Coming Out

After the events between the two men Hakkai noticed that Sanzo seemed to be more relaxed when they rolled out of town, the monk slipped into the usual front position of Jeep. Gojyo slid in the back, winked at Goku and then lit up a smoke as they pulled off.

“There’s a rumour around the town that about a day’s hike from here we will find an abandoned temple. Someone spotted a guy matching Jianyi’s description headed that way.” Hakkai told them as they hit the road. “Listen, he’s hardly someone to be taking lightly, we don’t know what he might be packing inside that place. Are you guys ready for this?”

“I owe that guy an ass-whooping, don’t worry about me.” Goku grinned. “Just make sure we get somewhere decent for lunch afterwards.”

“Typical Monkey, you’re only interested in food.” Gojyo muttered.

“Yeah?” Goku looked at him. “Least I have an interest that’s safe in public. You’re just a dirty pervert.”

“Yeah but you know what,” he leant over and kissed Goku’s nose with a smirk, “I’m generally a happy pervert.”

Goku laughed, it was a cheeky grin, and it took him off-guard but considering Sanzo hadn’t threatened either of them, they decided not to push their luck with bickering. Sanzo watched as the scenery passed by, the forest was getting thicker as they drove along, by midday they had passed the last of the farmsteads and were into the loneliest of territories. The forest canopy made it darker and as it did so they all said less, until by the early evening there was nothing being said at all.

The temple was old enough that it was worthless for its original use, the west wall had collapsed and left half of the monk’s original rooms exposed. Nature had begun to reclaim back its territory and as they parked up near the entrance they had to question if they were going to be prepared for him, Ni was hardly a push over and as of yet they had no clue of his actual potency. Sanzo knew he had the potential to use a Sutra and wasn’t going to expect him to bow down lightly when cornered.

“How do you want to deal with this?” Hakkai looked at them.

“I say with a bullet to the temple.” Goku voted.

“We need to check he’s not holding anyone else.” Gojyo lit up a smoke and hopped down watching as Hakuryuu transformed and landed on Hakkai’s shoulder. “If we go in there without considering he would hold more innocent people we could get them killed too.”

“Kappa has a point.” Sanzo muttered, and looked around for signs of movement. “There’s footprints over there, he isn’t hiding his tracks if he is here.”

“Am I the only one wondering how bad this can possibly get?” Hakkai looked at them.

“No, I am just trying to ignore how bad it likely is.” Gojyo said as he stubbed his cigarette out and grabbed his weapon up. “Some poor woman’s probably being used as a freaking test tube incubator by now.”

Goku was the one that headed off first; he slipped around into the treeline and headed towards the abandoned opening area.  Sanzo and Hakkai took a more direct route hoping that if he was watching he’d be more intent on them than the redhead or monkey. Gojyo took the other side towards the collapsed area of the building; he was hoping to see if he could break in that way.

Sanzo looked at Hakkai, nodded softly and then walked straight to the front temple doors, between them they opened the heavy wooden doors and looked inside. It was pitch black, slowly their vision adjusted and Sanzo gripped his pistol tighter. Hakkai kept beside him as they set foot into the dark corridor and both of them were momentarily dazzled when the torches lit up around them.

“I hate it when they give us a welcome sign.” Hakkai muttered; they stepped in prepared for a fight.

Jianyi however had planned no such entertainment for them; he wanted the last stage of his experiment to be a success and could ill afford them messing that up. The woman on the table had to be moved elsewhere now they had arrived, he looked at the demons he’d hired and nodded. They needed to distract him long enough to escape nothing more.

Sanzo looked at Hakkai, he was about to comment when they were surrounded by the yokai and sighed. Okay so they were going to end up wasting a bunch of hired trash just to get to him? Fine…