15:HOME_OF_THE_HANGED

They were silent. The entirety of Ground Zero was silent, but they were not silent for the same reasons everything else was silent. Nothing lurched even an inch and yet nothing remained at peace. The frozen aura of terror. An unfair end to many lives. Lives which could not be recorded, and which left no significant traces behind, no matter how much they may have wanted to.

They wandered past where there had once been a hospital, and another where there had once been a university. Jisako had visited the university once for an event. Adelaide had required the hospital. There weren't any remnants of the university, nor the hospital. Adelaide only knew where they were because she knew this area so well. She had walked through these streets a million times twenty years ago, and recognized the faint details which had survived the blast when she walked through the decimated versions.

There were some things which she did not recognize, however.

They passed a radio tower, which stood looming over the remnants of the city, somehow still intact. Likely some demon's act, to protect it for whatever reason, but they could not find the demon, and they didn't have the energy to investigate much further.

Adelaide saw Jisako, impaled on the tower, lying there. She didn't even bother to think about it. That ghost was everywhere now. Just two steps away, and only becoming more grotesque. It was Jisako's usual behaviour, wasn't it? To only grow weaker and weaker until Adelaide pitied her and did as Jisako demanded out of some blind pity.

There were bits of hair and skin flaking away, strange appendages growing where they shouldn't have– Adelaide's bride was more like a centipede of human limbs below the waist than any resemblance to the woman. And the face? It seemed strange how it still felt like Jisako despite all of the bodily change. The face was so horrifically mutilated she couldn't even bear to look at it.

So she didn't. She turned her back and refused to look at the stupid thing. It wasn't in her to care that much anymore. To fret over why her wife was haunting everything. She hadn't even died here. She turned away. Was this Jisako still demanding repentance? Adelaide's spit went sour in her mouth. Hadn't she already proven she'd die for Jisako? In fact, she was right on the way to. What was the point in the ghost getting so uppity?

She'd done everything she came to do. What more could Jisako want from her? Adelaide couldn't exactly bring her back to life no matter how much the dead woman complained about that.

She hurried away from the dead woman, pushing Rainmaker along.

Rainmaker wasn't walking so much as shuffling now. He kept his shoulders hunched in and his head down. He'd never had a particularly confident posture before, but Adelaide had to say he looked rather like a possum now. Something which went through the trash and played dead at the sign of any danger. He was trying to make himself helpless. Something undesirable. Adelaide was not a predator, however. She was a creature eager to drag the carcass along until it was truly a dead thing. She was eager to play the scavenger, which a hairless possum could not hide itself from.

Though Adelaide could only think about how he really didn't need any aid in the department of driving people away with how noxious he already was to be around. He couldn't be less desirable as company if he tried. He was too busy now, staring off into the middle distance, and holding the gun like he was planning to take his own brains out with it, to be much help with killing demons. He just let her pull him along. As she'd blamed him for the murder, the hairless cat, or perhaps hairless rat, or hairless possum.

At one point along the road, the piece of shit had taken his own cross, and chucked it off into the rubble. She'd forced him to retrieve it– or tried, anyway. She had reasoned with him that they'd still need something to point out the presence of a demon, but he'd refused, and so now they were relying solely on what remained of her chain, which didn't even have the hanging man on it, just a burnt lump of nothingness which had once been an effigy. She was angry with him, so he cowered from her, but even with threats, he did not retrieve the cross or do as he was told, despite the clear instruction. It was maddening for Adelaide, who was so utterly tired of dealing with tiring things.

There was a small part of Adelaide that wanted to rip the chain itself off, be rid of the damn thing, because it did nothing for her but leave burns now, but she couldn't. It used to be reliable, but without the hanging man left on it, it seemed something was wrong now. The chain was always a little warm against her neck, regardless of whether or not there was a demon nearby. Often it only served as a tool for false alarms.

She tugged and shifted with it, attempting to figure out what the issue was, but nothing seemed to figure. No matter how she tried to fix it, which was rather a difficult prospect when the only pieces remaining were a chain and a lump which had once been the hanging man, when she could not melt metal with her hand alone.

Adelaide's finger only started to burn worse. She attempted to look around and spot the demon, but there wasn't a single one wandering around despite how much her cross was acting as though there was. None peeked a head over the horizon or around a corner.

Adelaide looked at every damn corner she could for a demon. Every available nook and every cranny, but she couldn't see a single demon. Nowhere amongst the endless rubble and nowhere in the caging sky. But the cross kept its heat. Its strange, unwavering, inhuman heat. Sometimes its heat moved in cycles. It warmed slowly, and flashed up, before cooling down. She could not comprehend those cycles, as they did not come in routine. Sometimes they seemed to come around her thoughts. One thought of something about Jisako, and it would cool, and one thought about Rainmaker, then it would heat right back up again, searing through her neck. That however, was not so consistent that she could focus herself on thinking only of Jisako and be rid of the burning.

Eventually, Adelaide gave up on it. She couldn't figure out what it was detecting and didn't have the energy to care. For all she knew it was just heating up because it was broken. She turned her attention to Rainmaker. She scowled. It was his fault they were running around like fools now. "If you hadn't thrown your cross, maybe we'd know where to go or what to kill. Now there will be demons left, because we couldn't find them all."

Rainmaker only continued to hunch in on himself. In fact, he hunched in on himself even more, like a scolded child. The young man lowered his head. "...I'm sorry." His voice was even quieter than it had initially been. In fact, Adelaide could barely hear him over the sound of the toxic winds.

"You sound like a god damned child," she spat, grimacing at him.

"I feel like one."

Adelaide scoffed and turned away. "Well you're not one. And I don't know what kick you get out of acting like you are," she declared. At some point, he had rapidly aged in her mind, but not enough to be taken seriously. Old enough to be scolded in the most constant way she could manage to.

"I know."

"Stop acting like one."

"You've been getting crueller."

"We killed a devil, didn't we?"

"...I still loved my brother."

"Then why agree to kill him?"

"You told me to."

"You sound pathetic."

"I know," he mumbled. Rainmaker brought his hand over his face. He closed himself like a flower in a violent downpour. Adelaide hated it.

Her mind flashed again to the old couple, who had been sitting and awaiting answers with no idea when they would come or why. Expecting meaning while staying sat right next to a tree. Part of her wondered if that might've been a better place to be than this. Waiting indefinitely for something else to give you the answers, rather than having to go out and find whether her own belief on what would give her the answer would be true. Whether it would work.

If something else could be relied on to give the right answer, she wouldn't have to find it herself. If something else could be relied on to give the right answer, she wouldn't have to deal with the burden of thinking on her own. She wouldn't have to formulate any more thoughts. She could've been like those average wives who walked with their husbands in front without a word. Those wives who considered themselves deeply subservient, and best for being so.

She and Rainmaker had tried to stay on Earth and make their own answers, but here they were, regretting it. So would it not have been easier to leave the work to someone else? Just let them do as they wished without bothering to question or to reason around it? Would that not have been an easier life, if not perhaps a pleasant one? Surely there must have been something uniquely pleasant in dying while believing it was for a greater purpose or glory which could not be reached within the world of the living?

The sound of a loud fan whirring above got her attention. Adelaide looked up. A ship, which was floating not far, and not too high above, casting lights so bright and roaring so loud as to alert anything nearby to their presence. Rainmaker didn't seem to realize what it was. She grabbed him and pushed the both of them to hide under the nearest cover. The ship's engines roared above. It stopped for a moment, hovering above them in the air. Adelaide pressed a hand over Rainmaker's mouth. She scowled.

They were still looking for survivors.

Rainmaker grabbed at her hand. Adelaide pressed it down harder. He struggled to pull it away. Did he want to scream? Did he want to live? She didn't know if he would go on the ship if he had the choice. And so she took the choice away. Adelaide wanted to pull his head back and snap his neck. She couldn't, though. They were both weak from the sickness festering in them. The sickness born from the seed of the poisoned air, and the poisoned water, and the poisoned sky and grass and fruit– but Adelaide was a little stronger than him now and the stupid boy was frightened– so he gave up the fight after enough blind struggling.

She could tell by this point, as clear as possible, that she was doing the same to this young man as she had to Jisako, but she reasoned it was okay this time. Those actions had led to Jisako's death, and of course, Jisako didn't want to die. But Rainmaker didn't want to live, and she was just offering him the encouragement he needed to be pushed to go through with what needed to be done. He had killed a man, after all. He had followed her. He had sealed himself into a hell with her.

So it was really justifiable, this time. This wasn't like what happened with Jisako.

Jisako was a sweet presence in the world, which went out of her way to try and leave that world better than she found it. A sweet presence which tolerated the abuse she was given out of the goodness of her heart. Rainmaker was nothing. He was a horrible mess of a person who had none of the conviction to truly do anything.

The ship's sounds above them finally passed. Adelaide let go of Rainmaker, and he immediately slumped forward, almost like a corpse. Her heart skipped a beat. For a moment she wondered if she had snuffed the breath out of him, but the moment passed, and he stood up, with a slunk over posture, and general irritation in his eyes. Adelaide stood up after he did, and watched over the landscape again, once she was sure Rainmaker would not try to run off.

Her chain burned again, and she let out a yelp. She looked around, and finally, a demon seemed to become visible. Or, more accurately, a piece of one. A strange, thin limb rose from the ground. Adelaide tried to parse whether it was a finger or an insect leg.

The thing began to move back underground. Adelaide attempted to jump toward it, but as she jumped it was gone. She fell to the ground in front of a radio store which had miraculously survived the blast in some rather bizarre way. She stared at the radio store and stared blankly.

Her chain burned hot as what must've been the surface of the sun and then perhaps just a bit hotter. It seemed the chain was about to melt into her skin.

The leg blasted up again. Adelaide rolled to the side. A chunk of her side was ripped off. The woman let out a scream, she grabbed for her side. The leg went down again. Adelaide attempted to get back up– staggering and breathless. The leg emerged again, but she managed to move her head before it came down to stab through.

Adelaide struggled to her feet and stared blankly.

The leg did not rise up again, and she stared in utter confusion. She had no idea where the hell it had come from or where it had gone. Rainmaker did not move– he was just staring, slack-jawed and stupid. The young man took a second to realize he should walk over.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

"Well I'm bleeding. What do you think?"

"Well I think that we've been bleeding constantly for a while," he said, moving to touch the bloodied spot forming on her shirt. Adelaide moved his hand away.

"You're going to agitate the wound, Rainmaker," she said. But she felt stupid saying it. It was hard to sound serious and stern when you were saying such a goofy nickname. She sighed. "Just…"

"I won't touch it again," he agreed quickly, and he moved a bit away. "We should keep going, right?"

"We need to kill that thing."

"Okay."

"Do you know how?" she demanded. "Or are you just blindly doing whatever I say?"

"It seems like that's what you want."

"Shut up."

"Okay," he answered, with a deep meekness.

He looked down and avoided her gaze. Adelaide winced for a moment, thinking about how she sounded. Not too unlike the tree she had come from, but she was sure there were some glib reasons that she was right to do as she was doing now. She sighed. "You can talk. Do you have any ideas?"

"I don't."

"Stupid…"

"Do you have any?"

"Not a single clue."

"Then let's skip it."

"It'll multiply, Rainmaker."

"Yeah but I'm sure we haven't killed every single demon on the planet ourselves either, have we?" he asked. Rainmaker sat down on a stray piece of rubble which pierced out at an odd enough angle it seemed a bit like a bench. "It can't be that bad."

"It's clearly large, smart, and powerful," she noted.

"Maybe it's just the leg."

Adelaide shook her head in disbelief. "How in the world did you ever stay an exorcist with such a dismissive attitude?" she asked, annoyed.

He shrugged again. Rainmaker looked at the radio store. He stared at it as though deep in thought. And maybe he was. Adelaide didn't know. "Can we go inside?"

She glanced at it. "Why?"

"It's just… cold out here."

Adelaide crossed her arms. "You're complaining about the cold at a time like this?" she asked, raising a brow.

"I don't know. It's just… It feels cold."

The woman thought for a solid moment, before finally sighing and nodding. "Okay. Fine. Let's go inside there. Since you need to warm up so damn badly."

Despite how crotchety she was being, Rainmaker helped her walk to the store. Every breath was a labour while trying to walk— and the pain. It was worse than anything she'd dealt with before.

The inside of the store wasn't entirely unharmed. Some things had clearly been knocked off their shelves and laid broken on the ground. Adelaide doubted most of the radios would actually be functional.

There was a high likelihood that the radiation would've fried them somehow. Or if it hadn't fried them, just made the internals into some sort of soup in terms of their ability to actually function. She glanced at some of the parts scattered on the ground– they too seemed relatively fried. Though some small pieces had survived, which certainly took Adelaide by surprise. She wasn't expecting anything to survive and stay usable.

Adelaide lowered her head somewhat. The pain was receding into a dull ache, but that was likely just her utter lack of enough resources for her pain receptors to keep working. "Well, it's not any warmer in here," she declared, flatly.

"There's a floor," he said. "Come on, I'll help you up the stairs."

There was a small staircase that led to a second level. Adelaide sighed. "You can't trust how safe it is to climb up there."

"But the monster seems to come from out of the ground, so maybe we can catch it this time."

"Or, more likely, we'll fall and get more injured," Adelaide replied, frowning at his poor reasoning. She shook her head. "There's at least a floor here, that's right. You're right about that one thing. We can stay here near the ground." Adelaide wanted to cross her arms, but she decided against it, instead holding her hand to cradle the wound. A sour taste spread through her tongue and a grimey warmth pooled in her hand.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

"It won't attack us through the floor," Rainmaker reasoned. "I mean, probably not."

"No, probably not." Adelaide sighed at him before moving to sit down on one of the lower steps. It was becoming rather a chore to try and breathe with how things were going for her at the moment. Each inhale felt as though it were filling her lungs only with blood and radiation. If there were air it was purposely avoiding her. If there were air it had decided it no longer wanted her to breathe.

Adelaide turned once again to Rainmaker. "But don't stand so close to the door, either." There was the chance he might run off, and the chance he might decide that he was no longer too afraid to run. Just as Jisako had not so long before she died. She could not let him do as she had. Even if Rainmaker still died after, it wouldn't be right. He needed to die with her, not anywhere else.

"Right," he mumbled, walking inside, but still keeping a distance from her.

She scowled at him, but opted against uttering a single word to him. He wanted her anger, didn't he? He wanted a final excuse to run and never speak with her again. She would not give him such an excuse. She would not let him off easy just because it was what he so wanted.

So she kept her silence.