Me: Here's Chapter 7.

Rendan: Are we going to find out what happened to Arnold and Helga?

Me: Sorta. You hear about where they were taken. Also, this chapter and many future chapters have MASSIVE SPOILERS for the games. So, if you haven't played the games yet, read at your own discretion.

Zero: Fuck that! Where the hell's Pyramid Head? We want Pyramid Head!

Me: We?

Zero: What? Everyone else in Author Space wants more Pyramid Head. It's like Cowbell. You can never have enough.

Me: I swear you people are watching too much T.V.

Zero: How do we watch T.V.? We only exist here!

Rendan: Oh just shut up and let's get this one started.

Me: I got it this time. I don't own Hey Arnold! or Silent Hill. They are owned by Craig Bartlett and Konami respectively. All I own are the plot and the monsters I've created.

Rendan: Now that that's out of the way...

Me: Read and enjoy!

Chapter 7: A Barrier Begins to Break

Lila was the first to pick up her head after the imposing creature known as Pyramid Head disappeared. She looked around carefully and made note of the walkie-talkie's static level. Once it had shifted to a dull roar again, she knew it was fairly safe to leave the room. Her companion was up on his feet in a matter of seconds. He opened the office door and looked outside it. He quickly glanced to the walkie-talkie before motioning for Lila to follow. The duo made their way out of the police station, though Lila found it necessary to look behind her every so often, and walked to, what Lila hoped was a quiet place, the nearby church.

The church in question wasn't very far from the police station, a little thing Lila was thankful for. She'd spotted the church just after exiting the station and suggested, by means of essentially pulling her companion by his arm there, that they seek temporary refuge there. Luckily for them, the door was not locked and opened easily for them.

The insides of the church were just like any other building. It appeared to have not been habited for years, yet a collection of dust on the inside remained the only sign that time had passed. Along with the multiple rows of pews, an organ sat in the far corner of the church. Lila sighed happily at the lack of massive static from the walkie-talkie and sat on one of the pews.

"I don't get you," Lila heard AJ say. She turned and looked at him curiously. "You are one of the most timid and innocent people I've ever seen, yet, for whatever reason, you're trapped in Silent Hill and even stranger, you've seen the monsters and the Otherworld." Lila didn't understand what he was getting at.

"What do you mean? Doesn't everyone see these things?" Lila questioned. AJ shook his head solemnly.

"If I hadn't seen that one little girl before, I would've said yes." Lila blinked.

"What girl?"

"I don't know a lot about her, but she was here about the time another man came to Silent Hill. She couldn't see the monsters at all and Silent Hill just seemed to be a normal town to her. If memory serves, she left with him, but I cannot be entirely sure." Lila was now completely lost.

"Wait! Wait! What man? What are you talking about?" Lila asked in rapid succession. AJ looked to her before smiling and scratching just beneath his ear.

"Sorry, I forgot you don't know about this place like I do," he apologized. "The man's name was James Sunderland. He came here looking for his wife some time ago. He met up with that little girl who was also looking for his wife. When all was said and done, I believe they left together but I'm not entirely sure. All I know is she just left."

"How long ago was this?" Lila questioned. AJ shrugged.

"Don't know. Time doesn't seem to flow the right way in this place," he responded.

"What do you mean?"

"You remember how dusty the police station was?" He inquired. Lila nodded her head. "I went there yesterday and moved a bunch of stuff around while I was looking for something. My footprints were everywhere by the time I was done. When we went back today, there were no footprints, only dust making it seem as though years had passed. Everywhere I went appeared to have been untouched for a considerable amount of time." Lila nodded, now understanding how he knew his way around the station.

"What about the man, James, was his name? Did he ever find his wife?" AJ's expression switched from apologetic to sorrowful.

"In a sense, I guess he did," AJ answered though his voice was hardly above a whisper.

"In a sense?" Lila repeated, hoping to get more information from her companion. AJ looked at her with an expression that asked, 'Do you really want to know?'. Lila only nodded her head in response to the unasked question. AJ took a deep breath before speaking.

"He found his wife... or rather, what happened to her."

"What happened?" AJ's 'Do you really want to know?' expression returned, though it seemed more severe this time around. "Please." After a sigh, he continued.

"His wife was dead, long dead in fact. Or at least, that's what he wanted to believe. He wanted to believe that she died years ago from an illness, which made his search for her more meaningful. It ended up as quite the opposite, really. It became disturbing and painful. Turns out his wife was killed by someone... and very recently as a matter of fact."

'So she didn't die, but was murdered,' Lila mused as she listened intently, though something began to stir deep inside of her that almost begged her to stop AJ from continuing.

"As it turns out, not only was the murder recent, but it was James himself that killed her." Lila almost felt her heart stop. Her mind couldn't seem to process what she'd just heard. AJ's expression seemed to shift for a brief second to shock before his old one returned. When Lila finally processed everything, she noticed the severe look on her ally's face. "I warned you, and it even gets worse."

"How could it get any worse than that?" Lila cried. "Tell me!" AJ smirked at Lila's sudden show of force and actually demanding an answer instead of asking.

"Based on the letter James kept reading to himself before he disappeared, Mary had grown very attached to the little girl that was looking for her. In fact, she'd have been willing to go through whatever necessary to adopt her, to become her new mother." Lila's head dropped as tears began to fall from her eyes.

'She was going to get a mother...' Lila thought as her tears kept falling. 'Mom...' AJ sat next to Lila and put a hand on her back to help her calm down. Lila shifted herself to clutch onto AJ's vest to cry again. AJ sighed lightly as he allowed the girl to cry into his chest again. He waited and waited but the redhead showed no signs of stopping anytime soon. Apparently this subject was very touchy for Lila; if he only knew why. After a few moments, Lila stopped crying and looked up at him, his eyes filled with sympathy.

"Want to talk about it?" He asked.

"About what?" Lila replied with her own question as she wiped the last remaining tears from her eyes.

"Your mother," AJ simply answered. Lila recoiled as if she'd been struck.

"Wh- What are you talking about? There's–"

"She's dead, right?" AJ interrupted her. Lila's eyes filled with tears as she began crying into her hands again. AJ slapped his face in annoyance fully directed towards himself. "Smooth," he said aloud. He glanced to Lila and, for reasons unknown to him, pulled her close into an embrace. "It's alright. You don't have to talk about it." Lila, at this point, was crying on his shoulder as she gave a final sniffle before looking directly into his eyes.

She was still hurting, but something about her companion stuck with her. She had only just met this boy but he'd somehow been able to read her like an open book almost as if he'd known her for years, maybe even for a lifetime. Either that or... was he just like her? Did he know the pain of having family ripped from him at a tender age? Lila suddenly realized how close she was to him and blushed while pulling herself away to a comfortable distance.

"Thank you," Lila said softly. AJ only smiled at her and nodded his head slightly as his response. Suddenly, a loud chirping seemed to come from nowhere, surprising the two. Lila, being the more curious, stood up and began to look for the source of the sound. She found it, surprisingly, at the front of the church hidden under the table the priest would use. In a small cage was a canary, chirping happily as if it had just woken up.

Lila let out an 'aw' as she picked up the cage and started to coo at the tiny bird inside. Her companion, however, was far less receptive of the bird. He walked up to the cage and stared at the canary as his mind suddenly began to race. There was something about this canary that was really important but he couldn't place what it was. After a moment his eyes snapped wide open as he charged Lila.

"Lila, get away from that thing!" He shouted as he pulled her away. Lila was far too confused to fight his grip and found herself being pulled back as her companion hid them both behind a pew.

"Why?" Lila questioned. "What's wrong with the canary?" AJ held her behind the pew as he picked his head up and looked around.

"It's not the canary that you have to worry about," he cryptically replied. The canary began to chirp rapidly, followed shortly after by a siren and the coming of the Otherworld. AJ released Lila as the duo watched everything peel away and become the same, hellish Otherworld they were familiar with.

The pews were now in disarray while the organ in the corner was bent out of shape. Blood stained the keys and even more lined the floor. The duo stayed in place, seeming to wait for the static on the walkie-talkie to kick up. For a while, nothing came. Lila was only getting more confused as her companion kept looking around, almost as if he was expecting something to show up. After a while of looking he began to see movement in the shadows. He ducked his head and held a finger over his lips, signaling her to be silent.

"Wh–" Lila started to say but was quickly silenced with a hand over her mouth.

"Stay down and stay quiet," was all he said as he slowly removed his hand. Lila stared at her companion with nothing short of absolute confusion. Suddenly she heard a voice, and it was not one she was familiar with.

"Who left the canary out here?" the voice asked. The voice itself was masculine and one that signified age. Whoever this person was, he was most likely an adult. AJ picked his head up just enough to see two figures looking at the canary cage. Both appeared to be male considering their size and body shape. It was difficult to tell, however, as both figures were wearing what appeared to be mining gear that covered their entire bodies.

"Probably one of the new guys," a second adult's voice said. AJ used this opportunity to begin running between the pews, getting closer with ever sentence the two uttered.

"Maybe the kids did it," the first voice guessed.

"The ones our brother grabbed at Alchemilla?"

"Yes, those two."

"Could be." The second man looked into the cage at the canary for a moment. "We better move on quickly. Never know when monsters are going to show up." The second man picked up the cage and left quickly, not waiting for his companion. The first man shook his head at his quickly retreating companion. What he didn't expect was to be bludgeoned on the back of his head and sent directly to the floor.

"What the–?" He questioned but stopped suddenly at seeing the boy standing over him with the axe poised to strike. "Y- You're–" he was suddenly kicked across the face by the boy.

"You shouldn't be concerned with that just now, should you?" AJ asked as he loomed over the man. "If I were in your shoes, Order cultist, I'd worry more about giving the person with power over me anything he wants." The floored Order member nodded his head slowly. "Good. Now, I want information. Who did your 'brother' grab at Alchemilla?" The Order member coughed slightly.

"Two kids, looked to be about your age. One had a weird shaped head. Both were blond. One male, one female. The female was wearing a pink dress."

'Arnold and Helga,' Lila thought. She picked up her head to see her companion essentially interrogating the Order member. She ducked again, hoping not to be seen in case another was hidden in the shadows.

"Where did he take them?" AJ questioned.

"He's taking them to our base in Brookhaven Hospital, but you'd need a key to get in. My companion has the key between the two of us." AJ looked out the door the second cultist left through in annoyance. They'd never find him if they looked, unless they accidentally stumbled across him, but the chance of that was extremely low.

"Where would I find a key?"

"In the Lakeview Hotel. There should be a key somewhere in there!" The cultist was becoming more frantic. "B-but you won't be able to get in! We locked the doors!" AJ grinned. The cultist was spilling information without him having to ask. "The key to the hotel should be buried somewhere in South Park, just south of the butcher shop. We hid a metal detector in the shop to find the key in case of an emergency. That's all I know!" AJ's grin turned practically feral. He picked up his foot and stomped on the cultist's head, knocking him out cold.

"Well, now we know where we've got to go," AJ said as he started to head out of the church. Lila peeked her head out from behind the pews.

"We're going to the butcher shop?" Lila asked.

"That's right." The two were suddenly surprised by a spike in static. They turned to see the depressed looking creature from before come from an opening in the ground and make its way to the downed cultist. It looked to the Order member for only a second before it suck its teeth into his flesh and began tearing. Lila shoved her head into AJ's chest to keep from seeing the massive amounts of blood being shed.

AJ started walking back, pulling Lila with him as he did. He quickly opened the door and had Lila run out first with him following shortly after. As the two left the church in the dust, now running on grated streets, the walkie-talkie's static dropped back to a dull roar, something Lila was becoming increasingly thankful for. As they were moving, Lila noticed something that could be a major setback to their plan. There was no ground beneath them!

"Um, how are we supposed to find the key?" Lila asked. AJ didn't even seem phased by the obvious setback.

"We'll have to wait until the Otherworld shifts back to the Fog World. We'll grab the metal detector and find that key. With any luck, the shift will come soon."

"But don't we end up in a different place when the shift occurs?" Lila questioned, remembering where AJ said he'd woken up and found her.

"It's in luck's hands now," was all he said as the siren sounded off in the distance.

Me: And there's the chapter.

Rendan: Placing everything in luck's hands. Risky.

Zero: Not like there's much of a choice when that siren goes off.

Me: There isn't. So, not much to really say about this chapter, except AJ realizes he's been a dick for bringing up Lila's mom.

AJ: How the fuck was I supposed to know?

Me: Hehehe.

AJ: Asshole.

Me: Hey, don't worry about it. You made up for it.

AJ: I suppose that's it for this week?

Me: Basically. Aside from a little look into Lila's past, well... what I've come up for it anyway, that's all for this time.

Rendan: Be good and be safe everyone!

Me: I'm outta here!