardly patting the jacked a bit more snug around the girl, and Angie relaxed into her dreams with a more peaceful look on her face.

Something cold slid down Jill's spine to briefly lodge in the pit of her stomach as she watched the identical expressions on both women's faces... but more than the identical looks, it was their eyes that suddenly seemed frightening. Black or blue did not matter, both had that same intense, open and completely alien quality about them. It reminded Jill briefly of how she as a child had stared right into the large, wide-open golden eyes of a tiger at a zoo, and with a spear of ice-cold insight known that what she was looking at was something so foreign, so beyond her, that she could never understand it. Something... primal.

Closing her eyes with a shudder, Jill tried to let it all go.

A warm hand touched her bare arm gently, making a dark blue eye open to peek in that direction. Dark brown eyes set in an always surprisingly Asian-appearing face gazed at her kindly. Jill summoned up a wry smile at the woman beside her, appreciating the fact that Terri tried to make her feel better.

"Serves me right." Jill muttered, sending for a moment a dark thought to her parents and their poor choice in family name and valiantly trying to ignore the fact that judging from the sound of things Rain and Alice had returned to their previous activity. "Bumbling into a crush on someone I barely know like some oversized schoolgirl."

The hand remained on her arm, and it felt nice. Warm.

"We can't help these things." Terri whispered back, compassionately stroking Jill's arm ever so slightly.

"Hmph." Jill muttered, leaning a little more towards Terri so the sharp ears of the women in front would not pick up on their whispered conversation. "Maybe. I just wish..."

"What?" Terri's face was so close that Jill was involuntarily distracted for a moment. It hit her suddenly that Terri was one of the most genuinely feminine women that Jill had ever known... granted Jill, as a career S.T.A.R officer, had not exactly moved in the kind of circles that Terri's brand of female charms were all that common, but even so – it took a very special kind of woman to manage to look both dignified and daintily feminine while running away from a mob of crazed man-eating monsters.

"Oh you know..." A vague hand gesture. "That there could be someone for me too, that's all. Kind of silly after all that has happened lately, huh?"

That got a warm smile from the other woman. "It's not silly at all, and don't give up on that. Especially not after all that has happened lately."

For a brief moment both were silent, studiously ignoring other sounds nearby including the snoring that L.J was sleeping soundly at least for the moment.

"So... what would be the requirements for a... partner, Jill Valentine?" Terri's eyes glittered with playfulness and something else, causing Jill to grin a little in response.

"Oh, my wishes aren't that complicated really..." Jill replied with a wistful tone that was only partly pretence. "Any nice woman that hasn't thrown her lot in with Umbrella would be just fine. Of course she'd also have to put up with all..." A gesture with her hands. "...this, so what are the odds huh?"

For a moment it seemed Terri wouldn't respond. Then she leaned in, her breath tickling Jill's ear. "You silly woman."

Her next move pinned Jill in place with a lingering kiss on the lips. Stunned beyond mobility and words Jill just stared in shock when Terri drew back and stared at her intently.

"Alice isn't the only woman who has been standing right by your side through all of this, you know."

With those words Terri got up and made her way towards the bathroom, leaving the open-mouthed Jill Valentine to stare – not without quite a bit of appreciation at the view – after her retreating form, trying to wrap her mind around the meaning of this.

And outside the window a different continent spread out as far as eyes could see.

The End

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