Skinwalker Apocalypse

Hina Tanaka

Johnson watched in silence as Elle went straight for the statue, he watched her fool around with the horns of the ningyo a bit and with a loud click, a wooden portion of the altar began to lift off the rest of the wood finish.

He raised his eyebrows in surprise that she was able to figure out the secret compartment of the temple that quickly.

Elle shrugged her shoulders as if to say "What? I do this for a living."

"Ladies first." Johnson gestured for Elle to go down the ramp first.

Elle gave him a smirk as she passed beside him and began to descend the staircase.

The floor beneath looked neat and cobwebs free as though that entrance was constantly in use and the staircase led into a long narrow hall..

The two thieves went down the hall examining the wooden finish walls and floor as they went for doors and traps triggers but finding none till they got to the end of the hall.

There, in the dark end of the hall was a heavily barred door made of wood. It stood dark and ominously that both Elle and Johnson exchanged glances wondering what could be kept so securely in a room underneath a temple.

There were two heavy wooden bars, as well as a set of thick and heavy chains secured with a huge metal lock.

Elle examined the lock, it looked really big and a bit different from the types she was used to picking but hopefully worked by the same mechanisms.

She picked out the two biggest hairpins in her hair and got to work quickly on the lock. It took a while than it usually did but at last, the padlock creaked open. Johnson then got rid of the chains and lifted the bars.

Then they pushed the door open.

*-*-*-*

Nate Shaw and Darren Brooker stood still at the post they were supposed to be guarding. One of them getting more and more nervous with each passing minute while the other grinned beneath his disguise.

Putting on a legit Japanese army suit was another thing to cross off his list... actually, another thing to write and then cross off it cause, how cool was this right?

The night was cold and Nate heard the younger shiver a bit beside him. Well, he had no jacket to give and remembering how they could not break character, he decided to mind his business and not ask.

Another twenty minutes passed that way. A set of approaching footsteps alerted them immediately setting both males on edge.

Nate adjusted his pose, glancing at Darren to silently ask him to the same. They stood straight and tried not to show their tension in their stance.

Luckily for them, the guards gave them both nothing more than cursory nods at them before moving on which was as well as Nate knew very little Japanese.

Nate let out a quiet sigh of relief as soon as the parading guards were out of sight. Darren turned to face him, his half covered face showing a relief that mirrored his. Thankfully the shadows cast by the temple roof kept their face hidden from passersby.

Another few minutes passed again with both lookouts feeling more and more awkward and tense to be standing there in silence waiting for the rest to show up with Hina Tanaka.

"Do you think we should check on them?" Darren asked but the words had barely left his mouth when all hell broke loose.

*-*-*-*

The room the door opened to was much dusty and old than the rest of the places they had passed. It smelled musty and terrible in general.

Elle's and Johnson's noses wrinkled in disgust at the mixture of all types of body waste odour that permeated the stuffy room.

The room was poorly lit by filtering stray rays of light from the temple above the room. Other than that, it was dark inside so Elle switched on her pensized torchlight.

She shone the light across the room which seemed to be an abandoned one room apartment of sorts.

There was a rugged makeshift bed in one corner. At the far other end was what Elle recognized as a pit latrine from her time in the streets, which must be major source of the assortments of odour that they could perceive.

The question though was, what was so important to be kept in this room?

What was Hina Tanaka?

Elle's silent question was answered by a sharp howl from Johnson as his breathe was knocked out from him.

"Johnson?" Elle called as she turned sharply in the dark to check on the other when she felt the penlight knocked out of her hands.

The pen hit the floor and flickered twice before going off plunging the room back into darkness.

She shrieked in panic as something hit her making her double over from the thud in her midriff, before she could blink, her hands were tightly secured in her back in a painful grip.

Now Elle was usually good at defending herself but the darkness and surprise attack placed her at a disadvantage.

"Who... Who are you?" Elle asked trying to pull her hands out from the tight grip around them all to no avail.

Johnson on the other hand, attempted to crawl up from ground that he had crashed onto as the guard had hit him someplace on his chest that suddenly made breathing difficult and brought him to his knees. He had not expected it at all.

He heard a string of words shot at him or was it Elle? ...he could not tell. He did not understand the language and assumed that it was Japanese.

Oh Fvck! There goes the whole plan.

Then he heard a answering voice, at first, he thought it was a second guard but then recognized the voice as Elle's.

A short conversation in the tongue followed and he heard Elle tap on the ground. A hand gripped the back of his shirt, starting him, and flipped him onto his back. Another hit at his throat and he found himself taking greedy gulps of the foul stuffy air to feed his air starved lungs.

In a second, the light flicked on again as Elle found it and Johnson saw it settle on ...a woman?

She was thin and tall and she looked dirty, like really dirty, ...a little crazed even. Her hair were, well, a proper nest. Black, dull and a tangled mess. Her skin was pale like that of a ghost. Her clothes were dirty and soiled and an awful smell permeated from her.

Add that to her dark circles, wide world eyes and the streaks of stains all over her otherwise flawless skin, her overgrown fingernails which now looked like dirty claws and the cobwebs that decorated every inch of her, she looked like a nightmare.

"Johnson, meet Hina Tanaka." Elle told him.

A/N: I'm sorry for the long wait guys. I'll try to upload the next chapter very soon. Let me know your thoughts.