Me: Well, that was a hell of a wait.

Zero: Yeah, you took a while with this one.

Rendan: I figure since school is back on and the tough subjects it gets tough to find time.

Me: You'd be right about that. Well, let's just say that this chapter is a direct continuation from where we left Helga last time. I'll let you all see what happens.

Zero: Well, I'm going to get started. I just.. yeah. I wanna see.

Rendan: Me too.

Guardian: I'll handle the disclaimer.

Zero & Rendan: You again!?

Guardian: Duh. Anyway. Azard does not own Silent Hill, its established creatures, or Hey Arnold. They are the respective properties of Konami and Craig Bartlett. Heh, Bartlett. Anyway. The only things Azard owns are the plot, the OCs, the monsters he's created in that demented void he calls a mind and the puzzles he's created. Good to see a guy that does his homework on the shit he's supposed to be writing though.

Me: I try. Read and enjoy!

Chapter 24: Helga and The Guardian

Helga lost track of how long she'd wandered the halls of the Order hideout she'd fallen into. Could've been hours. Maybe days. Days? Had it really been so long? Any sane person would've doubted such a seeming impossibility. Sadly, this was not a world for sane people. This was Silent Hill, a world that ran on impossible and seemed to exist solely for the purpose of driving the previously sane completely mad. Still, if she gave up she would never escape from this place and would probably be picked off by some monster that happened to be walking on by. Not that the last few that tried had any luck getting the drop on her.

Helga couldn't explain but there had been a strange sensation that began to brew in the pit of her stomach whenever a monster was nearby. At first it made her nauseous and want nothing more than to empty her stomach in the corner. Now, however, it was more. It was her own personal warning signal, more effective than even the loudest radio. Sure, it didn't pinpoint exactly where the monsters were, that would have made it too easy, but it put her on guard to the point that it didn't matter. The feeling would come and Helga would drop into her shooting stance faster than her classmate Harold Berman could eat a sandwich. Considering the boy wasn't known for his restraint when it came to eating, it was pretty damn quick.

As she wandered, the nauseating feeling in the pit of her stomach returned just as the sound of crying reached her ears again, echoing from the near endless hallway behind her. Helga spun and drew her gun to aim it down the hall as she continued to walk backwards. As she continued to move, the nauseating feeling began to worsen, but only just slightly. Perhaps the creature was catching up. Maybe something was now coming at her from the rear. Helga quickly spun around, blasting the light of her flashlight down the darkened hallway revealing nothing to be there. She continued to walk backwards, waiting for the damned crying monster to reveal itself.

Walking backwards, Helga neglected, quite obviously, to watch where she was going. She suddenly felt her back connect with something solid. Shrieking at being snuck up on, Helga turned and unloaded a full magazine into whatever she'd bumped into. As the smoke from the gun cleared and the light from the flashlight shined through, Helga soon realized that she'd wasted an entire magazine of her limited ammunition shooting at a door.

"Criminy, I hate this place," Helga groused. Turning around briefly to see if she was being followed, Helga tried the doorknob and sighed with great relief upon her discovery that it was not locked. She walked into the room and closed the door only for a siren to blare loudly almost immediately after the door shut. "Damn it! Not again!" Helga shouted. She turned around, her gun poised and her finger on the trigger, as the world around her once more tore away and ushered her into the hellish Otherworld.

Almost immediately after the shift, Helga's ears were assaulted by music. Operatic music, specifically, and a song that she recognized. It was the introduction music from the opera "Carmen". Helga looked around in an attempt to find the source of the beautiful tune. She found it in a phonograph that was, to her surprise, playing a disc entitled "Carmen". Whoever set this up liked Opera, apparently. It was only then that she realized that the room was nothing like the empty room she'd been in before the shift. Now, there was a large stage in one part of the room and many rows of seats at the other, including several balconies and box seats. The shift had turned the empty room into a demented opera house.

"Arnold, my love, my soultry preteen," an almost mocking voice boomed. "Why must I hold you, only whilst I dream? Will I be forever enslaved by your spell? Why must I worship you, and never, ever, tell?" Helga whirled around, her gun aimed at the source of the sound. On the balcony of one of the box seats, with a pink book, one that she recognized, held open in one hand, was the shadowy figure of the Guardian. Helga lowered her gun. If she wanted to take out someone as strong as this guy, fighting him head on was a death sentence. She'd have to be tricky. "Oh, Arnold, you make my girlhood tremble," the Guardian continued as he leapt and almost floated down to the ground before her, "my senses all go wacky. Someday I'll tell the world, my love, or my name's not Helga. G. Pataki." He seemed to punctuate her name at the end for whatever reason. Helga remained silent, waiting for him to speak again. In that time, the music skipped from the intro to 'Habanera'.

"What do you want?" Helga asked, getting straight to the point. The Guardian chuckled as he calmly, and without the slightest hint of worry, walked around the girl at a deliberately slow pace.

"I was just enjoying some of your poetry," the Guardian simply replied. "I must admit, for a nine year old girl this is surprisingly mature. There's even an adult excerpt within that I am unaware if you know what it truly signifies. Truly the troubled soul, aren't you?"

"If you came here to mock me," Helga grated out angrily while she reached into her dress to procure the Aglaophotis only to discover too late that she didn't have it. Something seemed eerily wrong with the music player as it seemed to, at this point, have 'Habanera' on a loop.

"Looking for this?" He asked as he held his once empty hand out. Helga gasped. Within his outstretched hand was the vial of Aglaophotis. Helga tried to reel in her surprise but was apparently doing a piss poor job of it. "Don't be so surprised. There's a reason The Order fears me. I'm the best at what I do and, for the time being, what I do is hunt, survive, and hunt to survive."

"Also look into people's minds for their most personal thoughts and torment them with said thoughts," Helga commented. The Guardian laughed. "So what are you going to do with that book?"

"This? Oh, nothing," the Guardian said as he dropped the book and it peeled into nothingness before it ever hit the floor. "There wasn't even anything written in it, to be honest. I looked into your mind and read it from your memories. You're quite talented, I must say. A troubled soul with the insight of one much older than yourself, and the vocabulary to match. Though, to trouble yourself so much over a boy doesn't say much for you, I'm afraid."

"Shut up!" Helga demanded. "You don't know anything!"

"Don't I?" The Guardian wondered. "I reached into your mind to procure what I did, and that's not the only thing I've seen. I was aware that girls reached puberty and concerned themselves with boys before boys did the same about girls, but that was a bit much. Your poetry alone is all obsessive, all focused on one thing, while you could do so much more."

"Like what?" Helga asked, still glaring the Guardian down as he paced around her.

"Did that aptitude test mean nothing?" He responded with a question. "Or did you almost disregard it because of your teacher's mix-up? Woodsman. Oh, I'm sorry, Woodsperson, because Woodsman was, as your classmate put it, 'politically incorrect'. With the potential you have, I wonder why you squander it being a full on obsessive person and/or a borderline stalker."

"Don't you have better things to do than to intrude in my mind?" Helga shouted. She lashed out and threw a punch at the Guardian, but he seemed to dissolve around her punch and reform as she fell forward onto the floor.

"It's not just your mind, Helga," the Guardian admitted. "I'm in everyone's mind. I could tell you whether or not the one that 'makes your girlhood tremble'," the Guardian paused to shudder, "that's cringe worthy. Well, regardless, I can tell you whether or not he shares your feelings." Helga's eyes widened considerably. "But I won't."

"Why the hell not?!" Helga roared. She pulled out her gun and opened fire on him and had to watch, helplessly, as he seemed to dissolve and reappear in a different place after every shot. She didn't stop firing until she'd emptied the next magazine. "You're in everyone's mind and you seem to have no problems airing my laundry, why won't you air out Arnold's or Lila's?" The Guardian seemed to ponder that question for a moment.

"Because it won't do me any favors to do so," the Guardian replied. "Simply put, I need to know what makes you dopes tick, what drives you forward, what holds you back, if only so I can be aware of what you'll face. Then, it's my job to torment you until you either die or overcome and accept your inner darkness." Helga growled. This guy was really grinding on her last nerve and the song 'Habanera' on an endless loop was doing nothing to aid the situation.

"Too bad you're so much of a coward or I'd pound it out of you!" Helga exclaimed. "And shut that damned music off!" The Guardian laughed. "What's so god damned funny?!"

"I would love to shut the music off, Helga, but I'm afraid I can't," the Guardian stated. "Only you can."

"Well why didn't you say so earlier?!" Helga shouted as she stomped over to the phonograph and attempted to turn it off. She tried to lift the needle, which would've ended the never ending music but for some reason she couldn't. It was as if the needle weighed a thousand pounds or, more or possibly less likely, the needle had somehow been glued or attached to the phonograph. Helga tried to stop the disc by hand but found herself flung across the room as her hand grasped the disc.

Getting up and more angry by the second, Helga reloaded her gun and fired a single bullet at the phonograph, hoping that destroying it would shut the music off. The bullet, however, ricocheted off the music player and struck the stage. Aggravation taking over, Helga once more stomped to the phonograph and proceeded to attempt anything she could think of to turn it off while the Guardian silently laughed.

"We're going to be here a while," he muttered with a twisted grin barely visible on his shadowy form.

(Location: With Arnold, Lila, and AJ)

"Helga! Answer me!" Arnold shouted into the hole. When no response came Arnold growled. "Fine, then I'm going in after her!" Arnold readied to jump into the hole only to be pulled back by both Lila and AJ.

"Don't be stupid, Arnold!" AJ exclaimed. "Throwing yourself down a hole isn't going to solve anything! If something did happen to Helga and you jump down there you'd only get yourself killed too!"

"Well then what do you suggest we do?" Arnold asked. "Helga would come after us so why aren't we going after her?" AJ shook his head.

"We are, Arnold, but not that way," AJ said. "Call it whatever you want but I have a bad feeling about this hole." Just as he finished speaking a cry emitted from the hole. One thing was for certain, it did not sound like Helga.

"T-That sounds like Olga," Lila noted. "I recognize the voice. What's Olga doing here?!"

"Olga?" AJ questioned.

"Helga's big sister," Arnold answered, "and if I hadn't seen both Arnie and your father, Lila, I'd be wondering the same thing."

"I'm afraid I don't understand," Lila said. "What do you mean?"

"I'm sensing a sibling rivalry thing here," AJ commented.

"That's the polite way of putting it," Arnold added. "Helga hates her older sister with a passion. I think it has a lot to do with Olga being the ideal daughter her parents wanted while Helga was... Helga."

"That's fucked up," AJ stated.

"Yeah, well, I'm none too fond of her dad, myself," Arnold said bitterly. "It wouldn't be hard to see why she dislikes her family, to be honest."

"I do recall seeing her mother drinking a lot of smoothies," Lila remembered.

"Or she called them smoothies," AJ commented.

"What do you mean?" Lila asked.

"He's got a point," Arnold stated.

"I've heard that people refer to booze as different things to keep their kids from realizing what they were drinking," AJ said. "Either the cultists did it to be 'funny' or they just didn't want their superiors to know they were getting drunk on the job. Easiest to get the drop on, or sneak by, them when they were drunk."

"Seriously?" Arnold wondered aloud to which AJ nodded. "Well, if Olga is down there then we should help her!"

"Could also be a monster," AJ mentioned. "You said that the old looking monster looked like your grandpa. I wouldn't say it's impossible, especially if Helga really does hate her older sister."

"But I don't hate my Grandpa!" Arnold argued.

"You don't have to hate him," AJ continued. "There might be something regarding him that troubles you."

"Maybe," Arnold admitted. "Either way, regarding Helga's relationship with her sister, perhaps hate was too strong a word now that I think about it but it's definitely a strong dislike."

"Even that's more than enough," AJ said. "We may want to be cautious this time and not take a chance."

"If it's a monster can't you just kill it?" Lila asked. AJ shook his head.

"It doesn't always work that way," AJ answered. "Some monsters are bred from one person's mind, and sometimes only that person can kill it."

"So you're saying there's a chance that if what we're hearing is a monster, only Helga can kill it?" Arnold queried. AJ simply nodded. "Then I agree with you and we should find another way down... if one even exists."

"One almost always does," AJ stated, bolstering Arnold's resolve. With little more said, the trio headed away from the prison to try and locate Helga.

(Location: With Helga and The Guardian)

The Guardian watched, still holding back a laugh, as Helga maliciously stomped down onto the phonograph, doing absolutely no damage to it and certainly not stopping the continuous loop of 'Habanera'. Helga dropped to her knees, her stamina finally giving out, and breathed heavily.

"Why. Won't. It. Stop?" Helga breathlessly asked. "Make it stop..."

"Ya'know if I knew that all it'd take to drive you nuts is an endless loop of 'Habanera', I'd have done this ages ago," the Guardian wryly commented. "Seriously, it shouldn't be this easy."

"Oh, shut up you!" Helga demanded. "Your job is being done, isn't that all you care about?!"

"Is it?" The Guardian asked. Helga stopped panting and looked directly at him. "You don't know what my plan is, Helga. You have no damn idea what it is. Maybe my plan is to kill you or to drive you and your friends to the point you'll kill each other. Maybe it isn't. Don't act like you know everything or you'll be in the same boat as your unrequited lover-boy." Helga growled angrily and leapt up again, throwing another punch at the entity only for him to once more dissolve and reassemble behind her. "I've been patient with you, Helga. I've been more patient than I should be, but I don't like being attacked. I gave Arnold the same warning, though I suppose you're something of a more bitter and stubborn case. Attack me again and I will make you regret it!"

"Then why haven't you done anything!?" Helga angrily questioned. "Maybe all your power is just talk! Maybe... maybe your only power comes from what people think you can do. If they don't think you can do anything, you really can't! Your powers come from the beliefs of your adversaries and nothing more!" Helga couldn't be sure but she thought she saw the Guardian blink.

"All that intelligence, wasted," the Guardian said. "It really is a damn shame. To be able to come up with that all on your own is something quite impressive." The Guardian turned away from Helga and sighed heavily. "Tis a shame, a damned shame, to have this wasted on a girl that has such... improper tendencies." Helga took the opportunity the Guardian presented her with by turning his back to pick up her gun and fire on him one last time, taking no heed to his warning. The Guardian dispersed again and, in the next instant, Helga found herself lifted by her throat into the air. The Guardian had reappeared in front of her and lifted her by her throat with one hand and disarmed her with the other.

"W-why won't you... die?" Helga gasped out as the grip on her throat continued to slowly constrict and her breathing became more and more shallow. Within seconds, her vision began to darken.

"I warned you," the Guardian said just as Helga's vision faded to black. After what felt like seconds to Helga she awoke again. Her vision, now blurry, slowly began to focus as Helga's breathing returned to normal. With her sight back to normal, Helga glanced around at her surroundings and felt her blood run cold. Tombstones surrounded her, stretching down all directions endlessly. The words on said tombstones were illegible, worn away by either time or some vandal. Even with her vision back, Helga's view was limited due to the immense fog that covered the area. Still, she had an idea of where she was.

'A cemetery. Am I back in the Fog World?' Helga thought. Even here, the music of 'Habanera' haunted her and continued to play on a loop. She picked a direction and began to walk in it, enjoying the relative silence of the Guardian no longer taunting her before that unsettling feeling in her gut returned. Remembering what happened before she ended up there, Helga checked both her shirt and pockets. Both the Aglaophotis and her gun were still gone. Perhaps it was too much to hope for that she'd still have them. As the feeling in her gut vanished and she continued on, it seemed as though the cemetery would never end. The sounds of 'Habanera' were finally shattered by the sound of metal hitting stone which seemed to come from all directions. Helga stopped short and looked around, spotting a shady figure some ways to her left. Ignoring the voice in her head telling her to run in the opposite direction, she approached the figure.

"It's okay, my beloved," the figure said in a manic voice that chilled Helga to her core; it was her own. "I've found you at last." Helga approached as the shady figure came into view. It was her, no doubt, but considerably worse for the ware. Her hair was practically falling out and she had several bald spots on her head. Her eyes were wide, manic, completely obsessed and utterly broken. Her dress and shirt were both torn from what may have been constant battling. With nothing else uttered, the haggard Helga picked up a shovel and began to dig. Helga backed away slowly, turned, and tried to run before she collided with a solid object. Backing away slightly from the object she glanced at what she'd bumped into. The shadowy figure of The Guardian stood before her, a malicious grin somehow appearing despite his darkened figure. Helga blanched. How had she not sensed him!? How did he get passed her defense?

"We're not in the Fog World, you twit," the Guardian said, answering her unspoken question. "We're in your mind, in a world I've created using all that I know about you. Your defenses are nonexistent in this world. Your mind is quite the open book, I must say." Helga began to back away again but soon found herself restrained by something. Looking down, she noticed barbed wires sticking out of the ground that wrapped around her legs, preventing her movement. The Guardian held out a finger and spun it counterclockwise once, making the wire turn Helga around to face her demented doppelgänger as the wires stretched upwards and bound her completely. "We're going to watch a little performance of a road you seem to be heading down."

"You can't make me watch anything!" Helga shouted defiantly as she shut her eyes. Seconds later she felt something touch her eyes and dig their way underneath her eyelids before pulling apart, forcing her eyes open. Helga shouted in pain as the barbed wires that pierced her eyelids kept her eyes open as widely as they could manage.

"I can't, eh?" The Guardian questioned in humor. "I'd say I'm doing a bang-up job of making you do what I want. Now, watch!" Helga was forced to watch as her demented doppelgänger continued to dig in the same place until, moments later, she pulled out a strangely small, pinewood, coffin.

"At last!" Demented Helga shouted in bliss. "I've found you, my beloved!" She opened the pine coffin and revealed the body housed within while laughing manically. Helga watched on in horror as her demented double pulled Arnold's corpse from within and set his deceased body on the ground. "It's okay now, beloved! No one can ever separate us again!" Demented Helga leaned down and kissed the dead boy's cold lips. "Now, we can have the life that this Hell denied us." Demented Helga, in some sort of trance, began to strip the corpse until it was bare before doing the same to herself. Sitting herself atop the dead body, the demented double began to do things that would haunt Helga for the rest of her life. Helga, her eyes held open, was being forced to watch this version of herself violate Arnold's dead body. The tones of 'Habanera' only made the scene all the more disturbing and vile.

"Quite the performance, I'd say," the Guardian stated as he began a slow clap. "First insanity, then pedophilia, and finally necrophilia. Amazing what obsession can do to a person." He let out a laugh as several terrified whimpers escaped Helga's lips. A second later and Helga was turned around once again to look into the Guardian's shadowed visage. "I was willing to let you go on about your merry way but you just had to provoke me, didn't you." He laughed a little louder. "Well, there is little more that I can do to make this more perfect." He turned away from her before turning back, his gut-encrusted eyes showing through the ever present shadows that surrounded his body as he lashed out and grabbed her face before Helga once more awoke in the Otherworld, back in the room with the stage and the repeating phonograph.

"Wh-what was that?" Helga whimpered out, huddling to herself in the fetal position in the middle of the floor. "I wouldn't... I couldn't... not to Arnold... not to anybody."

"Keep telling yourself that," the mocking voice of the Guardian echoed in the room. "Obsession is such an interesting quirk of humanity. Honestly, you're not too much different than The Order. Your obsessions merely differ in subject." Helga listened silently to the soft footsteps of the Guardian as he paced around her. Helga kept her eyes glued to the floor, unable to look anywhere else. "You'll understand some day."

"N-no," Helga softly whimpered. "No... I can't... I won't..." Helga continued to whimper while the Guardian took a seat on the stage and watched her. "I will never do such a thing!" With her declaration, the music abruptly stopped playing and silenced. Helga looked toward the object only to see it break apart and melt into the floor as if the floor had turned to acid. "It... it stopped."

"Seems as though you've made a breakthrough," the Guardian laughed. "Took you long enough. For everything a reason, Helga, and I'm merely playing Devil's Advocate. It's fun enough when you know how to. Either way," he moved to Helga as she only watched him in horror and opened her hands, placing the vial of Aglaophotis in one and her gun in the other, "I'll be sure you get back to the Fog World. Your friends are waiting for you. Exit stage left, Helga." The Guardian turned and took a few steps away before he abruptly stopped. "Oh, and before I forget," he turned again and suddenly reappeared inches from her face, "I fucking warned you!" Helga shut her eyes tightly as the sounds of the siren blared around her. When she opened her eyes again, she was back in the same room, only in the Fog World. She was alone and the Guardian was gone. Her sense slowly returning to her, Helga checked her eyelids for any holes in them only to find none. Strange, the pain had felt so real.

"I... I'm still alive," Helga muttered, amazed by that fact. "He didn't kill me. He could've but... he didn't. Why? Why didn't he kill me? What's he going to do next?" She took some quick breaths. "The Order was right to fear him. If he's capable of so much, it's no surprise he's so feared. Those monsters... they must fear him too. He has to be the only thing they fear." Helga jumped as soon as a pounding noise resounded from the only other door in the room.

"You think she's behind here?" A male muffled voice asked, filling Helga with dread.

"It's worth a shot," another male voice stated. "The door's just jammed, not locked. We should be able to bust it open. Ready? On three! One! Two! Three!" There was another loud slam on the door.

"No good!" The first male said. "Again! One! Two! Three!" Another loud bang. "One more should do it!"

"One! Two! Three!" The two chimed in perfect synch as this time the door smashed inward, allowing whomever was slamming on the door through. Helga's eyes widened in both relief and strangely fear when she found her saviors to be Arnold and AJ.

"Helga!" Arnold shouted. "Thank God you're okay!" He approached her only for Helga to shriek and back away from him, still on the floor. "Helga?" Lila, having heard the shriek, entered the room and stood behind the two boys.

"Not good," AJ muttered. "The Hell happened to her?"

"Helga," Arnold repeated, softer this time. "It's me, Arnold. You know, Football Head? Come on, Helga, it's alright." Arnold approached again and again Helga shrieked and backed away from the rest of them.

"Helga," Lila cooed, trying to get through to the girl, "we're your friends. You can trust us. We're here to help you." Lila began to approach but had her path barred by AJ who held his arm out to stop her. When she looked at him AJ only shook his head.

"No!" Helga shrieked. "Stay away! Stay away from me! I'm not like that! I'm not! I won't do that to you! Not to you, not to any of you! Stay the Hell away!" The three others looked between each other, none of them saying a word but their expressions all said the same thing.

"What the fuck happened to Helga?"

Me: And that's the chapter!

Rendan & Zero: WHAT THE FUCK?!

Me: Ah, I missed that reaction oh so much.

Guardian: Silent Hill. Anything, and I do mean anything, goes there. Ugh. Still, I wish she didn't provoke me. Oh well, maybe she'll really learn a lesson from this.

Zero: You twisted S.O.B.

Guardian: Hey, I might've done it but he wrote it. *Points me me*

Me: Well, I wanted to make a good return. Hopefully I'll be able to update more frequently when classes aren't overwhelming me.

Rendan: I think I'm good for a while. I'm going to go to the hot springs and have a soak. Maybe then I'll be able to wash what happened from my mind.

Guardian: Wuss.

Zero: I'm with Rendan. *They both leave*

Guardian: Well, that was fun.

Me: Quite.

Guardian: Let's wrap this up. Be good and be safe, everyone!

Me: We're, very obviously, outta here!