Lincoln Correctional Facility, Part 2

Nick laughs. "Trust me, they're Pro Slayers all right!" He loudly replies, causing Mr Lincoln to flinch, then snort at Nick

"Well then, should I give you all the grand tour?" He grumbles.

"Them, not me. I'm not a part of this mission," Nick answers as he stuffs his hands in his pockets before turning around and strutting out of the Facility.

"Wait…you won't be going in with us?!" I cry.

"Nah," Nick answers as he turns over his shoulder at me and smirks. "You five should be more than enough. So long, kids! Goodluck!" Nick then exits the Facility for good, leaving the five of us alone with Mr Lincoln and his security.

"Ah…we're screwed…" Ella softly says.

"Mh-hmm," I agree.

"Oh, I wanted to fight alongside the strongest Pro Slayer," Grover pouts.

"Well then-" Austin begins to say as he turns back to Mr Lincoln, steering our conversation back on track. "As the strongest here, I'm the leader now, should we begin to tour?"

"WOAH WOAH WOAH!" Grover cries as he spins around to face Austin. "You're the leader?! I think you've got it wrong, here, buddy!"

"Did I not beat you in the exams?" Austin smirks as he does the anime-glasses- guy thing.

"It was a two on one! And besides, I've had my Cursed Ability for the longest, so I'm certainly the strongest!" Grover snaps back.

"You've had your Cursed Ability the longest and you're still weaker than me. How tragic," Ausitn sighs, causing Grover to growl at him.

"Austin, stop messing with him, come on!" Jamie whines as he struggles to push Austin away from Grover.

"Grover, he's just trying to get under your skin, ignore him," Ella says, doing the same to Grover.

As for me, I decide to stand up for my…"bud."

"Austin, how did you get your points to pass the exams?" I ask.

"I slayed three demons and took out a fellow contestant," he answers. "Why?"

"Well, because Ella, Grover, and I passed by beating a Pro Slayer," I smirk. Austin's eyes widen from behind his glasses, which hang crookedly on his face.

"Hah!" Grover laughs as he turns back to face Mr Linclon. "Should we begin the tour now?"

Mr Lincoln begins our grand tour of the facility, chatting to us about its history along the way. Apparently the Lincoln Correctional Facility was not made to handle Cursed Power and has no countermeasures against it. So these four prisoners pose a much greater threat than you might think. "The Cafeteria!" Mr Lincoln says, as he leads us on his tour. "The Courtyard. The Watchtowers. The Infermerary." This goes on for a while until Mr Lincoln says: "The Prisoner's Cells." Mr Lincoln leads us down the hall. I gulp and nervously follow the others. The hallway is narrow, with rows of small jail cells on either side, with a second row and a balcony on top. Most inmates look gloomy and depressed, some angry. A few grab at the bars, some spit at and holler at us. One reaches out and tries to grab Ella, who shrieks and latches onto my arm, causing me to flinch. Ella apologizes and lets go of me.

I, too, am pretty darn scared, even knowing I have my Wind Control. These inmates are hardened criminals, some are in here for mass murder! How can I top that?! Nick said that one with more control with their Cursed Ability always wins, but what about some unhinged psycho with no control over their Cursed Ability, ready to kill? Wouldn't that be even scarier, even stronger?

I peer at the other's faces and I'm shocked. Unlike Me, Ella, and even Mr Lincoln, Grover, Jamie, and Austin look unphased. What the Hell? Austin's annoyed expression hasn't changed once in the slightest since I've met him. Jamie looks confident, probably assuming that she can take these inmates in a one on one. But Grover, he's the weirdest of them all, he's...smiling. Laughing, even!

Finally, Mr Lincoln leads us to the four final cells in the back. "Here they are!" He says. "The inmates who have unlocked Cursed Power! Inmate 19701, inmate 19702, inmate 19703, and inmate 19704."

I'm still new to this whole Cursed Power thing, so I can't sense anything out of the ordinary, but when I look over at Austin, his annoyed expression wavers, just for a split second, before retraining soon after. Austin then narrows his eyes and smirks. What the Hell does he know that I don't?

"Let me introduce you to our new prisoner friends!" Says Mr Lincoln. "Inmate 19701: Cell Powers, arrested for multiple accounts of manslaughter and armed robbery. Inmate 19702: Spike Ashford: in here due to his mental instability and tendencies to… get violent...rather easily. Inmate 19703: Rose Cherith, a sex worker, arrested for a few accounts of kidnapping. And finally, inmate 19704: Niome Sierra, raging alcoholic and arrested for multiple decades of tax fraud."

Wow, what a colorful group of people! 

Inmate 19701, Cell Powers, laughs. "SHAHAHAHAH! These runts are the guards you ordered? I've killed dozens of kids no older than these!"

That's it. I'm going to die. But that's when in the blink of an eye Grover grabs onto the cell bars and brandishes one of his knives, holding it directly to Powers's throat. "Try us!" He laughs.

Powers looks unphased by Grover's taunt, still smirking at him, but then, out of the corner of my eye, I see Austin holding up a Cursed Power-constructed sniper rifle, aiming it dead center at the middle of Powers' forehead. Jamie's fists have turned to iron as well. Ella yelps and grabs back onto me again. Even Mr Lincoln looks shook. For someone who owns a maximum security prison he sure doesn't seem all too…brave.

Mr Lincoln clears his throat. "Well then" he continues, his voice still shaking. "Do you kids have any plans to watchover these inmates?" So he really didn't have a single way to handle these Cursed Power user inmates, huh?

"First off, the inmates being together in one spot, it isn't a bad plan. That way, all five of us can watch over them at once. But I would say that it is far more valuable to split these inmates into two groups of two. Four groups of one would be preferable, but since we only have five Slayers here it would be too risky. With the two and two, each Slayer has backup they can rely on, but also, by splitting up the inmates they have decreased communication and can't possibly share knowledge of each other's plans or abilities. That is, unless they have a telepath amongst themselves. I would suggest releasing the inmates to have them demonstrate their Cursed Abilities, but that would be far too risky. Also, they can fake their abilities. So until then, we'll go with my first plan, and we'll use Cursed Power sensing techniques in order to sense if they are letting out any Cursed Power. And if they are, well then, we'll just have to take countermeasures" Austin explains. The rest of us are star-struck by Austin's long-winded plan.

"Austin!" Jamie cries. "Slow down!" Austin sighs.

***

After Austin explains his plan again, slower this time, we sorted out the inmates. Two on one side of the facility, and two on the opposite end. I'm with Austin -who for some reason asked me to stay with him- on the west seated jail cells watching Cell Powers and Spike Ashford, while Ella, Grover, and Jaime are on the East side, watching Rose Cherith and Naomi Sierra. Spike's a little on the...crazy side. He convulses and moves around his cell in random, jerky patterns, occasionally flicking his tongue around and crossing his eyes. One in a while he'd let out various screams, grunts, and gurgles, but rarely uttering out a comprehensible sentence, not even a single word. Powers on the other hand, is a bit more silent. But sometimes he'd laugh at Spike or call him "good boy," almost like a...dog? It's creepy. When he did that Austin would bang on the bars and yell "silence!" I'm just as scared of Austin as I am the prisoners. Sometimes, Austin would form a gun out of his Gunsmith and fire it into the jail cell when Spike would get too close to the bars. Never at Spike though, just a warning shot.

"Let's get one thing straight," Austin says to me. "I don't like you. You're a sniveling, whining little kid who joined this Organization with no real aspirations. You're going to die out there without a dream to fight for, you know." So that's why Austin asked me to stay with him. Seriously?

"Yeah? Well I'm not too fond of you either," I grunt as I roll my eyes at Austin. "You're just an asshole!"

"Hey, kid," Cell asks me. "What's your name?" 

"Ah...um…" I stammar.

"Just don't answer him, Luis," Austin instructs.

"But you just…" I begin to say, but I'm cut off by Cell.

"So it's Luis, eh?" He asks.

"Hey!" Austin shouts as he fires a Cursed Power bullet at the bars of Cell's, well...cell. "Stay the Hell away from us!"

"Heh heh, Your Cursed Ability is cool, kid," Cell taunts. He has a gruff, hardened voice when he talks. It's scary. "So it's a gun, that's all? How strong is it, how lethal? I've murdered dozens with a variety of different guns so I'm curious to see if a Cursed one is any better?"

"I said shut up!" Austin shouts as he shoots another bullet into the wall of Cell's jail cell right next to him. The bullet grazes Cell as it passes by, but no blood comes out?

"Jeez, no need to be so cold," Cell grumbles.

"Ugh, how long do we have to watch these guys for?" I asked Austin.

"As long as we need to. Or until we, you know, get to go home. Or get a lunch break," Austin answered, not breaking eye contact from Cell for even a second.

"Speaking of which!" I say. "Come on, let's go take a lunch break!"

"You can," Austin replies. "I'll be responsible and watch these two."

Well now I feel bad. "Oh…ok," I reply. "Be back at ten," I say as I stroll away from Cell and Spike's cells.

"Oh, and Luis?" Austin calls to me.

"Yeah?" I answer as I pause and look over my shoulder at Austin.

"Tell Jamie she is not to leave her post," Austin orders, causing me to sigh. Austinis so hard on that poor girl just because he knew her for a while.

"Yeah…" I awkwardly reply.

I head over to the East side of the prison to collect Ella, Grover, and Jamie for our lunch break, and told them that Austin isn't joining us. The three of us eat lunch in the prison gaurd's barracks, chatting about our respective inmates, about how unhinged and crazy they seem.

"Alright!" I say once the four of us are finished eating. "Should we get back to our posts?" The others mutter an agreement, and the four of us get up head back to our posts, me going one way, and Ella, Grover, and Jamie going the other.