The Winter Tyrant-Chapter 10: Securing the Perimeter

After scaring away Avery and Richard, Dean was not at ease. If anything, he was more alert than ever.

He knew that by now they were continuing to harass him even after a month of deliberately distancing himself from their betrayal, and outright warning them not to provoke him. That this was not a wake-up call that they desperately needed.

If anything, the two parasites would come back in time with greater numbers. No doubt weaponizing the fact he had electricity within the local community that struggled to maintain power and preserve basic rations.

But that was not his immediate concern; instead, Dean secured his weapons and then returned to the room Yuki had chosen next door to his own.

He knocked thrice on the door before announcing his presence.

"You can come out now, the intruders are–"

The door swung open faster than Dean could even finish his sentence. Yuki shocked him by quickly grabbing his hands and inspecting his body from afar an almost pleading expression on her face.

"Are you okay? I heard gunshots, you’re not bleeding are you?"

Dean disarmed the girl’s concern by gently patting her head.

"I’m fine; those were my gunshots not theirs."

A look of horror appeared on Yuki’s face as a potential haunting reality quickly dawned on her.

"They’re not... dead, are they?"

Dean flicked Yuki between the eyes with his fingers, drawing her back to reality as she muffled a curse beneath her breath.

"What are you thinking about? No, I scared them off. But if they come back, I won’t be so merciful a second time. None of that is your concern, though. You don’t really need to fear gunshots either, this place was built to withstand the majority of small arms fire."

Yuki didn’t exactly know what small arms fire was, but from the sound of it Dean had ensured his house was built to be bulletproof, which was even more comforting to her after hearing gunshots for the first time in her life.

And it was only after she allowed herself a sigh of relief that she realized she was still holding his hand. She quickly released her grip on Dean and created a small step of distance between the two of them, averting her gaze and blushing ever so slightly as she did so.

"So... what are we going to do if they come back?"

Dean smirked as he grabbed her hand and led her out of the room.

"Come with me, I want to show you something...."

Yuki followed, not knowing exactly what Dean wanted to show her, or how it related to her question.

She followed him into his bedroom and looked around. The room was stacked full of tactical gear, guns, munitions, and other things that nearly made her eyes fall out of their sockets.

Obviously, the Union of Columbia had a reputation for allowing its citizens to own access to weapons that were outlawed in most countries across the world. But what Dean possessed somehow felt illegal even by this country’s standards.

Other than guns, magazines, belts, and crates lying neatly stacked around the room, there were body armor systems, helmet systems, and layers upon layers of cold-weather tactical clothing. And they weren’t just in men’s sizes either.

Dean didn’t stop just because Yuki was entranced by what she saw in his room. He opened a hidden door behind a bookcase that slid out of the way with ease. That door led to the balcony that wrapped around the perimeter of his property’s main building.

The balcony overlooked every angle of the property, allowing for no immediate blind spots. And just as Yuki gazed over the edge, looking upon the neighborhood below, which now appeared to be buried beneath the winter, she saw something near the entry point that caused her to gasp in shock.

"No way... You actually built a hot tub into your balcony?"

Dean looked over at the hot tub which lay beneath a cover, having temporarily forgotten its existence as he was too focused on the world around them to remember such a luxury he had given himself.

"Yeah.... What can I say? I love going in a hot tub in the middle of winter. It’s a shame I can’t feel the snow fall on me as I sit in it, but for obvious reasons the roof scales over the balcony as you can see. Did you remember to bring swimwear?"

Yuki raised a finger in protest but silenced herself midway through the thought. Because she had indeed in her haste grabbed everything she would normally take with her whenever she went travelling, which included swimwear.

"I plead the Fifth...."

Dean chuckled as he heard the answer. He honestly wasn’t expecting the girl to actually say yes.

This only made Yuki even more embarrassed, which Dean used as an excuse to get back to his original point.

"Right, hold on a second. I need to grab something. Be right back...."

Dean rushed off back into his room and came back with what appeared to be body armor on his chest and an army helmet on his head.

Just when Yuki was about to question why he had suddenly geared up he revealed a small drone in one of his hands.

"Check this out..."

Dean flipped down the goggles attached to his helmet’s night vision mount; they were neither night vision goggles nor thermal binoculars. They were instead a headset intended for use with an FPV drone.

He then flipped out a device embedded in the center of his plate carrier, which held a tablet-like device in it. Though with analog controllers built in, along with other features.

Dean placed the drone on the railing of his balcony, and then a moment later it drifted off into the air. Daring the storm raging in the background as he stood there sending the unmanned aerial vehicle into the neighborhood.

As the device was set to hover and scan for thermal signatures, he took off his helmet and placed it on Yuki’s head. Quickly adjusting it so that the goggles seated properly with his eyes while he himself controlled the drone.

"Alright, tell me what you see..."

Yuki stared in amazement as she saw what the drone saw.

"Oh, my God! This is amazing! I see my house! Holy crap the roof has already caved in! Are you freaking kidding me? Did that happen overnight?"

Dean simply laughed as he shook his head, flying the drone a little further.

The drone finished in a snow-white, low-signature coating and was further masked beneath winter camouflage wrapping. Making it difficult to track with the naked eye.

Despite the storm, Dean managed to track the drone just fine. Once the drone was exactly where he wanted it, he pressed a button on his personal end-user device that turned on the thermal overlay.

"Dean, the world just turned blue and orange! Is that normal!?!"

Dean rotated the drone to scan his own property and asked a simple question of Yuki.

"Looking down at the house below, that’s us... Do you see any red signatures?"

Yuki’s voice was quick to respond.

"only on the balcony where we are. I can see us! This is so freaking cool!"

Just as Yuki waved her hand towards the drone, smiling ear to ear as she watched herself from above. Dean plucked his helmet off her head and piloted the drone back to them.

It was then that he picked it up and brought it back inside, locking the door behind Yuki and himself as he did so.

"So, as you can see, I have the ability to detect threats long before they ever approach our property. Besides that, there are ample security measures to detect people approaching even while we’re sleeping. As long as we’re here, there’s nothing to fear. It would take a small army to breach this house. And if they do, they’ll walk right into my fire. So you can relax, and whatever happens next, you don’t need to worry about it."

Yuki felt more assured than ever after seeing access to the level of equipment and expertise Dean had .

She had previously read about Dean’s background in the military on the internet and what the specific units he was a part of meant. But reading about something and seeing a fraction of it performed live in front of you were two very different realities to comprehend.

Once Yuki had left Dean’s room and went about enjoying the comforts of her day, Dean opened the door once more. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

He placed his drone outside and returned to his bed, where he lay down in the safety and comfort of his room; dispatching the drone to follow where Avery and Richard had fled.

He naturally didn’t trust those rats not to gather a swarm. And judging by the thermal signatures across the neighborhood, few and far between had properly prepared a generator to sustain their own power even if for a limited time.

"Desperation is a hell of a drug...." Dean said aloud to nobody in particular as he scouted further in the sky without anyone else ever being the wiser to his bird’s-eye view of their lives and their hidden machinations.