The White Monkey

Hidden Fortress

~Shouko's POV~

It's been a quiet day today. Antauri, Chiro and I were collecting mementos for the enemies we've faced for the past few months for our new trophy room.

The Sun Riders' stun jacket. A mine from the vessel that created Flytor. Mandarin's helmet. Sparx's man-hands.

"Look at all this stuff." Chiro smiled, as we brought in a new skeletal helmet, a concrete claw of the underwater worm and Scrapperton's mecha-neural remote control chip, "Every kind of monster, heroes gone bad, even rogue robot monkeys."

I nodded, "Guess we've done a pretty good job keeping Shuggazoom an evil-free zone."

"Better than pretty good." Antauri smiled, then turned serious, "Chiro. Shouko. There's something important I've been meaning to tell you both."

"What is it?" I asked.

Before he could answer, the Super Robot's alarm went off. Antauri, Chiro and I quickly made our way to the lounge. The Central Computer was showing something approaching Shuggazoom. Everyone else was already here.

"A meteor is entering the exosphere and heading directly for the Super Robot." Gibson alerted.

Nova typed in codes into the console, "So let's blast it already!" The Super Robot locked on to the meteor, "Pretty weak, Skeleton King."

I stared at the meteor. I felt something warm and kind, but in deep distress. I glanced at Chiro. Chiro looked at me. I shook my head.

Nova activated the Super Robot's eye-lasers and was ready to fire, but Chiro stopped her, "Nova, hold fire. It's no meteor."

The meteor crashed into the Robot's landing site, but stopped just a few feet from it. Chiro grabbed my hand and we quickly exit the Super Robot to get a closer look.

Chiro and I gasped to see what it was.

Jinmay's head!

Her eyes lit up.

"Jinmay!" Chiro gasped.

"Chiro. Shouko. He's coming!" Jinmay told us, "He's coming..." Then she shut down.

The Monkeys arrived to the wreckage. Chiro told them to try and fix her. Sparx, Nova, Gibson and Otto quickly got to work.

"Hey, hey! Careful!" Chiro told the Monkeys.

"They're doing the best they can." Antauri told him.

Chiro looked at his heart pendant that Jinmay gave him before she left. Anger and sadness welled up inside him.

"Why? Why would anyone do this?" He asked, "Jinmay was just a girl. Well... Maybe a little more than that. But with that creepy monkey Sakko gone, she wouldn't hurt anybody."

Then he growled, "Skeleton King. He wouldn't need a reason to do this."

I put my hand over Chiro's shoulder, "Don't fret, Chiro. We'll fix Jinmay and make Skeleton King pay for what he's done."

Chiro looked at me and smiled. Then I felt an ice-cold jolt run straight through me like a bolt. I gasped and turned to look at the sky, then started looking around. A chill ran down my spine.