Double Or Nothing: A Coin Flip Away

Icing on the Flowers

Slamming the bound Sinner into the icy floor of a shattered armory, Shrap dusted off his frosted gloves, exhaling in bursts of steam. Cynthia's blazing skin radiated from her shoulders, melting parts of the icy shards across the floor as she stormed toward their prisoner. "Alright kid," she growled, ripping the gag out of the Sinner's mouth with red hot fingertips, "spill it. Who are you, how did you get down here, and why are you trying to kill us?" Shrap, counting the questions off of his fingers, nodded with an emotionless approval. "Huh, you got all the points. Nice." Cynthia blushed with a smirk. "Thanks," she mumbled.

The Sinner spat out a drop of saliva which froze upon striking the floor. "Screw off. You know why I'm trying to kill you. The Crimson Stripe has big plans for Hell, plans that don't need you getting in his way." Cynthia leveled her flaming fist with the terrorist, but Shrap's brightened eyes snatched Cynthia's arm before she could react. "Wait wait Doc! I have an idea!" Recoiling his hand and dousing the fiery glove in some nearby snow powder, Cynthia huffed, turning to Shrap. "What? We could pummel him right here, right now." Shrap chuckled, turning Cynthia away from the Sinner and slapping the gag back into his mouth.

"Okay, yeah, or we could empathize with him." Cynthia paused, staring at Shrap as if he had two heads. "What good would that do? He won't to listen to anything we say." Shrap grinned with the left half of his mask, fastening his tie. "Watch 'n learn, kiddo. Watch 'n learn." Twisting to face the Sinner, Shrap stretched and twisted his neck to plant his mask inches from the Sinner's face. "Say fella, you seem pretty devoted to The Stripe. Has he ever told you what he's gonna do when he rules Hell?" The Sinner laughed, brandishing a serrated left fang.

"He's told me enough about The Sin Hunter to know I'm right. You kill people because you think it'll make Hell a better place, but you forget that people here don't deserve mercy!!" Shrap tapped his chin, tilting his mask unsettlingly to an angle as he stared into the Sinner's soul. "Sure, they suffer, but does everybody deserve to?" The Sinner spat to the floor, swiveling his eyes away from the mask. "Pshht, of course! We're terrible creatures that God shoulda never made, tell me why I deserve mercy after robbing a bank to provide?!"

Shrap backed away, tapping two hands behind his back while keeping his alternate hands clasped in front. "You stole to provide for others?" The Sinner's eyes widened as he tucked away, rolling over in his ropes. "Y-you forget I said anything!!" Shrap rose from the floor, kneeling to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling. "Sounds to me like you're not the one to blame for that. As if...as if you don't belong in a bad place." In the back of the room, Cynthia's eyes began to brim at the sight of Shrap's calm demeanor. 'He's coaxing humanity out of a terrorist,' she told herself.

While Cynthia watched Shrap talk to the Sinner, something flashed in the corner of her eye from a shaft down the right wing of the armory. Cynthia blinked, peering toward the staircase. At the very bottom, something shuffled away with an echoing laughter. Cynthia felt chills clouding her mind, shaking the waves of ember drifting from her shoulders. A fragrant aroma filled her senses, clouding her glasses. Cynthia froze in rigid terror as her legs moved toward the staircase. 'What the hell?! Where are my legs going?!' Cynthia silently shrieked to herself. Cynthia turned to Shrap, whose back was turned away from her.

"Shrap!!" She screamed, "help m-mff!!" Vines snapped around her mouth, choking out the Demoness as she dragged down the stairs. In good fortune, however, Shrap's ears pricked at the sound. "Cynthia? What in-HEY!!!" Shrap flung himself away from the bound terrorist, grabbing the vines that dragged Cynthia down the steps. Forcing the line taught, Shrap yanked hard on the vines, his black claws turning gray. "C'mon, you stupid overgrown green bean," he grunted, but the vines sprouted thorns, digging into his hands and forcing him to let go.

Shrap fell backward, striking his head on the steps. As Cynthia's muffled screams disappeared into the darkness, Shrap lifted himself from the ground, patting the back of his bleeding skull. "Oof, that'll sting for a bit," Shrap groaned, grabbing a gauze roll from his pocket square. As he found it, however, Shrap stopped when he sniffed his hand passing by. "Hmm, that's oddly familiar," he muttered, turning to the terrorist in the corner. Without Cynthia's fire, the poor Sinner had solidified in frigid terror, his eyes wide in shock, frozen forever. Shrap shivered, coughing into his elbow.

"That'll be me pretty soon if I can't get some fire going. And if I can't find Cynthia, then I've failed to protect her." Shrap grumbled, turning to the stone stairs. Locking his fingers over his briefcase, Shrap paced to the steps leading down into the freezing darkness of the inner temple. Shivering one more time, Shrap tucked his arms in. "Here goes nothing," he winced, leaping down a patch of ice beside the steps. The patch carried Shrap down a frigid slip and slide to the bottom, twisting, turning and even flinging him across a gap of the broken temple with sharp icicles below. Shrap couldn't help but smile to himself.

Landing at the slide's end, Shrap plucked out some prickles from his hand, deep in thought. "These thorns don't grow anywhere else, but The Vizier's got some in their temple. I think they said it was a type of vine that grows in ice cold temperatures. But The Vizier also said," Shrap muttered, using a lighter from his suitcase to burn a torch, "that they're the only one that can grow them. So how-!" Shrap cut himself short, rounding the corner into the innermost sanctum with an unexpected sight. "Oh," he whispered, "crud muffins."