[center][h2]Kochiya Sanae[/h2][h3]??? — Burning Town[/h3][/center]
Despite her best efforts, Sanae found herself unable to break through the enemy mage's defenses. For better or worse, she didn't even seem to register on the girl's radar beyond something to be blocked as she attempted to handle the perceived "real" threat—a fact which [i]did[/i] hurt her pride a bit—but the sudden light show from around the city caused the green-haired wind priestess to pull back out of instinct. Where she had expected a follow-up attack to try and take her out from the skies, though, she found...

Well, nothing. [i]Less[/i] than nothing, in fact—the enemy seemed to be moving to retreat from the town outright.

"I... Guess that counts as a win? Doesn't really feel like it, though," Sanae grumbled as she floated back down to ground level and landed near Saria. A wary glance around proved that the Heralds that could still move were retreating or dragging their injured peers away, but the young woman had no intent to engage in further combat with an injured enemy force—not when it seemed likely that she was a bit out of her depth here. Maybe more than a bit, really.

With no signs of any attempted parting shots, the young woman glanced towards the sky and, upon noticing the gathering storm clouds (a result of the town being lit aflame, possibly?), shook her head and sighed.

"Talk about dramatic timing. Rain should help put out what I couldn't, at least, but I don't want to think about how bad it'd be for the injured people who might be stuck out in the cold," she remarked before glancing towards the other woman at her side. 

"...Or, well, that's just common sense, I guess. Might be a bit of a silly question, but you wouldn't happen to know how to handle rescue and recovery stuff, would you?"

It didn't help much that the tengu and kappa on Youkai Mountain were perfectly capable of preventing natural disasters from happening, of course, but if there was any time to want to hope that someone else would be able to lead the rescue efforts instead of her having to rely on bits and pieces she remembered from before she had moved to Gensokyo to begin with.

[@Raineh Daze][hr]
Despite the explosivity of what the sniper had wrought, the rubble created from what had been destroyed didn't seem to have resulted in any loss of life. Missing large swaths of their walls made the houses structurally unsound, of course—a lack of supporting framework was what had caused the rest of the collapse to begin with—but there didn't seem to be any people unfortunate enough to have been caught up in that.

That didn't mean that there weren't any casualties to speak of, though. The bodies of a few dead townsfolk were strewn about the inside of a few homes, and some still showed traces of being recently ransacked by the invading forces. [i]Those[/i], however, seemed few and far between; most of the houses had been left mostly untouched, save a lack of human presence inside.

Eventually, though, Rayne's call to action drew [i]some[/i] sort of response from a somewhat worn-down building closer to one of the town's southern gates—in other words, where the group had initially arrived from. The building itself was clearly not residential in nature, and the miraculously untouched sign featuring a bow and arrow alluded to it's intended purpose. The building seemed undamaged by the carnage at a glance, and upon entering the number of townsfolk—injured or otherwise—made clear that they had come here to seek refuge.

With that said, the sight of someone armed entering had immediately put the armed among their number—hunters, given their garb and the way they handled their bows—on edge. Seeing that the one who had arrived was not one of the Raven Heralds, though, the group slowly lowered their weapons as one of them chose to take the lead and speak up.

"Never seen your face before. Guessing you're part of the group that drove those guys off?" the hunter asked, gesturing at a few others who were still on edge to lower their weapons before stepping forward. "Name's Jeire. You have my thanks for stopping the Heralds before they got a chance to knock at our doors. That being said, we're a bit short-staffed right now—lots of people missing right now, of course, and we've got our hands full with the injured. Hope it isn't presumptuous of me to ask for whatever help you can give: first aid, rescue, cleanup... Not going to force you or anything, though.

[@Lugubrious][@DracoLunaris][hr]
[center][h3]??? — Town Outskirts[/h3][/center]
Though he was still visibly shaken by everything that had happened, Alvin seemed to be doing [i]remarkably[/i] well in terms of keeping himself together. Joker's words seemed to register in his ears as he shakily tried to stand up, only for his legs to fail him once more. But with the sounds and shadows of what he could only guess were the Raven Heralds disappearing, the young boy felt somewhat more at ease about the situation panning out as it had.

"I hope so... Maybe she's just tired...?" he asked in response to the black-haired teenager's assertion, hoping that such a simple explanation like that held true. "But if that lady really had the Heralds go away, then it should be safe for us to go back home, right?"

There was a moment of pause before Alvin's thoughts finally seemed to catch up with his body, and almost as if a dam had been broken, tears began to stream out of the child's eyes.

Even if it [i]had[/i] taken place over what could only have been the shortest of timespans, one could only imagine how long that must have felt like to a child not used to such things.

[@Drifting Pollen][@EchoWolff]