“It’s sealed. I told you, remember?” Ginta shifted his weight uncomfortably from foot to foot as stiff muscles and jolted bones adjusted to standing. “I’d tell you to look with your Sharingan, but don’t waste chakra. I know where the seal is and how to break it.”

He crooked his fingers into the tight knots of the Dragon seal, flicking through into Ox, then Horse, then Rat, and flooding chakra into his cupped palms. It took the same deep concentration that breaking an individual genjutsu took, but more energy, more finesse. He bent over and slapped both hands through the snow, flat onto the hidden rocks beneath their feet. For a moment there was no change, and then the terrain shifted as a few huge pine trunks, shrouded in mist, materialized around them.

Ginta sagged with relief. “Okay, so this wasn’t fucked with. If Kumo’d found it, I wouldn’t have been able to do that.” He peered through the fog, then pointed sharply to the left. “I was a little off. See? See there? There’s a mostly burned-down building and the foundations of another. Behind there is a little shrine.”

Kakashi shoved his ANBU mask aside, inhaling deeply and checking everything over, alert and focused. Then his shoulders dropped slightly and he turned back to look at Ginta. "You mentioned a key?"

“It’s a token. A coin.” Ginta pulled a trio of dull silver coins from his belt pouch. “We go like we’re praying at the shrine, and put these in the offering box. I don’t even know why I kept mine, but when I realized we were going to have to come up here, I grabbed it.”

He didn’t wait for Kakashi to answer, and he didn’t climb back on the dog, but started limping towards the buildings. When they got close Ginta could see signs that someone had been here since he last saw the place. The stone Buddha that sat guarding the door had newer gouges where some angry Kumo ninja must have hammered at it, trying to get it to reveal its secrets. Newer, but not altogether new. There was no sign that anyone had been here within the last six months.

“Ryouma still had his tokens, too. He showed me his, actually, when he told me they’d closed this post down. Said it was a souvenir.”

For Ginta, the feeling that came from tossing the coins into the collection box was a neon jumble of hope and dread, and regret. Team Badass was long gone.

There was never, especially for a ninja, any going back.

The Buddha’s face slid aside, revealing a dark gap. A gap that should have been filled with Ryouma’s or Daisuke’s or Arata’s grinning face.

Of course there was no one there to greet them.

Ginta chewed his lip behind his cloth mask, then went up to the Buddha, reached into the hole where his face should have been, and pushed chakra into a mechanism he could feel but not see. There was a click and a slow groan of moving wood and stone, and the whole statue shook, as a door at its base opened.

No sound came out. No light. No warmth. Only stale, damp air that smelled of mildew and disuse. “I guess we should go in,” Ginta said, glancing up to Kakashi for confirmation.

The hundred yard stare of a man preparing to face staggering disappointment met him.