It was a good thing Gekko was focusing so hard on staying above the water’s surface, because otherwise he might have been tempted to bury his face in his palms. “How- is Hajime somewhere too? Did General Gou really bring cadets all the way here?”

Ringo's distant reply sounded full of her usual confidence. “Military orders are classified information! I followed General Gounomouno, which wasn’t an order, though! So I can tell you that much! Where is General Gounomouno? He must have come down here, he left another cannon up on the roof! Is he deeper in the tower?”

Operating with her limited amount of information Junko gestured at Gekko to try and get some answers, but the boy looked every bit as confused as she did. “Yo,” Junko kept her voice to a low whisper, even though Ringo must have known Gekko wasn’t alone. “What’s going on? Who is that?”

“That’s Ringo. She’s, uh,” Gekko grimaced. “Another cadet. We’re Gou’s personal trainees. She’s not like me, she has a jutsu. It makes, uh,” Gekko waved his hand around a bit in the air. “It makes bubbles. Or one big bubble sometimes. It's hard to explain.”

“Cadet Gekko, did you hear my question?” Ringo’s own voice didn’t seem terribly concerned, as though she was unaware of the danger. “Where is General Gounomouno?”

“Why did you come down here, Ringo? And why is there- you’re doing this, right? This bubble of air around us- I mean, me?”

“There were a bunch of weird lights coming down from the sky into this hole! I followed it down, and saw the water emptying out from around the tube and thought I heard your voice, so I put some air down there to keep it from flooding up. Who are you talking to? That doesn’t sound like General Gounomouno!”

Both Junko and Gekko exchanged awkward looks. It didn’t seem like either had an immediately good cover story. Ringo didn’t wait long for an answer. “Just tell me if it’s an enemy, Gekko, and I’ll pull back my Bubble and drown them! I’ll remember your sacrifice!”

“What, no!” Gekko sputtered and almost fell back into the water. “It’s an ally! An ally! It’s- it’s a really long story, okay!”

“Where is General-”

“I’ll you, I’ll tell you, but you have to get us out first!” Splashing around some more, Gekko managed to regain his composure. “We need- can you move your air bubble more? Like, maybe-”

“Negative, Sir!” Ringo jumped in with renewed enthusiasm. “Against this pressure this is the most I can manage! But just hold tight, I’m sure some backup Annitou forces will arrive in a few hours, maybe!”

That immediately earned a stern head shake of disapproval from Junko. “I might look great and all, but I’m going to bleed out if I can’t close these wounds in time. We need to move sooner rather than later.”

“I mean,” Gekko gave her a wary glance. “I’ll probably be fine, though. Can't you just- okay, okay. Don’t give me that look. Ringo!” Gekko thought a second about how to phrase the story, then went with the easiest route. “We’re injured and can’t wait that long! We need to get back up now!”

“The tube,” Junko pointed up with her stump of an arm. “Have her break the tube. We can swim back down and go up, then leave through a hole on the other side.”

“You expect me to swim like this?”

“You expect ME to swim like THIS?” Junko waved her mutilated limb around for emphasis. “Of course we will! It’s not that far, and you’re a sailor kid anyway, you should be able to manage!”

Ringo’s voice, now with a slightly noticeable increase in alarm, chirped out from above. “What are you talking about? You still haven’t told me who that other voice is!”

“When we get up there, I will!” Gekko shouted back up in agitation, then lowered his voice again to complain directly to Junko. “Look at how dark this water is, there’s no way we can navigate it effectively.”

“It’s a big funnel! Just swim sideways until you find the glass, then head up through it. You were passed out but most of the glass totally fell to pieces, you could pick any direction to head in. It all only goes upwards anyway.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

“What if it- do you have the memory of a goldfish?”

A patient, but clearly neglected Ringo once again called out. “If you’re planning something, let me in on it! We’re a team!”

“Ringo!” Gekko coughed, his voice full of uncertainty. “Could you- we’re thinking you could break the tube, and then-” Before Gekko could respond the sound of shattering glass trickled down towards the bottom of the shaft. Junko’s face lit up right as Gekko’s contorted into a grimace.

Ringo’s response sounded inappropriately pleased. “Break the tube and then what?”

“You didn’t let me finish, Ringo! What would have happened if you collapsed the entire shaft-”

“I have a rope, Sir! It’s fine!”

“But the water-”

“My Bubble is more than enough! Remember the training-”

“Sounds like we’re good to go.” Junko let go of her handhold and slipped back into the water. Gekko shielded his eyes from the splashing and wasn’t nearly as eager to descend.

“Okay, how about this. You go first and get a rope, then come back and get me-”

Junko swam close and placed her stub right on the boy’s shoulder. He flinched in response. “How about this. I’ll drag you through the water since you’re so navigationally challenged. Then once we’re past the wall, just swim up. It’ll be a piece of cake. Have I been wrong yet?”

“Like, constantly, repeatedly wrong. I’ve died once because of how wrong you were.”

“Okay, but, like, in the last hour or so, I think I’ve been doing pretty good.” Junko gave him a good pat, then jerked her head to the side. “Tell her we’re about to set off. Worst case scenario I swim us back here and we catch our breath again. This is like, way, way less dangerous than everything else we’ve done so far. It’ll be a walk on the beach!”

Once again the woman’s unyielding push for action couldn’t be resisted. “Ringo! We’re going to try and swim up to you! Just keep your jutsu up and going, okay! We might drown if you don’t!”

“What about General Gouno-”

“Alright, I’ve heard enough.” Junko hooked her less useful arm around Gekko, then began swimming towards the darkness. “Hold your breath on three, okay? And kick your legs this time, it’s not easy dragging your soggy butt through this gunk.”

“I can swim on my own you know-”

“One, two, three!” Gekko didn’t get any chance to protest more as a moment later the dim light of the surface left him completely, replaced by the icy chill of seawater. The darkness was at once overwhelming. He tried as best he could to kick his feet in time with Junko, but the woman’s considerable strength seemed just as potent as ever as her powerful legs propelled them both through the water. Other than the occasional distressing lump or what felt like a shard of glass, they seemed to make very quick progress.

Keeping his eyes open in the filth laden water, though, was another matter. Gekko continued trying to look upwards for some sign of light but there was simply so much soot and ash now floating around them that absolutely nothing came through. Instead Junko stayed very close to the ceiling, rather than swimming straight down, looking for a spot in the glass she could slip through. Gekko only realizedher intention once her pace dramatically picked up out of nowhere and she yanked him without any warning, like an owner tugging at their dog’s leash. He accidentally let out a big bubble of his own air in surprise. He hadn’t eluded death’s icy grip just yet.

The intention was clear enough, though, as right afterwards Junko released the boy’s arm. The loneliness of the surrounding darkness at once made Gekko’s heart skip a beat but only for a moment as a second later Junko’s rough grip grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, then hoisted him upward. From there the natural buoyancy of his body carried him up, and he began frantically kicking and flailing his good arm as well. Swim up, swim up. That’s all he had to do, right?

Panic began to set in as he continued to flail his way up. No light pierced the murky water, and it felt like he was flailing through an endless abyss. He just needed to remember the swimming training! The trainings he routinely found excuses to skip and tried to get out of. Even Junko could swim better than him, and she was from a completely landlocked country. If he lived, Gekko decided, he would definitely consider maybe attending the first few minutes of one of those trainings if he had nothing else going on that day.

But then amidst his flailings he heard it. Muffled, distant, but distinct- a kind of garbling reminiscent of water struggling to go down a drain. With nothing else to go on he paddled towards it. There was a good chance he might just be headed towards some ancient Jinchi drain pipe, or might meet his end in one of those awful looking turbines, but he swam in that direction anyway. When lost in the dark there wasn’t much other choice. No wonder those deep sea angler fish could attract prey- in the hopeless dark, even the tiniest thread of hope seemed like a way out.

Then his hand bumped up against something smooth. Something with an edge to it. Without thinking he began to pound on it to very little effect. This had to be it! The chute lay before him, though again, he couldn’t see through anything. How far away was Ringo? How strange, this feeling in his chest. For the entirety of his history with the girl all he ever wanted was to be far away from her, and now...no, actually. He still pretty much felt that way. Yet in this context Ringo was the first person in a long while (apart from maybe Junko) who wasn’t immediately hostile to his existence. It was a complicated feeling.

On the other side, squatting on the debris pile and holding her hands out against the same glass, was one Kurusu Ringo. Maintaining her jutsu was effortless but the silence slowly ate away at her patience. The hole she bashed into the glass poured out water above her, but the thin protective layer of her expanded bubble kept her dry, like air trapped in a straw. It left her trapped on both sides by the filthy liquid, though. The dark water’s only respite were a few floating remains of shredded jellyfish, which continued to give off just enough white light to see the barest outlines of the tube. It was like trying to see by the light of a firefly, but it was better than nothing. The whole chute smelled like smoke and fire and ash and rotten fish and despite her best efforts, her Bubble simply couldn’t filter out odors. Or oxygen for that matter. She couldn’t really wait here in the water forever. The air already began to grow stale with each breath she took.

But then! From the sides of the glass came a rapping, then a tapping, then an increasingly frantic pounding. Ringo responded, tapping the glass with her baton. That had to be Gekko. Only he could be so uncouth as to panic while on an official mission from General Gounomouno! His knocking continued to draw closer as Ringo kept up her own tapping, the two engaged in a mutual percussion conversation like children on opposite sides of a door. Maybe she should have given him and his mystery ally better directions. The glass chute was broken in a complete circle, surely they could have just-

Broken shards of glass tumbled down and plopped into Ringo’s air bubble from above and she flinched, turning her attention straight up as a body emerged in the muck above. Her eyes brightened. Its silhouette looked distinctly childish, so it had to be Gekko. Her smile faded. Where was the General?

Eager to help the boy anyway since she knew he couldn’t swim that well, Ringo immediately reached out and grabbed the rope dangling from high above. She pulled herself, and her bubble, along with it, perhaps exerting more effort than needed. Ringo floated up and as the edge of her bubble brushed up against one of Gekko’s limbs she stopped, trying to stabilize her technique. “Calm down, Tanuma Gekko! If you wiggle too much-”

He wiggled too much and his flailing feet shattered the surface of Ringo’s bubble all at once. The whole thing collapsed with Ringo only getting the chance to let out a tiny gulp of air followed by a yelp of surprise, and then both of them were again surrounded by the salty, abyssal waters.

It took some struggling, some tugging, and maybe a slap or two, but eventually both Ringo and Gekko emerged from the surface of the standing water in the tower’s glass chute.

“Calm down! Calm down!” Ringo sputtered as Gekko continued splashing water in her face inadvertently. “Just grab- there’s a rope here! Grab the rope!”

After quite a flurry of coughs and false starts, Gekko did manage to grab hold of the thick and rough corded rope dangling from the darkness above. Ringo managed just by floating nearby- a slight cushion of bubbles kept her buoyant no matter what anyway, so she wasn’t really in any danger of drowning like some people who skipped swim class.

Eventually Gekko’s frenzied breathing died down to a point where the boy could form coherent sentences again. “Wait- wait, hold on.” He brushed some glowing goo off his shoulder as his eyes readjusted to the surroundings. “There’s not- I thought there’d be a lot more water in here.”

After bumping into and knocking out a few more thick pieces of glass, Ringo looked back at Gekko skeptically. “Is the room under here that small? What was General Gounomouno doing down there anyway?”

“It’s-” Gekko splashed a bit, then set his sights up above. “-I’ll fill you like I promised, but not here. This rope goes all the way up?”

“The entire way!” Ringo stirred from her idle floating to gesture above the broken glass tube, where a number of small opaque objects could be seen stuck to the sides of the non-broken sections. Gekko froze up, his mind instantly drawing a connection between the strange protrusions and the skulls from the room below. “I even stuck some footholds on the way down. I thought I might run out of rope and wanted to make sure I had a second way out!”

“How- how?” Gekko was already wrapping the rope around himself, thankful that he wouldn’t have to scale the height one handed.

“How do you think?” Ringo again seemed frustrated by Gekko’s poor memory. “This is stratagem number four-oh-eight, the blood ladder! We practiced it on the-”

“I know that one, I know it, okay. I just forgot.” Gekko’s beleaguered sigh felt almost comical in this context. This type of frustrating conversation was a common one in their unit- the fact he was having it here, now, after all that had transpired...these conversations were exhausting even when he wasn’t on the verge of passing out. “So Hajime is nearby? Why isn’t he down here too?”

“Hajime was hurt, but he really wanted to be here!” Ringo scoffed. “You know how reckless he is. I kept myself in good condition, so at least one of us could meet back up with you! It’s great to see you alive, by the way! Oh, also, I made Hajime give me this, so that he could still help out.” Ringo fumbled around a bit before pulling out a small dark flask. “A little supply of his blood, which will adhere to any surface! As long as he stays awake, anyway.”

The two floated in silence for a bit after that, both picturing an injured Hajime lounging comfortably in an Annitou medical bay. “I told him to stay awake until I got back.” Ringo, sensing Gekko’s immediate discomfort, jumped back in. “He wouldn’t doze off. That would be very rude.”

“How bad was he hurt? Is he in any danger of just...passing out?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Ringo stared with a blank look while Gekko’s already sagging expression just grew heavier. “Definitely. Surprise I managed to catch him when he was awake actually. He’s in terrible condition.”

That was all the motivation the boy needed to get moving. Kicking and hauling his soggy self up the rope (which would have been faster had he attended any of those training sessions as well), Gekko started the laborious process of hoisting his carcass back to the tower’s rooftop. Ringo followed right behind, and despite her small stature was more than capable of pushing Gekko up whenever he started moving slowly. “Hey, what about that other person? That other voice?” Ringo grunted as the two inched their way up, using the stuck rocks as footholds as they ascended. “Shouldn’t we wait for them?”

That earned a bit of a pause from Gekko, then he kept moving. “She’ll manage.”

After a truly heroic amount of effort and more than a few lengthy breaks, Gekko could finally smell fresh air again. Like an aquatic animal trying to beach itself he slopped himself out of the tower’s innards, and flopped onto his back to catch his breath. The entire central column of the tower had been blown to bits and the tidy little hole that Junko had carved out was nowhere to be seen. General Gou had apparently blown the whole thing open rather than trying to force himself into that narrow opening. But the air! The sweet, salty smell of the open air, tainted only slightly by the odor of burnt flesh and bitter ash. Gekko could have fallen soundly asleep right then and there.

Ringo followed right after. She jumped out, her feet splashing a puddle of standing water onto Gekko as she landed beside him. Finally getting a good look at Gekko she decided he looked so bad it made her uncomfortable to keep staring, so instead she squinted upwards at the thinning cloud cover. Already the rain had stopped, and even though the sunrise couldn’t be seen through the clouds, the brightening shades of gray made it clear before long it would be morning proper. Feeling quite proud of herself, Ringo marched around a bit to secure the perimeter, then approached the still flat Gekko with an air of absolute authority. “Alright, you can tell me now! What is General Gounomouno’s big plan?”

“General Gou,” Gekko wheezed, keeping his eyes closed, “is dead.”

At that exact same time a gurgling mess of a creature hauled herself out of the hole, every bit of her coated in black ash. Hit by the double whammy of bad news and this sudden monstrosity Ringo immediately yelled, drew her flimsy wooden baton, and advanced to save her teammate from this sudden threat. The fight wasn’t over yet!