Leo led Pariah out to the balcony. Examining the young man donning the black rabbit mask, shuddered indiscriminately. "Creepy. Not exactly how I imagined your true nature." Waiting for an answer, he found none. "Follow me. There have been rumors of more perfected closing in on our area. It's our job to misguide them to the other side of South Borough. Under no circumstance can we kill them, or else it will confirm their suspicions."
The young man gave a nod, following behind Leo. The two jumped off the lower floor balcony, landing on an old carriage and onto cobblestone Street. The two meandered in silence, Pariah questioned everything he had come to understand. If he wanted to ascertain the truth, he would need to investigate further, and to do that, he needed to gain allies.
After an hour of walking, they meandered to the back of a street. Pariah looked down to see fat rats scurry by. "You are positive this is the place?" The young man questioned.
Leo gave a discreet nod. "I'm certain. Chances are the perfected you encountered was part of the group sent here to South Borough."
The young man contemplated asking, "What happened to him?"
Taken aback, Leo turned. "To the old man? I knocked him out and moved him down a few streets. It would have been troublesome if his partners found us."
That makes sense, but how did he move him so quickly?
Before the thought continued, a door opening creaked down the street around the corner. Leo, tilting his head slightly, turned in the direction the sound came from. "Follow, but keep your distance. You haven't received any combat training. I would hate to lead a lamb to slaughter."
What a way to word it.
Pariah lampooned inwardly, following behind his mentor. Creeping down the street step by step, breath by breath, thoughts raced through the young man's mind. However, none of them were relevant to his first mission. What plagued his mind were questions of how and why revolving the entire city. He wanted to know who he was, but the absence of memories did not bother him as much as he thought it would. Approaching the corner of the street, the two leaned against the wall. Leo poked his head out to see a house at the dead end of the street with the front door ajar. "It's hard to see from here. I surmise it was kicked in. Stay here. If I am compromised, run back to the safehouse.
Pariah gave a nod and watched Leo slowly walk towards the front door. Pushing it open inch by inch, the dichotomy-masked man crept inside, leaving the door ajar behind him. The entrance was a small space for coats and shoes, the vacant racks there to prove it. After flipping the switch, dim lights flickered from gas-powered lamps by the wall. Beyond the entrance was the kitchen with an island in the center and the counter to the left. The cuppords drawn looked to be ravaged by a beast. Leo remained composed with his wits about. Advancing to the door in the back right of the white wall kitchen, darkness lingered beyond. Hugging the right wall, he passed through a narrow corridor leading to the back of the house, is left wall the casing of the descending staircase from the second floor. Reaching the post of the railing by the bottom step, two open doorways opposed one another. The left was a dining room, and the right was the great room, with a back door sandwiched at the hall's end.
Bang!
A crash from above resounded through the abandoned home. Leo looked up to the ceiling and rapped his index finger against his thumb. Step by step, he ascended cautiously to the second floor.
Creak, creak, creak.
The old wooden stairs cried out their age from the pressing weight of a grown man. Placing his gloved left hand on the post's knob he turned the corner. A railing lining the opening in the floor caused by the stairs left a narrow passage with three doors on the right, one at the end, and one at the end on the left. The first was a small guest room. Poking his head inside a dirty window allowed a glimmer of moonlight to seep in. An accent angle wall leaves less room vertically, so the guest room accommodated the spare storage the family needed.
The second room on the right was a bedroom decorated for a child no older than four. The walls were painted a soft pink, and a crib lay in the corner next to a white closet door. The window in the middle of the wall near the crib did not let much light shine due to a neighboring building. Leo gave a cursory glance and continued down to the third room on the right, the master bedroom, empty. He inched closer to the room at the end of the hall. Placing his ear to the door, he heard silence welcome him. Reaching for the handle, a gentle twist and a push opened the door to a bathroom. Footsteps echoed from the final room on the left. Slipping inside the bathroom, Leo swiftly closed the door quietly.
The left door opened, and a man wearing a long red coat emerged from the shadows. He scratched the back of his ginger head, and the well-kempt hair ruffled messily. His boots clicked along the wooden floor, the sound distancing from the bathroom down the hallway. Reaching the staircase, the strange man's ears twitched, and he stopped in his tracks.
Tick tock.
Agonizing seconds passed by ever so slowly. Leo held his breath, waiting to hear the man descend the stairs, but that moment never came. The ginger man turned around and studied the first door on the upper floor. It was ajar a couple of inches more than he had left it. Retracing his steps cautiously, he skipped the child's room and stood by the master bedroom, listening attentively. Once again his ears pricked up at the slightest of sounds.
Step, step, creak.
His gait slowed by the bathroom door. He tilted his head towards it, lingering for a time. After ten seconds, the ginger man turned and began walking away. Leo waited until he heard the stranger begin to descend the stairs and took a deep breath.
Creak!
The door flew open, and the red fox-masked ginger darted inside, attacking Leo.
Pariah waited for what seemed like hours, but only five or ten minutes had passed. As he debated whether to check the house, footsteps approached behind him. Turning around, he saw three men with bats and steel pipes in hand. Their faces were bare and filled with a robotic lack of emotion, the perfected. Pariah, stuck in the dead-end with no way out except for the house, decided to step back towards the corner, not wanting to run for the house and give Leo away.
"Looks like we caught ourselves a little rabbit." The leading man with a clean-shaven face stepped forward, tapping the steel bar against his palm. Pariah's eyes glanced between the trio, hidden behind the mesh of jagged eye sockets in the mask. The two men behind him sped up and took the front while the leader spoke from behind. "I always wondered what a rabbit looks like with broken legs."
The man on Pariah's left swung the bat, and the Black Rabbit weaved outward but was hit in the head by the man on the right's bat. Hitting the ground on his side, he rolled onto his stomach in pain. Feeling his head spin, a sickening wooz overcame him.
"Wake up, my sweet rabbit. Even if your memory fails you, experience is ingrained. Fight."
Pariah groaned. Pushing off the ground slowly the long ear hung in his face. Crawling to his feet, he held his head, feeling a throbbing pain. "Fight." He mumbled the word from the voice in his head, the men before him watching in joy. The one on the left swung his bat horizontally, and the man on the right swung his vertically. Pariah stepped in, right hooked the man and pulled his head into the oncoming vertical strike whilst raising his left arm and closing it around the former's bat, locking it against his ribs.
Letting go of the man who was rendered unconscious, Pariah grabbed the bat by the handle and the head. Anticipating the second foe's repetitive swing, he dodged right into a semi crouch and jabbed the butt of the bat against the inside of his knee, then swung the handle into his left; as he fell to his knees Pariah violently uppercut the man's jaw with the bat knocking two teeth out launching him onto his back.
The clean-shaven man with the steel bar rushed in swinging left, right, and diagonally, but Pariah weaved the first, swerved the second, blocked the third with the bat, and kicked the man's chest, knocking him on his back. Gasping for air, he held a hand out, "Wait!"
Thud.
Pariah had smashed the bat overhead with both arms, breaking the nose of the man. Watching him curl up, writhing in agony, Pariah dropped the bat and picked up the steel bar. Letting it drag along the ground with each step, he stood beside the perfected. "I've always wondered what a man looks like with broken legs." He retorted the man's earlier comment mockingly.
Crack!
Pariah shattered the knee of the man with the steel pipe; the crunch of bone and the whimpers of a grown man echoed throughout the silent dead-end street.
Crack!
The second followed, red began to run through the skin and pants wetting the street. Watching the man crawl away, Pariah followed him without feeling a shred of doubt or remorse. "Run rabbit run." Raising the steel pipe, he stared through the mask, lacking animosity or anger towards the attack, he felt nothing.
Crack.