The bulk of Motonubu’s body, carried by momentum of the attack, tumbled into a heap after Junko landed the decisive blow. The man’s head carried too much velocity from the lethal cut and it cleanly soared off the edge of the tower. As Motonubu’s lifeless body pumped its blood into the stonework Junko stared down at it, her breaths haggard and uneven.

She reared up and delivered another firm kick into the now motionless, armless, and headless torso lying on the ground. The sack of dead flesh did nothing but let out a distressing squelch. Good. No dumb Agent jutsu at work here. Motonubu was absolutely done for.

Finally Junko’s shoulders relaxed. Even with the frustrating, grinding noise of the tower’s machinations, a weight lifted off her shoulders. The top of the Arkspire was no doubt still rigged with the late Motonubu’s traps, but the man himself would no longer be an issue. She glanced back at where his arm had landed. His fingers still held onto the base of the long coiled spiral that made up the outer shell of the hourglass. First order of business was collecting her loot.

After a couple of safety pokes to make sure it wasn’t booby trapped, Junko retrieved the strange artifact. The variety of liquids inside it still spiraled in endless eddies and unseen currents, the control of which Motonubu manipulated to perform his agitating jumps through time. That was a facet of the artifact Junko cared little about. The real prize was inside, in that strange liquid Garion called the Tears of Assate. It was finally hers. The chance to make up for past mistakes...!

After ensuring that this time the hourglass was in fact the hourglass, Junko tucked it back away onto her person. She tore a strip of bandages off to tie around her wounds as well, but for some reason the injuries sustained in the last few hours didn’t bother her as much anymore. Strange, how strange! Was she smiling? No, of course not. Junko was a professional. And there was still business to be completed.

She looked up back towards where Hikiboshi fell after Motonubu dropped it, and then towards the motionless body of Gekko. Those fleeting feelings of success bled out of her. This was definitely not a time to smile.

The next order of business was retrieving Sahori’s sister sword. Junko took her time approaching it, still somewhat wary of all the noise the tower was making. What a racket! Even the spinning parts seemed to be gaining speed. If she had waited too long to pull that stunt, the edges of the tower might have just tore her to shreds. What a ridiculous tactic it had been to jump onto those rapidly rotating sections of tower. Without any special power of her own there hadn’t been much of a choice. At least Motonubu was just an Agent. A General wouldn’t have fallen for such a risky bait and switch.

She sighed as she bent down to pick up Hikiboshi. It was over, though. Her little lie bluffed Motonubu long enough to distract him, and now there was nobody left to stand in her way. Okay, well, there were all those Annitou forces to deal with. And those crazy Metsina Agents. Nobody down here in the underground though! Things were finally looking up for Kiku-ichimonji Junko.

Her fingers brushed the hilt of Hikiboshi and it disappeared into black smoke as Motonubu’s last Wispform dissipated. All that was left behind was the stem of his pipe.

Junko stared down at her empty hand for a moment as she tried to process what just happened.

Moments later the entire tower began to rise as its engines finally seemed to pick up enough speed. The whole Arkspire lurched, then stabbed upwards. Junko was thrown off her feet and flat against the floor as the tower accelerated upwards. Seconds later the massive structure tore into the earth above, digging into it like a spiraling screw. For the next few heart stopping minutes, Junko was positive the world was ending.

-

The order came almost out of nowhere after the graveyard expedition failed. Almost as soon as Annitou soldiers moved out to enforce the new policy, the entirety of Camp Monog descended into protest. Then on top of that, as if the heavens themselves disapproved of Jinchi’s poor governance, a nonstop tropical rain front moved in. In the early hours of the morning before sunrise rain continued to slam into the earth, softening the mud and making a clean operation all but impossible.

Even with these difficulties the Annitou forces continued their plodding, methodical seizure of absolutely every asset in Camp Monog they could get their hands on. ‘Total martial law’, as decreed by General Gounomouno, meant all citizen rights were ‘temporarily’ suspended. Piece by piece and block by block the soldiers moved in and out of buildings and ships, rounding up whatever souls they could regardless of whether or not they cooperated.

General Gounomonou called it a ‘complete evacuation’, and the exact reason being given for it was unclear. Some thought that the distant plumes of smoke emanating from the far off jungle meant that an active volcano was about to erupt. Others posited that General Daisuke was about to invade with a detachment from Garion in an attempt to take the island. Some whispered it might be a parasitic plague. The conspiracy minded claimed it was all front for Annitou to take back goods from Metsina smugglers. The truly crazy parroted theories that the island’s former deities were waking up and about to violently expel intruders. Even the local sea life seemed to have caught the irrational fever, as the shores positively teemed with aquatic sea life beaching themselves wherever there was exposed sand. Chaos poured out on every street corner, more so than usual for a distant island settlement like Camp Monog.

Nobody knew anything concrete and fears only multiplied by the hour. Not even the soldiers, forced back from the jungle after failing to apprehend General Daisuke, had been told anything. As if Jinchi nights weren’t black enough, now even the armed law enforcers of the island were being kept in the dark by their superiors. Large warships floated in all the biggest and closest docks in the Camp Monog port, and for days straight troops moved to and from the large vessels. The wounded in particular were getting shipped out faster than anybody else.

As Ringo moved through one of the ships being used as a temporary storage space for the disabled soldiers, her senses were constantly assaulted by the staggering number of casualties. Every broken body and wail of agony came from a soldier wounded in the misfire that was Annitou’s attempt to capture General Daisuke. Her head pounded as her own wound flared up every time a strong light came across her eyes. Ringo’s unconscious body got hauled in with the rest of the massacred troops, but apparently her hard head let her recover a bit faster than those unfortunate enough to have gotten diced into pieces. Head injury or not, Ringo couldn’t sit by idly while so many of her countrymen needed help!

She also hadn’t been given a choice: a few bandages got slapped on her and the moment she could stand on two legs she was given chores to do. It was just like the night she fought those two Agents. Annitou was too short staffed to let anyone who could stand on their own power waste resources. She couldn’t even see an empty bed on the medical bay ship anyway.

“That all sounds super bogus.” From beneath an entire mummy’s worth of bandages wheezed the miraculously lucid Hajime. He tried to move one of his arms in traction, but only succeeded in shaking it a bit. It wasn’t even apparent from beneath his injuries how many limbs he still possessed or how functional they were. A pair of eyes and some crusty lips did peek out behind the mask of gauze, though, and as Ringo finished changing out his IV bag Hajime kept trying to get more information out of her. “General Gou hasn’t said a single thing? How bad did Daisuke beat our asses, exactly?”

“Annitou wasn’t beaten.” Ringo huffed, very clearly agitated. “The expedition was always going to retreat if we couldn’t stop Daisuke from reaching the graveyard. Didn’t you read the orders?”

Hajime shifted uncomfortably, the heavy casts around his arms wobbling as he tried in vain to face the girl. “I heard a nurse say Gekko hasn’t been found yet. That’s good news, right?”

Ringo stayed silent and finished her assigned task. There was still so much to do! “You’re in no condition to worry about it.” She started packing up and got ready to move through the ship to her next task. “Just let your superiors worry about it. We’ve done all we can.”

“Can you check, though?” Hajime raised his voice as Ringo was already in full retreat. “Just, like, ask someone! What if we disembark and Gekko’s not on any of the ships?”

There was no response. Ringo was already out the door.

After a bit of time she finally resurfaced and got out into the fresh air of the open deck. Ringo’s head throbbed and her vision felt fuzzy, but so few able bodied cadets were around there wasn’t really any choice but to keep working. The makeshift hospital ship was still taking on passengers even as she wandered towards the front of it to get another breath of fresh air. She inhaled and took in the calming, salty scent. Anything was better than blood and bile at this point.

A booming thunder shook the air around her. Nobody paid it any mind. Far above them lightning occasionally flashed through the early morning darkness. The rumblings of the storm barely concerned those with far more important things to worry about. Nature’s wrath felt almost quaint compared to the growing unknown threat that everyone seemed to imagine would soon rear its head. While the civilians populating Jinchi were up in arms about the sudden evacuation, the Annitou foot soldiers could only enforce their superiors orders. That was the will of Annitou!

Yet ever since General Daisuke raided the docks right from under Annitou’s nose, control just seemed to be spiraling out of their reach. It all culminated in that massive blunder resulting in several entire units being torn to shreds by a pair of Metsina Agents. Not even the upper management seemed to know why the evacuation was occurring, only that it was a top priority.

But there was hope on the horizon! The first of the reinforcements from the Annitou mainland were due to arrive that morning, however far off it might be. Hopefully the additional manpower would help calm things down a bit. Even so Ringo felt a heavy stone in her stomach. Her fervor and devotion to the cause was absolute, but seeing such chaos everywhere she looked...Ringo worked best with rigid structures. This ambiguity was killing her.

Another crack of thunder shook the water below. Ringo gripped the side of the ship to keep her balance as it tilted precariously. Had that been a wave or something? At the same time as the thunder? She rubbed the fuzziness out of her eyes and tried to disregard the splitting headache, and glanced back towards the dock. Some oil lanterns kept the entire way lit (actually, she was tasked with refilling them before too long) and she saw the stragglers still bringing in injured had also been shaken by the noise. Was it the wind? Or was it-

Without even a flash of lightning to accompany it, the air again groaned and shook with a powerful, distant rumble. The reverberations echoed much louder than previously, and most distressingly, came from below rather than above. That wasn’t thunder at all.

It was an earthquake!

The shaking, previously intermittent, now grew in intensity. Nearer the center of Camp Monog the flimsier structures began to vibrate and collapse, though even a stiff breeze might have caused the poorly constructed buildings to have done the same. The rumble truly grew worrisome once the unmistakable noise of splitting wood and shifting earth began to reach the ears of those still lingering in the settlement.

Any last doubts about the immediacy of the threat collapsed in a similar manner minutes later. In the heart of Camp Monog an entire radial section, almost an entire block in size, gave way and sank into the muddy earth. What looked like a sinkhole expanded outward rapidly and swallowed even the studier looking structures in one fell swoop. The soil, the buildings, even a few unfortunate souls who refused to evacuate got caught in the gaping maw. With the clouds above blocking out the moon there was no light at all to illuminate where the abyss took them- the tiny oil lamps all blinked out of existence as they became buried in rubble, then transported down to the bottom of wherever the hole led.

Despite the cataclysmic nature of the massive opening, it didn’t seem to expand outwards after its initial formation. No giant fissure split across Camp Monog and sundered it in half, and the earthquake’s distressing volume and intensity wasn’t wreaking havoc on any other part of the island. The entirely localized disaster just carved out a specific chunk of land for itself. For a few minutes longer nothing appeared to develop, although the rumbling continued. It almost seemed as though the natural part of the disaster had passed.

Then from within the abyss came a slight, but noticeable orange glow. Almost like the slow rising of the sun, the illumination began to grow bit by bit, until eventually the entire outline of the sinkhole could be seen. The rain falling above, caught in the shine, took on an orange hue. The strange shadows formed by the light cast the entire settlement into hellish shadow.

Finally the earth rattling energy of the quake hit its peak, and with it came a massive deluge of light as though a large curtain had been drawn back. More than that, a horrendous grinding noise blasted out from the center of the hole, and from it erupted the fanged teeth of what could only be described as an enormous drill. Slowly, but inevitably, the drill spun its way up to the surface and out into the open. Along its length ran numerous sources of light, almost like flames but far more intense. As the drill drew upwards its true nature became apparent. Like a single cylindrical finger the drill’s shaft looked more like a tower or lighthouse than anything intended to be a weapon. At the top of the spinning top shone the brightest light, and the entirety of Camp Monog was at once lit up despite the storm still pelting the settlement with rain.

As the waves caused by the vibrations died down Ringo could finally release her death grip on the ship. She stared, not quite slack jawed but certainly feeling it in spirit, at the pulsating glowing tower that had just erupted from earth below. Even at this distance, the thing looked massive. Even Annitou lighthouses weren’t that tall!

That momentary wonder and dread gave way to a much more immediate panic and terror as the distinctive concussive booms of cannon fire roared out. Totally unprepared, Ringo nearly jumped out of the boat and onto the dock in response. An enemy attack? A misfire? Her answer came just as quickly as the cannon volleys fired again right after the first. Seconds after hearing the blast she saw noticeable plumes of orange dust explode out from the newly arrived tower. It wasn’t difficult to put two and two together.

That tower must be an enemy of Annitou! The Navy was firing on it! Even the architecture of Jinchi was treacherous!

Away from the dock and out just a bit off the shore floated Annitou’s war vessels, already fully loaded as if anticipating a war to break out. The enormous silhouette of General Gou took up a huge part of the sky as his large hands pointed to his men arming the rows of cannons along the side of the ship. “Fire! Keep firing, I don’t care if it doesn’t look like it’s taking any damage! Keeping loading the cannons until there’s nothing left to dump!”

Although Gou’s flagship lead the barrage, the amount of cannons was woefully small. Annitou refused the General his request to take the biggest and most powerful weapons the island nation had to offer. Why would an expedition force need heavy artillery, after all? Jinchi was abandoned! No other nation would dare send a navy, and foriegn Agents were best handled on an individual basis. As the smoke cleared from what felt like a solid half hour of bombardment the folly of that belief became clear. The alien tower now jutting out of Camp Monog like a torch hadn’t taken a scratch. Jinchi sure knew how to build a spire.

Even more alarming, its orange glow was spreading. Not getting brighter, but actually permeating into the air directly above it. The gray rain and black clouds above began to swirl and rotate not unlike those seen in a typhoon. One of Gou’s advisors immediately appeared to his side. “Sir, do you think that’s General Daisuke’s doing? This looks similar to-”

“Maybe.” Gou put his large palm in front of the face of the man and grunted. “This is worse than expected. Give the message to all remaining docked ships and tell them to depart.”

“The evacuation isn’t complete yet-”

“Anyone still on the island after this deserves what they get. Get all the civilian ships out. All warships too.” His arm reached out and he grabbed onto an enormous bundle wrapped in thick ropes at his side. “We’re out of time.”

“With these winds, Sir, and the current...and the reinforcements are still on their way! What will you tell the Lord?”

“Me?” Gou stepped forward to look into the churning ocean below. “I’ll either tell him I succeeded, or I’ll be dead. You’re in command now, officer.”

With that the giant man leapt off the ship, plunging with a titanic splash into the black ocean below. His departure rocked the whole ship and the sailors on board all let out a series of protests in response, but they were quickly silenced as Gou’s number two shouted out. “You heard the man, boys! Get these ships ready to go! No time to waste!”