Sources unclear on whether there's one or more tunnels that branch off of that emergency escape tunnel in the well. Oh well. I'll say there's a lot because that's the more fun answer.
June 2nd, 2021
Black cave walls glinted as Keiichi swung the flashlight around. They weren't damp, precisely, but there was enough moisture that they reflected, nonetheless, and the group was so deep within the earth that this moisture would never leave. The light from his flashlight speared through the dark, radiant and shocking as the day, and he shuffled forward, making way for the others.
There was always some trepidation about this, about entering this forbidden well. He remembered the jolt of fear and adrenaline the last time, the first time, when he had supported Irie and the group had clustered around the mouth to hear nightmare things, gunfire and shouting and worst of all, a sudden silence.
But that was alright. They had overcome, and those men were in prison or dead, and either way, they were gone –that was nothing to worry about.
No, the feeling that had his hand damp around the flashlight and a tingle in his nerves was the long, long drop of the vertical well behind him, the well that they had dangled an unconscious Shion over and threatened to drop. That was still here, and it would continue to still be here for a long, long time. That, he and the others couldn't forget, because they had to climb down it to get this far. They had to look down into the soft, gaping blackness when they stood in this side cave and know that there was a long, long way down to go.
He shivered.
Still, there was reason in this, as reflected in he and Rena's personal gear as she dropped down beside him. Hardhats, headlamps, a rope and an extra flashlight –a true country girl, Rena also still wore her white dress despite their grubby activity. Her knee-high boots were tough and strong, however, and she had an emergency first aid kit strapped to her purple sash.
"I think this is a dry cave, Keiichi-kun." she said, swinging her own flashlight around. "So we don't have to worry about it changing."
"We don't know where the entrance comes out, though." Satoko pointed out as she thumped onto the earth beside Rena. In her pink shirt and jean shorts, she seemed unprepared for a clamber through a dark cave and tangled brush, but her face gleamed with fierce determination beneath her headlamp, and she had her flashlight tied on her white belt alongside her rope. "So runoff might come through and make the floor slippery during storms."
Keiichi looked at the ground and scuffed his foot, flicking the flashlight to and fro to examine the tunnel floor. He might not know much about "dry caves" and "runoff" and other rural wisdom, but he did know slopes, and this tunnel didn't seem to have one.
"Not sure if any water would make it this far, though." he pointed out. "And this is the only spot we really need to worry about, right?"
"Mew, if someone's injured again when we come this way, we'll need to worry about watching our step even when we get away from the well." Rika chirped as she executed an adorable little jump over from the ladder onto solid ground. Her helmet was strapped on securely, which didn't stop it from wobbling on her smaller head.
"Oh, good point, Rika-chan." Rena agreed, gently ushering the others away from the cave mouth as they shuffled further inwards. Compulsively, Keiichi flicked his flashlight towards the end that was choking in obscure blackness, but of course, there was nothing in this tunnel but themselves.
"I still can't believe you got Oni-Baba to agree to this." Shion said as she dropped down behind them, addressing her sister, who was still on the ladder. "Only the family head is supposed to know about these tunnels."
"Batcha said that if we were fool enough to get lost down here, she wasn't going to send anybody after us." Mion answered. She and Shion looked even more confusing than normal, with Shion having borrowed her sister's jeans and sneakers (or used her own, identical pairs) and tied her hair back in concession to the dirty work they would be doing, rather than her normal loose hairstyle and pencil skirt and flats. "Which basically means its fine. I think Kasai told her what we did with Takano and the Wild Dogs, and she agrees on our plan, but since these are secret tunnels, she can't say that directly."
This plan, which was the reason the whole club was standing in semi-pitch darkness with ropes, headlamps, and flashlights –and in the case of Mion and Shion, heavy backpacks– rather than playing outside, was quite simple. True, they had rushed through this tunnel before, when pushing themselves to get to Satoko's mountain and relying on Mion to take the lead, but there was no chance that the people that had pushed Takano into her mad scheme wouldn't try again.
And Mion was only one person.
Hence, the club was going to explore them now, thoroughly, until they all learned the network of tunnels by heart.
"Alright," Mion said as she dropped down. She adjusted her heavy backpack and looked at the group with pride. "Here's how this is going to go. Kei-chan, you're behind me, you pay attention to how we go. The tunnel is meant to be a more-or-less straight shot, but I want to know if it curves on the way. Rena, you're our timekeeper."
She tossed over a stopwatch, which Rena caught perfectly.
"We're going to be doing this a couple times, and I want to know how long it takes to get from here to the exit. Rika, you've got the chalk, make a note of places where you get tired. We'll switch out chalk colors from when we're running as opposed to walking. Satoko, keep an eye out for places that you can set up traps to delay anyone coming after us. Shion-"
"In the rear as always, poor, poor Shion." the aforementioned twin said with a haughty toss of her ponytailed hair. "I'll make sure no one wanders off."
Mion and Shion grinned at one another, before the group reshuffled themselves into the appropriate configuration, in rough single file in the order that Mion had described.
"Ready, Mi-chan?" Rena asked, her thumb on the stopwatch's button.
"Ready. Let's go!" Mion said, stepping forward as Rena clicked the timer.
Their footsteps echoed against the rocky walls all around, and at first the group was quiet, perhaps weighed down by prior memories of their dash down this tunnel, perhaps intimidated by the stygian darkness all around. But with each of them in possession of at least one light source, and these sources frequently bobbing and switching as they slid from wall to ground and all around, there was a certain element of adventure and exploration in their march. Occasionally, a lagging Rika would pause with Shion and draw out a large star in white chalk on the wall, marking a spot where she and Satoko needed to rest, before they moved forward to rejoin the others.
Sudden dark, gaping holes began to yawn open on both sides about five minutes into their walk, entrances to other tunnels that led elsewhere in the village. Mion had already told the others that the escape tunnels were not there for the purpose of playing, and thus they couldn't use them to get around the village undetected unless they really, really had to. This was the Sonozaki Family's secret tunnel network –if the club wanted to get around undercover, they could make their own.
(Everybody had politely ignored Satoko as she began to take furious notes.)
Just to be safe, Mion had them travel to the end and back to the well multiple times. Rika switched her chalk to red when they ran, then back to white as they walked, then back to red as they ran, three times for each journey there, three times for each journey back, and three times for both walking and running. By then, almost two hours had passed, and the club had very thoroughly memorized the laughably easy route. True, other paths opened up onto this one, but all they had to do to get to the end was keep going straight. The only place where there was any concern was a crossroads of five different paths, all of which opened up at slightly different angles: the trick was to take the far left when running away from the estate, and when running back, well, there was only one route to go forward on.
For now, they were camped out at the intersection of the five paths, panting, as they all sat down on the cold damp stone and Shion switched on the lantern Rena had provided from her secret hideout. In its warm, thorough glow, their position suddenly felt a lot more adventurous, like they were robbers or pirates in a secret cave, and snacks were passed around with grins and giddy looks.
"Good job with the timing, Rena." Mion said through her ohagi. "You got it all down?"
"Yup~!" Rena singsonged, flourishing her small artist's pad. "Keiichi-kun, can you find the, er, the medium?"
"Median." he said absently, taking the pad and pencil and settling the latter on his knees. "And yeah. Just gimme a second."
"Well, this cave system isn't that good for setting traps." Satoko said with a pout, folding her arms. "The tunnels must have been drilled through solid rock, and I can't find any fault lines to bring down a section of the ceiling or something. At least, not in a way that's safe and controlled."
"Mew." Rika said sadly from beside her.
"And!" Satoko added with an extra flourish, rocking back against the wall and kicking out her legs petulantly. "The whole thing is too smooth. I can't hide anything in the walls or behind convenient rocks."
"Nobody uses the tunnels nowadays, so Oni-Baba probably won't mind if we bring in some rocks for you to hide traps behind." Shion pointed out. "And the others wouldn't even notice."
Satoko hummed thoughtfully at that one, then put her hands on her hips. "Well, when you do, make sure I'm the one to choose the rocks!" she said firmly. "They need to blend in!"
"A rock is a rock." Keiichi offered from where he was working on the math, speaking with typical cityslicker ignorance. "Does it matter?"
"Kei-chaaan, you're embarrassing us." Mion groaned as the other girls all made faces. "Ugh, anyways, now that we actually know where we're going, we're going to start making it a challenge. We'll almost certainly have company if we try to use these tunnels while the Wild Dogs come back again, so we're gonna have to get inventive."
She finished off the last of her snack and folded her arms around her legs, bringing them in as she frowned contemplatively at the shining lantern.
"I'm talking hidden caches of lights, food, first aid. Nonperishable stuff that can endure in all the damp and cold down here. I don't think we can store any guns this far down, right Shion?"
"Mm." Shion hummed thoughtfully, bringing her ponytail into her lap and toying with the end of it. "Possibly? If we make a cache that's high off the ground, hidden behind some rocks or carved into the wall, I might say maybe. Especially if one of us comes down every month or so to make sure everything's in working order, Onee."
"I think it'd be important to have a full pack near the exit to every tunnel." Rena said, lifting her chin from her own knees and looking sideways towards Mion. "That way, we'll definitely have supplies when we make it out."
"More than that, I can lay much more fearsome traps on the outside, so that once we make it out, we can bury the exit." Satoko said with a wicked grin. "That way, those poor fools that were chasing us would have to waste time trying to dig themselves out, or turn all the way back around and try to get back to the estate."
The club indulged in a fearsome chuckle as they imagined their foes lost, confused, and incompetent, stumbling through the dark after being thoroughly defeated by one of Satoko-chan's diabolical traps.
"Finished the math." Keiichi said, handing the pad back to Rena. "It takes about eight minutes to run it from either end, and seventeen to walk."
"We can draw out a schematic of the tunnel, and what spots Rika and Satoko-chan will have to stop and rest." Rena said, taking the pencil and flipping the page to sketch out a rough diagram. "We can cache weapons or traps there, so we won't be the only ones who are delayed."
"I can rig something up here, especially." Satoko said, looking down towards the dark entrances of the other tunnels. "Maybe a rack of guns that all shoot at once from different ways. They won't know which path to go down or which way we went, or even if we split up, and it won't matter if the guns misfire, because we'll only stop long enough to activate the trap. Oh-ho-ho~!"
Together, in the glow of the lantern that was so much like firelight, the club plotted and planned how to defend themselves during their next enemy engagement.
9.48 AM, USA Central Time