The Death of Inn Hinata
      

      The large cardboard box slowly yet steadily rolled
up the stairs that led to Inn Hinata, in grim defiance of
physics, yet its deceased occupant could hardly care less.
After falling under the effects of the other inanimate
object within the box, they were in no condition to prevent
the next phase of its self-appointed mission.
      As the package reached the top of the stairs and the
wide expanse of the front yard of the Inn, bathing in the
late-sunrise light filtering through the surrounding trees,
it aroused the curiosity of Onsen Tamago, who flew around it
for a couple circles as it continued its laborious end-over-
end crawl towards the front door. She landed on the box,
having decided to ride it a short ways, but quickly changed
her mind and began flapping her small forelegs in an attempt
to drag it indoors.
      The front door opened before them and Naru appeared
in the doorway, holding a broom and wearing both an apron
and an annoyed expression, stopping short when she noticed
the turtle and box blocking her path. Confusion dissipated
her anger as she looked down quizzically.
      "Tama? What's that?" She knelt down to examine the
label, which addressed it to Inn Hinata, but did not contain
a return address. Tama meowed innocently and floated away,
leaving Naru the unenviable task of bringing the box inside.
      "Wow! A delivery! Is it food?" The impossibly energetic
Suu skipped into the inn's foyer, chased by a less-energetic
Motoko, who held a damp rag in her hand and most of a bucket
of water in her hair and hakama.
      Naru pushed the mysterious box into the foyer, no small
feat considering its weight, and flopped on top of it in
frustration as it was only halfway in. "Gah! I don't know what
this thing is, but it feels like it weighs a ton! Can you help
me get it in, Motoko?"
      Wringing out her clothes, the kendoka walked over and
helped her friend finish pushing the box into the middle of
the room. Tamago continued flying around the room, waiting for
the girls to open it.
      "That's odd, it doesn't have a return address," Motoko
noted, somewhat out of breath, "Shouldn't we wait for Keitarou
to get back so he can open it?"
      Naru's annoyed expression instantly returned. "If he's
going to run out on us without so much as a note of where he
went, then I don't care. You realize how much studying I've
gotten done since we've had to catch up on doing his job? One
hour! How am I supposed to--" She stopped, looking closer at
Motoko. "Why are you all wet?"
      "Suu and I were trying to wash the floor upstairs, or
rather," she said, wiping some excess water off her brow, "I
was trying to wash and she was trying to make a game out of
it. As you can see, I lost." She indicating the dripping
sleeves of her shirt.
      "Uh-huh." Naru said evenly, then got turned her
attention back to the box. "Well, we might as well open it,
then."
      "Hey, whatcha got there?" Mitsune asked, descending
the stairs with Sinobu behind her holding a basket of laundry.
Sinobu looked up and gave a friendly wave to the impatiently
meowing Tamago, who continued to fly about the room.
      "Some package to the inn, looks like," Naru said,
working at undoing the packing tape which held it closed.
"Normally, Keitarou would be doing this, but with him gone--"
      She opened the box.
      In the silence that followed, one could have heard a
turtle land gently onto Sinobu's head, which one did. One
would shortly thereafter hear five simultaneous screams of
shocked horror.
      Folded haphazardly inside the box was the silent form
of Keitarou, his head tilted backwards at an impossible angle,
staring blankly at the ceiling.
      "He's, he's dead?" Naru stammered, trying to close the
lid on the box but finding it quite difficult to will her
arms to touch it.
      Mitsune and Suu both stared in open mouthed shock at the
gruesome sight. Motoko covered her nose, both at the smell of
decomposition as well as the instantly recognizable traces
of the evil that lingered around the body; whoever did this
was no mortal agent.
      Sinobu's trembling hands finally lost her grip on the
clothes basket and it clattered to the floor. Almost as if
reacting to the sound, the impact on the floor nearby jarred
the box, and Keitarou's head flopped a few centimeters to one
side, provoking yelps of surprise from Motoko and Naru, the
latter of whom jumped to her feet in reflex.
      "Don't DO that!!" she screamed, punting the box down the
hallway where it dumped its contents onto the floor and slid
to a stop. The five girls just stood breathlessly watching it
for a few moments, fearful that it would make another move,
but nothing happened. In a wavering voice, Mitsune spoke up.
      "What are we going to do now?"
      Naru tried to compose herself enough to begin thinking
of a response, but they were all distracted at that point by
the frantic motions of Sinobu.
      Pale with fright, she looked around sharply and rapidly
between Mitsune, Suu, Naru, Motoko, and Tamago, who was still
perched on Sinobu's head and staring at her intently. Finally,
she began to slowly back away, mouthing words in hysterical
silence, then turned and ran headlong up the stairs, causing 
Tamago to tumble off her head.
      "Sinobu!" Naru called after the young girl, somewhat
grateful at having concern for Sinobu's mental state around to
help override her paralyzing fear caused by the evening's
events. She glanced over at Motoko. "I'll go talk with her, you
call the police."
      "Got it." Motoko said grimly, though she held doubts that
the police would be much help in preventing further deaths of
this sort. This situation called for far more serious preventive
countermeasures.
      Suu, unusually sober, calmly announced, "I've got to
get to work on a defense perimeter. They got Keitarou, and sent
him here, so they'll come here next." Her young eyes flashed
with determination. "I've got to try and stop them." With a
hurried yet purposeful stride, she rushed upstairs to her room.
      Motoko and Naru both stood and walked towards the stairs,
past Mitsune, who held on to a nearby chair for support of her
trembling legs. She looked once more down the hallway and the
strewn corpse in it and muttered to herself.
      "I need a drink."

      "Sinobu?" Naru knocked hesitantly on Sinobu's door,
a sound which echoed throughout the eerily silent hallway.
"Can I come in?"
      The sound of muffled sobbing answered her, and she
decided to open the door herself. As it slid open, Sinobu gave
a startled yelp and jumped backwards slightly, clutching a
plush rabbit to her chest, but the expression on her face
forced Naru to have to stifle a gasp.
      Above tear-stained cheeks, Sinobu's eyes were wide-
open and fearful, yet hauntingly distant. For several seconds,
neither girl said anything, save Sinobu's panicked sobs, then
she whispered something, all but inaudible.
      "What?"
      "It's already inside. Too late..." she trailed off,
looking down at the floor and slowly losing the strength to
stand. "Too late."
      "Wait, what's inside? Who are you talking about?" Naru
took a step inside, but Sinobu, alarmed, scooted back again.
      "No! It's inside! We have to run!" she shouted, even more
frantically looking around at the walls of her room as if they
were living things, but slowly became overcome with a fresh
wave of despair and looking at her hands. "Too late."
      Naru helplessly watched Sinobu continue to tremble, but
couldn't think of anything useful to say; she wasn't in much
better a frame of mind either. Turning to leave, she spoke
gently, "We'll call for help, don't worry. You just stay here,
ok?" Quietly she closed the door and headed downstairs, leaving
Sinobu to whisper to herself.
      "Run."

      Mitsune reached her room, turned on all the lights, and
reached for the closest bottle of sake out of the large cache
of bottles she kept around the room. She didn't think of herself
as one who drank to excesses, or even as a convenient excuse
from her problems, but she figured that if any situation called
for something to calm her nerves, this was the one.
      Neglecting to use a glass, she poured a shot of the clear
liquid down her throat and sat down on her bed. "Well," she
mused, "that's a LITTLE better." Closing her eyes, she took a
series of slow, deep breaths to try to make sense of things.
      Keitarou was dead. Why? Who would kill him, stuff him into
a box, and then mail it to his house? From what she knew of him,
he wasn't the sort to have this done to him, and besides, he had
proven himself inhumanly resilient to almost injury that had
happened to him. For someone to actually finish him off, they
would have had to be--
      A loud clanking noise caused her to leap to her feet and
look around in alarm, until she saw that it was one of her
bottles that had somehow fallen off the shelf and rolled along
the floor. Breathing a sigh of relief, she walked over and bent
down to pick it up.
      A different bottle swung down sharply from behind onto
the back of her head, shattering and knocking her out cold. The
alcohol began to soak into her as the rest of the bottles in the
room began to be used on Mitsune in the same manner as the first.
      
      Suu's headset gave her rapid, stacatto-like progress
reports on various systems completing compilation and debugging
routines, as she efficiently and quickly constructed a plan of
defense to monitor and guard the inn and its inhabitants against
intruders.
      Once completed, she would be able to track every single
object in the house, the onsen, and the surrounding yards; it
was quite a large area to cover, but she had plenty of automatic
programmable Mecha-Tama drones to use. "If they're coming here,"
she vowed to herself, "we're gonna be ready for them."

      Motoko picked up the phone a third time, and heard only a
melancholy whistling sound coming from the receiver. Dialing
some numbers did nothing to stop it, so she set it down once
more, just in time to see Naru walk down the stairs.
      "How is Sinobu?" she asked, undisguised worry in her
voice.
      Naru shook her head sadly, "I don't know. She's scared,
confused, and isn't sure how to cope. Just like the rest of us."
      "The phone's dead," Motoko said. She held up her sword,
gripped tightly in a hand that was ready to use it if necessary.
"It's just us now."
      Naru looked up sharply. "What? How can the phone be dead?"
She paused, the realization of what that meant slowly crossing
her face, filling it with fear. "Then that means Sinobu was
right; they're--"
      A piercing scream echoed throughout the house, freezing
both Naru and Motoko in place for an instant, then Motoko's eyes
widened. "That sounded like Sinobu!"
      No further discussion was needed, as the two of them ran
up the stairs, Motoko with her sword drawn and ready. They slid
to a halt in front of Sinobu's room, whose door was wide open
and half broken off its hinges. Dolls and books were strewn
around the room as if trashed by some micro-hurricane, but
Sinobu herself was nowhere to be found.
      "Sinobu!" Motoko yelled, desperate to hear some response
from the missing girl. However, after a few seconds, she heard
only the sliding of the door in the room next door as Suu
stepped out.
      "What happened?" Her headset was off her ears and down
around her neck; Motoko's yell was close enough and loud enough
to interrupt her computer's vocal reports.
      "Do you know where Sinobu is? We just heard her scream!"
Motoko asked. Suu shook her head silently, just as another
thought occurred to Motoko. "What about Kitsune?"

      Naru and Motoko stopped short of the door to Mitsune's
room, frozen at the sight of a pool of clear liquid seeping
underneath her door, with streaks of deep red within.
      Naru backed away, choking back tears. "No...I can't look
in there! I can't!" She fell to her knees and leaned against
the wall. "I don't want to see--"
      Motoko stepped over the puddle, steeled herself, and
slid the door open a slight crack, just enough to see Mitsune
on the floor, battered, broken, and half-buried under a pile of
shattered bottles, all of which leaking various fluids across
the room.
      She closed the door and took a deep breath. "It's Kitsune.
She's dead."
      "NOOO!" Naru scrambled to her feet and ran away in the
direction of the stairs to the third floor, screaming the whole
way.
      "Senpai!" Motoko called after her, but to no avail. She
growled, looking around to see if there were any traces of the
evil monster who must have still been lurking in the inn. One
thing was certain, she decided: she would kill him herself. No
murderer would be able to escape her vengeance forever.

      Suu grinned as the last of her routines checked out as
ready to go. She slid the headset to her shoulders once again
and plugged in her first Mecha-Tama to test out the new defense
program.
      The little robot's eyes lit up, and it floated into the
air and looked around the room, scanning everything in sight
with its small red optical sensors. With a beep of alarm, it
flew over to the jungle and pond built into the far end of the
room.
      "What's that? You see something?" Suu got up and followed
it, leaning into the artificial jungle enclave but not seeing
anything out of the ordinary. "Are you sure--?"
      Something slammed into her back, sending her headfirst
into the pool. She scrambled under the surface of the water for
a couple seconds, just long enough to come to her senses again
and stand up.
      "HEY! What the?" was all she had time to say before she
saw her computer system, still plugged in, being dumped into
the pond with her.

      Naru flung open the door to her room and ran inside,
slamming it behind her. Hysterical with grief, she slid to the
floor, hugging her knees, and tried to steady herself.
      First Keitarou, now Mitsune. Both dead in one day, and
who would be next? Reason screamed at her to get up and run,
but her thoughts were too chaotic already to focus in any one
direction.
      A loud buzz rang through the house and all the lights
shut off. Naru screamed in surprise, and heard Motoko's similar
shout from elsewhere in the house, but no others. Sinobu? Suu?
Were they dead as well? Was she next?
      "I have to run," she realized suddenly. She climbed to
her feet and began groping around the room trying to find the
way to the door.
      Without warning, her next step missed the floor entirely
and she slipped, falling feet-first down the hole in the middle
of her room. Her tumble was unexpectedly interrupted by the hole
unexpectedly closing up somehow right before her head managed
to fall into Keitarou's old room.
      "he-help!" she gasped, reaching her hands up to her neck
to try and open whatever had just clamped down on it, but it
held fast, and her cry had been muffled enough so that nobody
but her heard it. As the dark room grew even dimmer, she was
able to manage one more garbled plea.
      "keitarou..."

      Motoko crouched in the candlelight of her room, her sword
grasped firmly in both hands, facing the door. She knew she was
the only one left; after the blackout, she found an electrocuted
Suu in her room and Naru hanging between her room and Keitarou's
room, and Sinobu's earlier scream gave little doubt as to her
fate.
      Whoever it was would come for her next; that much she
knew for sure. They knew she was the only one who would put up
a real fight, and wanted to save her for last. It made sense, she
figured, but it would be their final mistake. It didn't matter
if they killed her or not. If it came to that, she swore, they
wouldn't live long enough to gloat over her.
      Something creaked behind her. In one instinctive motion,
she spun on one foot and swung her sword in a flashing arc,
cleanly bisecting the suit of armor she kept in her room. With
a series of rattling crashes, it fell to pieces, but revealed
no intruder.
      She steadied her breathing and returned to her previous
ready pose, senses heightened to detect even the smallest
motion. If a mouse were to sneak into her room at that moment,
it wouldn't know what hit it.
      Her first instinct was to run, but she quickly dismissed
that; after finding the slain bodies of her closest friends,
all thoughts of running and hiding vanished. There was a killer
in Inn Hinata, she knew where he would go next, and it was only
a matter of time before she avenged the others.
      "Motoko." She tensed and held her sword back, ready to
strike, but paused at the last instant. That sounded like--
      "Please let me in, Motoko. It's me, Sinobu." Motoko's
heart leaped up, but was quickly held back by one thing: it
sounded LIKE her, but only a bit. That voice wasn't Sinobu's.
It was too deep, too gravelly. Motoko growled. It had to be the
killer, faking Sinobu's voice in an attempt to try and sneak
into her room.
      "Stay back!" she yelled, preparing to launch a Zanganken
wave through the door and into the intruder at an instant's
notice; there could be no hesitation.
      For a minute that felt like a week, nothing happened.
Sweat began to drip down Motoko's face as she kept her focus
at maximum, trying to ascertain what the murderer was doing.
Was he waiting for her to come outside? Or was he circling
around to come into the room from another angle? Perhaps he--
      A sudden motion at the door singled her attention to
one point, and it began to open.
      Now.
      "ZANGANKEN!" Motoko screamed, whipping her sword in a
well-practiced arc that generated a wave of solidified air
to smash the door to splinters, as well as the person behind
the door. A high-pitched scream erupted from behind the door,
but was all but instantly silenced by a hail of wood shards.
      With sword prepared, in case there was more than one
intruder, Motoko edged carefully out into the hallway, brushed
aside fragments of her door, and let out a pained gasp at
seeing who she had just killed.
      It was really Sinobu.
      "Oh no," she sobbed, falling to her knees, horrified at
the idea that she could have misjudged so grievously that she
accidentally hit Sinobu, instead of the murderer who was at 
her door earlier, with a lethal technique.
      Abruptly, Sinobu's grip loosened on the pair of grenades
she had been holding. Motoko's expiring thought was to notice
that they both had that triple-eye logo that Suu liked to keep
on most of her belongings.

      Onsen Tamago circled above the inn, away from the blast
of the grenades. The small fire caused by the explosion, with
the fuses out and nobody tending the house, would soon consume
the entire inn. Tamago, or rather the possessed shell that was
once Tamago, meowed in acknowledgment. With one final loop
around the doomed building, she flew away, small beady greenish
eyes reflecting the moonlight, and went in search of her next
mission.


                                                      -Sakamoto




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