Left 4 Dead and all canon content is (c) Valve corporation
A/N: Somehow, the language was set to... a language I don't recognize, to say the least. While it didn't affect my story itself, it made it filter incorrectly, which has now been fixed.
The rain did little alleviate the grim aura of death and decay that hung over what was once known as Fairfield, Pennsylvania. Though the precipitation washed away the worst of the blood and accumulated filth, and masked the stench of death with the sharp smell of ozone, the dim lighting it provided made the city look positively decrepit.
Survivors, unwilling to venture out into the cold wetness, holed up inside office buildings and scattered safe houses. They vehemently cursed the falling precipitation, their insides knotting up as they considered the cost of delaying their escape from the city.
The Infected were no less affected. Smokers' hacking coughs worsened as pneumonia and bronchitis settled in with the spore-producing fungus. Boomers lost their footing in slippery puddles to be slowly suffocated under their own weight, too fat to right themselves. Tanks ceased their yelling and rampaging in the streets in favor systematically tearing through buildings as a way of venting their pent-up anger. Witches sat down right where they were; mistakenly believing that night had fallen, blanketing them in comforting darkness.
But the Hunters? They loved it.
Their feverish bodies and powerful muscles kept them warm long after their heavy jackets were soaked through. The blanket of clouds smothered the sun just enough for the ones with eyes to relinquish their sheltering hoods, allowing the rain to wash some of the grime from their hair. And their insane jumping capabilities made splashing through puddles that much more enjoyable. The rain was just another outlet for their boundless energy.
One such pair, their hoods habitually pulled down over their eyes, was having a particularly good time in the torrential downpour. The Huntress remained perfectly still, perched atop a flashing red stop light, her pupil-less, citrine eyes fixed upon the sobbing form in the middle of the intersection. She leaned forward a fraction of an inch, wriggling with excitement, like a cat preparing to pounce. Her mate, perched atop the post opposite her, mimicked the motion, his own golden eyes dancing with excitement, a devilish grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.
With twin shrieks of glee, they launched themselves forward, landing in the deep puddles on either side of the Witch. She cried out in shock and indignation as a torrent of water washed over her, rising onto her knees and growling. Her head whipped around to try and spot the source of the disturbance, but the pair had already sprung safely away, landing precisely where their partner had rested just moments before. The male Hunter, ever the daredevil, took the game a step further and launched himself at the Crier, fully intending to introduce her face to the growing puddle she sat in. She proved to be much sturdier than she appeared, though, and he merely ricocheted off her back before her flailing claws forced him to beat a hasty retreat. His mate was quick to follow, yipping and growling in amusement.
It took quite a while for them to get away from the screaming girl, but the pair of Hunters finally skittered up the cracked outside wall of a parking garage, taking shelter behind an abandoned SUV. Confused and enraged, the Witch ran around beneath them for a few moments, her claws held menacingly out to the side as she searched for her tormentors. Finally, though, she was overcome by whatever it was that made Witches so miserable, and fled, moaning and wailing at the top of her lungs.
Panting with exertion—she'd chased them quite far, after all—the two Hunters sat back on their haunches, eyes alight with the lingering adrenaline high. Grinning, the Huntress shook the water from her clothing, showering her mate in a fresh spray of water. Growling indignantly, he copied the motion, making his female counterpart squeal in protest and dart away a few feet. He grinned smugly, scratching an itch on his ear with one bare foot and she pointedly faced the other direction with a snort.
She glanced over her shoulder after a moment but hastily looked away once more at the sight of his mischievous grin. The Hunter growled teasingly, nuzzling her back affectionately and resting his hands on her sides. She mulishly ignored him, determined to keep up the indignant facade for as long as possible. He whined plaintively and circled around her, nipping and licking at the exposed skin of her neck. The Huntress squirmed away with a light mewl as his hot breath tickled her throat, and he knew he'd won when she turned to lightly headbutt his shoulder.
He butted her right back, growling in a teasing way and gently toppling her with a snort. Yowling in indignation, she righted herself again and batted at the top of his head, pulling his hood down over his eyes and obscuring his vision. He growled and tried to pull it back into place, but she wasn't having any of it. She sat firmly down on his back, her clawed hands holding the fabric over his eyes. He forcibly bucked her off, launching her at the ceiling and eliciting a startled squawk from the Huntress, who flipped over in midair to land on all fours. He was on her before she could get her bearings, and it soon dissolved into a wrestling match. Their playful growls and the occasional yelp as someone nipped or tackled a bit too forcefully reverberated down the parking garage, and unknown to the romping couple, a group of survivors slunk past, foregoing the potential shelter in favor of somewhere unoccupied.
"I hate Hunters," a deep, gruff voice complained, and was met by a derisive snort.
"I hate rain," a female voice countered.
"I hate complaining," the voice of an old man asserted, effectively ending the two-way tirade before it could even start. The Hunters heard them but paid the group no heed, too caught up in their wrestling to care.
The Hunter finally pinned his mate on her back, straddling her hips and resting his weight on her shoulders with a triumphant howl. She stared mournfully up at him, a pleading whine bubbling up in her throat. He tried not to look at the puppyish gaze she sent his way, but it was too late; his insides melted like butter and he rolled off her, pouting the whole time. In an instant, she was on her feet and leaping onto his back, flattening him to the concrete with a cackling screech. He bleated in protest as she leaned down to nudge the cloth of his hood aside and nipped his ear, her hot breath tickling the side of his face.
Her weight left his back and he scrambled to his feet as quickly as possible, casting about to see her standing by the open wall of the large concrete structure. He caught a flash of red teeth, bared in a taunting grin before she jumped back out into the torrential downpour, her gleeful shriek a clear challenge. She bounded through puddles and over swamped cars, her mate in hot pursuit. He caught up to her quickly and flattened her in a relatively dry spot, nipping playfully at her shoulders before bouncing away in turn. Their game of tag lasted for several minutes before the male stopped dead in his tracks, and his mate collided with him in a tangled mess of limbs.
Once they had untangled themselves, the female peered about to see what had claimed his fleeting attention span, and her face was lit by another mischievous grin as she finally saw it. It was not unusual to see a Common Infected attempting to maul an inanimate object, but something about the sight of one viciously attacking the deep puddle at its feet was astonishingly entertaining. The Hunter crept closer to the thrashing zombie, snuffling at its sodden clothing and narrowly avoiding a faceful of water. With a playful growl, he nudged its backside with his shoulder, overbalancing the poorly-coordinated creature. Its arms windmilled desperately for a moment before it toppled forward with a splash.
For a few moments it laid still, and the Huntress batted lightly at its sodden and matted hair. It re-emerged, coughing and spluttering, water streaming from its mouth and nose. She darted back with a snort, golden eyes wary as she regarded the sopping-wet zombie. It ignored her, however, too focused on attempting to regain its footing. Seeing an opportunity for another exciting game, she leaped almost straight up into the air, reveling in the rush of air before dropping heavily onto its back.
Its face was re-introduced to the concrete and water, and a few bubbles frothed around its head as it frantically tried to buck her off. The Leaper obliged it and danced away, snickering as it floundered drunkenly to its feet, hissing and spitting angrily. This quickly turned into a variation of the game "keep away," in which one Hunter would allow the Common to chase them in circles, while the other would nip and paw at its ankles. They would then trade off, cackling like hyenas, when its attention shifted.
But then, all too soon, their victim tripped on some concealed obstruction that sent it sprawling on its face once more. It stayed there long enough to have drowned in the three inches of water, and the Huntress whimpered ruefully, nudging its head with her cold nose. A light, playful shove from her mate prompted her to look up, just in time to receive a faceful of water as he hopped up and down in the wide puddle.
Screeching mischievously, she returned the favor, and soon they returned to their romping, only pausing once to drag the dead Common out of the way.
-x-
By the start of the next day, the sun had burned away the clouds, and soon all that remained of the giant puddles was a lingering dampness.
Witches resumed their wandering, sobbing inconsolably into their twitching hands. Smokers sniffled and coughed up wet lungfuls of phlegm, resigned to dealing with the inconveniences of added respiratory illness for the next few weeks. Tanks re-emerged into the sunlight to take out their rage on anything that so much as looked at them funny, their bellows and roars audible from several blocks away. Boomers, mildly unnerved by the bloated and stinking corpses of their brethren, were hesitant to abandon their various shelters, waddling in an almost wary manner as they returned to the sunlight.
But as for the pair of Hunters, the disappearance of the rain brought little to no change. They could still drop from dizzying heights, screaming gleefully the whole way down, even if there was no torrential splash waiting at the end. And the sunny weather brought out even more playmates, however unwilling, among the Infected and Survivors alike- though the latter usually didn't survive the so-called "playing."
That didn't stop them from braving the harsh sunlight to glance up at the sky, hoping to see the blanketing clouds that would signal another day of sopping wet adventures.