Gekko toppled over from the force of the passing projectile. Unsure of how close it really came, he fell back to his knees and just braced for a follow-up. An involuntary gasp escaped as he finally grabbed hold of the chance to catch his breath, and he felt the heat of the vaporizing flames behind him as cannonball disappeared. He couldn’t hear anything for a while, either because of the ringing from the blast or because of the pounding of his heart.

Slowly his eyes opened up. General Gounomouno’s cannon fire missed yet again, because the man’s arm fell at the last moment. Now Gou stood stock still with both legs rigidly locking him in place, his arms firmly to his side in true statue fashion. Opposite of Gekko another flare-up of fire caught something as it fell off the edge of the platform. It wasn’t Junko, nor another section of the platform. Gekko took a wild guess on what just disintegrated, based on what Gou now seemed to be missing.

Gekko should have never questioned Sahori's sharpness. Directly behind General Gou, precisely in his blind spot, stood the ragged but enraged Kiku-ichimonji Junko. With one fell swoop her blade made quick and seamless work on the top of the grand General’s head, shearing it off despite the tree-trunk thickness of his musculature. The legend of General Gounomou and his Atlas ended in an instant, like a candle being snuffed out. The man’s immense rigidity and resolve kept him upright even without life, and he stood there almost like a scarecrow, arms outstretched and cannon barrel still smoking from its last shot.

A flood of emotions filled Gekko. Despite it all the man had been his mentor and teacher- unwanted, for sure, but until recently their relationship hadn’t been this...contentious. Junko, not being affiliated at all, let out a restrained sort of hiss, then flung Sahori to the side to clean the blood off the edge. When she spoke she did so through tremendous pain, the raw exposed emotion in her voice dripping with contempt. “Good riddance.”

The shaking pieces of platform where Junko’s hand could still be seen now regained some stability as the General’s jutsu lost its hold, though her flesh was now so pulverized that it resembled a flattened glove than actual flesh. Gekko didn’t want to look at it too closely- the gore made him squeamish, even now. Junko escaped Atlas like one would abandon a sinking ship. She left behind the limb and escaped while Gou thought he had her pinned down.

Junko quickly sheathed her sword with her one remaining good hand, then grabbed hold of the now severed stump on the other to try and compress the bleeding. She let out another hiss. “If we’re gonna die, it better happen soon, because I’m going to be out of body parts soon if this keeps up.”

Pulling himself up Gekko pushed aside his confused emotions, then tentatively approached Junko. As he drew closer he saw a deep set series of indentations in Sahori’s hilt- teeth marks, most likely. After the absolute madwoman had severed her arm to escape Gou’s Atlas, she had to carry it in her mouth while one handedly climbing around out of Gou’s vision. When Gekko saw her clamoring over the side of the platform behind Gou, the boy had immediately started talking as a distraction, letting her get close. Gekko might not have a jutsu but he did have plenty of practice being an annoying, hard to ignore attention vacuum.

That they pulled it off the plan at all was incredible- and pointless, if the Arkspire chose any moment in the next few minutes to finally activate and wipe all life off the island.

“Don’t worry about me.” Junko grunted through clenched teeth as she pulled a bandage around her bloody stump. “But maybe throw that dagger away before anyone else falls through the chimney there. I really don’t want any more guests.”

“Yeah, no, I get it.” Gekko’s chest heaved and he pulled the artifact out and cast it aside. Then he forced his eyes to turn back towards the rigid General Gou. “Okay. Wow. Can you, uh, are you feeling-”

“I’m fine. What do we need to do? This crazy dude is carrying enough ordnance to sink a warship, but those cannonballs he fired off didn’t even dent the glass. I assume you have a plan.”

“Uh, okay.” Gekko spoke under his breath and carefully reached out his hand to touch the barrel on Gou’s back. He ran his fingers down the metal barrel of the cannon as well, and shivered in disgust as he felt its lingering warmth. This chamber was odd enough without having to stand in the upright shadow of his dead teacher. “I wasn’t- I didn’t really know what to expect. This is a lot to process.”

Not waiting for an answer Junko lurched forward and slammed the ball of her heel into Gou’s massive back. Despite the corpse’s weight and size she managed to topple him, and the prestigious and honorable General fell face first into the platform. Or at least what would have been face first, if he still had a face.

“Hey!” Gekko jumped back with a shocked expression. “How about some warning, huh? That’s-”

“Do we really have time for this? Do you want to get the nutcase a funeral?” Junko, despite missing the upper third of her arm, was already stripping the body of its assets. “Holy hell, this gunpowder weighs a ton. Did he actually haul this around as is or did he rely entirely on his magical gravity powers?”

“You look like you could use a hand.”

“What, do you think-” Junko looked up at the boy for a moment, then looked down at her stump of a limb. “Oh. Ha. Great. Glad you’re back to being a smartass. Maybe plug up those bleeding nostrils before you go into shock and tell me how to break this hell engine before we all get turned into ash.”

The morbid work of stripping the late General of his goodies passed by in a moment, almost as if Junko was quite experienced pilfering loot from the dead. She hefted Gou’s sizable ‘handheld’ cannon and even with her considerable strength it put her dangerously off balance. “I can see why he spread his legs so far- hoo, boy.” Even though her other arm lacked a hand at this point, she still seemed quite adept at using it to at least stabilize herself as she lugged the large metal cylinder to the edge of what remained of the platform. “You’re gonna have to load this thing, kid. I don’t even know where to start.”

Gekko, with his own broken arm, operated in a much clumsier way. Twice he dropped the powder charges while fumbling with the loading mechanism on the back, and he struggled just to lift the cannonball from the ground to slide it into the front. Around them the skull-studded glass walls continued their rotation, the jellyfish inside swirling around like eager observers. Neither Junko nor himself gave much thought to ‘what happens next’ even if their insane plan worked out. Gekko could only hope the sealife on the other side of the barrier wouldn’t be too angry or hungry.

“Okay, okay, back off.” Junko grunted as she tilted the cannon back and gave it a little shake. “That ball seems a bit loose in there, but what do I know.” She jerked her head back towards where there still lay a small pile of debris, from where it fell out of the hole in the top of the chamber. “You stand there. If this doesn’t work, at least you’ll be around to try to figure something else out.”

“If this doesn’t work, there’s nothing else to figure out.” Gekko’s shoulders sagged as he barely moved towards where Junko ordered him. “We’re all dead meat.”

“Gee, such positivity.” Junko could only take tiny steps as she hoisted her now considerable weight towards the farthest possible lip of the platform. “At least you could start praying or something. Don’t you island folk have a guardian deity or something?”

That earned a derisive laugh from Gekko, which in turn made Junko give a little smile. “See? Positivity. Just a little bit goes a long way.” The boy didn’t respond, which was probably for the best. Junko turned her head back down to the spinning glass now facing her.

Although the fight with Gou only transpired minutes prior the entire wall looked completely unaffected. The man must have fired off three or four of those heavy projectiles, but none of them even seemed to have chipped the structure. Gekko’s explanation wasn’t exactly precise or informative- some kind of additional barrier existed as a layer atop the glass, like an unseen electricity that shot out to burn away foriegn objects. Junko narrowly avoided it the first time and everything else that had been thrown into it simply melted or turned to ash after getting exposed to its protective power. Even the pieces of the stone platform that tumbled down had been reduced to little more than black slag.

Even so, it took quite some time for the fires to burn hot enough to reduce the stone itself to such a state. That meant the barrier wasn’t instant- and, potentially, that something could be thrust through it like a needle piercing through a cloth. Her exhausted muscles continued to fight with the cannon as Junko planned her approach. Slam the thing into the wall, fire, and hope for the best was as far as this plan could go. She just needed to stay positive!

At least then while burning to death she could die on a high note.

Any more hesitation quickly found itself sidelined as the soft white lighting of the chamber began to shift orange. The color change broke Junko out of her mental focus for just a moment as Gekko’s perpetually worried tone also shifted to a level of urgency Junko had yet to hear from him. “Oh! Look! It’s- we need to move, it’s already starting!”

Given how Gekko kept saying the Arkspire was primed to go off, it shouldn’t have caught Junko by surprise. It did anyway. Why couldn’t she get a single moment of breathing room? Despite being told to get moving she took a second just to look up at what was causing the sudden lighting adjustment. The swirling, rotating sea life opposite of the glass still continued to move, but now their bodies began to crack and glow with an orange light. Rather, it was the same sickly orange color that had flooded the clouds prior to their entry, and the color of the flames that surged out whenever something touched the glass barrier. It looked precisely like how those lights Motonubu ‘turned on’ formed as well. Hundreds of animals burning from the inside out, compelled by the Jinchi’s nightmarish technology. The immediate connection was obvious. Even though the creatures were submerged in water, they now began to smolder like hot coals. The tower now began to burn its fuel.

When it ran out of sea critters to immolate, if Gekko was right, the Arkspire would move on to burn whatever else was nearby. That was pretty much all Junko needed to think to get the motivation to get going.

Her foot went up, and gave ponderous stomp. Junko stood right at the edge, alright. The same edge where her pancaked palm still rested. Gou’s jutsu considerably weakened the surrounding platform and with just a couple of weighted kicks the cracking structure again began to crumble. Junko gave a few short hops as well like a child trying to pound down an anthill, which would have been comical if not for the growing infernal atmosphere of the chamber as more and more animals began to ignite and burn away. The platform below groaned and trembled and began to yield with a plodding, uncertain crackling. Junko would have a few feet of stone protection between her and the glass once it broke, but who knew how long-

The piece broke off all at once. It was a small blessing. Now Junko didn’t need to worry about how much time she would have- either it was enough, or it wasn’t.