Grace and Silver

Chapter 3

Mercy and Bloody Shadow

Disclaimer: Takahashi owns Ranma and the Wrecking Co. Konami owns Silent Hill. This is just for fun, please don’t sue. Thank you.

Note: Anything spoken in is in English. Everything else is Japanese.

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“OhmyGod! ImsorryImsorryImsorry!! Oh, please be alright! I’m so sorry!” The American woman was hovered over the unconscious woman anxiously, fretting over any damage she might have done to the apparently Asian woman. She hadn’t even realized that she had hit her until after that...that thing...was dead, causing one form of panic to be replaced with one less centered on self-perseveration. She had half-carried, half-dragged Nabiki to safest place she could think of nearby, a sleazy strip bar Heaven’s Night. Satisfied with her haven, she searched Nabiki’s purse some aspirin and possibly identification, discovering the first aid kit inside. With the minor medical supplies, she proceeded to bandage the victim of her own panic.

Her relief was visibly present when the young Japanese woman opened her eyes. She sat up in the booth seat she had been lying on. She gingerly touched the side of her head, sensing the bandage over what would probably be a very bad bruise. American backed away, as the other began shouting angrily in rapid Japanese. She had no idea what she was saying, but as some hand gestures were universal she could make a pretty good guess.

Nabiki was righteously pissed off. She had tried to help and what did she get for her troubles? A mild concussion! This girl was paying for her medical bills and then some. She looked at her assailant, and mused that once again America did not fail to live up to its stereotypical image.

The woman was half a foot taller than Nabiki, with clear blue eyes that were set well with her blue halter-top and jeans, and long blond hair that was well kept. Most likely she was Nabiki’s age, give or take a year or two. She wore unremarkable tennis shoes, which offset the decadence of the two gold stud earrings on her left ear and the diamond ring on her hand. The ring was on her right hand though, marking that it was just ornamental.

“I’m sorry. It was an accident,” the woman offered up, almost meekly in apology to the infuriated woman, “Butthere was this...this...”

“Monster?” Nabiki offered, hoping she found the correct English word, while cringing at the woman’s, ‘Tourist Speak’. Slow, halting, and unnecessarily loud. However, Nabiki could safely presume that the extent of her Japanese was limited to the words sushi, sake, and goodbye, which left her few options.

Her temper had finally cooled, and she was looking around at her new locale with the appropriate distaste that was equated to her sex and orientation. A pause as she took a deep breath and nodded. “It is alright. I understand, this place...” Nabiki couldn’t think of the proper English word to dub this Hell.

Instead of dawdling on a fitting descriptive, Nabiki took in her surroundings, ”Where is it we are?” Nabiki internally groaned, feeling like a moron speaking in and even recognizing the Pidgin English so many Japanese tend to fall into

“Oh wonderful, you speak English!” The woman bubbled, glad that they were able to communicate. Nonetheless, she made sure her words were clear for the foreign woman “We are at Heaven’s Night, a strip joint. Near the bowling alley.”

“It is... seems to be so...” Nabiki took out her brochure and began to scour it over as she obtained her location. Once found she turned to her attacker/rescuer. “What is your name?”

“My name is Mercy, Mercy Lucre.” She extended her hand in greeting, allowing Nabiki to take it while introducing herself.

“I am Nabiki Tendo. Your name Mercy, is that common American name?”

Mercy smiled, as if she was reminded of a private joke,“No it has a special meaning.”

“How is it so?”

There was a glimmer of mirth in the blond woman’s soft blue eyes“It is a name that gives great power to others.”

The two women spent the next two minutes in awkward silence. Nabiki checking Mercy’s bandage in the mirror, as Mercy moved from the booth, and rummaged around the bar in an attempt to find anything remotely useful.

“Whatwas that thing? It was not human, was it?” Mercy asked Nabiki; thankful for her new companion, but still weary of whatever lurked outside.

“Hai, bakemono desu-“Nabiki calmed herself, remembering to stay in English, “It is a monster. Not a human, the way it does change alone...” She shuddered in memory of her own encounter.

“I know, it’s just not right!” Mercy quickly replied, making it difficult for Nabiki to keep up, “I mean nothing can move like that. Hell, nothing should LOOK like that...and how it’s hair changed from blond to brown and back.” That last part was more to herself than Nabiki.

‘Blond and brown?’ Nabiki thought to herself. ‘It did not have red or black hair in a ponytail. Just like...’ She violently shook her head, deciding the creatures varied. “Mercy, why are you here in Silent Hill.”

“I’m looking for my husband Jeff. He has been missing for a month, I know he has family here,” the blonde woman answered, unable to help the tint of concern coloring her voice.

“Can you find him?”

“No,” Mercy answered, “I had just left his sister’s house when I heard this siren and I passed out. When I woke up, there was this mist all around and those things. So I grabbed a pipe and started trying to find anyone.”

“And have you found anyone? One other person that is not me?”

Mercy shook her head sadly. “No, just you. Well...there was this other guy but he ran off as I got near and I lost him. So I just pegged him as a monster or something.”

Nabiki’s eyes lit up with a faint hope, “You are sure it was a man? Where was it you see him? What were his looks?”

Mercy was a little taken aback by Nabiki’s rapid-fire questions. “P-pretty sure, East South Vale by a toy store, and I couldn’t see his face. He was wearing a tuxedo.”

Another long silence between the two, Nabiki knew that this just screamed trap, but what other option did she have really? Sighing, she turned to the blonde American, “This toy store it has the name Maxine’s Toys? Where is its location?”

“Maxine’s Toys?” Mercy took out her own map, a triple A travel guide, and looked over it for a while. “Yes, corner of Lindsey and Sanders, across the street from the flower shop. That’s about where I saw the guy in the tux.”

“That is to East South ValeFrom where I comeshimatta.” Nabiki muttered to herself. “Thank you for you help Mercyand be cautious of harming others.” She started to go for the door.

“Wait! How are you going to go back?” Mercy asked.

“I am going to go down Nathan...” Nabiki paused in recollection, “Mou... I forgot I can not go down that road.”

The blond woman nodded in confirmation at Nabiki’s realization, “There are a lot of roads that you can not go down. This screwy town has blocked off roads all over. Here, let me have your map for a moment.”

Mercy snatched the brochure out of Nabiki’s hands, and started to mark on it with a red marker. When she was done she handed it back to Nabiki with a haughty flourish and a smug smile.

“...Thank you.” Nabiki replied coldly, a feeling of dislike for this woman was creeping up on her. “Perhaps we should be traveling together? There is safety in numbers, as you Americans say.”

“Thank you for the offer but you and I are going in completely different directions.” Mercy responded, allowing a touch of regret in her voice.

“Oh? Where is it you are going to?” Nabiki enquired, just in case it was necessary to seek the woman out.

“Brookhaven Hospital. Jeff is there, I know it.”

Nabiki nodded; the woman seemed very adamant, “I hope you find him.”

“I hope you find who you’re looking for,” Mercy said, sincerely, “Is it that guy in the photo in your bag?”

“Yes he’s my sis-...wait. You went through my possessions?!”

“I had to! I needed that first aid kit you had!”

Another long pause as Nabiki fumed a little, she definitely wasn’t taking a liking to Mercy. However, people trapped in a foreign country in a little isolated town that is quite literally going to Hell can’t afford to be picky about their allies.

Mercy nodded, and in apology for the concussion, gave Nabiki a first aid kit she had found in the dressing room, as well as one of the two boxes of handgun bullets the other woman had found under the bar. As she sat on one of the stools quietly loading the bullets into the clip she heard Mercy leave.

Nabiki paused she stared into the mirror, her mind elsewhere. Why didn’t she like Mercy? It wasn’t as if she was a bad person. Just in some way the woman grated on her nerves. The fact that she had hit her upside the head didn’t help things. Also the way afterwards, when Mercy apologized, she stopped being concerned about Nabiki.

That was probably it, if Mercy had a little more sense of her surroundings, she wouldn’t have whacked Nabiki. In fact, the way she talked, even in ‘Tourist Speak’, she had this arrogant sense of being and that just rubbed Nabiki the wrong way. The way she had left; it was with no goodbye, no good luck wish, not even a nod. Just as soon as her obligation to clean up her own mess was complete, she left without so much as a slightest glance back at the strange foreign girl.

She jumped in surprise when she saw someone else in the bar. After a moment, she realized that it was her own reflection in the bar mirror. Nabiki peeked under her bandage where she had hit the thing in the bowling alley, blisters has developed and her skin had taken on a nasty red color, that punch to that thing had burnt her worse than she thought, it had to be second degree. The bandage on the side of her head throbbed painfully, and her eyes were bloodshot with bags under them.

“Heh, hello Tendo Nabiki. Welcome to Hell.” Her chuckle lacked any mirth to it.

She got up from the stool and went to the door, before pausing to dig in her duffle bag for one of her orange bottles. She took out one and extracted two grass green pills in the shape of diamonds. She slammed them back along with a swig from a bottle of seltzer lying on the floor that had long gone flat. “I hope we both get out of this alive.”

She closed the door, and started on the long trek back to East South Vale. She could decide if she was referring to herself and Mercy, or herself and her reflection. She did not notice that she had been talking to herself this time.

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Another recent acquaintance of Nabiki’s exited the men’s bathroom, smiling through her bloody bridal veil. She picked the bloody paper towels Mercy had used as an early makeshift bandage for Nabiki; she went to the mirror and used them to draw on the glass. The end result was a simplistic, crude outline of Nabiki’s form.

“Bitch.”

She swung the meat tenderizer mallet she carried into the reflective surface. It shattered into hundreds of fragments that landed on the alcohol stained ground. The woman in the bloody bridal veil left Heaven’s Night, humming the wedding march.

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The trip back to East South Vale was not going to be easy. If Mercy’s map was correct, then the only path back to Maxine’s Toys would be a long and winding set of roads. Nathan Avenue was impassible; she had seen that for herself. Katz Street, according to Mercy, had become a terrain of twisted metal debris that was once cars and shopping carts from a nearby market.

The only path available to her was to travel down Carroll to Rendell, and then head south on Monson, as a large wall of melted plastic blocked any passage north. Once on Saul, she need to follow it to Neely and proceed north to Katz as the jagged metal barricade stopped at the entrance to the Woodside Apartments. It was pointless to travel to Nathan from Neely; the largest road in town had developed the largest potholes in the world. From Katz it was a short walk to Lindsey, and from there just a half a block to travel from there. Then, she would finally reach the damn store.

“I hate this town.” Inwardly she winced as she realized that she had talking aloud to herself again. She looked at the plastic wall blocking off Monson, it looked like someone had put it together with tens of thousands of melted red plastic Legos, and shook her head. ‘This place is a demented fun house, why does everything have to be a damn obstacle?’

Not wanting to have to play along with the town’s twisted game, she attempted to jump the plastic wall. It wasn’t that big, just ten feet tall. If she got a running start, and hit the jump off of the Oldsmobile ruin next to the wall just right then she might be able to grab the top and pull herself up.

She took a few steps back and prepared to run. ‘Mental Note, if you make it back home start training again. In case I have to fight through Hell again.’ She made it three steps when she stopped dead.

‘sostrongiwishiwaslikethatsuchashame’

“Damnit!” She pulled out her gun and immediately ran to the nearest building, pressing herself against the wall. This time was starkly different from the bowling alley as now her mind was fully functional and working top speed.

‘Option one: these things can’t see too well, if at all from the lack of eyes. Find out where it is from that sloshing sound and stay away from it,’ Nabiki strategized, ‘I can use the mist to hide in, and move slowly through it. Most importantly, don’t take your eyes off it! Those things seem to catch up to you pretty quick when you’re not paying attention to them. If it sees me, keep moving backwards and keep it in sight. When I’m a safe distance away, probably a block, turn around and run. Run very fast.

Nabiki grew a slight wry smile, ‘I can always shoot it to death, too. If it does catch up, put a few bullets into its head. Hopefully that’ll kill it or at least make it collapse. Okay Nabiki we are ready.’

Nabiki tensed in preparation, expecting to hear the sloshing of the thing any moment. What she didn’t expect was to feel something slip around her neck.

“...My son...my son...” The thing behind her pulled its hands tight against Nabiki’s neck.

‘SHAMEHONORPITYHONOR’

Nabiki froze. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Worse yet, she could feel the hands, rope, or whatever it was actually cutting into her neck.

“GET OFF ME!” She lifted her left leg and kicked at the wall behind her as hard as she could.

“AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!” Whatever it was let loose a horrible scream and let go of Nabiki’s neck. She ran out two steps into the street and fired two precious bullets into the thing.

A thing that resembled a thick piece of black fabric cut into a human figure collapsed onto the sidewalk. A bright red stripe had been painted across the neck that matched the color of the two bullet holes where its chest would be, pouring blood. It gushed out, as if someone had turned on a hose, and the shadow like creature just lay on the ground bleeding, twitching, and mumbling.

“My son...my son...my son.” It was soft and gentle like a sorrowful mother’s lament, and to Nabiki’s ears, as horrid as an unearthed grave. She shook her head violently at the ideas bubbling up in it; comparing this thing bleeding from the neck and stomach to someone back in Nerima.

Cautiously and fearfully, she walked up to the murmuring thing and slammed her foot into the thing. Another scream was emitted from the creature, accompanied by a spurt of blood that stained her shirt and jeans with specks of red. With the blow, the thing's writhing, agonizing whispers, and mind-rending murmurs all mercifully stopped.

Nabiki collapsed to her knees on the street, heaving as if exhausted and nearly sobbing. ‘If I get out of this place alive I swear I am getting this town torn town, the lake filled, the woods burned to the ground, the earth salted, and this damn basin in the mountain range filled with concrete!’

She slowly got to her feet and prepared to continue on her long, overly complex, trip back to East South Vale. ‘And then for good measure, I will personally drop the bombs on the filled in hole.’ Her hands went to her neck where the bleeding shadowy murmuring thing had grabbed her. There was a small cut on her right side, that thing’s ‘hands’ were sharp apparently. Again she was assaulted by familiar memories as she realized that the creature had been trying to cut her head off. Again she shook her head fiercely to keep her mind in the present.

When Nabiki attempted to jump the barricade again she was assaulted by the whispers again. Not wanting to meet anything else, she turned away from the wall and proceeded on the ‘convenient’ route. The message the town was sending her was loud and clear You are going to play MY game Nabiki Tendo, and if you don’t I will make you pay dearly.

“Akane, Ranma, you two are going to pay for my therapy bills, medical bills, and a hell of a lot of emotional duress.” She mumbled to herself as she finally walked onto Lindsey after encountering, and thankfully avoiding another one of those bleeding murmuring things. It was becoming easier and easier to avoid these things now that she knew the sounds, and what the whispers meant. What the Hell these things were, why they were here, and why she was hearing these whispers and emotion rushes were all very good questions. Of course the only question on Nabiki’s mind that she wanted to be answered promptly was:

“Where is this damn toy store?”

She walked back up Lindsey, after her first unsuccessful journey down it. Eventually, she found it underneath a cheerful green and white striped awning and a few doors down from the corner across from the florist’s, rather than across from it as Mercy had said. Underneath the awning there was a pleasant display in the window of a rather impressive, if nonworking, model train countryside. The door had a very happy looking Robbie the Rabbit smiling at her, holding a sign with the word ‘open’ on it.

Nabiki opened the door, prompting the cheerful chime of the sensor inside the doorframe. She paused and looked at the other side of the door where she saw the other side of the rabbit was sleeping with the word closed written on the side of his overalls. Nabiki shook her head; she really did not like that rabbit, and found it unnaturally disturbing. Turning into the darkened bowels of Maxine’s livelihood, Nabiki attempted the light switch, and was completely unsurprised to find it not functional in the slightest. She sighed to herself, and continued on.

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The girl in the bloody bridal veil smiled, as she exited the bridal shop with a bouquet of white flowers, as she watched Nabiki enter the toy store.

There are many different smiles in the world. The simple everyday smile where the corners of the mouth turn up slightly in a subdued fashion, the expression carried more by the cheeks and eyes. The smile of the extremely happy can actually be seen from their mouths, as their faces take on a radiant glow. The smile of malice takes on a coldness to it, making it a parody of contentment.

There are many different degrees of smiling, each having their own special trait and nuance. However there is only one version of the smile of malice that is so large and wide that it caused the skin in the corners of the mouth to slightly crack, allowing a small amount of blood to seep from the slight wound. It’s only a few drops but the effect is rather impressive, morbid, and sinister; a smile framed in blood.

There is only one kind of emotion that causes this bleeding smile, only one that creates the bloody smile...

It was the emotion that came from dark vindication, invoking the ‘Smile of Revenge.’

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Author’s Notes: As always reviews/flames/death threats are all welcome. Once again a big thank you to WFROSE for helping me with this. And yes there is no Maxine’s Toys in the game but there IS a shop in East South Vale on Lindsey with a green and white awning.