The rifle's grip had long been warm in his grasp, his digits rippling along its length in worried anticipation. His breath smoked along the weapon, the moisture adhering to the cold metal and becoming frost. Not built for the cold, he suppressed a shiver and returned his attention to the building he was watching through the scope. Still nothing. He stole a glance at the watch on the inside of his left wrist; 4:37 AM. He'd been posted in the condemned apartment complex for about six hours now, and there was no sign of that cursed hare.

He was crouched back and away from the window, well out of sight from the outside. Four stories up, he had a clear view of the warehouse from which his quarry would appear. Or least, he was supposed to. There had been nothing that would arouse any amount of suspicion in this part of Tundratown, the most exciting of which had been a pack of juvenile polar-bears tagging the front of the building he currently occupied. He paused his vigil to sip at the lukewarm canteen that was strapped tightly to his body to prevent freezing, and caught movement in his scope. A nondescript SUV had appeared and ground to a stop in front of the suspect warehouse. The engine didn't stop, and he watched it idle before the warehouse's office door puffed off its coating of fine snow before slowly wedging open and revealing his most hated enemy.

The hare was in most ways unremarkable. Taller maybe, than most of his kind, but otherwise he seemed a simple business-mammal carpooling home. Almost. It was almost five in the morning, for one thing, and of course, there was his infinitely telling patterning. Unlike every other known hare, this one had a set of tiger-like stripes banding the sides and back of his head, a pattern that continued up the backs of his ears, where they faded into black tips.

The rifle-bearer tightened his grip on his weapon and nearly snarled as he zeroed in. For too long this had gone on, this hunt, this game, and he was going to end it. The safety flicked off without conscious thought, and he dropped the crosshair right onto the hare's unsuspecting forehead, who had stopped in his tracks.

He froze, his claw halfway through trigger-pull, as the hare turned casually towards him, his eyes rising until he was looking right at him. For a second, nothing else existed, nothing could possibly exist in that fraction of impossible. He knew. Still frozen, he stared in growing horror as the hare smiled and cocked his head, as if asking a question, and suddenly things were very clear to him.

He snatched up the rifle and shouldered through the thin door with as much force as he could muster, then scrambled for the larger window at the end of the hall. Panic was shut out by decades of hard training, and his exit route crystallized in his mind. Out the window and down the dilapidated fire escape to the ground, and then away as fast as his long legs would carry him.

It didn't happen quite as planned.

He was a few strides away from the window when the bomb exploded, taking his footing and chucking him at the glass. A blast of hot air, hotter even than a Sahara Square afternoon, came crashing towards him, and he only just managed to tuck his limbs in before the force sent him into a shower of hard glass.

He was lucky he was in Tundratown for two reasons, one; the thick jacket he was wearing spared him from any serious gashes, and two; the snow beneath the window was deep, and even luckier, soft. He grunted as his lungs expelled air into the powder and felt his elbow bend just a little too far in the wrong direction, not enough to cause any damage, but it was mighty uncomfortable. He floundered momentarily while trying to extricate himself from the snow before clambering to a shaky stand. The cloud of black smoke dissolved quietly into the darkened sky, and car alarms were wailing for at least two blocks. He took just a moment to bind up the minor cuts he'd received; a blood-trial in Tundratown was like leaving a note with detailed instructions on his location. He also piled snow onto what little he had lost, more as a delaying tactic than anything else. He still had the rifle, slung over his shoulder as it was, and his sidearm hadn't left its holster without his knowledge. If it came to it, he'd fight if he had to, but as that was just one outcome, it was one he'd rather avoid.

He took off through the silent cold of the Tundratown night and didn't look back.