Gibbs, DiNozzo, Toshiro, and Nao went down into the mine with the rest of the tourist group. Which wasn't many. Sure, certain cave explorations were cool, but salt? In the middle of Kansas? DiNozzo was surprised there was even a museum for salt, he was more surprised there was any tourists at all. They went with a tour group through the beginnings of the museum, DiNozzo learned random information about geology and old mining equipment. So far this place was completely unimportant to him.
Toshiro on the other hand could feel the growing and immense spiritual pressure building the farther they went into the mine. It was large, by far, but nothing he couldn't handle. The young captain had asked Nao about how the ticket attendant had been able to see the two of them, but the youngest brother just shrugged his shoulders like it was no big deal at all. That annoyed Toshiro, and interestingly enough, it also annoyed Gibbs.
Gibbs knew that seeing these soul reapers wasn't normal, so how could some normal, small town girl be able to see Nao or Toshiro? From what Gibbs could understand it was more acceptable to see souls like Nao and normal soul reapers, but even harder to see the captains. So why could the attendant see Toshiro? What was more curious to Gibbs was Nao's explanation, or lack thereof. The little boy should have the knowledge, from what Gibb's knew was those brother's should know these caves like the back of their hands, so why wouldn't the youngest understand why? Or why couldn't he at least come up with a decent excuse.
Toshiro was startle when he heard the small, excited, and surprised, gasp from agent DiNozzo. The agent's eyes were wide as he gazed into the storage area of the mine. What the agent was seeing was Agent Smith's costume from the Matrix, not to mention the snow man costume from Jack Frost.
The tour guide seemed to notice DiNozzo's interest, "We house multiple costumes here, including original Superman, Batman, and Mr. Freeze costumes along with original camera negatives from films like Gone Like the Wind. The security makes the salt mine optimal, it's secure both from humans and mother nature."
"McGeek would have a nerd-gasm here," DiNozzo thought aloud.
"And you aren't?" Remarked Gibbs, seeing DiNozzo's interest in the Matrix costume.
"Boss, the Matrix-"
Toshiro was trying to follow the conversation but had no clue as to what the two NCIS agents were speaking of, but he did follow the end of the tour guides speech. Secure from humans, maybe. Mother nature, probably. Soul reapers? No.
The tour went on, until it was time for the Dark tour, where they'd go through the dark parts of the mine on some sort of mine track or something of the sort. The plan was to depart from the tour from there, and not to get caught. Nao and Toshiro were unseen by most every tourist here, whereas a little over a third of them could see them or tried to engage with them, most treating Toshiro like a small child. He was not middle school student. He was not a elementary school student. He was a captain! But he really couldn't let anyone know.
The Dark tour was the second to last part of the tour, so luckily they'd miss whatever was after that. The plan was simple for Nao and Toshiro being that they were invisible to almost everyone. Thank goodness that included their tour guide, it seems fate was in their favor in giving them a newer guide. It would just be tricky getting the two NCIS agents off the tram, or whatever the transportation was. They were visible, harder to sneak away even in the dark. Not to mention the lights that were occasionally positioned around on the walls and the headlights on the tram.
The tour had started, the new and very enthusiastic guide started her spiel. The guide talked, at first, of the purposes of the salt mine. Touching especially on topics like storage, all of which Nao knew too much about. DiNozzo was bored with it, but actually started listening somewhere along the lines of when the guide talked about attractions that came and went featuring movie costumes and props.
Suddenly Nao jumped from the tram, seconds after poking the other group members. Toshiro jumped off no problem, Gibbs did as well. DiNozzo got up and hesitated before jumping, the last of the group and henceforth a bit farther away from the group.
Nao was crouching close the ground, hiding himself into the darkness of the cave floor. The lights weren't that bright, so the floor was a dark haze. That being so, Gibbs and DiNozzo had a difficult time finding their way to the crouching boy. Toshiro had found the boy easily, his spiritual pressure was odd. That's what Toshiro noted first about the boy, and that's what led him to the boy now. It seemed to grow even stranger in the cavern.
McGee walked with Matsumoto and Koji in tow. Matsumoto was chatting loudly with Koji while McGee's head was pounding with splitting headache from listening to the various conversations. Not only was the fiery lieutenant talking, but she was talking over the tour guide. Who fortunately could not hear Matsumoto. About half way through the tour McGee found himself being tugged away by Koji. The middle brother was pulling both McGee and Matsumoto to the 'personnel only' section of the cave.
"Storage and operations should be down here, but I don't think there will be too much going on, it's quiet, very quiet."
"Quiet?" Matsumoto muttered, suddenly taking in the surroundings. The cave seemed almost entirely human, she didn't detect any strange spiritual pressure or reiatsu. To her this seemed like a completely normal cave, just filled with noisy tourists.
Koji nodded, hearing Matsumoto's mutterings. Just like Matsumoto, Koji realized that this base must have been abandoned. There was nothing unusual, and he wasn't lying about it. The middle brother led McGee and Matsumoto down the cavern. The floor wasn't flat like the more touristy areas, instead there were steep drops and twisted pathways, probably why there was a caution sign and personnel only one too.
The path was long, longer than what either McGee or Matsumoto had expected. Eventually Koji disappeared into what looked like a wall. Matsumoto followed, momentarily surprised until she realized it was only an illusion to keep people from entering. McGee, totally lost, stared at the wall in front of him.
"Where'd you go?" McGee said, looking around the dark cavern.
"Shhh!" Matsumoto hissed.
Matsumoto's hand came out from the wall in front of McGee, grabbing his wrist and tugging him through the smoke screen wall. McGee looked surprised and shocked, but recovered. This wasn't too surprising considering he had just found out soul reapers existed.
They walked in the darkness for a short while until Koji abruptly stopped, causing Matsumoto to run into Koji, and McGee into Matsumoto.
"It's gone," the boy said suddenly, "everything, it's just gone!" Koji ran around the cavernous opening, looking high and low for some sort of evidence.
"There's nothing here," the NCIS agent said blatantly.
"I know!" Cried Koji. Koji knew something was amiss when he couldn't sense a thing, but he didn't expect them to entirely clear the place out. The boy didn't want the agent or soul reaper to think they had been tricked, because they hadn't. They were honest in disclosing information, but somehow this location moved. Moved everything. It wasn't coincidence it was right before they arrived, and Koji knew it was before they arrived. This location was active even after they attacked the orange haired soul reaper and the captain. Somehow someone leaked information.
McGee's hand was now resting by his gun, his trust in the kid had run out. There was nothing here, wasn't this supposed to be a black market hub?
"Kid, where are the black market goods we talked about?" Matsumoto said, hand instinctively reaching for her zanpakuto.
"I-I swear, I don't know! We promised to help, ok? I tried! S-somehow they f-figured something out a-a-and moved everything!" Koji knew he was doomed if they lost trust. The human wouldn't kill, unless Koji threatened his life. The soul reaper, he wasn't so sure about. She looked mad. Very mad. Koji had noticed both his group members had their hands by their weapons, afraid there had been a double cross.
"W-wait! There's this extra storage place! I can take you there! Maybe they forgot to clear it out?"
Ziva, Ichigo, and Taro had followed the tour until Taro notified them it was time to separate. Taro led them down a cavern covered in with 'Restricted', and 'Danger!', signs. Ziva and Ichigo followed Taro through the darkness down the winding path. Taro had it memorized like the back of his hand, Ziva noted. She wondered how often the eldest brother had been down here.
Taro suddenly stopped mid-step and put his hand out to push Ziva and Ichigo to the cavern wall. Ziva's back arched at the impact of the wall, Taro was stronger than he looked. The jagged rocks digged into Ziva's back but would only leave some scrapes and bruises. Ichigo had reacted to Taro's arm, but stopped himself from fighting back. Ichigo was only a fraction of a second later than the boy in noticing the incoming presence of souls. They weren't strong or menacing in any way but they still had a presence.
"What's the plan?" Ziva whispered, fixing herself into a more comfortable position by removing Taro's arm.
"Shut the place down and try not to kill too many people," Ichigo replied, echoing what Toshiro and the Soul Society had ordered.
"Aren't you supposed to notify the Soul Society somehow about this place?" Taro whispered.
"Toshiro told the Soul Society, we're supposed to stop all production and shut the entire operation down while we wait," Ichigo shrugged.
Ziva sighed, "So we're just buying time?"
Taro shrugged, "Guess so."
"They should be here soon?" Ichigo added weakly. In retrospect, things weren't that well planned. By anyone.
"Hey! Who are you?" The trio was startled out of their conversation by one of the souls moving the black market goods. Other working souls noticed the commotion and the new faces. Their response was simple, attack. What Ziva, Taro, and Ichigo faced was an angry horde of souls charging straight forward, each brandishing their own weapon.
Around the corner Toshiro and Urahara could both sense the enormous amount of souls. It wasn't that any of them were particularly powerful, it was more shocking the shear amount of souls that there actually was. DiNozzo and Gibbs couldn't sense them, but they were able to see them clearly, even if they were just lowly souls. There were crates and boxes littered all over the cavern, Toshiro noted. What Toshiro didn't know were that at least half of these crates were from the Slovak cave, just arrived a day or two ago. Nao knew this. Nao also knew that there were too many souls here to be normal, someone had ordered an influx of soldiers, their employer knew they were coming. Their employer also knew which cave had more enemies, and which cave Nao was at.
How did their employer know? That was simple, Nao told her.