The Third Verse

The assassin has failed, but is now met with determination to finish her job. Her next step is to learn more about her target.

She hid her field dressing kit in the basement of an abandoned town home somewhere miles away from the section of the city where the fight took place.  Inside, she removed packets of rubbing alcohol, sealed gauze, a bottle of pills, and a container of distilled water.  She cleansed and dressed her wounds as quickly as she could.  She didn’t want to risk him finding her in her current condition.  She quickly gulped a few of the pills with the water then replaced all the items into her kit and slung it over her shoulders.  Ascending towards the roof, she kept replaying the scene in her mind.

So the reports were true, she thought, how could I have been so f*****g careless!  She was given a file from her contractor that held very limited information about her target.  It told of his weight, height, fur color, clothing, and behavior.  She cursed at herself, while leaping from rooftop to rooftop, at how she could have overlooked what was deemed as an important piece of information.  The blood, the f*****g blood!  Why didn’t I think about it sooner?!  The bounty report told about how he “goes berserk” when blood washes over his claws.

She recalled the part of the fight when her claws sank into his left forearm.  She remembered the blood dripping on her foot, but didn’t take into account of how his blood ended up at that point in the first place.  The tip of his sword came to rest only a few inches from her shin.  This told her it must have run down the blade.  In order for to have made it there, his blood had to have traveled down his arm and onto his hand.  She was so focused on the direct attack to his heart she didn’t think of how much force she used to stop his arm.

She found herself in the run down industrial sector of the city.  She scanned around for a fire escape and quickly descended from the roofs.  As she walked around the empty factories she tapped her nails on the wall in code.  This would tell her partner she was near.  Once she was able to find the door, she turned the doorknob and entered the small room.  Leaning back on one of the inside walls, she lifted her head and gave out a large sigh.  “Welcome back, Kizzi,” answered her partner in a monotone voice, mindlessly staring into a large screen and typing as if she were trying to finish a thousand-page report in minutes.  Kizzi removed the wrappings that covered her face and let out a groan in pain as the pills she took began to wear off.  Hear partner, a black and white rabbit with long black hair, sniffed the air and quickly turned to face Kizzi.  With ears perked up, her tone changed as she said to Kizzi, “Holy hell, woman, you look a mess.  Even more a mess now than ever before, just what the hell happened to you?!”

Kizzi let her kit fall to the floor before she responded.  “I got careless.  I thought I could end this one quickly,” she said as she tried to ease herself onto a nearby cot.

“Careless?  That’s what you call yourself?”   The rabbit’s tone changed from surprised to sarcastic.  “Careless is when you butter your bread with the handle of the knife.  You look like you just got mugged by a swarm of scarabs.  Are you sure you didn’t just end up in a nest of those things?”

“I should have been more cautious when I read the f*****g report,” Kizzi said in a raised tone of voice, “It told me he goes insane when he gets blood on his hands!  I must have pierced him when I grabbed his arm.  I GOT CARELESS!”  Kizzi struggled taking off her top to reveal the rush job she did tending to her injuries.

“Hot damn, maybe it wasn’t such a smart idea to accept such a job-“

“No, the price was right and it was just one cat!  For such an easy job, how could I resist this contract?  But they clearly said to be careful of the blood and I overlooked it!”  Kizzi let out another sigh to calm herself down.  “I should have had you pull up some more research.  I don’t know why but I get this feeling there was information left out.”

The bunny snorted, “Left out?  More like taken out on purpose.  For such a simplistic profile, he shouldn’t have been this much of a handful for you.  You ask me, they wanted you to die in that fight.” 

“Oxi please, I’ve no need for your conspiracy theories right now.  Just try to find some more info on this guy.  Would it be too much to ask for you to do this for me?”  The look on the cheetah’s face was that of sheer exhaustion.  The effects of the fight drained more energy than Kizzi realized.

“There’s plenty of time for that later, hun.  Right now, I need to see to those wounds of yours.  I swear, I’m gonna hold your paw while you’re out there just to make sure you don’t hurt yourself,” Oxi spoke in a pseudo motherly tone.  The plus-sized fully figured rabbit stood up and walked over to Kizzi, examining her arms and then the removing the bandages on her stomach.  “Eep, that looks painful!  You sure this came from him and you didn’t find some sort of underground S ‘n M club-“

“That’s disgusting, and no this came from him!  Please, Oxi, just check on this guy for me,” Kizzi pleaded.

Oxi sighed.  “Alright!  I’ll do it for ya.  But I’m not gonna get much more about him from the files I have.  I mean, a cat with a scar on his face is a rare thing these days,” she retorted with a sarcastic tone.

“Well I have been trailing him for days.  I’m pretty damned sure I have a better description than you do,” Kizzi snapped back.

“Excellent!  Let’s have a look!”  Oxi put her hands on the cheetah’s cheeks and gently lifted her gaze to meet Kizzi’s eyes.  Suddenly a flash of colors began to scroll across the rabbit’s pupils in the form of letters, numbers and other odd symbols Kizzi couldn’t recognize.  “Perfect!  I should be able to find him no problem with this!”  Oxi bounced back into her chair and started dancing her fingers on the keyboards of her large computer rig.

“I hate when you do that,” Kizzi said just before allowing her body to collapse onto the cot.  Doing so caused a sudden rush of pain and she bit her lip to hold back a groan.  Kizzi’s eyes began to weigh and the sounds of quick and constant key strokes became hypnotic, lulling her to sleep.  She knew not for how long this lasted, but she was suddenly snapped out of her trance when her long-eared companion’s voice made a sound to the tune of four very familiar letters.  Kizzi shot up in a burst of excitement.

“This is bad,” Oxi’s said with a worried tone, “This is very bad.  No, this is beyond bad!”  Kizzi ignored the pain as she staggered over to see what troubled her partner so much as to cause her to worry.  “Look, it all points to here!  All the information I scanned from your memories.  I found it all here!”  Oxi pointed to the largest of the screens that illuminated the small and cramped room.  Detailed reports of muscle structure and overall body mass, videos exhibiting his feral-like state, images of the carnage left in his wake.  Kizzi’s eyes stared in disbelief as her lips absent mindedly formed the word she saw.

“MESA”

Author's Note

This is a writing in progress and I feel the need to add a few notes about this:
-the characters are all anthropomorphic animals, not humans
-grammar will be corrected as I review previous chapters
-aspects of characters, events and setting are subject to change
-all characters are of my own design unless specified otherwise
-chapters will be uploaded out of order
-anything written in brackets are used as placeholders

Beyond this, feel free to rip it apart!