[OPEN] The end of the storm

[watermemory]

Who ⬤ The team members and ANYONE!
What ⬤ The mission was a success! Time to face the music from friends and family.
When ⬤ Just after the tower expedition
Where ⬤ Outside Kaigo no Bou, probably moving around
Content Warnings ⬤ References to violence and horror imagery


All at once, the rains cease.

The damage remains, both to the city and to her inhabitants, but reality reasserts itself, and the ill wind that's blown through Jigoku-cho has—for now—come to an end.

Emergency services have borne away the injured, including the Daitengu and the freed Enma, leaving a gaggle of people emerging into the night.


[This is an OPEN IC MINGLE. Go forth and icly rubberneck or speculate or collect your friends back home to get some rest or yell at said friends for taking risks without telling them they were chosen for this mission out of some misguided attempt to get them to not worry. Who would do something so stupid, anyway.]

Comments

[ganashara]

The ambulance? How bad off was he?

[ Lio, of course, assuming the worse and not realizing Toraguma was accompanying Cloud there or anything but he was also still very much in panic mode. Give him a moment. ]

[watermemory]

[It takes him a moment to absorb how that must have sounded. oh gods he's tired.]

No no no, not like that! He was harrying them to get someone on his team to the hospital. I didn't get a good look before they left, but he was shouting up a storm, you know how he is... [that literally means less than nothing for Toraguma.]

...it must have been bad. I don't think even he's sounded that mad before.

[ganashara]

Well that...

[ Didn't sound surprising. ]

I guess that makes sense. What about you?

[ He didn't look that beat up, but they'd just been in the heart of the beast, for lack of any better descriptor. ]

The hell did you see up there?

[watermemory]

Mm. I didn't realize how lucky our team was, until...

[At that question, Minato tenses up instantly. Besides that, the careful lack of expression from him is probably more telling than any visible reaction.]

...

You were right, Lio. It's not from the city at all. It...

[For all his reading, he's at a loss for words at how to actually describe what he saw. That last word just hangs in the air for a moment.]

[ganashara]

Hey hey, take it easy...

[ His hands go up to steady Minato's shoulders. ]

Breathe. Just walk me through what happened, okay?

[watermemory]

[The gesture is a little unexpected; Minato gives him a brief smile, gently pushing his hands off.]

It's alright. I only -- I can't describe what it looked like, Lio. It isn't hyperbole. We saw it had the Enma chained up in his office, but you couldn't look directly at it. It was like -- the aura coming out from the tower, only... concentrated in a person.

[If it was a person.]

...it's all gone, though, isn't it? If you and everyone else can get here...?

[ganashara]

[ Something he couldn't even look at? Lio was having trouble imagining what that was like, but there was nothing about Minato's way of describing it that seemed insincere or overly figurative. He was telling the truth, that was for certain... ]

It's thanks to that incense you could even survive up there, I'll bet. But yeah, as far as I can tell, the city's been cleansed... mostly, anyways.

[watermemory]

[At that news, he lets out all the air in his lungs, leaning against the building. It's not that he didn't think the faction leaders (well... at least Toraguma and the Daitengu; and presumably Lady Tenkohime with the rest of the support) would have dispersed if they didn't believe the heart of the curse had been dispelled, but... It was really over.]

The incense and Knightley. He stood up to that thing like it was nothing. I think if he hadn't, we wouldn't have had the courage to keep going.

[Sorry Cain you have been sold out in the name of an innocent compliment]

...what do you think happens now?

[ganashara]

[ He'd definitely scold Cain later, for what little good it would do him. But he also wasn't surprised to hear that guy pulled something off like that. It was so very him. Annoying, but... really admirable, too. A complete idiot, but a noble one... he couldn't help but be drawn to that.

As for everything else... ]

We heal.

[ What else could they do? ]