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Ch 27: Drivin’ down property values.

Rose looked at the crackling radio “Wasn’t doing that before,” she commented; picking it up she tried to tune it for some sort of signal but that static got only worse “Damn thing.”

“Ughhhhh…” a strung out moan came from the outside, masked by the loud static.
“You said something?” Rose asked Vincent and he shook his head; Rose sighed and put her hands on her hips “Well I know I’m not hearing things.”

There was another moan, more audible than the first; a man with a burlap sack over his head, much like the prisoner, stood in the doorway. The man moved in spasms as if electricity surged throughout his body with every step, naked except for the burlap sack and some tattered rags around its waist.

It was a soul damned to wrath known as a Prisoner and they were created from souls who were tortured in life and couldn’t let go of their hatred towards their tormenters so they could enter paradise, taking forms characteristic of their torture. “Ughhh,” it moaned and twitched towards them.

“Rose, get back,” Vincent told her and drew his katana, he knew enough to not underestimate how badly a demon can, and will, ******** you up based on how it looks or moves.

“Pssh,” Rose dismissed the warning, she drew her own katana and looked at Vincent “Look, that thing’s going at two inches per hour: I think I can take it.” She turned around just in time to see the Prisoner having snuck up on her and clamped onto Rose’s neck with its clammy vice grip, pushing Rose with its weight to the ground and kneeling over the fallen succubus.

Its burlap sack opened in the front in a mouth shape, the Prisoner leaned in as its mouth opened wider to eat Rose’s face. Rose was slowly losing strength to resist while being choked so she used all her energy to a single kick between the monster’s legs that resulted in a phenomena called ‘reverse puberty’ “Uggh,” it moaned, now a full two octaves higher; its grip on her neck loosened and it fell over, Rose seized the opportunity to stab it in the face with her katana.

“It’s a boy,” she chuckled but cut it short while rubbing her bruised throat. “What?” Rose asked when Vincent looked at her with that dry ‘I told you so’ look.

“Anyway,” Vincent said taking charge, “we need to find somewhere to wait for these two to wake up.”

“Why,” Rose asked him, “we know their weakness now.” She made kicked the air like it was a man’s ‘soft spot’ and chuckled at the thought.

“Well…. It may not work all the time,” Vincent said after searching for an answer.

“Why wouldn’t it work?” Rose asked.

“Well if it’s a woman, what then?”

Like the predator pouncing upon its prey after hours of waiting for the right moment Izazu sprang up and declared, “You spank her!”

Vincent and Rose stared at Izazu for a few moments before Vincent asked, “Were you just waiting for something like that?”

Izazu grinned and said, “Yeah, pretty much.” He sounded triumphant.

An hour later Diamond woke up and asked while rubbing her eyes, “where are we?”
“Silent Hill,” Vincent told her, they ended up staying in the electronics store after all. “We need to get through the town if we want to get into the Silent Prison; do you have enough energy to heal?” he asked Diamond, Water Draconians were known for their healing abilities as well as their attack; they were also pretty good at painting with water colors and other such arts and crafts.

“I think so,” Diamond said, “but not by much.” She focused her magic “Water arts: Kangen!” she yelled and a a sprinkle went over the group, just enough to heal injuries that would be sustained during a viscous butterfly attack. Diamond slumped from the energy the ability took, she had had to draw on her energy to the point of deficit in the fight against Pyramid Head. Vincent tried to prop her up but she resisted “I’m fine,” Diamond insisted, “let’s get going, the sooner we get out of here the better.” She looked at the emergency radio Rose gave her and looked around to see the others had their own radios “What’s this?” she asked.

“A radio,” Izazu answered simply with a smile.

Diamond just looked at that and sighed, “I know that, but why are we getting radios?” She was tired, hungry, and in no mood for smart a** answers.

“Well,” Rose said, “for some reason the monsters here cause the radios to get all static like when they come close.” They had run experiments that had doubled as Izazu’s punishment for making Rose carry him when he was awake. They sent Izazu into the town with a radio after Rose first said her idea, and he would wander until the radio began to get staticy, he would go in the direction it was getting stronger in until he found a monster and then come back via a handy dandy trail of bread crumbs.

“Oh,” Izazu added in, “we’re also out of bread.”

When they got outside Diamond saw the road was littered with crumbs, she looked up to Izazu who just grinned sheepishly and shrugged. Vincent saw in the distance a majestic coliseum at the far end of the town. “Look,” Vincent said to Diamond, “remember when we went there on a date?”

“Are you talking about that time you got the dates mixed up and it was closed that day, or are you talking about the time you stood me up in the rain, after telling me to dress up, is that the date you’re talking about?” Diamond asked Vincent and put her hands on her hips

“I meant the one where we got good seats,” Vincent muttered, but oh was Diamond listening.

“Oh, you mean the one where I nearly got decapitated, yeah that was a fantastic date!” Diamond was laying the sarcasm on heavily with a mock hysteric.

“How was I supposed to know?”

“Why did you think they were so cheap?”

Izazu was pondering “Wait,” he said narrowing his eyes, “it rains here?”

“Not the time or place, Izazu,” Diamond told him with her hand held out like a stop sign.

“Anyway,” Vincent demonstrated his uncanny ability to change subjects as fast as a speeding tortoise with a limp, “we’ll just meet up at the Gladius Maximus if we get lost.”

They began walking and after a calming period Izazu fell back to walk with Vincent “You two used to date,” he said, earning the captain obvious achievement (10 gamer points), “So why did you break up?”

Vincent shrugged and told Izazu, “I missed some dates, dinners…”

“That’s all?”

“Her birthday, my birthday, our anniversary….”

“Oh…”

“Her father’s funeral—” Vincent was going to continue but Izazu stopped him.
“I got the picture,” Izazu told Vincent in an understanding way. A scream pierced the air and Izazu looked to Rose, who shrugged, and then to Diamond, who had her knife ready. “Who was that screaming?” Izazu asked but his question was soon answered by a growing static on their radios. The fog around them thickened, obscuring everything more than 3 feet in front of them.

A figure emerged from the fog; it was a man with skin that was seared by flames over every inch. His eyes glowed with a deep burning flame and his lungs did glow red hot when he exhaled, showing through his charcoaled skin as if someone had stuck a billow in his back and used it to stoke the fires inside of him. He opened his mouth to moan and a bright orange flame shone from his throat, illuminating his esophagus.

It was another kind of Prisoner, though this type was identified ironically as the Illuminated. He grabbed Diamond by the arms when she tried to attack him with her knife; his grip was burning her arms though the flames did not touch her. “Aah!” Diamond screamed and pulled away, taking both arms with her in the process. The arms had been ripped off of the monster’s body and loosed their grip on diamond, falling to the ground and smashing into a pile of ash and burning embers. She kicked through his neck with a single, forceful strike and received severe burns from the kick as her exposed leg came into contact with the flames. She backed off and the Illuminated’s head fell to the ground where it smashed into ashes and burning embers.

Busy with her own problems, Diamond had not noticed the rest of them were being attacked by Illuminated also. Vincent cut the legs off of the one attacking him and it fell to the ground. Its torso, which took the brunt of the impact, did not collapse into ashes but was damaged by the impact, splits and signs of being crushed all over. The Illuminated dragged itself towards Vincent with its arms, its chest was slowly broken by the dragging and a trail of burnt ground and flames formed behind it as it pulled itself along. Its entire chest had collapsed into a smoldering mess by the time Vincent finally had crushed its head with his boot.

Izazu meanwhile tried impaling the Illuminated that was attacking him with Aiken’s Katana but it just moved itself up on his blade, making it harder for him to withdraw. He jerked the katana around trying to get it free and accidently cut through the flimsy spine of the Illuminated. Its torso bent backwards and ripped off of its lower body and was crushed by the force of impact. The legs dropped forward and broke against the ground. “Destroy the spine!” Izazu said to Rose, whose roses were of little effect for obvious reasons.

Rose nodded “Thanks Iz,” she said and slashed through her Illuminated with her katana, it didn’t slide off but instead it looked down and its entire upper body, for lack of a better word, imploded. “Cool.” She chuckled, stepping away from the mess.


After Diamond’s wounds were tended to, the group proceeded to the Gladius Maximus in time to see Michael fight a super imposed kitten on the flat screen outside. Michael rolled to avoid the swiping paws and decapitated it when the super imposed kitten got drowsy. “Extra Extra!” a news boy yelled waving a paper “two hundred confirmed dead in bleacher collapse during chorus of ‘We Will Rock You!’, twenty still unaccounted for!”