As the effect of Daisuke’s jutsu waned, the swirling air keeping the storm at bay relented. Again the rain began to fall. Junko kept her balance and watched as the gleeful Daisuke fled the scene. It almost looked like he was about to start skipping as he did so. She waited patiently for him to depart, and just a little while longer after that. Then she exhaled and dropped her stance. What a nutjob.

Still maintaining her composure Junko moved back to the large central pillar. Daisuke’s explosive technique scattered all the debris in an almost crater-like fashion. It reminded her of that fight encounter, where the man almost succeeded in killing Motonubu had she not intervened. The Green Ghost was a man of habit if nothing else. Junko’s gauze wrapped fingertips slid down the side of the large central column. Daisuke couldn’t help himself. When she stood in front of it, the indiscriminate Daisuke just had to blow it up. Her fingers found paydirt: what looked like a hairline crack, coming from the inside. As expected, the thing was hollow, and that trigger happy General’s technique managed to pop part of it open. At least he was good for something.

A few grunts and heavy blows later, the thin cracks evolved into full on chunks. Eager fingers peeled the rock away bit by bit and revealed...an entirely dark interior. Junko stared into it and tried cramming her hand down farther, but was only able to enlarge the hole a bit more. The area inside looked traversable, if only the opening could be made wider. The whole tower was built around a central shaft, so if she could just...

“You’re never going to fit in there before we all get vaporized.”

“I know that, you dumb brat.” Junko hissed, straining to dislodge another massive chunk of the column. “Didn’t I tell you to stay down in case Daisuke came back?”

“I didn’t want to miss anything exciting.” As she struggled to widen the hole, Gekko got a little bit closer to watch her handiwork. “You should really lift with your legs. You’ll put out your back if you-” Junko’s hand snapped as the stonework gave way and on the rebound her wrist smacked Gekko right in the face. The boy staggered back with a yelp of surprise. “God damn, watch it! You’ll kill me like that!”

“You’re lucky I didn’t kill you to begin with!” Junko spat, fury growing the longer the boy lingered. Daisuke had the hourglass, alright. An empty hourglass. In the middle of the fight, Junko expended the life giving liquid inside. Theoretically, she could have revived Motonubu instead. Or just chucked the hourglass off the Arkspire. She wasn’t entirely convinced yet that bringing the boy back was a good idea.

“We just have to shut-off the power.” Gekko’s words came out with a nasal whine as he rubbed his bruised face. “The skull- those animals are powering this thing from below. We need to get back down. Didn’t you see anything like, a big chamber on your way up?”

“I don’t bloody -urg- know!” Junko tore out the biggest chunk of column yet, then fell back to recover. The hole was just big enough for maybe a baby to fit through. “How much time do you think we have?”

“Uh, based on...the data I saw...that I can remember before DYING...” Gekko looked away for a bit to study one of the upright columns. “...I don’t know, the Jinchi used some really weird units to measure time. A full power charge is dependent on all these variables...”

“Give me a range! Are we talking by sunrise? Within the hour?”

“Probably more like...” Gekko rubbed his neck, where just minutes before there had been a massive fatal cut. Junko watched the Tears of Assate within the hourglass repair the boy's wounds almost instantly, which in any other context would have been simply amazing. Since she did it entirely against what she wanted, though, it felt more gut wrenching than miraculous. “...an hour ago, I think? We should probably all already be dead. I’m not sure why we aren’t.”

Standing up Junko finally rested her palms back on her remaining sword. The falling rain began to intensify. “Oh, okay, that sounds good. That means maybe something is broken and there’s no rush. We can go get some gunpowder from your backstabbing Annitou buds and-”

“I mean, uh, actually,” Gekko brushed some of the rainwater falling over the columns with one hand so he could see it better. “It’s not so much that it’s not working, I think it’s...like, waiting for something? A trigger of some kind?”

“Nice. Alright.” Junko stood up, her lungs heaving as she tried to assess the next move. “Since we have time, new plan. Get on a boat and get out of here-”

“I think, uh,” Gekko turned towards the exhausted looking Junko. “If I’m reading this right, the trigger has something to do with the surrounding population. Like a mouse trap, it needs a certain...weight, before it goes off.” The two both gave blank stares to each other. “My memory is a little fuzzy since I kind of died a little bit ago, but-”

“Motonubu said Annitou was bringing in a massive number of reinforcements to deal with all the havok Garion was causing.” Junko sucked in a spiteful breath of wet air. “That bastard. That awful, scheming piece of human garbage. How did he know?”

“Coincidence.”

“I’m done with coincidences.” Having apparently regained her momentum Junko slammed her foot into the last bits of loose rock and finally cleared out enough space to wiggle her way through. With one hand she grabbed her sword, and with the other she pointed at Gekko. “You’re coming with me. There might be more stuff down there to translate-”

“What? No. No no no. Look at that!” Gekko gestured at the crumbling abyss Junko already had one foot in. “I just got over being dead, and you want me to jump in what might be a bottomless pit to nowhere?”

“The only reason you aren’t still dead is because I don’t know how to disarm this bloody thing!” Junko tapped the hilt of Sahori menacingly. “And we’ll both be dead if I can’t figure it out once I get down there! I didn’t drag your sorry ass out of hell for you to sit around and not contribute.”

“At least I’ll die in the fresh air and not trapped in a stone death tube with the foul smelling ogre who kidnapped me!”

That gave Junko a small pause. “Yeah, well, we all make mistakes. I didn’t really think I’d been recruited to reactivate a weapon of mass murder. Maybe you should have told me earlier.” Junko took the moment of reprieve to tie up her hair that got blown loose in the altercation with Daisuke. “Right now there’s only one person on the entire island who can stop this thing, and it’s you. Motonubu killed you because he knew that. And maybe you want everyone on the island dead, I get it.” She took Sahori out of her sheath, but not in a threatening manner. “But you want to be a true jerk? A real pain in everyone’s ass? Keep on staying alive. Nothing pisses off your enemies more than having to continue putting up with you.”

Like she was trying to get a cat to come over and play, she wiggled her weapon and pointed it down the dark hole. “So get over here so we can go down into wherever in hell this chute leads too. You’ve already died once today. Not like things can get that much worse for you.”

Other than the falling rain and howling wind, Gekko didn’t say anything. The boy looked worse than ever, in fact. The sickening orange lighting and dirtied, damaged Annitou uniform made him look more like a street rat than a soldier. The liquid inside the hourglass restored him to his living state and even reversed some of the damage that Daisuke’s flames inflicted to his previously dead body, but his own blood still soaked his shirt where it spilled from his throat. It must have felt pretty awful, knowing a fatal amount of your freshly shed blood now soaked into your clothes. On top of that, this was the second time he’d been rained on today, even. And the day could still get even worse.

Despite Gekko’s truly dour appearance, a relenting look of hesitation passed across the boy’s face. “For the record,” he ran his good hand over his forehead as if he could rub away his doubts. “I don’t want everyone to die. I might not be the happiest person in the world right now, but that doesn’t make me evil. Maybe that whole getting kidnapped and assaulted over and over kind of ruined my attitude, you know. A little bit of sympathy would be nice.”

She stared with an empty expression at the boy after he made his response. The kid definitely didn’t deserve this. Then again, what other choice was there? “So are you going to pout up here or help?”

Throwing his hands up in the air in defeat, Gekko crumbled. “Fine. After being granted the gift of life, let me throw it away by falling down a huge hole and dying at the bottom of it. That’s always been my dream anyway.”

“It’s not a huge hole.” Junko grunted as she tried to reposition and get a better view. No outside illumination made its way down the shaft but she smelled something familiar wafting its way up. Airflow was a good sign! Or at least as good as one could get before throwing themselves into a chimney to hell. “And I have some experience transporting your sorry carcass down long distances. Maybe this time you can try to not land on your arm.”

After some uncomfortable shifting and getting into position, everything fell snug into place. Even in the few minutes it took for Junko and Gekko to organize themselves the glow overhead grew to such an intensity that the surroundings were beginning to look more like a very early sunset. In a way the darkness of the abyss seemed safer than staying outside.

“Tell me again,” Gekko whined as he tried to keep his body as tucked in as possible, “how do you know your sword won’t snag like a twig halfway down?”

“Sahori does not yield so easily.” Junko’s unsheathed sword clanked and clattered as she maneuvered it into position. “The steel from the City of Kings does not tarnish or corrode or dull. It’s unbreakable.”

“Okay, then how did they make it in the first place? Doesn’t that require, like, molding it?”

“It’s part of the forging process and- look, you little pest, just shut up and let me do my job for once.” It hadn’t even been half an hour and already Junko was beginning to regret having used the last known source of those divine tears on this kid. It was a bit late to worry about minor details like that, though. Without warning she pushed herself off the lip of the rooftop. With one hand around the boy to keep him from tumbling and the other around Sahori, the pair began their descent. The sword’s blade bit into the nearby stone with an ear rattling shriek, and Junko’s worn, soleless sandals likewise pushed out and back as the two plummeted downwards. Both of them inhaled and held their breath at the exact same time. At least they could both agree on something.

The combination of friction between her body, the sword, and the sides of the chute provided just enough of a slowdown to not put the pair in immediate danger of being turned into pancakes at the bottom...probably. For the first terrifying moments of the fall Junko realized a bit too late that her assumption that the whole path would be made of stone like the outside might not have been the best. Even as they skidded down the length of the tube she could feel the resistance changing, turning less rough and sandpaper like and more into something slicker.

“Take your sword off!” Gekko shouted over the cacophony, his voice sounding annoyingly authoritative. “It’s going to break!”

“It’s not going to break, brat!” Junko didn’t have to shout as loud since the kid’s ears were just right there anyway, but she did anyway out of a sense of pride. “This sword was created by the best blacksmiths in the known world, it’s put up with way more abuse than-”

“No!” Gekko yelled, squirming as he did so. “Not your dumb sword! The wall! Look down!”

Finally understanding Junko tore her attention from the dark wall and peered in between their tangled limbs to catch a glimpse of where they were headed. At first a sense of relief flooded her heart- light! Some kind of white light, unnatural but not immediately threatening, seemed to be at the end of the long vertical tunnel. That meant their plummet was about to end, didn’t it?

Except as they drew closer the walls around them began to shimmer. To glisten. Junko could see the material they were sliding down on now. It wasn’t stone or metal or polished marble. The increasingly slippery surface was glass. The only reason her blade hadn’t shattered it yet was because, at that moment, it still seemed like the surrounding stone outside of the glass was helping to keep it intact. It didn’t even sound like glass (not that Junko made a habit of running her swords into the stuff), but minor trifles like that weren’t the immediate concern.

What was an immediate concern was the knowledge that soon, that stone backing up the tube’s material wouldn’t be there anymore. Without that backing the fragile chute might just collapse under the pressure she was putting against the sides of the walls. Junko might just add a bunch of broken, ancient glass right on top of their fall. There wasn’t much of a choice to make here. “Hold on tight!”

“I’m not even holding on to anything, you’re holding onto me-” Gekko’s protest cut off as Junko tightened her grip around the child and then released Sahori’s grip on the tunnel. Even with her back to the wall and feet extended out fully, losing the friction of the sword immediately affected their descent as their falling speed increased dramatically. Now even the air whooshing past their ears was too loud to speak over, and there was nothing left to do but let gravity take the wheel.

The white light from below grew and grew, but Junko kept her attention straight ahead. The muscles along her back and legs ached tremendously from how hard she forced her body to press up against the walls, but even a moment of relaxing might speed them both up to a lethal velocity. The illumination grew stronger, and stronger, and stronger, and the sides of the wall even more slippery. The horrible, awful, moment of truth was almost there! Even their heartbeats seemed ready to stop at a moment’s notice.

Then the curtain of darkness fell away and the world opened up yet again.

Junko’s immediate reaction was not to process the sudden influx of visual stimuli, but to strain to slow down the descent as the cool glass continued to slip past. The surroundings visible through the windows might as well have been random noise as far as she was concerned. Staying alive was a bit more of a priority compared to taking in the sights.

Gekko, meanwhile, focused entirely on the environment that now surrounded him, and if his jaw wasn’t already clenched tight in fear it might have dropped open at the sight. Though the glass warped the light coming through and distorted the image, Gekko could make out the most important bits well enough. He first noticed the structure around them coiled and twisted in a peculiar pattern, vaguely reminiscent of the hourglass. That small detail became way less important as the contents of the world outside the chute came into focus. Around them floated- they had to be floating, right?- an enormous number of large glowing jellyfish. Unlike most of the tiny ones from the canal before, these chunky looking jellyfish let out an almost pure white light, and so many of them lay suspended in the tube that rather than small points of light they all shined together in one almost angelic looking glow.

That wasn’t all. Unless Junko was purposely spinning them on the way down, the waters that must have surrounded them seemed to be spinning in a clockwise motion. The jellyfish themselves moved much slower than the shadows in between- it took another tense few seconds of falling before Gekko realized what it was he was staring at. Other types of sea life- fish mostly, but certainly more than just that- were swimming alongside the jellyfish, propelling the waters inside around and around the central shaft. There must have been hundreds, maybe thousands of various species of aquatic life, all mindlessly spiraling for seemingly no purpose. Were they really still inside the tower?

As they fell even further and the density of obscuring wildlife grew thin Gekko saw the last piece of the puzzle. The chamber outside the glass walls began to narrow and funnel inwards, though thankfully the tunnel’s width remained consistent. Glimpses between the teaming mass of sea life he could finally see the far wall where massive horizontal paddles thrust out into the water, running alongside the entire length of the structure. Turbines! The entire tower must have been built just to convert the mechanical force of the enslaved animals into energy to power the weapon. It was quite a bit of a departure from the rosy picture painted in the stories of helpful animal friends. Given the horrors already witnessed, these Jinchi people seemed to possess quite a cavalier attitude towards life of all types. It made sense that a civilization that ended itself to allegedly slay a god held such a cold attitude towards the living.

A shout ripped out of Junko, thick with a tone making it clear she wasn’t just making a friendly suggestion. “Brace yourself!”

So enthralled by the surroundings Gekko neglected to keep his attention downward. He turned his face down and saw the abrupt ending of the chute rapidly approaching. His jaw finally managed to release itself just a bit so he could manage out a panicked scream. Then the pressure surrounding him disappeared entirely. Junko’s limbs no longer had anything to push against.

The two tumbled into the open air. A swirling pattern of white, blue, and orange spots filled Gekko’s vision as he spun wildly. At least his untimely death would be more colorful than his last one. A bone rattling thud shook through his body as they landed, and for a moment, his entire world once again swam in inky blackness.