A single distant footstep snapped Junko’s eyes back open. How much time had passed? She wasn’t worried about Gekko getting away- the boy was tremendously clumsy, and in the tomblike quiet of the tower she could easily hear him even in his sleep. Even the wiley Motonubu couldn’t completely dampen his footsteps, meaning he must have stayed quite a distance from Junko this entire time (however long it had been). That nap was much, much longer than she wanted to admit, and even now she felt oddly disturbed by the ease with which her consciousness slipped away. Her training should have prevented such a long, uninterrupted period of rest. Hell, she was still leaning against the wall- she’d taken a nap standing completely upright!

The footsteps grew in volume until the cloaked form of Motonubu came into view, his cloaked form emerging from the shadows. He looked up at now fully awake Junko as one might a misbehaving servant. “Well? Are you satisfied?”

“Not quite.” Junko struggled hard to not yawn in the middle of her statement, and to distract herself pointed at Motonubu indignantly. “Where’s the fish? You said you’d go get food.”

“I do not recall promising that.” He pulled one arm out from under his concealing cloak, revealing a thin piece of string and multiple small fish strung along it. “But I did gather these, incidentally. Uncooked, since I know you would anticipate me poisoning them otherwise.”

A bit astounded by the continued generosity of Motonubu, Junko actually felt her spirits lift a bit. “Huh, yeah. Okay. The coal should have dried off by now, we could make a little-” she paused. What time of day was it, anyway? “A little meal. Gekko hasn’t moved. I’ll go get the sucker up and we’ll get the show on the road again.”

True enough when Junko looked back towards the featureless corridor Gekko disappeared down hours(?) ago, she found the boy collapsed on the bedroll not even that far from where he departed. Literally every tin of food left was empty and discarded as well- it seemed like everyone was all-in from this point out.

Peeking around the corner Motonubu spoke quietly, almost like he did not wish to wake Gekko. “He has not perished, has he?”

“How thoughtful.” Junko walked back and snatched up the fish from Motonubu. “He’ll wake up when he smells this. Give me some of that lantern oil and your lighter. I’m making...dinner, or breakfast. Whatever.”

Like clockwork, as the fish began to fry the aroma stirred Gekko from his slumber. Wordlessly the boy stumbled his way back into the light by the window, where the distant glowing sealife continued their selfless illumination of the Jinchi ruins. Motonubu at that point already returned to his gargoyle-like post by the window, and Junko was squatting by some small burning coals with some small fish spitroasted over her swords.

“Morning, kid.” Junko pulled back one of her blades and pinched the fish with her fingers to confirm its doneness. “Or afternoon, or evening. Must have been real frustrating for the Jinchi to never know what time it was down here.”

That gag demoralized Gekko even more. Without so much as a snide comment he collapsed nearby and silently crunched at one of the charred morsels Junko offered him. Just another regular morning on Jinchi.

After more than plentiful time to recuperate Motonubu insisted on getting the show back on the road. The last of the fresh water was consumed, the final bits of coal burnt to ash, and the still fresh wounds rebandaged. It wasn’t much but compared to the frantic rush through the jungle, it was something.

An hour after aimlessly walking up the tower’s staircase, though, the doubts began to creep back in.

“I don’t think you know where you are going.” Junko glanced out every window they passed as if worried something might attack from the openings. Unlike the ornately decorated outside, the inside of the stone structure was rather dull. There was little in the way of decoration that she could perceive, the stonework more like old forgotten castles and fortresses than anything worth writing home about. “Wandering aimlessly through ancient ruins sounds like a good way to bumble into a trap and die. Just my two cents.”

There wasn’t much of a response as the group began to move up a large, gently spiraling staircase that took them around the entire circumference of the central tower. “We are looking for a sign, Legionnaire Junko.”

“What, from heaven? Or like, ‘emergency exit here’? Or like, a really, really long ladder?”

“No. A literal sign.” Motonubu waved his arm as if swatting away her comment. “This is the central building of the Jinchi civilization...without a doubt the weapon would be here. If not to protect it, then to house it. Without a doubt our goal resides somewhere in these halls.”

“You don’t know that.” Gekko’s voice still wobbled a bit from his earlier queasiness, and he lagged behind far enough that Junko was basically walking right beside him. “The weapon could be underwater now. If there even is a weapon.”

“Hm.” Motonubu’s gaze was locked straight ahead. “Seems unlikely, no doubt the Jinchi people went through great efforts to preserve it even in the case of a cataclysmic flood. Remember, child,” the sandpapery voice of Motonubu shifted to a slightly more menacing tone. “You have just as much to gain, and lose, as I do. If not more. Not cooperating will only result in needless suffering.”

“Watching you suffer sounds pretty good, actually.” Gekko grumbled out his weakest response yet. Only Junko was close enough to hear it.

“So,” Junko jumped in, momentarily stopping the conversation from growing even more sour. “Does this place have a name? Or is it just ‘Jinchi Tower’? Because if it doesn’t have a name, I have one in mind-”

“It’s called the Arkspire.” Gekko’s tone turned know-it-all, which was technically an improvement.

“Oh yeah?” Junko tried feeding the kid’s ego some more, since it seemed preferable to more Motonubu threats. “You read that somewhere and just decide not to tell us?”

“It is from an Annitou nursery rhyme.” Motonubu kept leading the way, but he stopped by a window to look down and out at the glowing sea below. “Two by two, into the fire, ran all gods’ foes, into the arkspire? Did I recite that correctly, child?”

“No.” Gekko huffed, sneaking his own glance out of the window. “You totally butchered it. It’s ‘the Leviathan’s foes’, duh.” Motonubu only responded with an eerie smile, then he resumed walking.

As they continued to ascend the light from below grew dimmer and dimmer. Although their eyes could adjust somewhat, that was only because they traveled in close proximity to the windows. The spiral staircase branched off every floor, suggesting that the tower held many more rooms and structures than what was immediately visible. After a few breaks and abortive attempts to explore, Motobubu refused to go through any more of them. “The boy will let us know when there is somewhere of interest.” His cold gaze looked back at the disheveled Gekko, who was growing slower with each step. “Unless Cadet Tanuma Gekko is in need of another nap.”

“Yeah, actually. That sounds pretty nice.”

Motonubu’s upsetting smile returned, and he continued to climb the staircase. “Best find that weapon soon, then.”

The previously waterlogged lamp barely provided enough illumination to see an arms length in front of their faces, so nobody really objected to Motonubu’s excessive caution. After almost a half hour of seeing nothing new, though, it felt as though some risks might be required to make progress.

What finally broke the eternal march up the stairs was Gekko’s weakened voice. “Hold on.” Motonubu stopped his tracks almost mid-step, and Junko’s finely tuned ‘the kid is going to pull a trick’ senses started back up again. “There’s something here.”

“If it’s another ‘latrine’, I’ll just stay out here, thanks.” Junko’s protests aside, Motonubu moved swiftly to bring the light towards Gekko, who was drawing near a stone archway. Like the others it opened up into some manner of stuffy, dust filled room, with nothing immediately signifying it as being different from the others.

“Let me hold the light,” Gekko waved his good arm towards Motonoubu.

“Why? So you can throw the lamp out of a window?” Gekko’s face contorted with frustration but Motonubu didn’t relent. Instead he waved the light around the stonework, squinting himself as though he might suddenly learn the language that Gekko had spent a lifetime wishing he didn’t understand. “Convince me, boy. What do you think you saw?”

“I didn’t get a good look. Stop moving the light around.” Gekko’s head craned upwards as his eyes lost focus again, and he began poking and prodding at the spaces between the stones. “It’s, uh, it’s really old and hard to tell. Something like...history, I think?”

“History?” Motonubu used his free hand to scratch his beard. He stepped into the dark, windowless room, but saw nothing that immediately looked like what he sought. Instead he became very interested in something near the wall opposite Gekko.

“Stop walking away, I can’t read if you do that.”

“Hm. Here,” Motonubu thoughtlessly thrust his lamp back towards the boy, who was so surprised he almost dropped it as he tried to grab it. For a moment Gekko was completely stunned by Motonubu’s apparent willingness to trust him with their only source of light. His plan had been to smash the thing, maybe to throw it at the Agent and hope he got caught on fire, but-

An all too familiar hand placed itself on his shoulder with just enough pressure to be threatening. Junko’s voice didn’t even try to disguise her contempt. “I know you’re thinking about it, so don’t.”

“Ah, as I thought.” Motonubu’s back was to both of them but the pleasure dripping from his words made his satisfaction clear. Ever since setting foot into these Jinchi ruins Motonubu had been very uncharacteristically chipper. Perhaps he was eager to finish his mission as well.

“Well?” Junko took her hand off the boy and placed it back where it belonged, over her weapons. “Found the self-destruct button?”

“Since you are from the City of Kings, Legionnaire Kiku-ichimonji Junko, I do not imagine you have much familiarity with ruins. How do you think, thousands of years ago, the Jinchi people managed to see in this abysmal darkness?”

Junko shrugged, her disinterest very apparent. “Maybe they all had pet jellyfish.”

“Not far from the truth, I believe.” Motonubu’s hand emerged from under his cloak, the black skull once again in his fingertips. “All animals glow, you know. Some just require a little more effort to get going than others.”

Without any further explanation he again reached out with the skull and screwed it into a notch on the far wall. As with the prior times a shower of sparks sprayed out from the small rock, but this time the orange flames danced up and along some path as well. The orange glow quickly ran up a channel etched on the wall in a manner similar to a wick being lit, before disappearing somewhere within the stone archway. Rather than fizzle out immediately however, a light orange flame then emerged from the keystone in the middle of the doorway’s arch. From it came a series of what could only be called embers, which seemed to swim out from the doorway until they shot out across the gaps between the stones. The pulsating, but contained individual sources of light spread out like ants, floating along the walls and ceilings, and in mere moments the room that had once been shrouded in musty darkness lit up.

Junko leaned in to examine one such floating mote of light, and then immediately wished she hadn’t. “What the hell!” She shot a look at Motonubu, who was enjoying the show much more than anyone else. “These look like- those are fish! Little tiny fish!”

“Yes, it seems like it.” Motonubu ran one finger down one of the trails of light, stopping on a writhing ember. He gave it a few taps. “Glass, hm. Impressive for such a primitive civilization. They’ve ‘wired’ up the tower like an aquarium.”

“What?” Gekko broke away from Junko to do his own examination, and let out an actually disgusted noise. “Why would they bother- holy- why are all these fish on fire?!”

Motonubu scraped the glass with his finger, then turned back around to the other two with deliberate glee. The skull in his fingers slipped back into his cloak as he spoke. “Jinchi’s animal friends serve to the death, it seems. How noble of them.”

The grand fiery display turned out to be the most exciting part of the reveal, though. Once the light expanded completely it was clear that while the room was quite large, it was largely devoid of anything immediately interesting. Instead a multitude of featureless white stone columns lined the chamber, like a bunch of human sized sticks of chalk that someone painstakingly arranged into rows for no apparent reason.

Turning away from the light-horror-show, Junko focused on their new surroundings. “Man, I was expecting a pile of gold or some treasure chests or something.” She advanced warily and placed a palm on the thick columns. “These things are pure decoration. Did the Jinchi people just like building big arts and crafts projects for the fun of it, in between torturing animals for convenient lighting?”

A very strange tone came from Gekko, who still stood near the doorway as though he were planning to run. “You don’t know what you are talking about. Look at all this!” He took one step forward, then another, before approaching a different column and running his fingers down it, traveling some invisible path. “Logs, ledgers, dates...” His eyes jumped to another column, then another. Motonubu sat still by where he originally lit up the room with an expectant expression. Gekko turned to Junko first, but then thought better of it and turned to Motonubu instead. “It’s like, a database or something. I’ve never seen so much Bossa in one place like this! It’s incredibly dense!”

“What,” Junko, doing her best to ignore the tiny fish burning to cinders around her, tried to join in the conversation. “Does a bunch of paperwork really mean that much? I guess this is more like...stonework, though. Seems horribly inefficient.”

“Don’t talk if you’re just going to say stupid things.” Gekko shot back as he returned his attention to the column. “These recordings are more like...calibrations. They were keeping track of results and conditions. Like...weather reports, almost. Or like cooking recipes. I’m missing a lot of context.”

“Oh, yeah, great. That really narrows it down.” Junko knocked on one of the columns with her knuckle. “So what, are we going to let the kid run around and take notes, Motonubu? There’s like...ten dozen of these things in this room.” She bent her head to look around some more and didn’t like what she saw. “That doesn’t sound like a day job to me. I wasn’t planning on staying here for the next month to look at a bunch of fancy rocks.”

“Neither was I.” Motonubu finally began to move as he walked between the columns. Gekko didn’t even seem to pay attention. The boy seemed to be silently mouthing off words as he ran his eyes down each column. Whatever he was seeing, at that moment, he was keeping it to himself.

“We have not even navigated one tenth of this tower yet.” Motonubu reached the far opposite wall and seemed to regard it with a quiet disdain. “I imagine there are many of these rooms, and many such columns, all with information of questionable use. It would be a waste of our time to investigate them.”

“You don’t know that!” Blurted Gekko, still half enthralled deciphering what he could. “The Jinchi people clearly decided to preserve this information in an incredibly permanent form. They could have put this on scrolls, or in books, but instead it’s carved into stone itself. This could easily last another ten thousand years and still be readable. It’s like they expected-” He shut up suddenly as the realization hit him first. It was too late to put that cat back in the bag, though, and Junko picked it up as soon as he dropped it.

“Like they expected someone would need to read it thousands of years later?” Junko’s words came out with a tone of confused worry. “That's creepy. You’re not about to pull some dumb prophecy mumbo jumbo out of your ass here, are you?”

“I am sure if there was any folklore for Cadet Tanuma Gekko to mock, we would have heard it by now. At the very least I do not know of any more islander rhymes that address the issue.” Motonubu turned around with a tight-lipped expression, and closed a small journal he pulled out at some point prior. “These columns are of a different stone than the rest of the structure. They were carved somewhere else and brought here.”

“Ah, yeah, of course.” Junko didn’t roll her eyes but her tone very much suggested a desire to. “The ancient Jinchi people and their fetish for moving huge heavy objects long distances for no reason. No wonder their civilization died out. Between burning the wildlife and hauling rocks, their priorities were terrible.”

“Not entirely accurate.” Motonubu began moving through the room again after replacing his journal, now focusing on something above him. “I doubt they moved these stones far. They would need to keep them close for reference.”

“Sure. They just loaded these huge suckers onto a wheelbarrow and carted them up fifty flights of stairs. Easy.”

“I did not say stairs-”

“Sorry, I meant to say, in their anti gravity hovercraft.” Junko’s growing frustration was bubbling back up to the surface. “Or maybe they used the power of their animal friends to haul this garbage around. Either way, I don’t see how this helps us find any treasure- or weapon, or whatever.”

Gekko’s eyes seemed to focus on something very distant. Motonubu and Junko were now quite a distance from him so if he chose to, he might have been able to make a break for the door. But that idea wasn’t even on his mind at that moment. Instead some pieces began assembling themselves in his head. While the two adults bickered, Gekko moved quietly through the many columns in the room. There was an organization to each block, a chronological order. For it to be in such a manner structured meant one thing.

“The latest entries must be at the top.” Like Motonubu he looked upwards as well, though not at anything specific. “They didn’t haul anything up here. They hauled it down.”

Now the true purpose of Motonubu’s roaming became apparent. While Junko prattled on about not wanting to climb a mile worth of stairs, Motonubu bent down to examine something on the floor. Gekko watched him from behind a pillar, his attention finally broken from the writings on the stones. Motonubu was already a weirdo, but his weirdness was getting worse the closer they got to...to what, exactly?

With the sleeve of his cloak Motonubu dusted away the top layer of filth from the floor, as if he were an archeologist uncovering some ancient bones. The faint sign of some kind of circular carving lay right under his feet, though it might have just been a quirk of the stonework. Once Motonubu wiped some more of the filth away it's boundaries became apparent. It was a bare circle about wide enough for four of the large columns to fit on, or perhaps enough room for five people to stand uncomfortably together. The pathways of yellow light above them also seemed to bend away in a circle from that location, such that there was a perfect matching shape above the floor where the dais stood. Suspicious by all accounts, it also could have easily been mistaken for decoration.

“You know those Jinchi people.” Junko only spent a short time examining the circle before turning back to make sure Gekko hadn’t run off. “They sure do love slapping random concentric circles on everything.”

“Ah, but,” Motonubu grew a bit more pleased with himself as his careful dusting revealed the real prize. “Decorations don’t have an indentation like this, do they?” His careful ministrations revealed a slot in the floor right near the interior edge of the circle. Unlike the others so far, this opening looked much longer, more like a mail slot than a screw hole.

“That could be anything. You can’t even cram your skull in there, if that’s what you planned on doing.” Junko stepped back a bit, wary of getting caught in some scheme or another animal bonfire. Motonubu began to shuffle about from within his cloak and that was always a cause for concern.

“Cadet Tanuma Gekko, come look at this.” He waved the boy over. Gekko looked worried for a moment, but then seemed to relax as something crossed his eyes. He joined Motonubu within the circular area. “You can read this, can you not?”

“Ah, yes. I suppose. There is some Bossa text there.” Quite a different attitude overcame Gekko as he started to study the pattern on the floor. Motonubu might not recognize it but Junko pinned it immediately as the boy revving up his engines to say something insulting. Well, served Motonubu right! Even with their frequent breaks, traveling up this entire way had been very tiring. The man deserved some comeuppance for once.

“It says-”

“Ah, no, confirm this for me first.” Motonubu’s words felt grimier than ever as one of his fingers outstretched to the small slit he just discovered. “This must say something like, authorized access only, I believe?”

“I- er, sure.” Gekko, despite exhaustion and fatigue, put on his best and most smug smartass face. “It actually says ‘bad smelling dudes with no class not allowed past this point’, so I guess you’re out of luck, dude.”

“I feel like our luck is about to turn around, actually.”

Not getting the response he expected Gekko blinked a few times without replying. “No, I mean, there’s no way you’re getting past here. That’s a keyhole-” As the boy tried to setup another zinger Motonubu’s other hand shot out from under his cloak and thrust something into the slot. Before even Junko could react Motonubu twisted the object and a shuddering click noise shook through the floor. Then a terrible, ear sundering shriek blasted through the air. It wasn’t like nails on a chalkboard- it was like someone took an entire chalkboard and was running it through a blender.

The stone plate beneath their feet cracked and wailed under the strain of over a thousand years of disuse, but before anyone could react the whole structure yielded. The platform Motonubu and Gekko stood on shot up like a coiled spring, propelled from underneath by some enormous, ancient looking screw. Junko couldn’t even let out a spurt of profanity before they disappeared up through the ceiling, as it too yielded and gave way at the same moment. It was an ancient elevator!

Whatever Motonubu or Gekko might have said prior to disappearing got washed out with the rock-on-rock grinding noise that now shook through the entire structure. The screw shot straight up and showed absolutely no signs of stopping- it must have been a one-way trip.

The orange and fuzzy shadows cast by the incinerating fish only gave the strange storeroom that much more of a dream-like feeling. As the column of stone rose up in front of her eyes Junko couldn’t comprehend what just transpired. Motonubu and Gekko disappeared up through the ceiling, leaving her stranded in the strange column-filled room. Should she wait for them to return, or was this something malicious on Motonubu’s part?

Large elevators of all types existed across the world, with fancy new electrical ones in the more civilized areas. This was something else entirely, though. This Arkspire elevator looked more like a chute, something not designed to stop at each floor but rather quickly shoot its contents up and down to...who knew where? And its speed! If something failed to open properly Motonubu and Gekko might just get smashed against a stone wall or some equally horrible fate. Well, not that it was any of her concern, but Motonubu was kind of her current ticket off the island. How could he have made such a boneheaded error?

After doing nothing for some time the rotating screw column stopped in its tracks. Junko stood back in case the ancient apparatus decided to break or crack or do any number of dangerous things that one would expect from technology this old. Instead after a moment the screw began to reverse and rotate in the opposite direction, coming straight back down. The cacophony increased again as the stone shrieked under the friction. It grew louder and louder until finally with a body rumbling thunk it finally pulled back into the room. There was nobody left standing within the circle. No blood either, but that was hardly a relief. The object Motonubu jammed into the slot was missing as well.

Junko continued staring at the empty dias for a while before finally letting out a quiet burst of profanity. She turned and darted out of the room and back towards the uncomfortable darkness of the stairs. How was she ever going to get back in touch with those idiots now?