Alright, so he was doing something after all. Though "witch" damn well wasn't the right choice of expletives. Jinhai gave the samurai a shit-eating grin as he stepped to the side, allowing Arisa to deliver her flaming greatsword towards the samurai without issue. The moment she did, he surged forward, weaving through the storm of steel the armored ghost was putting up and retaliating with his fists and elbows whenever he got a chance. There weren't many, but the blows he did manage to land would leave the samurai reeling from sheer concussive force and spiritual cleansing.

Another flash of the katana. A bit slow to evade this time. Blood ran down Jinhai's cheek from the gash that just opened, but he persisted. It was all about watching the wrists, not the actual blade. The samurai's attention was still on him. The ghost wound back just enough for Jinhai to read his next move. A straight horizontal cleave. Finally. Perfect.

The samurai made his attack, and Jinhai brought his palms together to catch the blade by the flat, blood already dripping from his palms where he'd had to make contact with the edge.

"Got his ass!" Jinhai yelled to Arisa, to anyone who was within range. "Kill him now!"

This wasn't just a force of Sengoku-era military phantoms any longer. The appearance of the komainu made that clear enough. Just what was this samurai ghost here for? Not only were his efforts seemingly entirely defensive, but on top of that the use of the two guardian dogs to bolster them meant that---

There was no further time to think it over. Arisa gritted her teeth as the enormous komainu bore down on her, jaws snapping as it lurched forwards.

Fleeing would only keep it chasing her, something she couldn't afford to do if she wanted to reach the samurai in time and deliver a critical blow. Even if it made all the other enemies vanish, she had to guarantee she could deliver that blow rather then being crippled or killed before she could reach her target.

So she'd take the legendary guardian head on. Quickly, efficiently, and without wasting a single moment!

Magical energy poured down the redhead's arms, flowing down her fingertips and igniting lines of light visible through her skin. She was forcing as much power into her arms, reinforcing her limbs as much as possible, as quickly as possible. If she didn't do this, she would almost certainly be injured just by what she was attempting.

In fact, Arisa wasn't sure she'd escape injury regardless. But she had to remove this obstacle as fast as she could.

Ifrit tore through the air, and found its target, slamming between the jaws of the komainu as they clamped down on the blade. Her whole body rocked, her teeth gritting as the impact reverberated up her arms and throughout her whole body.

She poured more magical energy through her arms, feeling like a fire was igniting inside of them. But instead, flames flowed across Ifrit's blade, the enormous sword burning brightly.

But she wasn't just trying to weaken the stone by superheating it. Doing some damage was ideal, but her real goal---

"Get out... of the way---!"

The enormous amount of magical energy pouring into her arms blazed even brighter, further light pouring down her limbs as she abruptly yanked her blade sideways, in a bid to knock the stone beast off balance or even cause it to topple over.

The instant she was attacked, the naginata-wielding spirit twisted her body, sending the soldiers following along behind her ahead as she spun in place. While she didn't respond swiftly enough to make a counter-attack of her own, she used the shaft of her weapon instead, intercepting the first strike and in the same motion leaping back to gain distance, before swinging the naginata down in an arc.

This close, it was clear she was markedly different from the other faceless phantoms, eyes, nose, and mouth visible, albeit still composed of inky darkness, beneath her helmet. Additionally, despite her proximity to the smoke, she didn't seem nearly as affected by it...

The hulking figure attempting to attack Agent Mae staggered, stumbling. A combination of the healer's smoke and the arrows striking its body was certainly having an effect, as the phantom was forced to stop its charge in order to adjust his targets, sweemingly aware it couldn't attack Agent Mae without being destroyed first.

Of course, this single moment gave an opportunity between the komainu's arrival for Masaru to land a well-placed shot---!

As the larger creature stumbled and it's charge slowed, Masaru wasted no time in loosing one last shot aimed up through the bottom of it's head before attempting to retreat. While he had been expecting an immediate response from the thing after firing at it, the monster being forced to refocus meant that the young man had ample opportunity to draw back and pull the fight away from their healer.

Unfortunately, though, Masaru had failed to account for the possibility of the enemy simply siccing another enemy his way. A massive komainu-esque monster had popped out of the shadows, and when the young man glanced over at it for a brief second out of instinct, it was almost as if he could head an alert sound pop into his head. It didn't take a genius to figure out that it wanted his head, and that meant that a continued offense was absolutely not the correct choice of action.

Rather than trying to dance around the enemy he had been trying to kill until now (as he was unsure how likely that his arrow would even lead to a lethal blow to begin with), Masaru hopped backwards and turned his attention towards the komainu rushing him down before firing a few arrows towards the only obvious soft spots on it's body—namely, the eyes and mouth—before readying an arrow and aiming straight at the beast's head. There, a small spiral of water had begun to form upon the arrowhead thereupon, and before long that spiral had begun to move so quickly that the motion of the water could scarcely be perceived.

Wordlessly, the Agent let that arrow fly head-on towards the monster's head. If it came down to it, he would have to abandon any notion of trying to counterattack and focus solely on evasion, but he had to make use of what time he had now to do as much as he could. Wasting time occupying the enemy only mattered so much as he was alive and the others were getting things done, after all.

Yūma was not a fan of how things were progressing right now. The constant, confined sound of arquebus fire had already been deafening, and now the ashigaru force had drummed up cannons of all things, something that, quite frankly, he was neither equipped nor positioned to deal with. The samurai was not going down easy, there were Guardian Statues rushing them down now, and to top it all off, his attack on the naginata wielding spirit had only distracted her, the rest splitting and moving like professional soldiers, an impressive block giving momentum enough to create distance to bring her weapon down in a dangerous downwards arc. Swaying to the side, Yūma slammed his boot down to either pin or, if he was lucky, break the naginata at the lowest point of the swing. He didn't have the luxury to focus on making further call outs, dueling had that effect of focusing the mind and attention to a razor's edge.

Naginata was dangerous, the plan in pinning or breaking the weapon a natural response to that, and further eliminating as much waste in his actions as possible. Put the female spirit on more equal footing with him, or at least eliminate the reach advantage for a moment. The back of his mind, not focused on dueling the spirit, had noted that she was more distinct, and broadly speaking far less impacted by the efforts of Agent Mae. Strange, though he would have to speculate with others later, as he used the twisting motion that came with his stomp to transfer into another strike, a snappy right hook aimed right for the ribcage of the spirit, aiming to start a chain of blows that would keep the spirit off kilter until banished from the damage. He might need to look into getting some sort of blessings or modifications done to his brass knuckles, something that he should have done in retrospect, but for the time being it was the honest way. One blow at a time.

The samurai paused for a second, as if dumbfounded by his blade being caught--and then opted to retreat, abandoning the weapon entirely with a jump back and smoothly pulling up a replacement at the same time. Of course, that briefly raised the question of how exactly the ghost was planning to shoot a bow with no arrows--

Ah, some form of magical lightning condensed into an arrow. And that would do it. If anything, this was worse than sword fighting, because it would quickly become apparent that these hit much harder than the musket balls had. On the plus side, at least it was slightly easier to dodge them--advantageous, unless Zhao wanted to be both pincushioned and electrocuted.

Both the komainu were showing the expected resilience of stone guardians--Arisa's swing sent hers flying, but it scrambled to its feet easy enough, and rather than going back for the sword-wielder seemed to show the awareness to get her attention another way: lunging for Zhao's back, where he'd be hard pressed to deal with both it and dodging the arrows. Masaru... well, after briefly pausing, that beast began to charge forwards again, the arrow sticking out of its head having been insufficient to entirely bring it down.

Fortunately, the tide seemed to be turning with the common enemies--the ashigaru were no longer reforming, the goop instead streaming back towards their primary enemy, being absorbed beneath the armour. Even the cannons had accepted being destroyed by a rampaging monster, failing to get another shot off. Not that Tera was entirely left alone, their final previous foes revealing themselves: a handful of practically-dressed types, carrying some rather obvious metal spheres. With lit fuses. Right next to her, in grabbing range.

With a mighty pounce - a maneuver that should be impossible for centipedes - Teratoma leapt through the air and simply body-slammed the cannoneers, letting its weight, size, and gravity do most of the work. Upon landing, it thrashed about for good measure, making sure it caused as much disruption as possible. Overall, it achieved its purpose as the antiquated batteries didn't manage to get another shot off... or so it thought.

"RrRrRrGgGgHh?!" Out of the multi-faceted corner of its compound eyes, the Ōmukade saw more of those spectral artillerists, carrying what appeared to be spheres of metal, the sparking lit fuse making it obvious what they'd be used for. It's a bit inconsiderate of them, wasn't it? Here Tera was, already showing what would happen to naughty wraiths, but they were just simply too stubborn, well, just meant it had more to punish. Before that however, the giant insect noticed that the inky ooze was no longer reshaping into new soldiers, instead coalescing toward the naughtiest one of them all, the samurai.

"..." A tinge of deviousness flashed across the shapeshifting abomination's mandibled visage as Tera swiftly slithered around the cannonball-carrying ashigarus, practically surrounding them with its long segmented body. After that, it began curling up like a pillbug - or a rollcake for a less buggy reference - with said ashigarus caught between its carapace, sandwiching them. However, instead of immediately crushing them, Tera began rolling instead, barreling toward the samurai, carrying a bunch of ashigarus and their lit cannonballs with it!

"GgGgRrRrRrHhHh!!!" With an otherworldly roar, the carapaced wheel of explosive doom essentially unleashed a kamikaze attack upon the pesky samurai!

The good news was that he had a functional sword again. The bad news was that his gambit didn't exactly pan out. Oh, well. You won some, you lost some. Jinhai just shrugged to himself before flipping the katana around, grasping it by the hilt with one hand. He turned to the samurai with a grin, only to blink at what he saw next.

Some sort of...lightning arrow. Well, shit. And in his peripheral vision, an animated komainu rushing for his back. Double shit. Without time to think about his next move, Jinhai leapt up into the air, instinctively going for the first idea that came to mind. He'd seen this move he was about to outright steal...somewhere. He just couldn't remember where.

Jinhai raised his pilfered sword, crashing it against the arrow of magical lightning. It sparked and ran across the blade, shocking his hands somewhat before he hurriedly swung, redirecting the lightning down towards the komainu whose charge he'd just leapt over. He landed on it feet first, qi-empowered limbs aiming to smash into it and do whatever damage he could.

On one hand, she'd managed to toss the komainu away from herself to open her path to the main threat.

On the other, it had instead lunged for Agent Zhao immediately after recovering, what damage she had inflicted far too little to successfully cripple it.

Thankfully, the Chinese Agent had managed to redirect one attack into his new attacker, which meant her pathway to the main threat was still open.

Presumably, the most efficient way to destroy every remaining opponent would be to deal with him rather then take them all out individually. Disabling the central spirit was the best option they had.

Why was this spirit using komainu to begin with? If he was a negative presence, how could it even create something in the image of the stone guardians?

It wasn't adding up, especially given the purifying smoke and Agent Zhao's blows hadn't had the expected effects, but there wasn't any time to worry about that now.

If spiritual purification wasn't working, the best possible route was overwhelming him with force.

With most of the enemy dissipated, Arisa could focus, raising Ifrit's enormous blade back over her shoulder and channeling magical energy down her arms, into her fingertips, and up the blade's edge. Flames leaped across the weapon's form, surging across the massive sword and swiftly turning it into a column of fire gripped in both her hands.

Slamming one foot forward, Arisa swung it down, projecting an arc of near-white flame towards the samurai that seared the air as it passed.

Agent Amano's efforts weren't in vain. The naginata was lodged to the floor, and the Agent's first blow struck her in the side. The phantom visibly gritted her teeth, a far more notable response then any prior phantoms had given, before leaping back out of range, hands no longer on her weapon.

As she moved back, she drew its replacement: A rather long-bladed katana gripped in both of her hands, which she immediately swung in a waist-high arc.

Yūma was keeping track of the goings on as best he could out of the corner of his eye. The samurai had been disarmed, only to produce a bow with lightning for arrows. Great, fantastic, though that didn't seem to throw off Agent Zhao as he redirected the lightning back towards the komainu before coming down on it like a ton of bricks. A-188 was barreling into the explosive wielding enemies, another slight problem he was in no position to address but had to leave to the Anomaly to handle instead. Agent Murakami was throwing out all the stops, apparently, the bright white flame of the blade directed squarely at the Samurai would, hopefully, put an end to this. Until then, however, he still had a fight that was turning out to actually be engaging to get to.

The actual facial expressions, gritted teeth and all, were unexpected frankly. The other spirits had simply taken blows stoically, fading into the black ooze when destroyed, not this one though. Coupled with the resilience to all the incense, there was more going on here than it seemed. Still, her response to move back from the momentum, coupled with going for another weapon, was smart. Pushing back off the pinned naginata, Yūma aimed to evade the midlevel swipe. Higher or lower he could have evaded forward, be it under or over the blade, but he didn't have supernatural powers to boost his movements like the other agents. The blade was close to striking its mark, but as it passed, Yūma couldn't let the spirit woman retain the momentum.

Pushing off his backfoot, hard, Yūma launched himself forward, ducking low and moving towards the side that the blade was passing to now. He needed to get in close, stay in close, throwing a straight left towards the spirit's core again, aiming to land more body blows. He had to trust the others to handle the ashigaru chaff, letting this one close to Agent Mae would be not ideal, given its displayed resilience so far. Which meant he had to keep the aggression up, following up the straight by keeping in close and throwing a rapid series of jabs and hooks, trying to keep the spirit from going back on the offensive again. Besides, this was far more interesting than simply brawling through disposable, identical ashigaru, and the loose grin on Yūma's face as he pressed the attack was evidence of that.

Though bringing the monster down with a single arrow would have been the ideal miracle in this situation, Masaru was not particularly concerned with the fact that the arrow had not dealt anything that seemed even close to meaningful damage. Rather, it was more like he hadn't fired the attack with any intent to kill in the first place.

No, the act of simply lodging the arrow inside the beast's head would have been enough to proceed with the rest of his original plan. The brief pause in the komainu's gait had given the Agent an extra second to make even more distance between himself and the monster—valuable time in it's own right—but what might have been more relevant was the fact that the young man could spot some other form of electricity—not of his own making, of course—being prepared and fired off.

"...Damn, guess this bow must be mass-produced or something," he half-joked before nocking an arrow and aiming towards the same spot that his first had landed in. The projectile was still there, of course—sticking out right in the middle of the monster's head—and with it, of course, was all the water he had used to drill that hole into it with in the first place.

Pure water wasn't particularly conductive in the least, but after being mixed with whatever made these beings up and all the metals in the arrowhead itself, surely a proper shock straight to the brain would fry this thing in short order.

With that thought in mind and his bow crackling with electricity, the young man took a deep breath before beginning to fire a multitude of lightning-laden arrows in rapid succession towards the komainu. With the arrow present already functioning as a miniature lightning rod, the damage would surely continue to build up even if the arrows themselves din't meet their mark outright.

The samurai didn't even turn to look at Tera's attempted advance--the final ashigaru gambit had paid off far more than whatever this ghost's intelligence expected, with the entire short-fused explosion hitting Tera. More than enough to derail any attempted rolling attack, and at least leave his back free to continue fighting against the invaders.

Aside from Tera's mishap, it seemed like they were winning: both the komainu shattered and crumbled, and that only left the samurai and the onna-bugeisha still standing, putting the numbers--at last--firmly in their favour. Seemingly recognising this, the warrior woman disengaged from Yuuma with alacrity, retreating to the bow-wielding samurai just in time to push him away from the searing flames.

Which meant they only had two more to deal with. Unfortunately, even with the slight pause of surprise at his rescue, the samurai remained undaunted, and the remaining goop continued to flow inwards. As for what this meant? Well, now each arrow released immediately split into a dozen more. And he showed no signs of slowing down the shotgun-like approach, especially with a sword-wielding guard to handle anybody rushing for him.

The plan was perfectly calculated, but man, was the anomaly bad at math. Alas, no one was perfect, not even interdimensional eldritch creatures; Tera possessed unparalleled mastery over genetics and biology, but unfortunately explosives wasn't covered in either. The centipede's rolling kamikaze attack blew up in its face, quite literally. The anomaly had overestimated how long those fuses would last and thus, the primitive bombs went off far sooner to do any meaningful damage to the samurai.

As consequences for its blunder, Teratoma alone received the full brunt of multiple explosives point-blank, and unlike those musket bullets and cannonballs, good ol' explosions could effectively wound the shapeshifting anomaly, not as much as incendiary weapons, but with sufficient power, they practically bore similar results. Red alien flesh splattered everywhere as the shockwave erupted outward. In a matter of milliseconds, the Ōmukade was there and then not, its youkai form destroyed...

...leaving only a mostly-intact blob made of the same flesh, though its size was a far cry from before, being no larger than a black bear at most. It seemed rather inert as well, showing that Teratoma was effectively in a daze, the equivalent of a human who had just suffered a flashbang going off on their face. Hopefully, its comrades would be able to finish off the samurai and the onna-bushi without it.

Yūma frowned as the warrior woman spirit disengaged, rushing to the aid of the Samurai while he had been in no effective position to prevent this retreat from occurring. A downside of brass knuckles, his reach was only as good as his arms, but more importantly, it was disappointing that the most interesting fight this whole mission had up and ran off to play hero. The odds were swinging in their favor at last, even as A-188 got blasted into submission, leaving the remaining Agents to deal with the samurai and onna-bushi. The Samurai seemed hell bent on preventing this, unleashing a veritable barrage of lightning, arcing every which way, forcing him to evade at least several of the many blasts that were being emitted like someone would with an automatic shotgun. Rude, and during his evasion, he had a simple goal in mind.

Continuing to move himself into an ideal position, Yūma was watching for the onna-bushi to become engaged, before drawing his pistol again. One shot left, time to make it count, and the moment the sword wielding woman was unable to intercede, Yūma would fire off his last shot, aiming squarely to put the bullet between the eyes of the Samurai and put an end to this once and for all. It would be anti-climatic if it worked, but Yūma was going to have to deal with the fact that he had been robbed a good fight, so might as well rob the Samurai of a proper, honorable death in close quarters. Especially if he was insistent on firing off lightning arrows at the volume he was clearly intending to, that simply would not do, and trying to get close from his current position would have just gotten in the way of the other Agents, so he relied on accuracy with his pistol instead.

One problem down. Both, if you included efforts that weren't his own. That just left the samurai and the onna-bushi left. Too bad his fingers were still twitching. He wouldn't be able to hold a sword to full effectiveness like this. So with some reluctance, Jinhai tossed the pilfered odachi aside for the moment, with every intention of retrieving it later. It wasn't technically losing a katana if he brought a replacement back, right?

Agent Zhao cracked his knuckles as he stalked forward, set to get back to work with his bare hands. He surged forward, weaving around and under the splitting lightning arrows as he tried to close the distance. Getting into melee range with the warrior woman would ensure that he didn't take any more fire outside of stray shots, as Jinhai doubted the samurai would risk shooting his only lifeline at this point.

A dive tucked into a roll, and he sprang up to lunge at the onna-bushi, aiming to get in close past the range of her weapon to land some devastating baji strikes against her.

With the komainu that had been pursuing him now most certainly dead (for the moment?), Masaru took a quick glance around to reassess the state of the battle as it was now. There weren't any accidental casualties in the interim—at least, not for anyone who injuries would matter to—so the Agent was free to join in on the whole 'dogpiling onto the only two targets left standing' thing that was going on.

The hail of electric arrows dividing in midair certainly felt unfair, though, especially when he could only fire one at a time. That wasn't any sort of replicable skill he could learn, and trying to clash with that head-on wouldn't do much of anything. All that could really be done was add more chaff to be blocked in hopes of overwhelming the onna-bugeisha so that someone who could land a more decisive blow could jump in and close this out.

The samurai had expanded his attack. The rain of lightning arrows was devastating, any single one that struck an unprotected target would surely deal grievous injury at best.

However---

The fight was nearing its end. Now left with only the onna-bushi as an ally, who herself was being attacked from multiple angles, the samurai had chosen to try and saturate the ruins with as many arrows as possible.

Arisa sucked in a deep breath.

"Ifrit!"

The blade raised back over her shoulder. Her grip tightened as she sent magical energy surging down her arms. She finally had a window of direct attack.

The heat passed through her fingetips, surging as leaping flames up Ifrit's wide, heavy blade, coating the weapon in fire. It grew brighter, casting a brilliant red-white glow across the ruined mansion as it surged upwards into the night sky and singed the crumbling wood behind her.

Gather it. Compress it. Concentrate it. Lock it as tightly to the blade as possible.

The leaping flames constricted and grew denser, hugging the shape of the enormous sword as they did. Despite it being fire generated from her own mana, Arisa could feel the heat washing over her body.

Tighter. Tighter.

She had to make sure she could reach the target in a single motion, or else she'd risk being struck by the arrows. There wasn't any defending to be done like this.

A single, final, decisive blow.

That's what she had to achieve.

In almost the same instant as Agent Amano fired his pistol---

"Release!"

The surging inferno exploded behind Arisa, turning a swathe of the ruined mansion to ash in an instant and leaving nothing further to burn.

The explosion of heat and sound sent the redheaded Agent rocketing forward, her feet leaving the ground as she hurtled directly for the samurai. She finally had an opening. She finally had a moment to prepare.

And finally---!

Ifrit slammed downwards, tearing through the air and trailing fire as it tore a path right for the ghostly warrior---!

Zhao pressing the attack on the warrior-woman seemed almost unnecessary by the time he could land a strike--if only because the entity had found a way to eliminate itself just as effectively: jerking to intercept Yuma's bullet. With her face.

At this defeat, the ghost froze up, staring at the black gloop--and flicking over to where Tera had been just seconds before, the portal conveniently transporting her outside the property having already gone--with what may have been a puzzled expression, under the armour.

Before eating the wave of fire in its entirety.

As the fire died out--

He was still there, scarcely seeming any the worse for wear, as if the damage had passed right through him to instead simply burn through the building on the other side. Yet, at least he wasn't fighting.

Stunned and disoriented, the anomaly was effectively incapacitated. A veritable sitting duck, while it would eventually recover by itself given time, it'd take but one more attack to truly finish the creature off. Fortunately, Agent Yakumo was quick to respond, using her Euclid-defying ability to send the fleshweaver back to the mansion's courtyard via a portal.

"...-so then I was like-... oh?" Agent Kawahara was just casually chatting with Agent Otsuka to pass the time when a familiar dark purple portal spawned near the two agents as a blob of alien flesh immediately plopped out of it, said portal vanishing immediately after, "Hey there, Tera~" It was a bit difficult to visually gauge its condition, what's with the lack of facial expression and visible wounds, but the flesh lump's lack of response might indicate its less than ideal condition. Well, guess there's a reason why Sakura pulled it off the battlefield.

With A-188 safely evacuated, now twas' up to the Anomaly's friends to contain the other - more malicious - anomaly.

Yūma observing the warrior woman spirit throwing herself in front of his shot, squarely catching the round between the eyes and sending her back into a puddle of goop, was not his preference for putting an end to this. A-188 had been evacuated as well, meaning that all that was left was for the samurai spirit to get incinerated by the impending attack from Agent Murakami. The others had been forcing the onna-bushi back, but as the flames cleared...the samurai spirit was unphased, simply standing there observing that it was finally alone. Still, even if it wasn't attacking at the moment, Yūma moved himself to the front of the Agents, slipping his brass knuckles back on just in case. He wasn't going to attempt to comment or imagine what shape Agent Murakami would be in after that much exertion, but other than bullets, Yūma could do this all day.

"Done throwing manifestations of the past at us, or do you need some final honorable duel to satisfy you?"

Yūma was wary, but the spirit had communicated before, and was intelligent. Those facts meant that simply pressing the assault wasn't necessarily the best idea, not when such a powerful attack had simply phased through it as if nothing had occurred than more than a warm breeze. The spirit had declared, on its honor, none would progress further. What good was honor when all its summons were spent and it was, practically speaking, almost unarmed? But if some honor bound fight might be key to banishing it than so be it. Still, Yūma was wary and ready to evade or block should the need arise, but the lack of continued attacks by the spirit samurai had been unexpected enough to attempt to engage it in another manner completely.

Ifrit lowered.

Her flame wave didn't appear to have done any visible damage, and yet...

Arisa could sense something had changed with the death of the onna-bushi phantom.

The ghostly samurai had stopped, staring at the black ooze that her body had collapsed into, silently. He no longer fought. He no longer moved.

Flames still danced over Ifrit's edge, but Arisa didn't take another step closer.

The samurai's bow fell to the ground at his side.

"... I... I remember now," he said, half-murmuring to himself as he placed a hand to his face, "This happened before. All of it... I already failed."

It had already been her guess that he was acting out events that had occurred in the past, but now it had been confirmed. Not only that, but the samurai seemed aware of if.

"This village and everyone in it have been dead for hundreds of years, have they not?"

He raised his head, now, addressing the assembled agents.

"I died in failure, surrounded by corpses of my fellows and those I had sworn to protect, and so that is how I spend eternity."

While no physical damage had occurred to him it seemed as if the death of the last phantom and the flame wave had penetrated his mind and reawakened him to full mental clarity.

But there was no telling how long this would last.

The samurai sank to his knees. He no longer seemed to have any intention of fighting, his unfocused gaze still lingering on the spot where the onna-bushi fell.

"If you have the ability, people of the current era, then end me," he said, simply, his tone lacking much inflection, "I am a failure who can only reenact his failure again and again. Nothing I do will bring the slaughtered people of this village back, and I cannot perish by my own hand after death, therefore I place it in your hands."

As opposed to a vengeful spirit, was the samurai more akin to a guardian spirit who had lost his mind? Arisa wasn't certain how to proceed. He had most certainly been responsible for the deaths of civilians, but conventional measures against wicked or mindless spirits were unlikely to have a permanent affect unless they could figure out exactly what was binding him here.

Which meant, perhaps, containment was the more effective option, but that still required being able to move him.