Now that things were less dangerous--and that meant much less running around trying to avoid being accidentally shot, although towards the end she'd just been keeping an eye out to see if anybody needed to be pulled out of the way of a lethal blow--there was time to think.

Not that she needed to do all that much thinking, this was a ghost story. But they'd really got the perspectives backwards, and if it weren't for being so ridiculously overboard for a traipse through an abandoned mansion, they'd have been just another list of victims. Maybe with some fancier deaths.

Plus, Tera's decision to become a giant monster centipede of all things helped a bit more on the ideas front.

"So... does anyone think I should go get a priest?" the girl wondered, playing with a strand of hair. "We wouldn't need one for exorcism, but I'm sure there's always room for another local god."

The onna-bushi went down, and the samurai...up and packed it in. Damn. Looked like seeing everyone else go down shocked him back into sanity. Good for everyone, bad for Jinhai's own entertainment. With a sigh, he walked over towards the odachi he'd tossed aside, kicked it up into the air with his foot, and snatched it by the hilt with his hand before resting the blade on his shoulder.

The former monk walked over towards the kneeling samurai, squatting down on his heels next to him.

"Yeah, well, trained monk here. Pretty sure I could get an exorcism going, don't think buddy over here's in any mood to keep on going, even as a local god." He said over in Sakura's direction before turning back to the warrior.

"That said, you wanna go out with honor, I know you're implying harakiri isn't working, but what if you had a second?" He lifted the odachi off his shoulder for a brief moment in emphasis before letting it rest again. "Could be what you're missing to let yourself pass on. Give it a thought, huh?"

Yūma had been braced for a lot of things. Some final grand show of force, suicidal last attack, ranting, raving, some grand speech or the like. He had not, however, been ready for the spirit to seem to come to his senses, collapse to his knees, and begin muttering about his failures and inability to escape whatever cycle he had been trapped in. Assuming, after his fellows had died alongside him, he has been stuck in this loop of murder, slaughter, defeat, realization, only to be condemned to it again, Yūma figured that Hell certainly was a thing. This samurai had been living a form of it, and if the agent knew of any way to put the spirit out of his misery, he would have done so without hesitation. Part of him felt a pang of guilt for enjoying the brawl with the spirit as much as he did, but it was gone as soon as it appeared. So far no one seemed keen on answering the question posed about everyone being long dead, which Yūma would at least confirm for the poor soul.

"Unfortunately, yes the village and its people are long since gone."

Listening as the offer to decapitate the samurai with his own sword, in an attempt to carry out the full ritual suicide, was another dark note on many that had come to the fore of this. He ran through his far more limited knowledge of the supernatural, of folklore and the like, thinking out loud as he did. Yūma was at his best fighting and brawling, but now was putting the other part of the whole job to work. Contain or eliminate the anomaly, which meant considering all the options available to them.

"Never been much of one for memorizing folklore, but wasn't there something about the spirits of the dead being unable to move on with unfinished business left? Resolving that might help too, least worth considering at any rate."

Numako Yamamizu
@Raineh Daze@VitaVitaAR@Eisenhorn@Izurich

---

Man, she really just wasn't cut out for this whole field work thing. At least, not this more aggressive kind anyways. Numako for most of the fight since her attempt to restrain their opponent had mostly taken a bit of a back seat, doing her best impression of a nonexistent ghost. Not to difficult, to remain Moreso at the edge of the fighting, expanding as little energy as she could just taking care of the small fries. Being useful without putting in too much effort.

The only things that had made her pause were when Tera got put out of commission, and when she had to take a quick dunk in her own water to avoid getting turned into an actual ghost.

And then, just like that, it was all over. She kind of understood this spirit guy in the end. She was...well, kinda similar in a way, only that technically she was more of a priestess of a corrupt local god. Should she do something? Say something? Maybe she could help...

"Whew...it's over. Im going to need a long massage after this. Hey, you got a name ghost guy?" She'd inquire, not really expecting much of a reply. "The others arent wrong, though." She'd say, piggybacking off of the others comments. "If you feel regret about not being able to protect the people, maybe give it a go again? Wont fault you for wanting to sleep though, heh. Could build a local small shrine here. Consecrate the grounds or whatever. A donation box people leave money and other offerings."

Hopefully she wasn't being too out of line, or speaking too much nonsense. And that third suggestion wasn't just for her own benefit, either. Definitely not.

The mission's resolution was not neat or tidy.

After reporting to command, first an attempt to assist the spirit in seppuku was made. Ideally, an anomaly that could be dealt with wouldn't simply be allowed to persist unchecked, and this was by his own request. As long as he remained lucid, that made it all the easier.

However, such efforts had failed.

It appeared as if the samurai was not just a wayward spirit, but the process of deification had already begun. Indeed, he was bound to the land itself, far harder to get rid of then the average spirit.

In retrospect, this explained the presence of the komainu, even if it was only in their image.

The decision to lock down the area and begin the process of converting the spirit fully into a local deity seemed to be the best option available, but only time would tell how well it would work.

It had been several days since the mission, now.

Arisa sighed heavily, leaning on the wall. It was frustrating, really, that the mission hadn't achieved a conclusive outcome. People had died, no matter how repentant the spirit was. But they couldn't seemingly remove him for containment, and assisting him with seppuku had failed entirely.

Still, at least the area was locked down and the anomaly was registered. This was no risk of civilians entering and being caught up if the spirit forgot his own death again. Since his powers seemed limited in range, at the very least lockdown could ensure that.

Now, it was a matter of waiting and seeing what happened next.

That, and awaiting the next assignment. Arisa wasn't on anomaly containment, but agents were expected to remain on standby pretty frequently.

So she'd picked up some melon bread at the cafetria, for the moment.

With the matter regarding the samurai settled, Masaru felt it perfectly reasonable to consider the mission resolved. The young man felt as if he hadn't actually done much in the grand scheme of things—if only because he was used to being the big playmaker when it came to hunting most days—but whether or not that was true would be left to the people reviewing footage of the incident to decide. What he felt and what he knew[ were two different matters altogether, though; at the end of the day, cleaning up trash and keeping them off of the people who could actually land meaningful blows on their enemy was what he was here to do.

In that sense, he had done his job exactly as he should have... But that didn't mean that he couldn't do more next time.

Rather than going back to the simulators and exerting any effort there, the Agent had instead elected to go and review the VODs of the last incident.

Thankfully, nobody seemed inclined to stop him when he walked in with a bowl of ramen and took a seat in front of a computer. Watching videos and eating food at the same time was nothing particularly groundbreaking, but that didn't mean it wasn't worth doing anyhow.

Hopefully nothing would spill, though, else he would've been left on the hook for cleanup...

Yūma was meandering the facility, head fairly lost in his own thoughts at the moment. Sure, they had gone and secured the area, the spirit samurai was secured and the area was, last he heard, being converted into some sort of shrine after an attempt at assisted suicide hadn't worked at all. He suspected they had all been missing something or another, though it wasn't like he could go waltzing back on site and poke around at this point. What was done was done, for better or worse, sometimes all they could do was contain an area and hope someone down the line figured it out. Maybe some exorcist or something could figure it out, all he was good for was shooting problems, or punching them if the need arose. Speaking of shooting, he made a mental note to at least grab a shotgun next time he was called to head out to a situation, at least if it was slightly possible that another full blown battle would occur.

That being said, Yūma figured at this point he could do with some time on the range to get his head out of the last mission. Dwelling on it wouldn't help or change anything, and he always felt better after putting himself through the paces. Heading down to the training wing, he would go to focus on firearms training and drills. Unlike normal, where he would go for his sidearm, he instead began picking through longarms, both conventional and less so. Having had to burn through his entire supply of .45 ammo during the mission had been a bit of a pain, and figured a good way to get his mind off the last mission was focus on bringing more varied tools to the next. Even if that variation was in the method of his shooting rather than completely new ones.

Settling one a shotgun to start with, a standard issue patrol model he was more familiar with from his time with the AERT than as a full blown Agent, Yūma would start proceeding through various courses of fire. Accuracy and speed were goals on the range, sure, but he was also practicing techniques he hadn't used in awhile. Different methods of reloading, firing from each shoulder in case one was compromised, firing from the hip, anything that could come to mind as something that might be useful for whenever the next mission would come up. He fully expected another one to come up, something in his gut was telling him things were not going to be quiet today.

---

Entering the cafeteria a minute or so after Arisa had, an unfamiliar, tall, narrow figure in very modest clothing drew the eyes of several agents present in the room. Eye-catching both because of her unfamiliarity, and because of the four glowing blue and gently humming rings - flat like discs - floating in the air around her; one hovering above her head not unlike an angel's halo, one hovering near to her right shoulder and levitating a mug of coffee below it, one hovering near to her left elbow and levitating a closed laptop, and the last hovering near her right hip and levitating a fifth ring not glowing, humming or rotating like the other four. In her hands, she held a folder containing documents she was fervently attempting to memorize, her eyes behind her rectangular glasses listing up to down even as the dark circles under them almost appeared to darken in real time.

Elvira stepped across the room and made her way to the coffee maker present - the same model as the one in the office space that had apparently started spraying liquid several days ago due to poor operation by one of the other agents - and exchanged the folder in her hands for the laptop being carried by one of her H.A.L.O.s. She also took hold of the dormant H.A.L.O. being carried by the one near her hip, which came to life like the rest after some brief typing on her laptop. She reached toward the coffee maker with the now glowing ring in hand and held it above the machine for a moment, then removed her hand and left the ring floating aloft the machine, rotating and humming with power. Elvira turned her attention back to her laptop, copy-pasting some lines of code she'd written earlier from a text file into the program used to control the H.A.L.O. above the coffee machine.

"So that's the new transfer? Looks like she's been running herself ragged."

"What are those floating circles? Some kinda magitech?"

"Holy magic fused with technology? That's a new one."

@VitaVitaAR

Numako Yamamizu
Cafeteria
@Nyahahameha

---

Immediately after getting back from the mission and the post-mission checkups she always had, Numako found herself in the cafeteria. Why? Well, so she could conveniently not be dragged into something if she was in the offices or somewhere else. Indeed, the Cafeteria was her own little palace. A safe space where she could laze about, eat snacks, and generally just not be bothered. It was also, all things considered, relatively quiet.

Just her, a plethora of snacks, the murmur of a few coworkers as background noise and s l e e p....

"Mngh...?" She couldn't help, but to pull her head up from where it had been buried in her arms as the background noise got louder, and she could pick out a few distinct words. New transfer, huh? Well, she wasn't sleeping now anyways, not with the new noise. Not to mention, the fact that she couldn't pass up the chance to mess with fresh blood, as one might say. She rested her chin on the palm of her hand, the other hand delivering the salty taste of potato chip to her mouth.

Might as well mix things up a bit, heh. Messing with the coffee machine twice in a row was just bad form.

Elvira would feel a cold breath on her neck as one of the nameless spirits would grab the folder that she had been holding, giving it a little yank, and sending it to the floor.

So everything got wrapped up nicely. Samurai spirit was neutralized no matter how it was done, and it wasn't like he gave a shit about the civilian casualties in the first place. Most importantly, Jinhai got to enjoy himself just a tad. Of course, that meant it was back to his little grey hole they called on-site housing.

Jinhai stood leaning against the railing on top of the facility's roof, puffing away at a cigarette. Wasn't like there was anywhere else he could smoke it, all things considered. No designated smoking area outside of this, and he'd probably get bitched out if he tried to smoke indoors. Quartermaster had given him enough of a tongue lashing for returning with a broken sword, and he wasn't even able to procure a replacement, considering the samurai's odachi had been confiscated as evidence. Fuckers.

He sighed, his cigarette still stuck in his mouth as he leafed through his personal copy of the Dao De Jing. If Jinhai had learned anything over the years, it was that Laozi wasn't full of shit: just that those who followed his philosophy tended to be. Damn shame, that.

"Motherfucker," He groaned to himself as his cigarette burned down to the stub. A quick palming of his jacket revealed he was out too: that'd been his last Marlboro. Fine, he'd find some other method to occupy himself. Reluctantly, Jinhai pushed himself off the railing and tucked his book back into his jacket, making his way down to do something else. Probably food, really.