"Appreciate it, pinky!" Jinhai shouted to his back as the arquebus ashigaru popped out from a portal right in front of him, just as he was done with the previous one. He stepped forward, and pushed his fist, popping it straight through the gunman's chest. A glance up revealed the remainder of the ashigaru were pulling back, setting up defensive positions.

"Huh. So they can think. That's a new one, for low-tier undead. Don't think I've ever seen jiangshi that smart." He noted briefly to himself as he decided on his strategy. Sure, he'd blow through all of them with baji eventually, but their spears outranged his fist. Best to switch as the situation demanded.

Zhao Jinhai burst forward in a rush of speed, charging full tilt towards the outstretched spears. Just before he fell in range to be impaled, a minute shift of his hips sent his arms sweeping outwards, his hands flat in piguaquan chops aimed to smash through the ashigarus' spear hafts and render them impotent.

@Raineh Daze @PKMNB0Y

Mae Ah-ryeon

@Rune_Alchemist@Eisenhorn@Izurich@VitaVitaAR@Raineh Daze

Ah-ryeon didn't react much to the gunshot. She didn't feel like she was hit, so there wasn't much to react to beyond the noise. The other agents would easily deal with that single threat. When more began to spill out, her opinion didn't change. The others could handle it. It wasn't necessary for her to step in.

Of course, even more began to spill out afterwards. It was beginning to be comical. Though, she supposed that it would be reasonable that they were all coming out of a large manor. It wasn't as though they were being birthed from nothing in a clown-car--even if these types of situations reminded her of one.

What Ah-ryeon wasn't doing was participating in brutal combat. No, there wasn't much point for her to do so. Her knife fighting could take on any foe, but it paled in comparison to a brute of flesh capable of rolling every problem away or the flaming blows of a magic blade. While her pistol could dissuade a tanegashima-wielding ashigaru, she lacked the ammo to have a discernible impact. It didn't help that any generic ritual she could perform would likely singe Numako's eyebrows off as consequence.

That didn't mean she was doing nothing. Intentionally using the flesh monstrosity as a shield, she had been preparing sticks of incense downwind of Numako. While such a gesture could be considered mindful of others, the truth was that Mae couldn't be arsed to deal with whatever consequences came from waving incense in front of a possessee.

"Surely someone else finds the idea of someone collecting so many antiquities in their manor a little strange," she mused to nobody in particular.

With lighter in one hand and incense in the other, she threw the aromatic sticks at the ghostly ashigaru and the various piles of dark ooze, the embers further igniting the aromatics instead of fading. Such was the nature of what Ah-ryeon burnt; she had solved the issue of having to utilize incense while actively being under attack long ago.

Her actions were mostly a test. She didn't have the luxury to brute force her way through every battle. It was always good to see how things reacted to different actions. The dark ooze especially worried her. Spirits didn't usually dissolve into a pile of goo that still felt like something when they were slain. In fact, they usually just broke apart and hobbled.

As the first wave of phantom Ashigaru crumbled, Arisa took stock of what had occurred as quickly as she could. While the ashigaru certainly weren't human, or any properly-living entities as far as she could discern, 'ghost' too appeared to be inaccurate. Even non-magical formsof damage had been able to harm them.

But that wasn't all. The black, tar-like substance stretched across the floor, all that was left behind by the ashigaru that had been destroyed.

That most certainly wasn't typical of most ghosts, either.

But there wasn't very much time to analyze what she was seeing, not when the second wave of defense had already arrived.

There looked to be more of them, now. And their position was certainly more difficult. The arquebus-wielding ashigaru had arranged themselves more carefully, and there were more of them. While A-188's aggressive assault had smashed through the main formation once again, it didn't account for every opponent that had now entered combat.

As Agent Amano moved up on their left flank, Arisa took the right, pouring magical energy through her legs, across the fibers of her muscles to put on an additional burst of speed as she exited into one of the gardens.

Bracing one hand against the flat of Ifrit's blade, she turned the enormous sword sideways, hearing shots impact on its surface only to be sent skittering off into the darkness uselessly.

While a barrier spell would have been more reliable, it was harder to cast and maintain while she was moving.

As she reached her first target, the fire mage twisted her wrist, retaking Ifrit's hilt in both hands and swinging it in as harp arc that swiftly tore through the arquebus-wielding ashigaru's armor and split its body in half. Her swing continued, immediately striking the second nearest of the phantom soldiers and cutting it apart in the same motion.

But that wasn't her only goal.

She'd cut through the crumbling wall.

Now she'd make her way around the Ashigaru's formation, and attack from the other side---!

Agent Mae's efforts produced a curious result.

While the 'living' phantom ashigaru simply reacted, stepping back and swinging at the incense as it was tossed, or moving to avoid it wordlessly, the piles of ooze had a considerably different response.

There was a faint, but noticeable hissing sound, as if something was burning from the initial contact. And then, suddenly, the piles of ooze were moving, as if pulled by some other force, dragged into the darkness to be moved away from potential source of damage.

Almost as if something else was aware of what was occurring. But why attempt to conserve ashigaru that had already been destroyed?

Unless---

@Rune_Alchemist@Eisenhorn@Izurich@OwO@Raineh Daze

With the sole ranged phantom ashigaru promptly dealt with by none other than Zhao and his fists of death, Masaru moved to follow after his teammate with more aggressive positioning. If their enemy was to take a more defensive posture to use their spears as tools to ward them off—against an archer, no less—then there clearly had to be some sort of misstep in their training.

Well, assuming they had been given any, at least.

As Zhao moved to break through their weapons, Masaru began to fire volley after volley of arrows into the gaps where the martial artist wasn't. If their enemies had been felled with simple shots like those he had fired earlier, then surely he could just turn them into pincushions and achieve the same result in less time... Right?

"Well, trash mobs like these are an... Okay warmup, I guess? Still feels a bit like target practice, which isn't particularly riveting," he remarked as he fired another volley of arrows. "...So if we've got foot soldiers here, maybe we'll find some sturdier stuff deeper in? Wonder how you go past 'armored samurai' in the chain, though, since I assume that's what's up next..."

@Psyker Landshark@Raineh Daze

With their spears snapped by Agent Zhao's empowered strikes, the phantom ashigaru had little choice but to step back and attempt to regroup, something they were unable to do due to the arrows loosed by Agent Tachibana. And, indeed, the most immediate threat in the form of the arquebus-wielding ashigaru had already been dealt with.

Unfortunately, this success was not to last.

As the latest victims of the Agents' assault collapsed into black ooze, it seemed as if the next line of defenses was already moving into place.

Arguebus-wielding Ashigaru entered from open spots in the walls, using the damaged mansion's halls as cover as they raised their weapons and took aim.

Joining them were phantoms wielding katanas, sticking near their ranged comrades in a bid to make it more difficult to directly assault them.

Finally, the line of spear-wielding ashigaru blocking off the main hallway had reformed, to prevent any attempt to run past the defense.

But that wasn't all.

Behind the spear line was a taller figure, now, clad in less worn and more maintained armor. A katana was gripped in both of his hands.

Perhaps not a samurai, simply lacking the ostentatious decoration of such warriors' armor, but some form of more capable mercenary? Or rather a phantom evoking such a fighter.

However---

The as the Agents passed further down the hall, the ooze left behind by the slain soldiers was starting to slowly move, stirring...

@PKMNB0Y@Psyker Landshark@Raineh Daze

With Terakoma tearing up the ashigaru, it seemed like reinforcements were specifically coming in to slow the monster down, the spear-wielding opponents not providing much of a threat, but their persistence--and the occasional prod--were unerringly leading her away from the frontal assault that she had initiated and down a side path. One comparatively free of arquebusiers, with those not yet destroyed electing to ignore the whatever-the-hell-it-was and focus on the more human agents.

One thing that wasn't focusing those down was an unexpectedly solemn looking figure. Somewhat armoured, true, but more notably covered with its head covered in some sort of white robe--and, shockingly, the naginata it was using was actually deflecting the wild attacks that had disposed of so many.

That wasn't to say that the others were being given an easy route in; Arisa's flanking manoeuvre had been met with a surprising reserve of sword-wielding opposition, preventing the increasingly-ragged firing line from being entirely wiped out. And the remaining arquebusiers were now using cover as they reloaded, making further pickoffs increasingly unlikely--and meaning that the remainder of the frontal squad was, of course, being shot at.

Now that Agent Mae had joined the fray, the scales were tipped even further in Sefirot's favor as the now-five member squad of humans, anomalies, and anomalous humans simply plowed through the spectral facsimile of the sengoku era soldiers. The Fleshweaver performed her duty well, taking up the bulk of the attention while the Ex-Cop and Blazing Runeknight covered the left and right flank respectively, the three frontliners supported invaluably by the arcane might of the Possessed Drowner and the Changgwi Exorcist, altogether, they became living proofs why Branch-092 was considered as among the best in Sefirot.

However, powerful as they were, there were several good reasons why AMATERASU and the higher-ups decided to send so many agents to handle this particular anomaly, as they wouldn't simply keel over against an overwhelming force. Their foe - whoever or whatever they were - seemed to possess extraordinary versatility as it appeared to gradually adapt to the assailants. An example of that came in the form of a spectral warrior-monk, a twisted reenactment of Uesugi Kenshin's loyalists, the humanoid creature stood firm even against the mass of eldritch flesh who could so easily dispatch its ashigaru compatriots.

"RrRrGgHh?!" A mindbending abomination Teratoma might be in its current form, it still possessed the same pseudo-sapient mind as the green-haired young girl it often masqueraded as, thus, after a few clashes of teethed-tentacles against the monk's naginata, the fleshweaver stopped for a moment, then all of its randomly-scattered eyes turned to leer at its new adversary. "..." Before it began to... shift.

Did you know... that according to Shintoism, there's a certain creature that represents the corrupted form of immortality?

Whereas the Kami were divinely immortal, there was always the other side of the coin, the unholy dark to the divine light. After all, aren't evil spirits immortal too?

Among these blighted entities, one stood as the representation of their depraved deathlessness...

I will lay apart
Its carapace flaps and feel
Its innards to find
Why its trace remains inside
Like a phantom tumor

After a period of snapping bones, wriggling flesh, and clicking carapaces, an Ōmukade stood tall in front of the warrior-monk, its carapace black and gray while its head and tails remained in the same flesh-red as Teratoma's true form, its elongated form towering above the naginata-wielding wraith.

For a few tense seconds, the monk and the insectoid youkai stared at one another, naginata gripped harder as the latter's mandibles began clicking ominously. At first glance, it seemed obvious who was actually on the side of humanity. Shinto legends would tell them that the warrior-priest would be the one to slay the man-eating youkai, but alas, reality wasn't often so simple.

Thus, without a moment left to spare, the Oomukade snapped forward, giant mandibles poised to snap the warrior-monk in two, but the wraith responded, using its naginata to prevent the creature's jaws from closing further in. As they struggled against one another, the centipede's tail and body began wrapping around its foe in an effort to crush them, but unlike the ashigaru, the monk was swifter, stronger, it managed to disengage just in time, performing a backward somersault to avoid a terrible fate. Their stance reset, the two combatants charged once more, both of them knew that only one may leave this place intact, would it be the spectral priest or the eldritch centipede? Sooner or later, one would find out...

@Raineh Daze @VitaVitaAR @Eisenhorn @Rune_Alchemist @OwO

"A-188 is getting split off!"

Yūma barked out the warning to the other agents present with the frontal assault team, a weaving step evading another spear thrust, using his momentum to move into his reach to slam a brass knuckle upwards, sending another one of the ghost ashigaru down for the count. With the core of the assault drawn away, the flanking action had turned into an isolated attack. Switching back to his pistol, the former officer moved to regroup with Agent Murakami, supporting her with his service pistol to keep her flanks clear. He knew better than to stand alone and continue pressing the, albeit far more appealing, brawling advance. Divided they would get torn apart, no matter how good they were individually. The blackpowder wielders were getting smart, which meant he had to focus more on countering their incoming fire, moving erratically between what concealment and cover he could find, pacing shots between them.

"Whatever you did, Agent Mae, keep it up, I'll provide cover."

Yūma had positioned himself in a spot that could keep a broad eye on everything occurring. A-188 was beyond his ability to reach currently, not with the combination of gun wielding Ashigaru and the sword forces engaging to keep the frontline from falling apart completely. Agent Mae's efforts had not gone unnoticed, the remains being driven away and seemingly reacting poorly to the incense sticks being thrown. His current efforts were focused on preventing any of the phantom ashigaru from either flanking the remaining agents, or firing on them from covered positions. He couldn't afford the luxury of conserving ammunition with A-188 being lured off the war path, and if he could prevent an allied agent from getting hit, all the better.

Numako Yamamizu
Branch-092 - Offices
@Raineh Daze@VitaVitaAR@Eisenhorn@Izurich@OwO

---

Whatever the black ooze that the creatures collapsed into...well, in her professional opinion, was not good in the slightest. She had experience with spooky black liquid, after all. As the others continued their assault, Numako remained mostly near the rear. They certainly were handling the fighting relatively well and easy enough...she thought, briefly perhaps that she could take it easy. Stay near the back and not get involved and simply let them do all the fighting. It was relatively safe back here and she didn't want to get in the thick of it.

"I'll support her best I can." She'd shout back to Yuma. Was It actually a Her? Probably not, but it was far easier to say that then A-188. As her tired eyes fell upon Teratoma and the naginata wielding specter that seemed fairly adept at not getting crushed. While Agent Mae, Yuma, and Arisa were busy dealing with the chaff then...

"Haa...I could really go for something spicy right now..." Moving without any hint of swiftness through the battlefield, Numako made to evade a few of the Ashigaru, while a thick barrier of black water was put between herself and the Arquebus wielding specters. Bullets sank into the black water, stopped in their tracks.

As she got close enough, between when the Ashigaru were reloading, the barrier of water dissipated, as the structure sank and then...a wide arc of the black liquid shot overhead, raining down on both the Ashagaru immediately in front of her. Notably however - it was aimed to land right on top of the Naginata wielding warrior that Teratoma was busy trying to chew on. It wouldn't be a particularly powerful attack, but with any luck the cursed water should weaken the specter enough for Teratoma to finish off. She'd need to get a bit closer in order to try and bind the spirit.

Ooh, they were getting smarter. What fun! The ex-criminal gave the situation a brief once-over, considering the enemies' capabilities, as well as his teammates'. The kid was probably a better shot than the gunners by far, but there was only one of him, and several of them. Beyond that, Pinkie could always just portal the rest somewhere else. Some war-torn shithole, maybe? Or Antarctica. Who gave a crap about Antarctica?

Still, the arquebus-wielders were definitely the largest problem by far at the moment. As much as he'd like to go one on one with the big guy, it was difficult to do so if Jinhai was riddled with bullets. He shot Masaru a brief nod, drawing his pistol.

"I'll keep the gunners distracted, feel free to put holes in the spearmen. Pinkie, if you're gonna just portal these all away, mind at least leaving the big guy? He looks just interesting enough."

Jinhai raised his piece, and moved. He was a blur of motion as he charged the gunners, his pistol trailing smoke from the barrel as he shot blessed 10mm bullets at the phantom ashigaru. The bullets were just a distraction as Jinhai closed the distance, reaching melee with the gunners as he started to tear into them with knees, elbow strikes, and the occasional pistol whip.

@Raineh Daze @PKMNB0Y

Despite expectations that the enemy might have survived more than a single hit, Masaru found himself ever so slightly disappointed at their complete lack of durability. With Zhao covering the vanguard as he was now, the duration really did boil down to little more than target practice. Arrow after arrow flew true, crippling any ashigaru that had miraculously not been shot somewhere "lethal"—not that they lasted long afterwards, though. Between the flurry of limbs and follow-up attacks, crushing the defensive line was but child's play.

Just as they were beginning to make headway, though, the defensive line that the team had broken through for but a moment seemed to reform in an instant. Despite the lighting in the area being less-than-ideal, though, Masaru could make out more than a few of the phantoms taking aim; with more melee-oriented ones essentially marking the positions of a few barely-concealed rifling, though, it made sense to try and take them out before potshots could start being issues of any sort.

Not that he'd have any chance to, though, as Zhao took the offensive and began to rush down the snipers before he could.

"You're fine without any covering fire?" Masaru chimed in as he shifted his focus back towards the spearmen standing staunchly between them and the rest of the main hallway. "Don't think the guys turtling over there are liable to break formation or anything."

Regardless of his thoughts on the matter, Masaru began to unload volley after volley into the stationary ashigaru, to the point where he began to intentionally move forward to bait stabs before retreating and firing into any openings made as a result.

This wasn't a phalanx, after all; poking the line until it broke wasn't exactly too outlandish if the only things he had to be aware of were linear stabs or stray bullets, and moving unpredictably solved both of those issues easily.

@Psyker Landshark@Raineh Daze

While Ifrit was a huge and powerful blade, Arisa certainly hadn't expected this sort of resistance to her latest attempt to press her attack. In contrast to the arquebusiers, who were unable to swiftly draw any melee weapons they may have possessed before being cut down, the phantom swordsmen were swifter, able to block her assault together and force her to take a step back before lunging forward for their own.

They didn't have time for this.

Every moment that passed was a moment that added further unpredictability. The presence of the sohei currently clashing with the shapeshifted A-188 was proof of that. It was obvious that not only were the tactics of the phantoms improving, but so were the quality of the enemy soldiers being deployed.

All of this proved that they had to find the source of these phantoms and put a stop to it that much more quickly.

And so, Arisa push that much harder.

Magical energy flowed down her arm, as if it was passing through her veins, down to her fingertips. This time, it wasn't use to simply strengthen her limbs.

This time it flowed from her body, Arisa pushing her mana from her own being and into the enormous blade gripped in both her hands.

The first phantom ashigaru raised his blade---

"Ifrit, Ignite!"

---and flames blazed across Ifrit's edge as Arisa swung it in an outward arc. Armor snapped instantly, the sudden outpouring of heat even enabling her to break the ashigaru's word in two.

With the blazing blade raised over her shoulder, Arisa sprang forward before body even broke apart, using the other phantoms as cover from the arquebusiers as she swung her blade downwards, the burning weapon searing the air and parting the next ashigaru's body from its lower half.

They had to push further!

@Rune_Alchemist@Izurich@Raineh Daze@Eisenhorn@OwO

---

As the arquebusiers fell, others of their number backed up, taking cover around walls as the spear-wielders adjusted their positioning. Still, it was clear that their numbers were dwindling, the combined efforts of the Agents assaulting the rear of the building grinding down this wave of defense.

Unfortunately, this was not to last.

The tall sword-wielding man raised his hand, and at the very moment he did the arquebusiers pulled back around the corners and out into the air.

There was a tapping sound as several round, dark balls were tossed into the hall, ahead of the spear formation.

The fact the remaining ashigaru swiftly averted their eyes made it all too clear what was about to happen.

When the flashbombs went off, particularly swift, lightly-armored phantoms wielding short katana, handcannons, and even in one case a kusarigama would suddenly leap into the hallway, the nearest immediately trying to catch Agent Zhao with a swift thrust of its blade.

@Raineh Daze@PKMNB0Y@Psyker Landshark

With the intervention by Numako, the seeming stalemate between the warrior monk and the monstrous centipede was broken, with the shapeshifting anomaly coming out on top. Sadly, as the warrior monk turned into goop, it didn't seem like it was aware of or even responding to the irony of the entire situation. The few reinforcements that came too late didn't offer much more than a pokey distraction.

Of course, now that Arisa was outright cutting them in half, and being supported by Zhao, their offence had gone from flanking to a two-pronged attack and it seemed like they were overwhelming the enemy once again.

Except. Except not all of the sludge had been cleared away, and some of it was reforming into the very enemies that had already been defeated, spearmen bristling as they went in on the flanking team for an encirclement, and an arquebusier formerly shot in the head raising its loaded gun at the girl from behind.

---

"I'm not allowed to drop anomalies or possible anomaly constructs in random places, that becomes an Incident," Sakura stressed, the small girl shrugging at the offer. And then letting out a particularly aggravated squeak at the flashbomb. Now she couldn't see anything, and that made doing anything clever with positioning or restraints quite impossible.

Which meant the next portal in front of her let forth more of a torrent of writhing limbs, disgorging more and more vaguely in the area of the attacking ashigaru for only a second or two before she cut the thing off. She didn't want to risk that the other agents would get hurt, after all... and being maybe hit by a destructive alien limb was definitely better than being definitely stabbed by a ghost soldier, right?

Judging from their mutually approaching trajectory, the Sōhei and the Ōmukade would clash once more, perhaps exchange a few blows after, but they'd ultimately end in another stalemate, a zero sum game just like the eternal battle between good and evil... except, the Heavens weren't with the priest that day. In serving a murderous entity that had so callously taken the lives of three innocents, the sōhei had forsaken its divine protection. Truly, that must be the reason why it found itself assaulted by the Defiled Waters from yet another youkai mid-charge.

The spectral monk's body hissed agonizingly as the Weeping God's inky curse burned it, the exact extent of the damage was unknown, but the result spoke for itself as it became weakened enough to falter, and even if the affliction would've only lasted barely a second, that slight moment of hesitation was enough for the eldritch centipede to snap shut its mandibles around the wraith's neck, and due to the size of the creature, it ended up crushing its head and shoulders as well. "!!" Noticing this, the insectoid monster made clicking noises that seemed to express triumph, then proceeded to swivel, staring at Numako for a second before slithering back toward the rest of the group on innumerable legs. Of course, smashing and crushing over more ashigaru as it did.

Upon rendezvousing, Teratoma the Ōmukade would lead the charge once more, stampeding any ashigaru foolish or unfortunate enough to get it in its way. Though A-188 wasn't exactly a brilliant strategist, it still knew what it must do, protecting her 'friends' as they ventured to the heart of the incident so the 'bad monsters' could be punished!

@Raineh Daze @VitaVitaAR @Eisenhorn @Rune_Alchemist @OwO

Mae Ah-ryeon

@Rune_Alchemist@Eisenhorn@Izurich@VitaVitaAR@Raineh Daze

Well. Numako be damned. Ah-ryeon was going to go all in on incense in lieu of being able to perform an actual ritual. It would probably be unpleasant for her, but it was worth the suffering. Though, incense had different meaning for natural spirits and household gods. While spirits of the dead were usually banished or dispersed, the supernaturally divine were generally appeased. If Numako was lucky, she'd just have to accept whatever her deal was being very content.

Using the chaos of the whatever their resident anomalies were doing, she went to work lighting a large handful of incense sticks. As she blew on the bottom like a straw, a thick plume of incense smoke erupted from the other end and accelerated the burn process. With a few kept in her hand in case of emergency, she tossed the rest into the air. Naturally, they dispersed around her as incense, smoke, and ash created a counter-encirclement.

"I can't carry infinite incense, so do try to wrap up this. Or find a way to grant me two minutes of song and dance." She announced to the others.

A-188 had support in the form of Numako, and that suited Yūma just fine then. As long as none of them stood alone, they would be in far better shape than not. Obvious thoughts aside, it seemed that the continued, combined efforts and shifting tactics had forced the Ashigaru on the backfoot again, the return of A-188 and Numako being very helpful for the cohesion of their assault. The problem was they were not making good headway, and unlike the others, his ammo supplies would be exhausted eventually. A-188 slammed into the Ashigaru while Agent Murakami tapped further into the pyrokinetics and bladeplay to smash the ranks further. Yūma kept in the center of the ad-hoc formation that had formed, pacing his shots more carefully, saving them to either prevent unseen attacks, or keep ashigaru gunners from employing their methods. The black puddles reforming into enemies, the ones that had not fled into the dark, was just plain unsporting. It did at least make the fight interesting again, since the anomalies bullying ashigaru would get old eventually.

The sudden surge of incense, smoke, and ash coming down announced that Agent Mae had, in fact, doubled down on the use of incense. That should turn the attempts by the ashigaru to surround them on its head, given the sudden falling cloud of the material. Agent Mae's announcement was very much in line with his own ammunition supply situation, he could only keep shooting for so long before he ran out of bullets. Punching ashigaru back into the black goo they came from was fun, but compared to the speed of elimination that the anomalous could provide? A waste of time if he had better options at hand, as much fun as it would be to get stuck in again. Glancing back to evaluate, Yūma spotted the arquebus ashigaru reform and begin to take aim, he barked a warning as he opened fire to interrupt it.

"Gunner behind!"

Yūma put several shots into the ashigaru, aiming to prevent it getting its shot off before shifting his stance again. Slipping a brass knuckle onto his left hand, he prepared to engage in close quarters shooting against any of the ashigaru that advanced on either himself or the incense wielding Mae, while hopefully conserving ammunition in the process. Agent Murakami, A-188, and Numako had proven that being surrounded only improved their lethality, and they were not exactly in need of as focused defense. Given the sudden ability of the ashigaru to form from their remains, someone had to keep their head on a swivel to watch for gunners materializing out of the woodwork, and Yūma took up that position while continuing to cover the anomalies and agents present.

@Rune_Alchemist@Izurich@VitaVitaAR@Raineh Daze@OwO

"Oh come on, what's the worst that could happen?" Jinhai asked casually as he rammed a knee up into an ashigaru's ribcage, the rest seeming to fall back. He would have said something further, but the flash bomb going off in his face just about nixed any further response for the moment.

"Agh! Prick!" The former Triad cried reflexively, wincing as he tried to clear his vision. When he managed to do so, the first thing he saw was a blade coming straight for his throat. Quick reflexes narrowly shaved Zhao Jinhai's life, the barest twist of body causing the sword to only graze his neck, drawing a slight bit of blood.

No time to think, the only thing that mattered to his continued survival was eliminating the threat in front of him. A rapid application of his fists to the new foe's face ended with Jinhai twisting the shade's head around in a neck snap, after which he picked up the ghostly body and hurled it at another of the new arrivals...huh. Well, that was something, at least.

"Look at that, ninjas! Really is like a movie now, huh, pinkie?"

@Raineh Daze @PKMNB0Y

With their offensive proceeding apace, Masaru continued firing volley after volley into the enemy's ranks with no other intent than to chip away at them until Zhao was able to move in and clean everything up afterwards. It seemed like a reasonable enough plan, given how quickly the older man was cleaning up shop, and it didn't seem like anyone or anything was likely to interrupt that simple plan of action.

Or so he believed, up until the point where the enemy decided to do exactly that. A cluster of flash grenades clattering to the ground followed by a bright light in the middle of a dark room was more than enough to disorient Masaru, and given the chaos he could hear unfolding around him, it was rather obvious that he hadn't been the only one caught off guard by them.

Didn't make anything about the situation easier to handle, of course, but it would at least make recovery less problematic if the only thing taken from them was their sight.

Out of habit, Masaru quickly backed up and put his back up against the nearest wall. With his eyes still attempting to recover from the blinding light, it only made sense to try and continue applying pressure onto the enemy forces rather than stop outright. Though aware that doing so made him a sitting duck, the Agent felt that something like this was better than attempting to blindly fumble about and get to cover to wait until his eyes recovered.

At least the ashigaru were probably still clustered up in formation; if he couldn't aim properly, then firing more arrows in that general direction was sure to force something.

Hopefully his sight would return before something tried to break past the chaotic lashing out of his teammates that he could make out around him; relying on hearing to fight was not a skill he was particularly accustomed to, much less fighting while literally bleeding out or missing a limb.

"My vision's still screwed up, so be careful of any stray arrows!" he called out before blindly firing a few volleys in the general direction of the largest group of enemies. "Point me in a direction and I'll shoot, but don't expect perfect bullseyes for a bit!"

@Psyker Landshark@Raineh Daze

"Tch---!"

The left-behind ooze was rising again? It wasn't just that there was seemingly an inexhaustible army ahead of them, but the already-defeated soldiers were reviving from destruction?

Thankfully, it seemed as if they did have a weakness. The ooze they left behind on destruction was being repelled by Agent Mae's efforts, her incense was effective. It interrupted the reformation of any ashigaru that hadn't fully formed, and additionally repelled the ooze and forced it back deeper into the ruined mansion.

But that didn't mean they weren't operating on a much stricter time limit then they'd initially thought.

Arisa knew this meant the current strategy of wiping out each wave simply wasn't sustainable.

They had to reach the source.

"A-188!" she called the shapeshifted anomaly, even as her burning blade crashed down to split another Ashigaru in half down the middle, "Teratoma! Keep going! Tear a path through their formation and head for the mansion's center! We'll follow you!"

With the sohei temporarily dealt with, they had to capitalize on this moment before any more dangerous warriors appeared. If the Ashigaru were forming defenses to prevent them from going deeper, it meant that whatever was spawning them was likely somewhere towards the center of the ruins.

Rather then fighting every wave and relying on Agent Mae's finite number of incense sticks to keep the reanimating soldiers at bay for as long as possible, they'd decapitate this phantom army!

@Raineh Daze@Eisenhorn@Izurich@OwO@Rune_Alchemist

---

If there was one good piece of news for the Agents in the rear team, it was the fact that Agent Yakumo's blind assault had managed to clear a path.

The ambushing shinobi were swift enough to evade the attack, though one was caught by the foot and pulled under and the dissolving form of the mercenary killed by Agent Zhao was smashed apart.

Agent Tachibana's arrows, too, aided in keeping them to the sides, forcing them to break off their ambush and helping to disperse what remained of the defensive line.

In the face of the tentacle assault, the large, katana-wielding figure seemed as if it decided to take a stronger defensive position deeper in the mansion, retreating down the hall while brandishing its long blade at the same time.

Unfortunately, as vision and hearing steadily returned to the Agents, it was evident that luck wasn't entirely in their favor. The bodies of the soldiers they had slain, left behind, were beginning to reform.

Ashigaru picking up their blades and spears, leveling their arquebuses to take aim at the Agents.

At the same time, however, they had a path forward.

If slaying the soldiers wasn't effective, then---

@PKMNB0Y@Psyker Landshark@Raineh Daze

Like a warhorse - or in this case, war-centipede - that had been given a sonorous warcry of a command by her 'rider', "GgRrAaAaAgHh!!" The Ōmukade... roared, which was something a centipede, or any insect really, shouldn't be able to do, but to be fair, if one was being charged at by a creepy-crawly the size of a schoolbus, pondering whether or not it should be able to roar would be hovering at the bottom of one's list of priorities. Spurred by Agent Murakami's directive, Teratoma did exactly that, galloping on a hundred legs as she tore a path forward, literally ripping and tearing anything that stood in its way; be it an ashigaru, a squad of ashigaru, tatami doors, or some random decorative fixture, nothing was spared from its insectoid wrath.

Not too far behind the Ōmukade, Agent Mae's exorcizing incense worked well at making sure the downed specters stayed down, or at the very least delaying their resurrection process enough for them to be a non-issue. Furthermore, the sengoku wraiths that did manage to revive at their backs were promptly dispatched by Agent Yūma. The collective effort of the two teams kept the scales in their favor, but at this point, it'd be folly to believe that they'd not succumb to a war of attrition. The wraiths were endless, and unlike living, breathing soldiers each with their own fears and willpower, these apparitions were mere extensions of a greater being; like clusters of white blood cells, they knew not fear, nor morale, they'd fight to the death, and when given the chance, live again to do the same, until the threat had been eliminated.

An outcome that Sefirot obviously wouldn't tolerate and the sentiment was shared amongst its agents, including the not-so-human ones. As yet another set of antique shoji doors fell victim to the carapace-clad youkai, Teratoma eschewed any sense of historical preservation over maintaining its momentum, its innumerable feet creating puncture and gash marks all over the tatami flooring and wooden beams. If whatever entity behind this considered the whole manor to be its "body", then it'd surely be writhing in agony right now.

The Fleshweaver could feel it, they were closing in on the enemy's heart, it wouldn't be too long now, wouldn't be too long indeed...

@VitaVitaAR @Raineh Daze @Eisenhorn @OwO @Rune_Alchemist