23. Deadly Exposure.
"Jeez it's freezing out here...." Leon says while the cold breeze seeps through his clothes.
He looks back at Alexis, she starting to look pale.
After leaving the rooftop earlier this morning, they continued their journey through the city. Unfortunately for them its starting to turn to winter.
It's going to make it much more difficult for them to survive. He can only imagine what other survivors are going through.
The zombies are no exception to the drop in temperature. Their movements have slowed quite a bit.
Knowing they won't last very long in the cold, Leon spots a clothing store just up ahead. Hopefully they can find some warmer clothes.
He leads Ava to the store and they go inside.
The store is filled with different types of clothing,most of them for fashion.
He looks up at a sign hanging from the ceiling to find the children's section. Towards the back of the store he luckily finds some good clothes for her to wear.
He picks out a jacket, some thick insulated pants and socks, as well as a scarf and toboggan.
He returns back to the front of the store carrying all the clothes.
"Here, go get changed into these and I'll get a fire started. We'll get you warmed up in no time." Leon says reassuringly.
She nods her head and takes the clothes to a secluded section to change.
Meanwhile, Leon pulls out his camping stove and throws in a bunch of kindle to give off as much heat as possible.
Too bad they don't have an artifact that can help with situations like this. So far they've only found artifacts that help with combat in some way.
Alexis returns back to the front of the store wearing her new clothes.
She walks over and sits in Leon's lap. He's caught off guard for a moment but quickly recovers.
With her current state it doesn't seem like she's in her right mind. Either way, this will help her warm up faster so he wraps his arms around her tiny figure.
She soon falls asleep wrapped up in his arms.
A couple of hours goes by as she begins to warm up.
"She's one tough girl, most kids her age would be complaining non stop and getting in to trouble. But it's like shes much more mature than what her appearance shows."
He carefully wraps her up in a blanket, borrito style, and lays her next to the fire.
He wants to take a look around the store for some clothes for himself. Even with his newly enhanced body he can still get hypothermia and die if he doesn't have the proper apparel.
While looking around the men's section he finds a few good jackets to chose from. He picks a black colored zip up jacket with an attached Grey hood.
He also grabs some more insulated pants and changes into them.
"Is this the place you saw them go into?"
"Yea, they're right in there, b-boss."
As soon as Leon finished changing he heard people talking outside of the backdoor of the shop.
"Damn, it's locked. We're gonna have to bust it open, get ready."
When the man said that, Leon could hear metal scraping against metal. It seems they were being followed.
He doesn't know exactly what it is they want but it certainly isn't anything good.
He quietly walks to the back door and stands there with his arms crossed. Since they most likely have ill intentions he decides not to take it easy on them.
His golden armor begins to liquify until it covers his entire body. Onyx is wrapped around his shoulder and giving off a hint of bloodlust while staring at the door.
He seems to know these people aren't good. That assures Leon even more for what's about to happen.
"Almost..... Got it!" he says when the lock on the door breaks.
"Hurry, let's get in there before we lose the element of surprise!"
"Alright alright, hold your horses man."
One of the men swings the door open and is immediately greeted by a large man with golden knight looking armor on.
"What the fuck!"
"Hey, is he one of the people you saw?" he says while looking at his companion.
"I-i dont know, i never seen anybody with armor like that."
"Argh, useless piece of shit."
"You better surrender before I beat the goddamn life out of ya!"
Leon looks back and forth at the two guys. The one throwing out threats seems like he's the leader. He looks to be around 30 years old if he had to guess. The mans wearing a leather biker jacket with a big beard and a bald head.
The second guy looks extremely timid. He has a stutter when he speaks probably due to a lack of confidence maybe.
He's more or less dressed the same way as the leader guy. They look like your typical biker dudes.
After scanning over them with his eyes through the horizontal slit in his helmet, he makes a mental note that they don't seem to be carrying any artifacts from what he can tell.
Leon unfolds his arms without saying anything. Leon's silence seemed strange to the two bikers at first but it's like the golden knight has an invisible pressure emanating from him. This automatically puts the two guys on guard.
It doesn't matter though, they're nothing compared to the creature he faced in the tower.
Before the bikers even realized what happened, Leon reeled back his right arm and slammed his fist right on the leader guys sternum. The leader guy had unfortunately been right in front of Leon, so he received a direct attack without any time to even register the fist flying towards him.
The leader is now lying a couple of feet away from where he stood originally, unmoving.
He shouldn't be dead from just that punch, Leon held back on how much power he used but kept his speed the same.
It doesn't matter if he dies anyway. The meek guy, finally realizing what just happened became more scared then angry.
That's why you can't rely on a coward, they'll 100% ditch your ass if it means they can get out alive.
"Fuck this im out of here!"
He makes a 180 degree turn and sprints as fast as his legs allow.
All it takes is a slight gesture from Leon and little Onyx pounces towards the fleeing man. Onyx swiftly glides through the air and attaches himself on the mans neck.
" Ah! No get this thing off me! Let me go you stupid dog! Aahh!"
It only takes a few moments before the man goes silent as his body is sucked dry of blood.
Leon goes over to check in the leader guy to see if he's dead. Surprisingly, he's still breathing.
" Now the real question is what should I do with you now? "
"You know what. Screw this." He hates people like this the most and doesn't feel like dealing with this guy anymore.
He raises his metal covered leg in the air and slams it down hard on the leaders head, making it explode like a watermelon.
It's people like this that force him live as a loner for most of his life.
He retracts the armor back into its chest plate form and walks back inside. He made sure to block the door now that the lock is broken.
He goes back to the front of the store to check on Alexis. He's starting to get worried that maybe her condition was worse than he thought.
Just as he's thinking this, she suddenly wakes up.
"How are you feeling?"
"Um, much better thanks."
"Okay just let me know if you start to get cold anytime while we're moving okay?"
"Okay."
They get everything packed up and are ready to move on. Just before Leon places his hand on the front door knob, he heard a couple of car doors slam shut and foot steps all around the perimeter.
He's not scared in the least, he knew those two guys were most likely part of a bigger group.
"It's finally time for me to test out this orb of clarity.
He begins to channel his mana to the orb settled in his left eye.
The whole area around him suddenly changed. If he had to compare it to something he would say it's similar to heat vision, except instead of heat, it senses mana.
With this orb he's now able to see the people outside clear as day. There's around 15 of them armed to the teeth with guns and even grenades.
"Where the hell did they get those?"
There's one guy that stayed with their vehicles and all the rest encircled the shop.
It looks like the one that stayed with the cars is their leader. Once he finishes yelling out orders to his men, everything goes silent. No one moved a muscle, just waiting for the tense battle to start.