Progress up the side of the tower moved along at a smooth pace. The old weathered surface of the stones provided more than suitable for Junko’s trained fingers and with no distraction, she could scale the Arkspire without fear or hesitation. The last third of the way could now clearly be seen, as the same distressing incandescent illumination from before could be seen circling the very top of the citadel. Good! That was all good news. It must have meant the two were on the very top, probably bickering over rocks or something. If things stayed the course Junko would be joining them momentarily.
Then the shift happened. In searching for another place to grab onto Junko briefly wrapped her hands around a stone protrusion, letting her rest a bit before moving on. At one moment, she stared upwards and strained to see in the low light conditions. Then in the next, reality blinked. She felt the change before she saw it, because at once the nerves running along her palms and fingers began to scream out in pain as if they were on fire. Then it felt as though the whole world nauseatingly shifted beneath her feet. In the span of a single second, her brain flipped from mild irritation to survival mode.
The instinct was to let go, as one would if they suddenly found their hands wrapped around a hot coal. For a variety of reasons that simply wasn’t an option, requiring significant mental fortitude from Junko just to not immediately plunge off the side of the Arkspire. Her teeth snapped together and prolonged, agonized hiss escaped from her lungs. What little attention she could divert from forcing herself to stay motionless, she focused on trying to understand what just happened.
What the hell! Her other senses slowly recognized the change. Though she couldn’t feel with her fingertips Junko could clearly see now the eroded surface of the Arkspire no longer existed. It had been replaced by what looked like immaculately fresh stonework. When she tried lifting her leg to shift her position for a better view, her footwear stuck fast to the surface they rested on. Bewildered and still in a very uncomfortable amount of pain, she made the mistake of tugging hard with her legs under the impression that, perhaps, the material had gotten stuck.
That was true, but not in the way she expected. When Junko pulled the entire sole peeled off at once. Even in the dim light Junko now understood why. The entire shoe had fused into the side of the renewed stone. Now the pain in her hands made sense, in a twisted way. This wasn’t an ancient Jinchi trap, at least not an intentional one. The entire Arkspire, in that instant and without any warning, zapped itself back to its old state. That meant all the little bits and pieces knocked off over the course of its thousand year disappearance came back- and Junko, unfortunately, had been in the way. That thin layer of surface material worn away by time now lay in her skin. The idea was horrifying and unexplainable at first but as she clung there in pain, the pieces started to fall together.
The word repair wasn’t right either. It was more like...the entire structure was new again. Fresh. As if it wasn’t thousands of years old. As if it had slipped backwards through time.
When that thought crossed her mind suddenly the pain in her hands felt miniscule compared to the implications. Without any hesitation Junko tore one hand from its current holding position and grimaced as the outer layer of skin tore itself loose just as her footwear had. Well, that bandaid was going to have to come off sometime. While gripping with one hand the now bloodied free one dug into her satchel. From that bag she pulled out a cloth wrapped object- the hourglass, which Motonubu so generously paid her with days before.
Unwinding the fabric with one arm the content’s true nature revealed itself. The ornate glass helices of the artifact no longer existed. In its place, it seemed, was nothing more than a bunch of twigs, tied together in roughly the same shape as the hourglass. Junko was simultaneously surprised and not surprised. Of course. Of course that bastard would pull something like this. Motonubu never intended to pay her at all. Stupid! How stupid she had been to have trusted such a duplicitious character. Her gut instinct had been right all along. The entire island was full of nothing but liars and thieves.
That anger briefly flared through her veins. Then, just as fast as it arrived, it subsided. Letting emotions take control here, no matter how well deserved, would not serve her well. The newly reformed tower might look slick and shiny, but she could very clearly see the path forward to the top now. The chunks and pieces of the structure that had long ago fallen away were now miraculously in place again, which would speed up progress considerably (not counting the poor condition of her hands). Somehow Motonubu used the hourglass to fix the Arkspire- Junko didn’t waste any thought on how that might have been possible. The man’s obsessions with assembling Jinchi artifacts for weeks must have been for this express purpose. If anything she should have expected it. Why else would Garion have spent so much time and effort assembling a bunch of magical relics, just so they could pay some washed-up swordsman to kidnap a cadet? What a laughable prospect.
Junko wrapped her palm with the cloth and found another place to hold onto while she ripped her other hand free as well. The pain felt like nothing now, a minor inconvenience compared to her injured pride. That Motonubu! That treacherous lout! Taking deep breaths through her nose Junko once again began to ascend the tower, leaving little bloody handprints on her way up. She would get her payment, one way or another.
Then as things tended to go, the world shifted under her feet yet again before Junko could even adapt to the last cataclysmic change, though in a more literal sense this time. The massive structure let out a hideous sounding screech from the friction of stone on stone, sounding much like that elevator when it absconded with Motonubu and Gekko. The entire section Junko held onto began to rotate- no, not just that! As she glanced down she saw the entire spire was beginning to spin, albeit very slowly. It matched the coiled, swirling pattern of the jellyfish down below. Somehow this was even more startling and distressing than the tower’s sudden shift into the past. Something was happening as the long dead Arkspire began to return to life. The prospect of what that might mean was gut wrenching.
An immense sense of dread began to well up inside Junko. Rather than dwell on it, she turned her head up towards the top, where the lights only seemed to be getting stronger over time. Focus. Focus and get to point B. The mysteries of the universe could wait. The reality of dealing with a backstabbing scumbag needed to be confronted first.
As Junko clawed her way up to the final stretch of tower before reaching the peak, she slowed her breathing. Though her muscles ached from the exhausting climb she kept her pace very steady, careful to not loosen any masonry or cause any more sound than necessary. Would Motonubu be expecting her? The immense grinding of the tower as it rotated around its central axis made it hard to believe anyone, even Junko, would be able to detect her as she prepared to haul herself over the precipice and reach the top of Jinchi’s ancient citadel. Yet she remained cautious and methodical, even as the tower’s rotation only seemed to grow in speed. If there was any lesson to take from all of her interactions with the Garion Agent, it was that scheming for every eventuality was his forte. Junko saw that every time she happened to draw close to the man- underneath that obscuring cloak he was prepared at a moment’s notice to react to a possible assassination attempt from her. Well, now he would get a chance to put those contingencies into practice.
A bloodied palm slapped the side of the tower and within seconds Junko threw herself over the side. Her torn up footwear actually helped in this regard, letting her grip the stone easily and almost jump into a battle ready position. In a flash she drew both Sahori and Hikiboshi, their polished blades reflecting the yellow light glowing faintly under the thick layers of ash. Her frenzied eyes whipped across the entire horizon. A number of similar pillars to those in the storage room decorated the otherwise flat surface of the rooftop, along with a scattering of what looked like altars or pedestals positioned around them. In the center was a large pyramid, and to the side of it a particularly thick and darker looking cylinder. The area was rife with hiding spots, cover, and potential locations for Motonubu to disguise himself...
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Yet her eyes fell on his diminutive cloaked figure immediately, as he was resting comfortably against the dark pillar, with a smoking pipe in one hand. His head slowly turned to look at Junko and regarded her as one might a house pet. “That certainly took some time. I almost thought you had abandoned us.”
Junko’s eyes shifted from Motonubu and began scanning the ground. There were footprints everywhere in the ash, both Motonubu’s and Gekko’s. Sensing her next inquiry Motonubu gestured somewhere out of view with his pipe. “The boy is over there. He is quite injured, I would leave him be.”
“Oy, brat!” The words ripped out of Junko’s throat with an unusual volume. “Sound off!” Apart from the tooth rattling grinding of the tower, no response came. Junko’s gaze shot back to a shrugging Motonubu. “He was very tired. I am sure he is simply resting.”
“You are full of shit.”
Junko shifted her stance imperceptibly. A considerable distance separated herself from Motonubu, but his relaxed position meant he couldn’t respond fast. She could close the distance before he could react. If he made any aggressive move at all she resolved herself to cut him down then and there. She didn’t need to know the answers to Jinchi’s mysteries. If anything, the misery of finding those answers was unbearable enough. “I’ll give you one chance to give me a reason to not gut your conniving ass right now.” That wasn’t true- she was going to gut him regardless. But she needed to know where that hourglass was first. Recovering it was the only hope left of getting any payment out of this mess.
Motonubu took a long drag off his pipe, held it for a measured time, then exhaled a precise plume of smoke. “I feel no obligation to do so. It would be pointless. I have already accomplished my goals.”
Was he bluffing? The giant tower around them continued its ominous rumbling, though at that moment the platform they stood on felt relatively stable. “You can die with your precious Jinchi superweapon, if that’s what you wish. I’ll do that one free of charge.” Junko’s tender fingers squeezed the hilts of her weapons. That skin she lost earlier wasn’t doing her any favors here.
“Your hourglass,” Motonubu turned away from Junko to look off into the distance. It would have been a perfect time to strike, except he happened to say the exact word Junko was locked onto at that moment. “Was necessary to restore the tower. I presume the Jinchi people left it on the island for exactly that purpose. A thousand years of wear and tear can make a weapon quite inoperable.”
The Arkspire itself was the weapon? As Junko tried to process it, three large stone spirals erupted out from the periphery of the tower from somewhere down below. Like the fangs of a beast the long pointed spirals shot up somewhere out of sight, but curved inwards as they spun, making almost like a conical dome over their heads. Their rapid rotation blew the falling ash away and finally stopped the continuous snowfall of gray particles from above.
“Hm.” Motonubu shifted his pipe to rub two of the last flakes of ash to fall in between his fingers. “This material only began falling relatively recently, you know. As if our presence has stirred something awake above us.”
“You’re a bloody maniac.” Junko spat. Did she need to revise her plan? Killing Motonubu, getting her hourglass, then getting out was the ideal course of action. The boy would manage, surely. But now the spinning teeth of the tower suggested something much more regrettable was about to transpire. Hadn’t Motonubu said this Jinchi weapon zapped the island out of existence before? He couldn’t really have activated it again, right?
Again, as if anticipating her thoughts, Motonubu wistfully responded to an unasked question. “This structure is too big to destroy without an army. The only way to ensure nobody has access to it is to use it for its intended purpose.”
A long silence followed.
“Myself, you, and everybody in...some range of the island of Jinchi, will get to experience what the Jinchi did hundreds of years ago, Legionnaire Kiku-Ichimonji Junko. I do not know what will happen, but the threads connecting us to the rest of the world will be cut. Given the lack of human remains on the island, I anticipate we will all perish. Well, you all certainly will, at any rate.” He took another puff on his pipe. “And so to will go the weapon. Mission accomplished, as they say. Good work.”
It had to be a bluff. Of all the nations, Garion tended by far to be the least suicidal. They didn’t have the national pride of Annitou, nor the desperation of Fenshingiri. Even the Metsina could be motivated to spiteful mutual destruction in the right circumstances. But Garion was the autocracy governed by rigid, rational self-preservation. This couldn’t be the end. It didn’t make sense.
“No complaints if I kill you, then?” Junko shoved those thoughts aside. Believing anything Motonubu said was a fool’s game. “It seems like your apocalypse machine isn’t quite warmed up enough yet. Plenty of time to get my payment.”
Motonubu still didn’t turn his head. He did tilt his pipe upside-down, though, and emptied some ash from its bulb. “I can see why your father and your fellow Kiku-Ichimonji clan had such trouble with you. The Iron Tower, Legionnaire Junko, who follows her own justice. Hmph!” He closed his eyes and let out a small chuckle. “And look where it has led. To a dead end.”
There was no response from Junko, at least in terms of words. Instead her reply came in the form of footsteps, carried wide across the breadth of air between herself and her target. Sahori sheer through the air like a flash of lightning. One long horizontal strike slammed and sliced right into Motonubu’s rib cage, cleanly separating the top half of his torso from the bottom. He hadn’t even gotten a chance to exhale as she cleaved the smoke itself in his lungs.
The look on his face wasn’t of shock, though. As the ends of his shredded cloak tore away they revealed something gripped in his other hand, which he kept concealed. In his weathered palms rested the prize itself: the artifact hourglass, already being flipped even before his blood had time to fall. In the next moment Motonubu disappeared as if he blinked away.
What an old trick! More than anticipating this, Junko's Hikiboshi already twisted into position. Her stance let her perfectly shift focus from the frontal assault to protecting her flanks, and her weapon easily found its target and sank into the small form of Motonubu appearing from nowhere behind her. Since she saw the man perform those tricks when fighting Daisuke, Junko anticipated Motonubu’s tactics perfectly. It didn’t matter how many times he could zap himself into the past as there were only so many angles from which a weakling like Motonubu could attack. Hikiboshi stabbed right into the chest of Motonubu and with another twist Junko pulled it back, stepping back to bring both weapons back in front of her. A spray of dark fluid erupted from his chest.
Except it wasn’t fluid that spilled from his body. It was smoke. Junko’s blow easily disrupted the vaporous, grinning form of Motonubu, which expanded and dissolved like a puff of air as her weapon pulled away. A decoy! Full sized and shaped in Motonubu’s image, the smoky image dissipated into the air as the Wispform ability that kept it intact faded. This whole time he kept that trick up his sleeve from Junko, that he could form an entire dummy out of nothing- perhaps intentionally concealing it from her, for just this type of occasion. Weak or not, the man was too dangerous to be allowed to live.
A pain erupted at her side, a feeling Junko was all too familiar with from her years on the battlefield. Some small blade slipped past her defenses and now threatened to tear into her. Instinctively her wrists snapped towards the source, bringing both of her weapons spinning backwards as she pivoted to avoid taking more damage from the stabbing attack. She only caught a glimpse of the insufferable smile of Motonobu as both her weapons again sliced through where he stood. Clearly her body moved faster and with more precision than Motonubu’s, but that didn’t matter much when he already anticipated her attack and ducked to avoid it. She stopped her momentum instantly, rapidly adjusted her position, then swung down to sever both his arms at once. A sure hit!
True, technically. Both her swords smashed through Motonubu’s arms, leaving nothing but smoke in their wake. He’d even faked where his arms were! He slipped in closer as his real arms pulled out from under his cloak with a clear goal of sinking his dagger into her chest. His own trajectory was stopped short, however, as Junko’s knee sprang up and slammed into his body just a fraction before he could complete his lunge. Being faster did still have its perks, even if Motonubu planned that many steps ahead.
As he tumbled backwards she brought her blades up again and attempted another lunge of her own. The other arm of Motonubu, the one not holding the dagger, spun around, and the hourglass resting in his palm shifted as he did so. Seconds later her weapons passed through nothing but air. The man had jumped again.
It was becoming very clear why the General Hashimoto Daisuke held so much contempt for Motonubu. Imminent doomsday or not, Junko wasn’t about to make the same mistake again.