Up until that moment the surrounding gravestones looked harmless enough, but as the threat of an invading army became more real the rocks and carvings began to feel more like judgmental onlookers and stubborn roadblocks than meaningless scenery. Junko flicked the edges of her sword hilts in agitation as her mind rushed through the possible avenues of escape, whereas Gekko looked quite content to just be slumped up against a stone with a hopeless expression on his face.
“Alright, how about this.” Junko more or less forced Gekko back onto his feet, and started moving again. To his credit Gekko didn’t resist but he clearly wasn’t in the mood to provide any meaningful input at this stage. “Motonubu doesn’t know this place is a worthless dump. Do you know what he wanted you to translate? Find it and make something up, lie and say the real treasure is somewhere else.”
“What,” wheezed Gekko , “would that possibly accomplish?”
“I don’t know. But neither does Motonubu. The man is an Agent and if he thinks there’s a profit to be made, he’ll do his damnedest to try and get us there. Tell him a convincing lie and at least we can have one more target for Annitou to shoot at while we try to figure something out.”
“He’s not even here.” Gekko’s head rolled back and he opened his eyes again, if only to take in the depressing sight around him. “He ditched because he knew Annitou was coming. You fell for it.”
“I am this close to pitching you off the next cliff I find.” Junko huffed and kept ducking and weaving between the alleged tombstones, searching for some clue as to where to take the child. “If this is a landfill, then there must have been a staging area or something where they sorted the trash, right? I bet that’s where this big mysterious message Motonubu wanted deciphered is at. Let’s try going there!”
“...it's futile.”
A grumbling hiss passed through Junko’s lips in frustration. Even facing this hopeless situation, Gekko was still an enormous thorn in her side. Unfortunately she didn’t have a better plan than this. If she could have ditched the kid and just offered to work with Motonubu alone she would have done that, no amount of pride was worth dying for. But the Garion Agent was only really interested in the boy, which meant her only bargaining chip required keeping him alive.
The alternative was trying to massacre her way through the Annitou Navy, but Junko really didn’t want to go down that road again.
Navigating her way through the seemingly random sprawl of stone markers eventually brought her back to the thickest and most densely populated section of the ‘graveyard’. Here the stones stood close enough together to almost mimic walls. She couldn’t even squeeze her way through them anymore and had to walk along the space in between, almost like navigating a maze. The cannons seemed to have stopped their bombardment, indicating Annitou was planning to or had already begun moving in. Time was getting shorter by the moment.
“Man, kid, give me something to work with.” Junko’s voice almost carried a pleading tone to it, though it was still pretty laden with anger as well. “Don’t you have parents or siblings you want to go back home to? You are like twelve years old, there’s no reason to be this suicidal!”
“I’m fourteen.” That was just about the only bit of useful information Gekko seemed willing to provide. “
The air grew still despite the mounting anticipation of Annitou soldiers bursting out at any moment. Junko was already abandoning the idea and drew both her swords, looking for somewhere to plant herself to defend against the first oncoming wave of men. It wasn’t until Gekko looked up at his surroundings that something began to pull him out of the dark hole he found himself in.
Slowly Gekko drew himself up to his feet and shuffled towards the seemingly unremarkable stone. As he drew closer Gekko put his ragged fingers onto the waist high carving and traced out something unseen across it. His breaths became shallow and his eyes seemed to focus on something distant, far past what was right in front of him. On his shaky knees he bent down to get closer and drew so close his lips almost touched the surface.
Here, of all places? It was such an easy to miss location. Annitou might have never spotted it if they only brought in adult Bossa speakers. You would have to be a child to have seen it from such a low angle. It was undeniable now. This absolutely must have been what Motonubu brought Gekko to the graveyard to decipher. Something that the original translator couldn’t have seen. A message that even General Gou couldn’t read.
The implications of it staggered his mind. The message there was worn and nearly illegible, but its context was plain enough to understand. It was a sign. A mundane, simple sign that anywhere else, in any other language, would have meant absolutely nothing. But here, among these scattered stones, on an island with nothing but ruins, that simple message felt absolutely world shattering.
“It’s a floor.” Gekko’s words came out almost as a whisper. He finally tore his eyes away from the marker to frantically search the surroundings. “It’s a floor, a floor!” It took some time before Junko even paid attention to Gekko. After all, nearly everything he said could be ignored without consequence. But now for once it looked as though the boy was actually trying to communicate something meaningful to her. “Junko, this is a floor!”
Okay, maybe she was wrong. Maybe he had just cracked. “Yeah, I know. It’s all a floor. There’s no walls or ceiling, that’s really all it can be. Did you really need an ancient stone tablet to tell you that?”
“What? No- no, you don’t understand!” Gekko struggled to get back up, but grasped at the stone as if it were a life buoy. “I mean like, a building floor- like a level, or a platform, or a storey!”
“A story? Floors aren’t fictional, you daft-”
“No!” Gekko finally found some volume. “Like, the top floor of a building! We’re on the top floor of a structure!”
“Oh.” Junko stared at the wild-eyed Gekko, not sure exactly what to make of that statement. “That can’t be right. You must have read it wrong.”
Exasperated Gekko threw up his one arm and tried gesturing as though he were deaf. “There’s a staircase nearby! The stone says there are stairs here, because this is the top floor!”
“Oh. Oh!” Junko blinked away the last of her foggy confusion as the significance of the finding hit her. “So somewhere to hide, then? Or at least a chokepoint...okay, yeah!” She joined Gekko in looking around at the field of otherwise nondescript grave markers. “Okay, where’s it at?”
“It’s- oh, it’s hidden, I guess.” Gekko broke his attention from Junko to again search the stone for clues. “I mean, maybe it’s not intact anymore or Annitou damaged it during their excavations, but, uh...there’s a door, somewhere?” His face scrunched up in concentration but try as he might no further clues could be revealed. “I mean, it’s the word for ‘door’, but I guess it’s more like...a gateway? Is there anything here like that?”
The most obvious and immediate answer was ‘no’. The graveyard earned its name because it looked exactly like a barren field decorated only by inert tombstones. There was no structure even slightly resembling something like a door or opening or gate. If there had been Annitou surely would have dug it up already.
Unless...it couldn’t have been dug up, because it was too big. Junko’s gaze darted towards the base of every stone in sight. Almost all of them looked fairly shallow, as if the heavy stones merely sat atop the dirt and didn’t extend much past the surface. Even the largest, widest stones looked more like just common masonry without any type of supporting structure. There wasn’t any time to start digging around like amatuer archeologists to see which rocks might conceal secrets. This called for aggressive, immediate action.
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Junko turned and planted a firm, powerful kick at the nearest rock. It shuddered and tilted just a fraction before settling in place. Taking a quick breath and step, she moved to the next and delivered another similar blow. Very much the same predictable thing happened. Gekko’s confused stare followed her from stone to stone, completely clueless as to what the woman was doing. Had she snapped?
This continued for just a bit, with Junko’s furrowed gaze shifting between stones like a farmer looking for a chicken to slaughter. Each time she struck a rock it did nearly the same thing- move slightly under her behemoth strength but otherwise remain in place. In the immediate vicinity there was a single long, narrow chimney like tombstone that she struck as well. It didn’t look any different than the others, albeit being a bit skinnier, but it did stand as amongst the tallest and roundest, like a large stalagmite coming up out of the ground. When she hit it there was no discernable difference between it and the others. But Junko’s face lit up as soon as her foot made contact. This had to be the one!
Quickly sheathing her weapons she charged the rock, refraining from her usual guttural battlecry since they were trying to not alert the approaching Annitou forces. Her foot slammed into the rock much like she had done with Gekko’s now destroyed watchtower stone just before. The force rebounded off the solid surface and shook the earth so hard even Gekko felt it from where he stood. His mouth hung open in disbelief.
“That’s so stupid.” He shook his head, unable to comprehend the woman’s antics. “You can’t just-”
With a loud, sharp inhale Junko reared back and struck the rock again, this time with her shoulder. The giant stone structure refused to budge, despite the air shuddering force with which she struck it. That monstrous woman’s strength wasn’t to be questioned and no doubt she could have easily charged like a rhino through a more fragile structure, but this was a surprisingly solid rock. It was like trying to lift up a mountain. “That’s not helping! You can’t just brute force your way-”
“No, hang on,” Junko exhaled, face redding with exertion. “I think I got it.” Using both hands she gripped the sides of the stone spire and slammed her teeth together. Her nostrils flared and the thick veins running along her neck and face bulged from the pressure she was exerting on the stone surface. Her feet sunk into the dirt and then began to dig into it, and several times she had to simply step back in place to get another firm grip on the earth. Gekko needed a spare palm to bury his face in. This type of gorilla strength wasn’t going to get them anywhere. Even assuming Junko could lift the huge stone (which was impossible, of course), how could that have possibly been a staircase or exit? Were all the ancient Jinchi peoples musclebound hulks that operated their entrances through ridiculous, impractically sized door knobs? What could have possibly possessed her to pursue this course of action, when both of them might get captured (or worse) in minutes?
From his perspective Gekko couldn’t understand what the woman was trying to accomplish until the undeniable noise of something slowly grinding reached his ears. Junko couldn’t hear it because her ears had popped from all the force she was squeezing the rock with, but she could feel it as something began to yield. Gekko’s doubt turned to incredulous amazement as Junko completely failed to lift the rock- that hadn’t been her goal, anyway. Rather her body began to move sideways, taking the stone spire along with it. She was twisting it, like a giant screw!
And every inch she twisted, something under their feet rumbled. Gekko stepped back in paranoia as he thought a sinkhole or something might open from under him. Instead Junko’s frenzied ministrations produced results elsewhere. Another large spire some distance from the two began to shudder, and Gekko watched in amazement as the seamless surface of the stone began to split open like a loaf of bread. After making a full quarter turn of the rock Junko released her grip, stumbling back a bit to catch her breath. Sweat poured off her now deeply reddened skin and like a bull she exhaled several steaming snorts. She turned to Gekko, who in comparison looked as though he was about to topple over in the slightest breeze. “See?” Junko’s hoarse voice carried an inappropriate amount of confidence. “Easier than it looks.”
“How the hell...” Gekko couldn’t even find the words.
“E-eaaasy.” Junko spit roughly and wiped her mouth as she gazed up at her handy work. “This rock didn’t move when I kicked it. That means it must run much deeper than the others. So, uh, it was probably an opening mechanism or a staircase, or whatever. Actually, I thought it might be a lid, like a manhole cover. But, you know, this works too. The City of Kings has a few mechanisms like this on their older buildings. Much easier to turn though, since they don’t have a thousand years of rust on their bearings.” She tapped her forehead with her index finger. “Sometimes you gotta use your brain for things other than slinging insults, kid.”
From somewhere out of sight came the snakelike whistling of a very unwelcome voice. “Very well done, Legionnaire Junko.”
Both her and Gekko whipped around to the source of the noise, which was concealed behind one of those many gravestones. A nearly imperceptible smoky haze dispersed as the self assured mug of Motonubu revealed itself. Junko and Gekko’s responses were nearly identical, but Junko managed to spit out her response first. It was less of a question and more of an accusation. “Where the bloody hell have you been!”
Motonubu remained mostly concealed behind his rock but did appear to make the slightest, most token of bows. “My apologies. I was attempting to divert Annitou forces so they wouldn’t arrive this quickly. We do not have much time.”
“I know that!” Junko’s hands were already back on her weapons and it wasn’t clear who her aggression was aimed at. “Look, we found this- well, it’s a hole.” She glanced down at the gaping darkness within the split rock with more than a little bit of doubt. “But that ain’t gonna stop an army. I think we need to get out and regroup. If we head out into the jungle-”
“No, no.” Motonubu waved his hand dismissively at the suggestion. “Annitou won’t follow us, I can assure you.”
“Are you mental?” The sounds of many approaching footsteps were just now coming into hearing distance. Had Motonubu led them here by accident? “This hole is small but they’ll cram themselves into it no problem.” She pointed an accusatory finger at Gekko, who was standing awkwardly about with no idea what to do. “These Annitou guys are insane! You can’t not expect them to do suicidal nonsense if they think it will work. How in the blazes are you going to keep them from following us?!”
“By preventing it, of course.” Motonubu held up a visual aid, which only Gekko recognized at first.
Junko let out a dismissive scoff. “What, you’re going to give them an empty roll of toilet paper?”
Gekko finally found some words to contribute to the discussion. “That’s a charge- that’s a gunpowder charge! Where did you get that? ”
“I borrowed a few sticks from some Annitou forces who were...busy.” Motonubu didn’t hesitate to whip out his other hand, which held a lighter. Without any warning he struck a flame and lit the end of the long fuse at the of the cylinder he held. “I’ve placed several dozen of these around the graveyard. They won’t be able to follow us,” he wiggled the now lit and fizzling explosive. “Because I intend to destroy all possible evidence of where we went.”
“Oh, ffff-” Gekko still seemed to be processing what he just heard but Junko immediately recognized the implications. She jumped into action and began darting towards the open gate, then slid to a stop and turned around to yell at Gekko. “Get moving, kid!”
“Oh. OH!” A look of panic shot across Gekko’s face and the boy at once abandoned his own rock and began stumbling after Junko. The dark cavernous interior of the split rock revealed its true nature as he drew closer, and it was apparent now that it led to a deeply recessed, steep spiral staircase. It was the kind of path that required slow, careful navigation, lest you slip and-
“Move it!” Junko grabbed Gekko by the scruff of his neck and chucked the child into the abyss. He let out a wail as he tumbled out of view, and Junko immediately followed after him. Their cries quickly faded into nothing as the two descended, leaving Motonubu alone and holding his still lit stick of explosives.
“Hm.” As soon as it became clear the two were well on their way underground, Motonubu reached up and snipped the wick before it could burn all the way down. That probably hadn’t been necessary but given the unreasonableness of both of them, a little extra motivation couldn’t have hurt.
The noises of the advancing Annitou soldiers became at once engulfed in a myriad of air shattering explosions. Unlike their own cannonfire these blasts arose from seemingly nowhere- and as their clumsy feet marched over more of Motonubu’s carefully laid tripwires, the detonations only grew in number. After fussing around just a bit to cover some footprints, he approached the large entryway to the staircase and tucked away a small satchel at his side. How generous it had been of Annitou to equip their squads with enough ordinance to flatten a building! Truly those island hicks were terrified of what Daisuke could do, to have loaded themselves down so much with the dangerous explosive material. Especially against someone with a fire-manipulation jutsu. Suicidal was right, Annitou was throwing everything they had at the General. Motonubu expected a strong response but even this felt over the top. Was it possible General Gou...?
No, indulging in idle speculation would solve nothing. Motonubu approached the gateway and inspected it briefly before getting to work. Just before he entered he ran his hand down the edges of the stone, letting the black smoke of his Wispform jutsu seep out. It took a bit of time for enough smoke to cover the entire gateway, but as it did so his vaporous jutsu replaced the gaping open abyss with his swirling black smoke. While the dust had yet to settle, Motonubu stepped inside his black cloud and disappeared within it. After he passed through his smoke began to take on the color and texture of the surroundings until finally, as though the stone was once again a single solid block, the entire entrance was ‘sealed’. Now it was once again just another large rock in a sea of large rocks. It would seem as though they had disappeared into thin air.
As he descended the staircase in near total darkness, Motonubu allowed himself a quiet smile. All major obstacles had been dealt with. The only thing left to do was finish what Garion sent him to Jinchi to do.