Your knees throbbed while your legs scampered as fast as they could to the fenced gate that led to an outdoor portion of the police station Leon desperately wanted to meet you at. You put your entire trust into a random rookie you just met an hour ago, and yet there existed a gravitational pull about the unfamiliar man. For moments at a time, you believed that your mind fooled you into a fulfilled reasoning for someone you barely knew; you saw heaven-sent angel ready to save you before anything else in the world in a man who spoke a few sentences of vagueness. Though, part of you - your heart - thought some type of chemistry could exist between the both of you in this zombie-ridden city. Halfway through your short journey, a helicopter carrying a mutant - the tyrant, Mr. X - crashed into the side of the police station. The damage from afar blazed and pierced into the dark and desolate sky; just as you thought this world could not lose any more hope, one of the very few remaining human survivors pummeled into a brick wall right before your eyes. The sight caught you off-guard for a brief moment, but you knew that in order to persist through this event, you needed to keep moving, and you did just that. Almost ready to give out, your legs sent aches that radiated throughout your body, and the agonizing lung pain from a lack of oxygen due to running offered you no remorse either. Just as you finally reached the gate's latch, Leon popped out of the back door, huffing and panting like a dog. The man dropped both his arms down to his padded knees and you watched in awe as the falling rain drenched his soft hair. A few seconds went by before he looked back up to you poking your fingers through the fence wires, a look of admiration plastered on your face. Entranced, lustful eyes met curious, yet somewhat endearing blue ones, and Leon broke the tension by rushing over to the gate and initiating conversation.
"It's so nice to see you."
"You're actually not so bad for a rookie. Would help if you were a bit faster, though."
Leon shrugged your joke off with a slight snicker, looking down to his right side.
"Hey, at least you're in one piece."
You stared him down for a moment before wandering sauntering your eyes over to the zombies lying on the wet concrete, then back to Leon again, whose face contorted into a slight smile.
"You gonna shoot me some more dad jokes, or are you going to use that key that you hopefully have?"
Leon bit his bottom lip.
"No such luck."
Well, as if the night could not get any worse.
"Axe? Crowbar, even? How about a paperclip wire? Lock pick?"
Leon searched his pockets for a few seconds before audibly gasping, taking out a lock pick buried deep in one of his pants' patches.
"Leon, you realize that-"
The brief unlocking of the gate cut you off. Internally, you wanted to smack him straight across the face, but deep within you resided some slight regard for the man's jokes, and his tiny featherbrain. Surely, the wisecracks did not fit in a setting such as the one the world forced upon you two in Raccoon City, but something charming about the man's ludicrousness coupled with his lack of confidence and naïvité enchanted your heart and soul. For a fleeting, you had to convince yourself not to develop an infatuation with a man whom you just met. Perhaps this penchant formed out of something besides romance, and the feeling you entranced yourself in came from someplace else.
"I did it, didn't I?" the man's eyes opened up and his mouth fell agape, looking over to you for some sort of approval.
You side-eyed him and then shook your head while snickering.
"Mhm, you sure did. Now, come on, we need to get going before it's-"
Hints of scarlet, tangerine, and amber detonated into the soot sky which distracted the both of you. The pigments radiated from the helicopter crash you witnessed a few minutes prior to reuniting with Leon, and with the palette came a loud ringing of ignition from the area.
