chapter 9

"Alright, spill it Roger, I'm starting to take their little transgression as a personal offense toward myself, ain't nobody scratching my beautiful face with a fucking bullet and get away with it." a chilly light flashed from his eyes as he brought up the topic of his face getting injured.

"And what the fuck is with this wound? Shouldn't it have been closed up by now?! Why is it still bleeding!" Leonard cursed as he can still felt the wound still somewhat gushing out red warm blood and drip down his face.

"Fucking hell…" he cursed once again as he could now taste the sweet and thick flavor of blood on his lip.

"Just continue spilling what you had in mind, make it snappy." Leonard glared at the bearded man as he continued to apply pressure to the cut.

******

Back to the rooftop where the sniper bullet came from.

"Bullshit, they've escaped into the alleyway, I can't find them in there...failed attempt, failed attempt!" the man who was responsible for stirring up Leonard with a sniper bullet sounded out as he saw Leonard and his group entered the narrow alleyway and away from his line of sight, making it impossible for him to sent another bullet to Leonard.

"That...bullet time dodging was...unexpected, no use in crying over spilled milk, we shall proceed with our plan in the annexing of the region survivor enclave." the captain shrugged off the soon to be their greatest pain in the neck.

"Yes, captain." all of them- except for the sniper chanted in unison.

The captain certainly, noticed it however he said nothing.

"Question captain." the rookie of the group raised his hand and called out for the leader of the group with a question filled look on his face.

"What is it?" he asked in a somewhat annoyed tone of voice.

"Are we seriously going to annex the survivor enclave of the region? I mean- there's only like that? Ten of us here? While they could be in the thousand...beside, what do we even get out of it? Last I check- this region was abandoned by the other major forces." the rookie questioned.

"The people themselves are a great resource kid, what's the point of rebuilding the world without the people to work and be the backbone for it?" the captain snuffed his cigarette as he told the rookie.

"But can't the Government sent out an order and demand those people to join us? Why do we have to start such a bloodshed?" the rookie asked in much confusion.

"Naive… do you honestly think that these people who had enjoyed something akin to absolute power over other would happily hand back to the central government? We already tried that shit- and guess what? The emissary got turned into swiss cheese." he added.

"Don't you think that luring a swarm toward the direction of the enclave is a bit… overkill? I mean, innocent civilian could die, why not just infiltrate the base and assassinate the higher up and sent in the army to occupy this region?" the rookie continued.

"That's just stupid… do you honestly think they're just going to obey an army of armed militant that just waltzed in and took control of the region right after the head of the snake has been cut off clean? We need to create a ploy- and what's better way to do that then to portrait ourselves as the heroes? Showing them their incompetence and we swooped in and saved the day." as he told the rookie that, he took out another cigarette from his inner pocket and lit it up.

"Captain, I think you should cut down on the smoking, you've been complaining too much about not having any money- that's sir, right there is the reason why you don't have any money." a man with a scar on his cheek pointed out to him, in order to change topic.

"Oh shut up Michel, smoking isn't an easy habit to break away from… damn I swear that these tobaccos' company's probably adding in some mutated stuff to make these things taste so good… to the point where it's impossible to get off of." he complained as he looked into his inner pocket and noticed that there's only roughly ten cancer sticks left.

"Fuck, I can only rationed these out for another day or so." he complained.

*****

"So...you're saying that the people who tried to blow my head off a moment ago might be from other rival settlement?" Leonard said in an amused tone as he pulled off the handkerchief from his face, revealing a smooth rosy skin underneath, devoid of any scar or injury, only covered in a bit of dried blood which wasn't much of a problem as he slowly wiped it away.

"-how...your face…" all of them- except for Ryuji was stunned by what they saw, just a moment ago Leonard face was covered in blood and from their standpoint, it would probably leave a nasty scar judging from the bullet that scratched his face when it hit the building.

"What? Never seen someone as handsome as I am before? Stop staring or you're going to make me blush" Leonard said jokingly seeing their stunned look.

"Will you stop being such a narcissistic bastard?" Ryuji face was twitching as he heard Leonard little comment and saw that shit eating grin on his face.

"Just kidding, I healed fast." he told them.

"B-but, just a moment ago that wound was bleeding profusely! How can wound heal so fast?! I mean- I know of people who had fast healing wound thanks to a bit of mutation, but this is just too freaky?! There wasn't even a scar left! I could swear that the new skin look even better than it surrounding?!" Roger pointed at Leonard face as his eyes was bulging out.

"Oh please, don't act like you never seen any "super" freaks...the worlds is big so there's bound to be things you could have never imagined in your life." Leonard shrugged.

"But enough of that, I'm going to look for that sniper now… and I believe I have I pretty good idea of where he or she might be hiding, you guy either stay here or take your chance and sneak back to the enclave, I have a bone to pick with them." Leonard cracked his knuckle slowly as he faced the direction of where he believes the sniper was stationed.

"I'm staying here till you return, I'm not risking my head out there." Ryuji adamantly requested to stay by dropping directly onto the ground and sat there, unmoving.

"Fine, stay here and wait for me- and here, take this just in case." Leonard tossed a piece of the discounted Nano armor to Ryuji, who looked at him with eyes full of confusion as he caught it.

"What the hell is this?" he asked.

"Just something to insured your skin." he told the trap ancestor before heading back toward the alleyway that they came from along with mini Nugget, the mutated- now zombified Cerberus's.

He headed in for a good distance, making sure that he had gotten away from their sight.

"This is good enough, time for some payback." he grinned and revealed the crazy within his eyes and his body began to encased itself within a layer of steel from head to toe.

*clicking *clicking

From above a Licker dropped down right on top of him with it jaw opened wide and was ready to take a bit from Leonard.

"Shut it, I don't have time to play with you." his voice was cold as he stretched his hand out and grabbed onto the expose brain of the licker and gave it a hard squeeze, needless to say, the mushy piece of meat exploded, the poor mutated creature dropped limp to the ground, dead.

"Alright, let's go." he told the Cerberus using a mental command as a master to servant before cloaking himself with a field of invisibility and headed toward the tallest building within this settlement.