Chapter 1: City of the Dead
Hamunaptra – 1923
For three thousand years, men and armies fought over the land of Hamunaptra, never knowing what evil lay beneath it. It was a land tainted with greed and war, any man or woman who stood upon the blood-soaked sand suddenly overcome with the desire to own it, to claim it, to kill any who defied that desire…
And for three thousand years, unbeknownst to those men, the Medjai, the descendants of Pharaoh's sacred bodyguards, kept watch…
Cambridge University in Cairo had sent an expedition into the city, purely academic in intention as their people combed through the ruins in search of remnants of the ancient world, but as a fully-armed battalion of French Foreign Legion soldiers rode towards their camp, the expedition team found themselves woefully unprepared.
Of course they had brought guns and ammunition into the desert with them, but they were scholars at best and dandy-boys at worst. None of them were soldiers, save one.
The leader of the expedition, a pampered Bembridge man atop an ivory horse, threw his rifle to the ground before kicking his horse and galloping back to the safety of the city. Two of his subordinates watched him as he fled with his tail between his legs.
Tamaki Suoh grimaced, his perfectly groomed eyebrows furrowing. "It seems you've just been promoted…"
His companion, Yoko Torinuma, growled in the direction of the Bembridge dandy. She was second-in-command on the expedition, so with the official leader disappearing into the distance, she was the one in charge.
Her long purple ponytail flicked as she fixed her rifle in the crook of her arm. The team of diggers and bookworms were practically shaking, their fingers trembling around their own firearms, but to be honest, they were more afraid of what Yoko would do to them if they fled than the French soldiers.
"Tenez vos positions!" she called, the others adjusting their aim and trying not to swallow their own tongues. "Steady…!"
The legion continued charging towards them, some of them pulling swords from scabbards and waving their guns wildly as their horses thundered forward.
"Steady!" noticing how Tamaki kept struggling to hold up his rifle correctly, Yoko turned to him and whispered, "You're with me on this one right?"
He laughed nervously, soft hands slipping when he tried to peer down the line of his rifle. "Your strength gives me strength… but you know I'm not much of a fighter…"
Yoko knew Suoh was as home-grown as they came, his family funded the expedition so of course they sent him to make sure they found something, but he'd die after one hit in a real fight. That being said, she wasn't too surprised that after another glance at the army speeding closer to them, Tamaki threw his gun and ran into the city, screaming for the expedition leader to wait for him.
Yoko wasn't mad, actually no, she was furious, but settled for taking it out on the French soldiers instead of her cowardly buddy Suoh.
"Steady!" she called again, the legion letting out various battle cries as they neared the wall they were crouched behind.
Her finger hovered over the trigger, stiff and refusing to squeeze until the moment when she saw the whites of the horses' eyes.
"Fire!"
Hamunaptra erupted in a thundering storm of bullets, the first layer of the French Foreign Legion dropping to the sand. The line of soldiers behind them who had avoided being shot couldn't stop their horses from tripping over the corpses, buying their enemies time to reload their guns and shoot them down too.
Yoko fixed bullets between her teeth as she rushed to reload, the barrel clicking and locking with each new round. She didn't have time to fully load her rifle as a Frenchman charged towards her, but she managed to empty it into his chest before he could touch her.
Taking the last bullet from her lips, she finished reloading and shot down another soldier from his horse. Her comrades around her were getting their licks in, but some of them whimpered as they had swords plunged into their stomachs, or tried to run before being gunned down themselves. Some of them Yoko knew, most of them she didn't, but she had no time to mourn her expedition-mates, concerned for her own survival at the moment.
A legion soldier who had been knocked off his horse came running towards her, sword raised high as he screamed, "Japon pute!"
The bastard didn't get the chance to make use of his insult as the butt of Yoko's rifle turned his jaw into a skin-bag of blood and bone shards. Another man sped his hose in her direction, but his face suffered the brunt of her rage too, her gun forcibly kissing his lips as she cracked his skull and he fell in a heap on the sand.
Yoko spat on his body before tossing her gun aside, pulling a pair of twin revolvers from under her arms. The guns popped one after the other as she emptied bullets into any uniformed body she could find, inching backwards into the crumbling city as she did. Since more of her guys were dropping than the French bastards, it was easy to tell they were outnumbered.
Her best chance at this point was to get in as many hits as she could before being forced to retreat.
The revolvers ran out quickly, so she tossed them, grabbing another pair of pistols from holsters on her legs. She wasted whoever she pointed her guns at, eyes darting between bodies and noticing a head of foreign blond hair hiding behind a stone pillar.
Yoko growled, she thought Tamaki had taken cover somewhere, but then again his survival instincts were comparable to none at all. Still holing her pistols, she grabbed him by the back of his shirt and pulled him to his feet, giving him a hard shove in the direction of an opening in the ruins.
"Run, Suoh! Run!" the pair kicked up sand as they made a break for the open door, Yoko pushing her comrade in front of her to run faster. "Get inside! Get inside!"
As they neared safety, the purple-haired woman spotted their expedition leader already inside the ruin. She made eye-contact with him before he scoffed at them and pushed his weight against the door, closing it and trying to lock them out.
"Hey!" she roared, "Don't you close that door! Don't. You. Close. That. Fuckin. Door!"
Her shouting did nothing as the door shut in their faces, Yoko smacking her back against it as Tamaki beat on it with his dainty fists. It was no use, that fucker had just thrown them to the buzzards, but forget him! They had to keep moving as more legionnaires moved towards them.
Giving the blond another shove, the pair split into different directions. Luckily for Tamaki, the legion men went after Yoko, chasing her on horseback deeper into the city.
She managed to evade them by ducking and weaving around fallen pillars and broken statues of forgotten gods, but she lost her advantage when the ground disappeared out from under her. Yoko had misunderstood how far the top of the horizontal statue was from the ground, and had taken a hearty tumble into the sand as a result.
Spotting her gun that had slipped from her hand, Yoko quickly tried to reach for it, but barely managed to avoid getting shot as another flurry of bullets aimed for her head rained down.
Abandoning her weapon, she continued running, the rumbling of hooves hitting the ground following her until she found herself quite literally backed against a wall. The girl had nowhere to go, the dozen legion men that had chased her now stood over her, gloating and pointing their guns at her.
Yoko bit her tongue and squeezed her eyes shut, the sound of barrels being pulled back echoing as she waited for the end…
But it never came. The horses suddenly reared up, whinnying in fear and kicking wildly, disobeying their masters' commands and galloping off in every direction, taking the legionaries with them and leaving Yoko in silence.
She peaked her left eye open, confused to find nothing before her. For some reason, the Frenchmen had turned-tail and ran. Her eyebrows furrowed as she walked away from the wall, listening for anyone else nearby.
The City of the Dead was quiet, so Yoko combed through the ruins for any of her comrades that were still alive. She soon spotted Tamaki, his back to her as he stared at a statue sticking out of the desert. It had the body of a man and the head of a dog. Anubis, she remembered.
"Suoh, you alright?" she asked, picking up a rifle from the ground and slinging it over her shoulder. When he didn't answer her she stepped closer, noticing he was not moving or had even reacted to her presence at all. "Tamaki?"
He refused to face her, and though Yoko could not see this, his eyes were wide and white as they remained locked on the face of the god of the underworld.
It was then that she heard it, whispers emerging from the sand, wrapping around her like fabric. Her gaze darted around but found no one else besides herself and the blond, but the voices were clear as if someone was standing right behind her.
Yoko did not like it at all.
"Hey Suoh, we should go…" she gave a distrustful glance to Anubis, reaching for her friend, but before her fingers could even brush against is back, the whispers manifested into movement.
The sands seemed to come alive as they sprung from the ground towards Yoko like a wave in the ocean. She flinched, jumping out of the way, but another wave was waiting for her, sand filling every gap in her clothes. Another wave slapped against her back, grains flooding her mouth as she coughed and tried to dodge the sand.
Too overwhelmed, the woman ran from where Tamaki still stood, failing to see her friend's Nile-blue eyes roll back into his head as he fainted, falling against the sand that had formed the shape of a screaming man.
The French Foreign Legion had turned the abandoned city into a mass grave, bodies scattered throughout the Egyptian sands as the remaining soldiers mounted their horses and cleared out, leaving the ruins empty once again.
Nearby, a group of men dressed in all black watched the battle fizzle out. A pair, a tall man and a small one atop the same horse, the small man's grasped between the tall man's strong arms, breathed sighs of relief.
"The creature remains undiscovered." The tall one spoke in Arabic.
"What about that one?" The small one asked, pointing to the purple-haired woman.
Yoko managed to slip out of the city unnoticed, stumbling away from the whispering tomb. While she had escaped whatever evil was beneath that sand, she still faced an endless desert in front of her. The sudden sound of a whinnying horse made her stop, her ponytail whipping in the wind as she turned and saw the men in black watching her from atop a cliff wall.
They clearly weren't with the legion, they just sat there, watching her. She glared, yellow eyes burning with anger, but was without weapons or reinforcements. Alone beneath the sun, she turned her back and forced herself forward, deeper into the wilderness.
"Takashi, should we kill her now?"
"No, the desert will kill her."
Though she was walking away from Hamunaptra unscathed, the City of the Dead was far from finished with Yoko Torinuma.
Meet Yoko! One of our heroes! Also to clarify, Tamaki is both Beni and not Beni, he will have some of Beni's lines but will not mirror his personality or actions at all, and as for his connection to Anubis, you'll have to wait and see! You probably guessed that this story won't follow The Mummy exactly, just some dialogue and the core concept. Most main characters will be Host Club members like Honey and Mori being Medjai, but some characters from the Mummy will remain such as Imhotep and the American treasure hunters, and if you were wondering who would be the "Beni," I haven't decided yet, maybe the Expedition leader who left Yoko and Tamaki to die? Anyway, I hope you'll favorite this story and leave me lots of reviews! Ciao!