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[h1][color=lightblue]Donnie[/color][/h1]
[h2]Word Count: 992[/h2]
[h3]EXP: (14/30) + 2 = [b](16/30)[/b][/h3]
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Donnie's heart sank as he followed the van on his Disc. He should have known from the name "Dead Zone." He had [i]thought[/i] it was merely a barren wasteland. That would have been par for the course. Instead, it was chock-full of ghouls and what looked like man-sized insects with vaguely humanoid features.

But it was mainly the undead he was concerned about. The Plague of Undeath, also known as the Blight, had not only killed his whole family while he was on the Wandering Isle, but it had nearly wiped out all life on his world. It still would have, if the Jailer of the Damned didn't exist. He did not hate the Forsaken, unlike most humans, but that did not mean he didn't take their more mindless cousins extremely seriously.

Some of the undead he was used to dealing with were armed with weapons, protected by armor, or even remembered some magical techniques from their former lives. But even the more mindless ghouls were capable of overwhelming an experienced opponent. There was a reason that, from the things he'd read, the Scourge had used them as shock troops. And that wasn't even getting into the diseases they could carry. Or the smell.

He didn't remember Detox. Catching something from one of those zombies could be disastrous. All in all, it reminded him far too much of the Plaguelands, and the Northrend conflict. The worst part was that he hadn't been adventuring at the time that war was fought, and didn't have nearly as much experience in this scenario. This could be bad.

Of course, he'd have to be blind to not also notice that Nico drove like a drunken dwarf going for a joyride in a stolen steam tank. While it definitely killed a lot of zombies (and shoving her still-burning cigarette into a bug's face was a nice touch), he was more worried for the integrity of the car. Shouldn't the windshield at least have been smashed in by this point? It had to be made out of sterner stuff than it looked.

Then the car had to stop at an intersection where there had likely been some kind of pile-up. Nero got out of the car, brandishing some kind of sword, and ordered them to deal with the zombies while he cleared out the insects.

Frankly, he'd probably have been more comfortable with those disgusting things than the zombies, but he [i]was[/i] professional enough to know when to defer to the person with the most experience. Unlike Jak, Daxter, Ratchet, and Clank, who went completely gung-ho, [i]he[/i] was going to stick to the plan.

"Very well!" he said to the demon hunter as he flew into the fray, Fists unsheathed. The first zombie didn't even have time to react before it was decapitated, the corpse falling over and leaving a Spirit behind. Quick as a flash, he grabbed it.

Well, this was what he was dreading: Holding an enemy's Spirit. He instantly decided that later on, he'd turn it into an object. Better than absorbing it, or worse, making it a Striker and potentially spreading diseases around when it attacked people. If there was something similar to the Blight responsible for this, he didn't want to be responsible for spreading it further.

He continued to fly around, rapidly slicing through his victims efficiently and mercilessly. It was as he was bearing down on his thirty-first target, however, that something slimy grabbed a hold of his left gauntlet. The tongue, as he soon discovered it was, was pulling with significant force, possibly enough to pull him off the Disc if he hadn't grabbed onto the flying artifact by hooking his right elbow over the edge of the Disc and clinging for dear life. He could have tried slicing it, but with both hands occupied, that was a bad idea. Instead, he tried something more creative. And fun.

He gunned the Disc, zooming across the street and dragging whatever it was behind him. He heard the sound of it being agonizingly pulled along the pavement, and risking a look back, he saw it was some kind of zombie with several growths on its head, growths that were bursting under the friction and releasing some kind of foul green gas as it left a trail of blood in its wake.

Having completely overpowered this long-tongued zombie, he gained altitude slightly and sent the zombie careening into a nearby group of undead, bowling them over, followed by intentionally crashing the zombie's face into the side of a nearby truck in a collision powerful enough to shatter its skull, send it flopping to the ground, and break the tongue as Donnie flew on, getting back to his feet.

Turning back to the gathering of ghouls that were attempting (poorly) to pull themselves back up after the Smoker-collision had knocked them into a loose pile, Donnie sheathed his handblades and fired a few Chi Bursts down at the crowd, blasting them to bloody giblets.

Unfortunately, it seemed that all the mayhem had attracted one of the insects away from Nero's gang, and it quickly entered his personal space, attempting to claw his face off. Donnie retaliated by grabbing its forelegs before they could meet his exposed jaw and throwing the [i]thing[/i] over his shoulder, holding the shrieking insect off the edge of the Disc. He then stomped on its face, over and over, until the disgusting mockery of an insect stopped moving, before he dropped the inert corpse to the ground below, where the force of its impact caved in the roof of the car it landed on.

[i]Ugh. I hate bug-monsters. They remind me of the mantids,[/i] Donnie thought to himself as he finished collecting the Spirits he had taken through rapid use of the Luggage (and grabbing the first zombie's Spirit item from where had dropped it), and unsheathed the Fists again, prepared to kill more zombies.

[hider=Note]About 40 Zombie spirits collected by Donnie, but 1 was turned into an item leaving about 39 more. Also, one Empusa Spirit collected by him too.[/hider]