…because I’ve already got enough in progress to worry about, but I need to write it down or else I’ll forget.
Plot bunny tracks…
As the air raid sirens blared ominously, Dick noted that Tim and Steph were running as fast as their legs could carry them. It was actually hard to keep up with them.
It was as if they’re running for their very lives.
“Hurry!” Tim screamed back. “Before it gets dark! Run! Run!”
Only then did Dick notice the atmosphere. The mostly fog-ridden town was getting darker, but not in the normal way of dusk or nightfall. Suddenly, he noticed that their footsteps sounded different. Looking down at the ground, he’s horrified to find that the pavement they all were running on was transforming into rusty worn metal plates and grating.
At least, he hoped that the dark red stains on the metal were rust.
Stephanie was the first to reach the church, an old whitewashed wooden building that looked more frail than any other structure Dick had seen since arriving in Silent Hill. Its pale countenance stood out starkly against the darkening backdrop. She desperately clawed at the door, struggling to get it to move. Only when Tim joined her did their combined strength pry the entrance open. As soon as they could, the two of them practically dove inside, and once Dick was inside as well, Tim dragged the door shut with a resounding slam that seemed to rattle every stained glass window in the building.
Dick’s lungs burned as he struggled to catch his breath. While he stood there in the foyer, he looked around to take note of their surroundings.
Clearly this building was one that Tim and Steph, at least, had been using as some sort of makeshift safe house. Supplies such as medicine, food, water, and weapons were stockpiled among the pews, obviously scavenged from around the town. It confused Dick, though. From all appearances, it looked as if Tim and Steph had been collecting supplies over a week or two, when he was certain they’d only been missing for about twenty-four hours.
Then a sound from outside the church caught Dick’s attention.
Footsteps…
Heavy lumbering footsteps…
Scraping metal on metal…
Like someone dragging something heavy along the steel plated metal ground…
Dick turned towards the door.
“Don’t open it.”
He looked back to see that Steph and Tim had moved themselves deeper the church’s interior and had curled themselves up underneath the altar. Dick was honestly surprised that Steph’s desperate whisper had reached him from all the way over there.
It was the first good look Dick had gotten of the two of them since he’d found them. Their street clothes were ripped and torn in places. Their faces and hands were dirty as well. Their eyes were heavily shadowed, as if they hadn’t slept for days. They looked like terrified children who’d just woken up from a nightmare and were trying to hide from the monsters plaguing their dreams.
Tim shook his head. “Stay away from the door,” the young man whispered in a tone similar to Stephanie’s. “Please… Just stay away…”
Dick looked back at the door. He noticed an old fashioned keyhole. Against the whispered pleadings of the teenagers behind him, Dick knelt down and put his eye against the keyhole.
Beyond the tiny metal window to the world beyond the church, Dick caught the vague outline of a massive bear-like man dressed in a bloodied butcher’s apron. Where his head ought to have been, though, was a huge metal pyramid with no features… No eyes… No mouth… In his right hand, Dick swallowed hard as he caught sight of the massive butcher’s knife nearly as big as he was, dragging along the ground and leaving a thin trail of blood in its wake.
Suddenly, the pyramid-headed man stopped.
Its head jerked around to Stare. Right. At. Dick.
Dick barely leapt back from the door in time as the massive butcher’s knife skewered the door. As the sound of Tim and Steph terrified screams filled his ears, Dick felt his heart leap to his throat at the sight of the tip of the blood-streaked blade, which had stopped just inches from his head.
Within the church, the blade of the knife began smoldering. Slowly it was retracted. When the knife had completely vacated the building, the gaping hole it left behind disappeared, as if nothing had pierced the door in the first place.
The only evidence left behind that anything had even happened was the uncontrollable tremble that wracked Dick’s whole body and the frightened sobs of Tim and Stephanie at his back.
Plot bunny tracks…
Tim glared daggers at Ra’s on his computer screen. “You’re lying!” he growled.
Ra’s smirked. “Do you think I would make a joke regarding something like this? I warned you there would be consequences to your actions against me and my organization, Timothy.”
The young man’s blue eyes were filling with tears, but he stubbornly refused to let them fall. “It’s not true. I just saw Tam a few hours ago. If you’ve hurt one hair on her head, I swear—”
The old man on the computer screen chuckled darkly. “I saw to her end myself, Detective,” he sneered. “With my own blade.”
“Liar!”
As a murderous rage whelled up deep within Tim, the sound of the door to his command center opening startled him. Immediately thinking that it was one of the League’s assassins come to attack him while he was off-guard, the young man pulled several throwing disks from his belt.
“Tim?”
The disks fell to the floor with small clatters. Relief flooded his system as a familiar silhouette filled the doorway. “Tam!”
She smiled ruefully. “Sorry about startling you. Can’t blame anyone but yourself, though, ninja-boy. You did give me a key, after all.”
“No…” Ra’s voice of disbelief was a mere whisper that Tim ignored as Tamara Fox walked towards him. “You’re dead… I— I killed you myself…”
“Are you alright, Tam?” Tim asked as he gathered the dark skinned beauty in his arms.
She laughed softly as he looked her over anxiously from head to toe. “I’m just fine Tim.” As Tim hugged her close, Tam looked over his shoulder and fixed a hard stare full of deadly promises on Ra’s al Ghul, her normally brown eyes glowing gold in the computer screen’s flickering light.
“I’ve never felt better.”
