They dug in the dust and sand searching to find an answer to the question of whether or not they would be killed for failing to find it. Amidst the sweat and silence, there was an audible sigh of relief when they found it...the pictures on the limestone, the entrance to the chamber...the beautiful ugly thing, which had mad them work so hard, at least from those who knew Him... Not the local men who'd been hired to toil, but those who were aware of what He would do to people who failed. It was enough to make a man pray for God, just to hope that their master wasn't the only one with that kind of power. To see into the hearts of men, to create flame from nothing, to turn off his very soul, to employ monsters of men... It was best to keep Him happy, to keep the belly of the beast full.

Two men had rushed off right away to deliver the news to The Lord's inferiors, to tell his subordinates that they were close to whatever it was that he'd been searching for. In the heart of one of the native men paid to aid in the discovery, was a dark fear. The men who'd given themselves to the shadow didn't much fear about any old engineer's traps or curse from some monster, some old ghost story that had been gone for three thousand years...the spirit of monster king locked away in some pit with curses ready...surely it couldn't be any more dangerous than He.

^^^^^^^^^^^

He was angry as he sat at the bar. Pablo could hold his liquor damned well, most often. Even so, sometimes it made him wanna fight. Hey, he thought, I guess that means good-for-nothing Papa DID teach me something, after all. I should smash a bottle of that stupid Mexican piss-beer he liked so much on his grave.
 

His men were smart enough to leave him alone for a bit longer. And, given the first few fights and that initial stabbing incident, the locals had learned as well. Good. There'd be nothing to interrupt his melancholy, now. Unless it was important. Life was full of high points and low ones ups and downs...his points had been more violently high and low than most, and sometimes things were up (or, here, down) for no good reason at all. It was while pondering the fate of his poor sister and what had happened to her, that the news had come.
 

@@@@@@@@@@@@

(An Extremely Brief History of Ancient Egyptian Theology-

In Egypt, in the old times, there was a god called Anpu...or Anupu, or Wip or Anubis, etc, depending on where you

were from. It was said that he was the one who would lead the dead to the world thereafter, and it was him who would

preside during the judgment of the deceased... Using a scale to weigh the heart of the dead against a feather, to

see if they were worthy of entrance into the next life (the heart is, of course, weighed down by evil deeds and

desires). He was often depicted as a being with the body of a man and the head of a jackal, this god, ad he was

called many things... He who Counts the hears, the one who walks through the shadows of life...he who is set upon

his mountain... Also, Lord of Westerners; it was believed back then that the entrance to the afterlife was in the

west, since that is the direction in which the sun sets.)
 
 

It would have been better if they could have said that they'd never seen their deaths coming at all, but during the last moments it was clear, if not literally. They entered the room through the tunnel they'd dug into the ground, about two meters tall, two and a half across, and seventeen long.

It had been dark, naturally, since the only natural light came from the tunnel's entrance some ways back. They had flashlights to cut through the darkness in swaths and two of the dozen men held lanterns. The place looked almost new, relatively, though the paintings on the limestone, which lined the inside of the chamber looked as if they were at least fifty years old. One of the Shadowlaw men, dressed as like the others but not blending in well at all, was in the group's center. He didn't want to stay in the back and seem timid, but that wasn't enough to make him try to head the group, either. Too many bad omens about digging up things buried by dead people.
 

There was only one room, about five meters deep and long, and three tall, not accounting for the convex ceiling which was hanging down a half a meter in the center. The paintings were of figures...mostly men or something like them, and strange objects shaped like feathers or fire or arms or other sundry things, hieroglyphs, which he supposed had made up words on the old, dead language.

(As these matters of death were important to people then, even more than they may be now, it also bears mentioning that there was a thing called a "ba." It was usually drawn as a bird with a human head, though it was believed that they could come in many forms. It could fly, invisible between the living and dead worlds...it was the force of life, which would join a person as they were born, usually, and depart at the moment of death. Along with it was the "ka," essentially the mind and heart of the person...everything that makes one unique. A mirror image, and the thing, which would depart to go on to the next world.)
 

Deeper into the room, toward the back, there was a cube of stone, about half a man's height and thrice his width, of a slightly different color than the chamber's inside walls. At least, from what he could see. Odd, that this was the only room...the rest of the structure empty, except for a few traps. The place had been robbed, he was sure. No reason to guard a square with some old stuff in it...unless it was of great sentimental value. And, sentimental value was rarely synonymous with the practical or financial kind. But, that really wasn't his concern...Boss' orders.

On the lid of the granite box was a creature with the head of a wild dog, and the body of a man. One of the old gods, he'd guessed. He was drawn above a blue square, a box with an open lid, in profile as all of the men were drawn in the old style, and, to his or it's right was a man lying prone on the ground, his eyes closed. Behind him was an identical man. Above the grounded man hovered a bird, at least partly... It was something with the body and wings of a bird, but with a man's head...

Taken aback by the oddness of it all, never having seen something like that before, it took him a moment to see that the "bird's" head was identical to the man on the ground's.

He who is set upon the hill bids you return, and accepts and guides Set's poor illiterate foreigners, is what the hieroglyphs on the stone lid had said, but no one who was present could read them.

The men lifted the painted lid off of the stone thing, using six men to lift it up and set it down, instead of just having three men slide it off onto the ground after prying it apart from the rest. Inside of the stone box was another, smaller one.

After they'd removed the lid dust swirled up into the already odd-smelling air, covering the men who had been close enough. The air never really seemed to clear, as the men used their clothes to cover their mouths and breathe through like a makeshift sort of filter... It didn't seem to be working. The men were choking now, and as some of them began to move back towards the tunnel's entrance, that's when it had been slammed shut.

(Also, there was Set.

Set was most famous for the murder of his only brother, Osiris, and then subsequently cutting his brother's body into pieces and locking them in a box and hiding them.)

The instructions had been clear...at the first sign of trouble, seal them all in, until everything was cleared. Some of the other men had sympathy for their Shadowlaw compatriot, now lost...many, had none. What was to be done? Boss' orders.

(Set was considered to be the god of sandstorms and of the desert...it was harsh and infertile, and it was believed that he was similarly severe, and unable to create life. In later periods, he was known as the god of foreigners.)

&&&&&&&&&
 

He was just slightly mad, and he knew it, the man. It's like Through the Looking Glass... When Alice was in Wonderland, and said that she didn't want to go among crazy people... The cheshire cat had said to her that it couldn't be helped. "Everyone here is mad...I'm mad, you're mad, we're all mad..." She didn't agree. But then, he had said to her, "You must be, or you wouldn't have come here."

Sitting here, telling the little girl who she needed to kill as he'd told the man earlier, there was no arguing the point...the absurdity of the situation was paramount. This place...this facility was a place wherein mad people used logic and science to their whims...was there anything more irrational or dangerous...? And, yet, they continued! That was even more absurd...

But that really isn't the point, is it?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Reno Tseng sat in the hotel room waiting for Cana to get out of the shower, agitated. He never should have let her go first.

There was no going back to their place now- they'd been made. The thing about being on the run, is that sometimes you lose your stuff. Sucks. Ah well, at least he still had his guitar with him. Unable to sit, he began to pace the room. Without pausing, he turned toward the door and yelled "WHAT THE HELL, WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THERE, HURRY UP!" This wasn't good. The world seemed to get a little smaller, every time he needed to run, like the time before where he'd disappeared from Cana. There was one less place to go...

It was dangerous just to be in Tokyo like they were now, but, where to go? Part of him wanted to stay and fight, for this to all be over and for him to be the victor...to fight THEM, since they were the real enemy, no matter what. No matter what monsters came after them, he knew who the real villain was, in this. He wasn't scared, he wanted to be free. He wanted the rights to himself.

"I'M SHOWERING, SHUT UP," came from behind the bathroom door. And, there was her, in the next room. The only on who he could connect with...he didn't always want to. But it was important knowing that he could.

Most importantly, this could be the end of the band. At least, until dead people stopped showing up. This whole thing had to be related to Bison, there was no doubt. But this was strange, even more than usual. His whole "life" was strange. There was always something moving under the surface...he could feel it. Always. Now, it felt like it was rising to the top...and something was coming.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%

They're unique, but not irreplaceable. Bring back on them, and they'd prefer the girl one. The "female specimen." They used to call her that. Anyway, that's what the man in the white coat had said, the bald one with the glasses.

Things were so noisy here...at least the airplane was quiet...it was scary seeing all of that stuff down there, through the window....
 

****************
 

His hand trembled as he lifted the lid of the small box, no wider or taller than his hand, and plain compared to the colorful room. He shoved the hinged lid open forcefully, hating the suspense of fear, he saw what it was. He pulled the thing shut quickly and was still creeped-out, even if there was less reason to be afraid. "Damned place..." he cursed the chamber under his breath.

Holding the lantern closer to the small box before picking it up, he was grateful to get out, finally. A shout came from the tunnel's entrance, "You okay down there?!!" As he turned, he was to see a man standing. He was draped in an old robe, and wore turban with his face covered by a black bandanna. He couldn't see much of his face, but the man's eyes were as black as any spot in the room. He seemed o fade into the darkness without moving backward, and the stranger's mouth didn't look to be moving, but in a garbled, distorted voice, he said

"...damned place."
 

---123456789---
 

Far away, Gill stood at a marble table, with a tinted glass board on it, about four inches high and half a meter long and wide. On it had been carved grooves, a grid pattern with rows and rows of vertical lines intercepting rows of horizontal ones. Reaching down, he lifted a large, black marble out of a bowl of identical others. Placing it down on the board on it's slightly smoothed bottom side to join a few others of it's kind, he paused a moment and reached down into another bowl next to the first. He set down another marble, this one red on one side and blue on the other, slightly smoothed at the bottom as they all had been, placing it with the group of others around the board's center. Twelve would be successful, no doubt. He'd sneak in and retrieve the artifact, whatever it was that Bison's searching for. There was no doubt of that. Twelve would escape and bring it back to the location ordered..probably without being followed. Surely, he couldn't bring it back here...It would be unfortunate to have uninvited guests.

He placed another stone on the board, the group almost encircling a pair of black ones. And then, there was...
 

~~~~~~~~~

It was an odd job she had, but she didn't much notice. "Love hotels" like the one she was in right nowhere used frequently for discreet sexual encounters. There was a secure parking garage so guest's cars couldn't be recognized, and a lot the time people would rent rooms for only an hour or two, or less, instead of the whole night. The clerk at the front desk didn't' think there was anything really odd, at first. It wasn't the first time a foreigner had walked in with a twelve-year-old girl. This was the first time, though, that the girl had looked like a foreigner as well. Maybe it was just some new makeup trend? Aside from that, there was the musician (...you could always tell, it was the way he walked. That and the guitar), who apparently checked in with one of his contact-lens-wearing groupies for the night...pretty much business as usual. No cheating married customers tonight, which was odd, but they usually came in on Tuesdays and Wednesdays anyway.

The foreigner with the brown hair turned to her and spoke quite poor Japanese, saying that the couple with the music-couple who'd arrived earlier expected them, and asking what room they were in. The little girl was slowly reaching up for the service bell on the desk, clearly intent on playing with it. The hotel attendant pushed the bell toward her a few inches, half out of pity, and prepared to make a call up to the hotel room.
 
 

"I'm gonna go take a walk," Reno said loudly, not thinking about the fact that it was safer for both of them that he stay in the room. Cana yelled something from behind the door, but he didn't really hear or care what. He pushed open the door, leaving one hotel room key (in the form of a sliding plastic card) on the nightstand, and taking the other with him. Opening the door to leave, he saw a man standing in front of him, obscuring his path.

"I'm coming in."
 
 

The desk clerk had learned quickly...Rez figured he might have to break one of her fingers before she would tell him the room (as soon as he'd sized her up, he'd figured one finger would do the job), but it seemed that wouldn't be necessary.

He'd urged her not to call, and she'd gathered by the tone of his heavily accented voice and other intangibles, that he was dangerous. Sensing this, he'd said that his "friend" was very eager to meet his "associate," casting his eyes down toward the girl, and that he'd like to keep this sort of thing as quiet as possible, pretending to be a pimp. He also mentioned that he wouldn't wish to interrupt anything that may already be going on in the room, something about something that may already be going on, and something about showing up early, but the woman at the front desk really couldn't tell exactly what he meant, because he was almost unintelligible as it was.

Elenore had discarded the bell after dinging it once, just to hear the sound. She'd retreated for a moment, and then, looking up at the frightened employee who was mostly maintaining her composure, grabbed a pen off of the counter, high for her, and began looking for something to draw a picture on.
 
 

The man was shades of gray and white, both his skin and his clothes. He stood a head taller than Reno and was broad-shouldered. his voice seemed odd...distorted somehow, almost like a bad telephone connection.

"Listen, jerk. You need to get the @#%$ out of my way, right now, and leave, right now, before I @#%$-ing kill you. Okay?" Tseng glared at him.

"Oh, Kay," the man repeated. He almost cracked a smile, but didn't. "The irony!"

Cana had walked out of the bathroom wearing an old t-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. "Good," the stranger said. "You're both here. This will make things go much easier. I've come to offer you a change of employment."
 
 

The odd pair stood in the elevator, queer music playing from the thing's speakers, and stepped out onto the second floor once the doors had opened. They walked down the corridor, and came upon room 204, the one the other duo had rented.
 
 

"I am Urien, and I am not here," the colorless man had said. "The thing that stands here is Twelve, and it is projecting a message from me. If you want freedom from Bison...if you want to know what's going on at all, you'll go with Twelve. If you want the cure to your condition... This is your only shot. If you don't your current employer..."

"We're not scared of them," Tseng spat out distastefully, interrupting the man, as the face of the thing in Urien's form remained cold.

"Speak for yourself," he replied. "Seeing as how your present employer has sought to, "terminate" your work status, you abomination...or at least yours," he said, pointing at Tseng specifically, "it's best that you find a new job and a new place to stay."

"What are you talking about?" Cana paused a moment. "You mean those things, those zombies were from..."

"This bores me," Urien said through Twelve. "Decide. Twelve will take care of the rest." Twelve seemed to change shape, it's bodily and facial features turning flat and losing definition, it's gray eyes turning to dark black ones.
 
 

Romanav kicked down the door from outside, his gun already drawn and pointed toward the center of the room.

Two hotel room keys sat on the nightstand, and the room was empty, as it had been for a few minutes when the trio had snuck out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Natalie carefully padded her way into the Makai's lobby, looking overall like a giant lobster. To match her red bathing suit and the towel wrapped around her waist, her skin had burnt to about the shade of a Boston Baked Bean candy. Wearing as much of a scowl as she could without screaming in pain, she shuffled her slow way through the large room, almost growling at passers-by who stared a second too long.

She stopped mid-growl however, when she caught and briefly held the gaze of a tall Chinese man with short, tapering black hair and a natural brooding look, who was talking to the lady at the front desk. It took her a moment, but recollection of the name that went with that face slowly came back to her. Her eyes widened as she mouthed the name to herself, "Locke Koh??"

Apparently, with her new crispy appearance, he didn't recognize her, because her looked back at the lady he was talking to and seemed to ask a question without giving Natalie another glance. She had never formally met the man, so he might not recognize her anyway, she thought. And she was thankful as she turned quickly and doubled the speed of her steps with a steady mutter of, "ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow..."

"Whoa, what happened to you, Nat-chan?"

What a nice time to run into Fei Long. He was a nice guy, but honestly Natalie believed that he made it a personal goal to see if he could really get on her nerves. Although, she often did the same, and the result was a semi-continuous playful banter whenever the two happened to meet.

"I got hit by a very large solar flare. Half the beach is gone and most of the fish are dead, but thankfully I survived to plot the destruction of the sun," she answered, not bothering to endure the pain of turning to face him as they entered the elevator that was apparently his means of getting to the third floor where most of the fighters who had already arrived were staying. Funny, she thought to herself, how no matter how much training any of the fighters put themselves through, nobody liked taking the stairs.

As Fei chuckled and pushed the button that would take them to the third floor, Natalie did glance at him, barely turning her head to note his outfit for the day, a tight yellow t-shirt and white dress slacks that were probably some neat designer brand she really didn't care about. "Don't you own any jeans like normal people?"

Fei smirked, "I'm a movie star, and future major film director, Nat-chan. I'm not exactly 'normal,'" he answered.

She gave him an appraising gaze, then nodded slightly despite the little hot-irons that continuously poked every nerve on any exposed piece of flesh, "Oh that's right, I forget how weird you are." Not that she could talk about what was and wasn't 'normal.'

She grinned at him, which he returned as he poked her arm experimentally, cause her to hiss and slap the offending hand away like an annoying mosquito as the elevator stopped and the doors opened, "Gee Nat, that looks really painful. You better get some lotion or something."

"Shut up. What's Jin doing anyways?"

"I dunno, was going to see him now, actually. Thought maybe we could spar or something."

"You are NOT going to steal away my lotion-rubbing-person. Anyway, he'd just beat you, like I did in DDR," Natalie replied, puffing out her chest like a bird with a swollen ego.

Fei huffed as they walked - or rather he walked, and she shuffled-down the hall, "You were ahead by 5 songs, and I'd have easily come back if the machine hadn't broke and the arcade manager hadn't run us out of there."

"Would not have. But yeah, that guy had an anger problem. Banning us from the arcade was a bit much..."

They stopped in front of room 67 and Nat slid her key-card into the locking mechanism until the little light turned green, pausing briefly to say, "Oh...don't make any sudden movements until they all get used to you..."

Before Fei Long could ask who "they" were, Natalie opened the door to reveal the room she and Jin were staying in, and its inhabitants. Jin - who was sitting on the bed with a PSP in his hands, Baka-neko - who was busy attacking one of Jin's shoes on the floor, Happy - the tree frog perched atop the TV, various lizards who scuttled into the leaves of some fake potted plants next to the door, and a very large tarantula who sat next to the glass doors leading to the small balcony, tapping her feet against the glass.
 

Fei just stared for a moment, "How the hell did you get them all here??"

Natalie gleamed, "Ask Jin sometime."

Jin, still engrossed in his game enough not to look up for the moment, simply stated, "I've been telling her to buy cages for them. One day, she's going to come back to the room and that spider's gonna be gone."

Natalie scowled and toddled further into the room, letting Fei close the door behind himself, as she questioned, "Are you threatening Rosie??"

"No... I'm just saying she may 'accidentally' fall into the toilet one day. Or off the balcony... it's a looong way down, you know."

Fei Long chuckled again and poked Natalie in the arm a second time. "You've definitely got a one of a kind girl here."

Jin smirked slightly and looked up in time to see Nat repeatedly smacking Fei's arm as hard as she could muster without hurting her poor skin too much. Jin blinked at seeing that she now matched her swimsuit,

"Ouch. Another run-in with the evil UV rays?"

Natalie hmphed at him. "Yeah. I'm working on a counter-attack as we speak. So yeah. I DO spontaneously combust in bright sunlight. "Anyways, you guys go ahead and plan your man-stuff. I can just tag along if I feel like it. Maybe if Saky's not doing anything she can come too!"

And with that, she meandered her slow way to the bathroom to heal herself. Be damned if she was going to go through days of barely being able to stand clothing. And maybe later she would do more digging to see why a former assassin was here. She knew Meliza Rinaldo was here, running her family's new hotel. It'd been difficult not to be recognized when Meliza greeted the group, but her new appearance might throw anyone off who hadn't known her well. Shutting the bathroom door and peeling off her swimsuit with multiple curses involving animal parts, Natalie added an extra swear as she recalled the names of those already scheduled to come. So much for cover, it'd be next to impossible to avoid everyone she had known or met previously. She had been trying to think of a plausible explanation for her return, but hadn't had any luck.

She looked in the mirror and griped yet again. Damn tan-lines from hell...