Each time a broad palm leaf slapped itself across Yuu’s face in the darkness he wanted to scream. Not in fright or panic, but just because the sensation was really annoying on his still rather tender and slightly fire-reddened face.

“If you had done your job right,” Hana hissed as the two ducked under the cover of a thick tree trunk for a moment. “Maybe your baby skin wouldn’t have gotten cooked by a tiny girl.”

“I can’t help that we keep running into lousy targets. Twice in one day we get into fights with people who my jutsu can’t hurt. What are the odds?” Yuu’s response seemed to be ignored as the two stayed silent for a bit before setting off through the jungle path again. “I don’t hear any pissed off animals anywhere. Maybe that Junko woman doesn’t have the skull.”

Hana quietly flung herself over a fallen log and softened her landing with her ribbons, making sure not to leave an easy to follow trail for any Annitou soldiers giving chase. “She’ll know where Daisuke is, and that’s all that matters. Those cadet kids confirmed it.”

Yuu slid up beside Hana effortlessly, as his own thin body could more easily contort around the jungle’s various obstacles much easier than the ribbon-wrapped Hana. “And if Daisuke is with her? Do you really intend to try and pick a fight with the deck that stacked against us?”

The girl’s cold gaze didn’t falter. What little blue moonlight fell from above cast her face in an almost skeletal light. Yuu had seen that expression too often. A heady sigh of defeat tumbled from his lips.

“At least the Junko woman isn’t an Agent. I can probably hold my own-”

“Shhh.”

Yuu’s face scrunched up in frustration. “Don’t shush me, what happened a bit ago was an anomaly-”

“No,” Hana’s dead focus shifted only slightly, just enough to give Yuu enough of a look to determine the girl was serious. “Be quiet. I smell something. Might be smoke.”

The prospect of fire brought Yuu out of his funk for the moment and the Metsina pair once again fell into a silent stillness. Without a doubt, in the air lingered whiffs of an unidentifiable odor. The night breeze wasn’t consistent enough to make a determination from whence it came, but after a moment of focus both of them came to the same conclusion simultaneously.

“It’s booze.”

“Whiskey, probably.” Yuu rubbed his nose with two fingers, careful not to disrupt the delicate toasted nerves still prickling after his brush with the inferno. “Maybe some kind of smoky rum. Damn, it must be strong if we’re picking it up here. What a waste.” A short, contemplative silence. “Was this smell at the camp too? Hard to notice, with all that dog blood everywhere.”

Hana’s mind went in a different direction. “It’s a trail. We can follow this.” She took off without another word, forcing Yuu to shake off his preoccupation with the alcohol lest he be left behind.

“What? Hey, mind explaining? I didn’t see any bottles or anything, how do you have a trail?”

A brief scowl shot across Hana’s face, but it faded almost as quickly as it appeared. “You just said it. All that blood at the camp- this woman must have been soaked in it. She needs to get clean. Must have used some of the liquor to do it.”

“So what?” As they moved the smell grew fainter before eventually disappearing altogether. Yuu felt lost in more than one sense as the two continued their rapid advance through the jungle. Were they not following the smell? “Why would she suddenly decide to clean herself off out here? And they don’t sell rum in bottles that big, there’s no way she could have- hey, Hana!”

Hana didn’t respond and instead picked up the pace, which Yuu knew was her standard ‘just trust me’ fallback. Despite the evenings mishaps Hana never dwelt on past failures for long, at least openly. Mentally Yuu was still cringing from the two massive setbacks they had already suffered, but he once again threw his weight behind Hana as the two darted through the shadow filled jungle. It wasn’t as though he could come up with any better plan.

Bit by bit the darkened Jinchi sky shifted, its hue first changing from an opaque and impermeable purple to the deeper blue of the early, early morning. The moon quietly floated across the sky, and once or twice a wayward cloud drifted by it and plunged the island into a distressing darkness. But, as it always did, the night slowly passed.

At the cusp of the transition from the darkest part of the night to the earliest fragments of morning, the pair slowed their charge. Hana noticed it first and raised her hand to signal to Yuu to be on guard. It wasn’t until a little later that Yuu finally pieced together what her plan was. A soft burbling trickled its way through the air, loud enough to be noticeable just barely the otherwise still jungle. A stream? Jinchi’s wilderness was full of little creeks and ponds, though it had been quite some time since it last rained on the island. No modern pollution or human detritus tainted the waters here, making them some of the cleanest in the world at that moment. Such a location made an ideal spot to recover from, say, a bloody altercation.

“Keep following this direction.” Hana swung a flat palm along the jungle floor, parallel to where they could hear the stream’s general location. “Listen for my signal. They have to be close.”

“How do you-” Yuu’s question met deaf ears as in the next moment Hana’s arms shot up. Two sets of bandages flung out into the upper branches of the nearby trees, and in the next moment the girl was flinging herself up to the top branches before disappearing completely out of sight. Yuu took a deep breath, then accepted it. There was no questioning Hana when she got like this.

His own progress slowed considerably as he edged his way through the forest. Every so long he would come to a stop and listen, trying to determine if anybody else was nearby. Eventually this bore fruit, as the distant sound of splashing and the undecipherable murmur of voices floated into his ears. Yuu’s muscles tensed up and he brought his profile even lower. Would this be it? Would he turn the corner, and there would stand the Green Ghost Hashimoto Daisuke himself? Was he nothing but bait for Hana to use? All these questions raced through his mind as the voices grew more distinct. From behind a particularly thick tree trunk Yuu finally settled down, straining his ears to pick out what words he could from the distant people.

Quite a distance away from the boy, the attitude in the air wasn’t quite the same.

Kiku-ichimonji Junko turned her flask upside down again just to verify and let out an imperceptible exhale when it proved itself empty yet again. Her standard morning routine would have to wait until the job was finished, it seemed. Though the sun had yet to rise enough ambient light trickled through the broad leaves of the jungle foliage that she could maintain a good watch of her surroundings, though the trickling of a nearby stream meant it was a bit harder than usual to keep her ears attuned to anyone who might approach. The kid certainly wasn’t making it easier either.

“Do you have to splash so much?” She raised the flask to her lips anyway just to inhale the scent. “If you draw the attention of a tiger or an elephant or a giant monster I’m going to be pretty upset.”

As Gekko tried to rub the dog blood out of his hair he only responded with a weak grunt. More than a small amount of guilt tugged at Junko as she watched the disheveled Annitou cadet try and clean himself up. The boy had been drugged, infected, and carried around like cargo all night, so his reticent attitude was quite understandable. Junko’s thumb flicked the end of the hilt of Sahori. The blade was clean, at least. The Iron City’s steel was famous for its durability and corrosive resistance so that much was to be expected. At least something between the two of them looked presentable.

“You want to eat?” Junko resigned herself to the lack of liquor and instead began fishing pieces of old, shriveled jerky out of her bag. “It’s not dog, I promise.”

Gekko turned his haggard face towards his kidnapper, his eyes expressing one of the most unamused stares Junko had ever seen in a child. “I just spent all night vomiting worms after being sedated.” Gekko’s tired voice still managed to carry traces of his usual attitude, which had to be a good sign. “I’m not really hungry.”

“Hhhmm.” Speaking through a mouthful of her meager meal Junko could only shrug. “Reasonable enough. That Maeda plague should be wearing off, we’ve put enough distance between us and the camp by now. Not that you have to worry about it.” Her eyes moved towards the pile of filthy rags she had been using to conceal and transport the boy. “I’ll carry you if I need to.”

“Why don’t you just get it over with and kill me?” Gekko’s exhausted voice hid whether or not he was being sarcastic, and as he plopped himself onto a moss covered rock his body slumped down in defeat. “Garion Agents don’t leave witnesses. You know your employer will slit my throat as soon as the job is done.”

“Won’t happen.” Junko moved her hand from her weapon to pick a particularly nasty piece of connective tissue out of her teeth. “I guarantee your safety, as long as you cooperate. The Agent just needs you to translate. You never have to get close to him.”

With a retch Gekko coughed and sputtered unpleasantly, either in disbelief at what Junko told him, or more probably because he was actually still recovering from being parasitized by that awful Maeda. After gathering some stream water and wiping his mouth, he finally spat out a response. “Yeah, of course. When you need a translation the first thing you do is kidnap someone who knows the language. Very safe and unsuspicious.”

It took a bit of self control for Junko to not roll her eyes at the kid’s constant skepticism. Truth be told, though, she didn’t quite follow Motonubu’s actions either. It wasn’t any of her business, but...”How hard can this language be to understand, anyway? If you’re that worried I could just write down whatever it is we need deciphered and give it to you, unless you’re going to keep being a brat about it.”

The young boy rubbed his forehead as if he could push his headache out with his slender fingers. “You don’t know anything. You can’t write Bossa down.”

“Okay, what, it’s spoken only? I’ll remember the phrase and get it back to you. Or we’ll have the Agent yell it to us. Easy.”

This only further agitated the boy, who at least was regaining some of his earlier defiance. “Did you really accept this job without even a little bit of understanding of what it entailed?”

Trying her best to not let that get to her, Junko stood up to her full imposing height. “Fill me in, short stuff, or stop whining about how misunderstood you are. If I can help-”

“-Bossa isn’t spoken or written down.” Gekko tossed on his hands in the air as if chucking a piece of garbage away. “You- and by you, I mean me- can only comprehend it through perceiving what is missing. It’s about what isn’t there. Like staring at a shadow, or a hole.”

Not liking where the conversation was headed Junko decided to busy herself by tying up her belongings in preparation for resuming travel. “If you’re just going to spout nonsense then save your energy. We have a ways to go yet.”

Somehow her dismissal of the boy’s talent only seemed to pull more out of him. “Look, you remember that thing that Daisuke had, right? The black skull?” Junko peeled back the layers of memory to the previous morning to try and remember, and gave a slight shrug in confirmation that she could recall what the boy spoke of. “It wasn’t alive or anything, but it had a message it was ‘saying’. Only someone like me could understand it, and only if we saw it with our own eyes.”

That skull had been creepy as hell, but all of Jinchi’s weird artifacts gave her the same uneasy feeling. At least the jutsu of Agents could be understood as a product of human intention. The hourglass, the skull, that dagger...an undeniable feeling of otherness couldn’t be shaken when she looked at them. Maybe that’s what all this Bossa nonsense was about?

“What did the skull say?”

“It said ‘let the innocent kid who did nothing wrong free, evildoers’.”

Whoops! Junko instinctively clenched her teeth as she fell into the same exact trap Motonubu had just a day earlier. Talking to this kid was just a roundabout way of getting insulted. Gekko seemed quite pleased with himself, at least.

“Alright, esteemed messenger of the Annitou people,” Junko reached down into her pack to retrieve something wrapped in cloth. “You don’t have to translate for me, but tell me if you can, uh, ‘hear’ this?” The smug look on the boy’s face began to melt as Junko undid the ropes binding the small object in her hands. “If you can do your translation thing from this distance then I know how far away to stay from the Garion Agent. I’m pretty sure this thing is the same as the skull, anyway.” As she removed the last of the covering the true form of the object came into the early morning light, revealing itself to be an ornate but rather dull looking stone dagger. “I already disinfected it so none of the Maeda’s nasty worms are on it. See?” She held it up, and Gekko nearly fell back into the stream as he tumbled back across his rocky seat.

“Whoa, kid. Calm down. You alright?” Junko took a step forward but Gekko scrambled back, trying to put distance between himself and the dagger she recovered off the Maeda’s body the previous night. “Feeling sick again? Just stay still and it’ll pass-”

A different voice came from the boy now, a more sincere but also much more forceful tone than Junko had heard from him before. “You need to get rid of that. Throw it into the jungle. It’s dangerous.”

Now it was Junko’s turn to be smug, since it seemed she found something that could penetrate the boy’s armor of self confidence. “Oh, sure. The Garion Agent was quite interested in it. His own people couldn’t recover it, so I figure I’ll sell it to him when we meet up. It looks ugly anyway, I wouldn’t want to-”

“No, idiot!” Gekko’s voice cracked as it took on a sharper edge. “You don’t understand at all. That thing will get us killed. Bury it and forget about it.”

“Hey, now.” Junko ran her fingers over the flat edge of the dagger. “Look at the fine stonework carvings on it. This is a historical find, for sure. It would be a shame to let go of it so easily.” The kid flinched every time she waved it around, and Junko couldn’t deny it felt pretty good to get a rise out of the boy. This whole time he hadn’t given anybody respect. Who knew all it took was a good spook to get the kid to fall in line?

“Listen to me, woman-”

“I believe,” she punctuated her remark by stabbing the knife into the air in front of her, “I told you to address me as-”

As they bickered Yuu drew even closer. From listening in it sounded like Daisuke wasn’t present at all, but these two were almost certainly involved with him. And who was this ‘Garion Agent’ they were referring too? The conspiracy only seemed to grow larger with each revelation, and Yuu wanted no part in any of it. Recovering the stolen skull was all that mattered. With that in mind, it would probably make the most sense to just tail the woman and the kidnapped Annitou cadet until they met back up with Daisuke. Engaging them now almost certainly wouldn’t produce anything useful.

Unfortunately Yuu was not the one calling the shots. From above him dropped a soft, rolled up piece of bandage. It hit his increasingly dirty hair without a sound, and rolled off just as quietly. His hand snatched it out of the air before it could land, as if he had practiced this maneuver many times before. He didn’t even bother looking up to see where it had come from. There was only one place that a mysterious bandage could have ever originated from anyway. With one thumb he carefully unrolled the ribbon, its entire length not taking up more than half his palm. Written across it in red was what would have been gibberish to anybody else. Yuu understood it perfectly, though he wished he hadn’t.

The one downside to this method of communication was how one sided it was. Their old mentor loved pitting her students against each other, and Hana seemed to have adopted that same mentality when dealing with the still unpromoted Yuu. He had no say in her orders now. All he could do was carry them out. For the second time that night the boy prepared himself for a violent confrontation with an unknown enemy- hopefully this time he wouldn’t end up quite as crispy in the process.