Up here, far above the artificial sea and layers of dust, the air carried a different taste. The top of the Arkspite smelled almost...burnt. Like the remnants of a campfire. The dust up there looked and felt different too. Gone was the lingering scent of ancient, undisturbed debris. What Gekko felt now was decidedly more...recent.

“It is almost certainly ash.” Motonubu rubbed his fingers together and crumbled some gray substance between his fingers. He looked up as if staring at an unseen ceiling far above their heads. A small amount of similar particles fell from above, not quite obstructing vision but too numerous to ignore entirely. “Almost like snow, is it not?”

“How would you know?” Gekko was laying on his back just a short distance from Motonubu, shielding his face. “Garion is a desert wasteland, it doesn’t have any snow.”

“You should travel more, Cadet Tanuma Gekko.” Motonubu turned back to the collapsed boy. “Perhaps Annitou is nothing but tropical jungles and savage seas, but on the mainland every country has a variety of biomes. The world is more diverse than you know.”

“Maybe there’s diversity in the weather..” Gekko’s breathing was labored but evening out. He hadn’t had a very good time on the elevator. “Seems like the world is full of the same type of horrible people, though. I think I’ve had my fill.”

“Ah, well.” Motonubu dusted some of the accumulated ash off his shoulder, then continued to inspect their surroundings. “You will understand when you are older, perhaps. Feeling well enough to stand yet?”

Around them lay a thick, but navigable sheet of ash, which covered every structure within eyesight. The elevator just moments ago very disrespectfully deposited the two of them at the top of the Arkspire, spitting them out like one would a wad of gum. From the top of Jinchi’s big citadel there stood little other than a few walls and columns, making it look like an unfinished construction project rather than anything profoundly important. Unsurprising given how all Jinchi ruins up on the surface looked. Nothing seemed to have survived the thousand year absence intact.

There weren’t any stair within sight either. In a way it resembled the graveyard, with lots of carvings and stonework distributed seemingly at random. Equally disconcerting, the roof of the cavern still couldn’t be seen from the Arkspire’s rooftop. There must have been something burning far above, given the quantity of ash that fell from the abyss. At the very least that meant there would be plenty of oxygen to go around.

A muted yellow glow extended from under their feet as Motonubu had located and lit another one of the strange Jinchi animal lights, like the one located in the room full of columns they just left. He followed the lit trails of small writhing fish carefully as his feet pushed aside the ankle deep accumulated ash, just in case he might accidentally fall down an open elevator shaft. Eventually Gekko recovered from his ordeal and sat back up to avoid getting buried in a layer of the falling materials. He watched Motonubu shuffle around with an idle curiosity, or perhaps in the hopes that the Agent would fall down a hole and die.

One couldn’t wait for things to happen, though. They needed to get moving and make things happen.

Gekko stood up while Motonubu continued his aimless wandering around the structure. His assessment was much more grim compared to Motonubu’s almost gleeful exploration of the site. The Arkspire’s roof was large but not nearly as big as all the other megastructures Gekko had been forced to visit that day. Taken as a whole the entire area looked just a bit bigger than the upper deck of an Annitou warship. Following in the path Motonubu already walked, Gekko started his own shuffle towards each of the ancient stoneworks, starting with the closest. As before these were loaded with Bossa text, but as he read through them their contents were far, far different than those from below. His eyes widened after consulting the first column for just under a minute. His gaze shot back up to the top of the column once he reached the bottom to check what he saw, just to make sure he wasn’t misunderstanding it.

An unwelcome pressure on his shoulder jolted the boy back to reality. People really seemed to like manhandling him these days. “Found something interesting, hm?” Motonubu somehow had gotten very close to him without Gekko noticing. He regretted not learning from Junko how it was she heard footsteps so easily.

A sound came out as if Gekko was starting to speak, but then he hesitated. “There’s a lot to read here.” His voice was distant and very noncommittal. Motonubu looked down at the child with a perplexing expression on his face. “Like- like I said down there, before you nearly killed us both, it would take days to go through it properly. I can’t translate anything without the proper context.”

Motonubu released Gekko’s shoulder and retracted his arm back into his cloak. “Is that so? You will not even try and speculate, hm?”

“That- it would be unwise to jump to conclusions.” Gekko put his palm over the column as if hiding his answers for a test. Motonubu couldn’t read Bossa anyway so it was pointless, so what was the boy afraid of? “I need more time. Just back off, okay?”

“Certainly.” Motonubu exhaled as he retreated. His proximity to Gekko weighed down on the boy’s back, and the pressure didn’t go away when Motonubu turned and departed. Gekko began inspecting the surroundings again. There was so much to read here, but just this one column lit his mind on fire. He hadn’t been lying entirely to Motonubu. There was a lot of missing context, too much to start wildly speculating on. But even with just this limited information the pieces were finally coming together. Nobody but him could see the whole picture, right? Motonubu couldn’t have known? Even General Gou likely wasn’t aware of what lurked below Jinchi.

The grating, gravel voice of Motonubu rattled out again. “You know,” Gekko’s face curled up with anxiety. “We have not had time to discuss it, since you are quite a frustrating conversation partner. Did Junko tell you what I was doing before I came to meet with you in the graveyard?”

Gekko didn’t respond and pretended to be engrossed in reading. Motonubu’s next words came out much clearer indicating he was staring right at the boy. “For a time, I snuck into an Annitou squad, just to get an idea of what they were planning. I did not linger long since my Wispform can easily be broken, but I heard some interesting things. For instance the Annitou Navy was under orders from General Gou to fire on General Hashimoto Daisuke on sight, which makes perfect sense. Legionnaire Kiku-Ichimonji Junko was also to be engaged without question. Those statements do not likely surprise you.”

“But can you think, Cadet Tanuma Gekko, why the Annitou Navy would be under instruction to fire upon you as well? It seems they considered you acceptable collateral damage. Is that not quite a bold thing to order your soldiers to do, to kill a child?”

“I-I’m not a child,” Gekko was barely able to croak out under his breath. Were his hands trembling?

“My apologies. Cadets are to be treated as adults. After all, you engage in quite dangerous work. All the more peculiar why after their first Bossa translator was shipped off the island, they never brought in any others. You were the only one left on Jinchi who could interpret after that.”

“Well, you and General Gounomonou. I suppose the General was more than confident in his own abilities to translate, hm?”

“Yeah, yeah. Something like that.”

“Or,” Motonubu’s increasing volume indicated he was getting closer. Gekko’s skin began to crawl and it wasn’t just because of the ash building up on it. “Was it that the good General didn’t want anyone else to translate Bossa, because the information was too dangerous to get out? What little our Garion spies collected made it clear there was some kind of weapon of great power here, but what if...” Was he behind Gekko now? The ash covering the floor muted footsteps and made it hard to tell.

“I thought perhaps Annitou was willing to let a child- a cadet die, so they could keep the prize to themself.” Was Motonubu even breathing? Gekko didn’t want to turn around to see where the man stood. “But if your nation wanted the weapon for themself, they surely would have sent more Bossa speakers. And they almost certainly would not have bombarded the graveyard with such immense intent to destroy it.”

“You don’t know Annitou. Needless collateral damage is normal. They- they just really wanted General Daisuke dead, I’m sure.” Gekko didn’t add ‘and myself’, not that he needed to.

“Oh, I am sure your people do want that. But they did not see General Hashimoto Daisuke, did they?” Motonubu’s tone hadn’t perceptibly changed at all. Yet without Junko around, his words felt like they cut far deeper. “They saw you.”

“I do not believe Annitou wants to recover this weapon at all. Annitou as a whole might not even be aware it exists. I believe your mentor- General Gounomouno- wants to bury it.”

“You couldn’t be more wrong. General Gou isn’t like that at all.”

“Hmmmm. What was it you said? It would be unwise to do a hasty translation? Yet you seem quite confident in what you just told me. Almost as if you already know something.”

The layers of ash building up around them made no sense, Gekko realized. For a ruin this ancient there should have been tons of it. And what was burning, exactly? How much of it could there be? The only answer was that the falling ash was recent. But how could that be true?

Motonubu continued, droning on in a very matter-of-fact tone as if everything he said was the plain truth. “Cadet Tanuma Gekko, I have made my intentions perfectly clear. Garion seeks this weapon’s destruction. If Annitou- or your beloved General- had the same idea then there is no reason for us to be enemies. In fact, this continued withholding of information is only making our respective jobs more difficult. At a certain point your precociousness becomes a liability to even yourself.”

Was Motonubu about to kill him? After all of this? The ash stuck to Gekko’s face as he began to sweat. It occurred to him how much more unsafe he felt when that boorish Junko wasn’t around constantly brandishing her swords.

“I can understand General Gounomouno’s position”, Motonubu exhaled a long, purposeful breath. “He cannot reveal such important information to the nations of the world. Goodness, can you imagine how fast Metsina would be scrambling their Agents, knowing that there was a prize so valuable on Jinchi? And the beleaguered Fenshingiri would at once attempt to claim the weapon to settle their civil war- and of course Garion would have to get involved even if those other nations posed no risk to us. Annitou wouldn’t be dealing with a handful of graverobbers and smugglers then. It might escalate to an actual war.”

As if war would have made Gekko’s life any different. He was still a slave to the Annitou’s machine regardless of what was happening on the world stage. Yet Motonubu’s words sank deeper than he liked. Maybe his life was forfeited to the military. He could live with that. But should anything happen to his mother...

“Look at us, Cadet Tanuma Gekko!” Motonubu’s sudden exuberance caught Gekko off-guard, and he took a breath after holding his own for who knew how long. “You, me, in this place, at this moment in time. There are no Generals here. No nations. The fate we choose can be accomplished by our own hands. No chain of command binds us, no fetters of responsibility or duty to make the decision against our wills. We, us, get to decide what path to walk. Do you not feel that? The joy of freedom? Is it not something to celebrate?”

The stress must be making him crack. Days and days of being held hostage, thrown into fight after fight, without any proper sleep or food...Annitou might train its cadets for such an occasion but reality was different than training. Gekko knew he was going crazy, because he thought the fiendish Motonubu who had caused all his suffering was actually starting to make some sense.

“The terrible secret of Jinchi can be buried by us, here and now. There would be nothing left to fight over but useless ruins. Is that not a cause worth pursuing? To divert an unthinkable conflict, saving thousands of needless deaths? And all we have to do- that you have to do, is tell me how.” Finally Gekko broke his attention from the single word on the column he had been reading over and over. Motonubu felt like he had been towering over the boy the entire time. Unable to contain his paranoia any further, Gekko slowly turned his head, dislodging a pile of ash that had been accumulating on his hair.

But as he turned his head he saw the Agent sitting atop a short piece of broken wall some distance from him. In fact Motonubu hadn’t been brandishing a dagger or glowering down at Gekko at all. Instead he simply sat with a lit pipe in one hand while he gazed out into the black abyss of the Jinchi cave. Like he had been talking to no one. Motonubu let out a long, smoky exhale, blowing the ash from his fingertips as he did so.

Gekko wanted to tell the Agent to go to hell. If he wanted, Gekko realized he could even throw himself off the tower. That would leave Motonubu completely empty-handed and strand the devilish brute underground for good. Instead, all Gekko could think to say was “Second hand smoke kills, you know.”

Motonubu looked over at the child and smiled. The man’s insufferable attitude didn’t make Gekko feel any better about the choice he was about to make. In all his life Gekko only got to make one real choice. When he joined the Academy as a cadet to spare his mother from having to become a translator like himself, he gave up that freedom and became a tool of Annitou. Now he was looking down that barrel once again. He could be a tool of Motonubu instead, or...

A choice forced by someone else wasn’t a choice at all. No matter what Gekko did, he would be serving someone’s interests instead of his own. Was there any way out, or was he as doomed to be a thrall of those in power, like those poor fish burning up at his feet?