[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

[notched]

[ She has large brown eyes, they have a way of looking emptied and vacant. She stares at him that way for a moment, but recognition seems to filter in. She hesitantly reaches up to touch the fabric of the coat, then draws it around herself gratefully. ]

We were successful?

[ She is... surprised and looking to him to reinforce that it's true. ]

[retroductions]

[His brows raise, and he lifts his hat from his head to run fingers though already-tousled blond hair.]

I’d say so, but not without a fair share of an ordeal, it would seem.

[He wants to fish, to prod for more answers, but maybe Anna is not quite focused enough for it. Sholmes holds his tongue for now, and reaches out to plop his deerstalker atop her head instead.]

Do you need anything? A sit-down? A lie-down? Something to drink?

[notched]

[ The heart of the curse had been so much like the gaze of that thing in the Mensis castle. She had run from that, she hadn't been able to stay there and feel its searching gaze burning in to her mind. But she had been alone then and the violence waiting for her back in Yharnam was so familiar and so comforting.

They defeated the nightmare this time. It doesn't feel real.

What she wants rears up uncomfortably: she wants to walk back in to the Hunter's workshop and tell the others about her success. They're all long gone. Lost before the Dream even began, lost to their madness, or lost in the graveyard.

There is no one, so instead she looks to him and asks, ]

How does it look?

[ Her sense of humor is very strange, but it's here in this moment under his hat and his coat. ]

[retroductions]

[He pauses, but then his mouth twists, screwing itself up as he sputters out a very gentlemanly pfft noise.]

You look like…

[She looks like she needs to have his clothes resized for her, of course. And cleaned — they are still stained with patches of darkening blood, dredges of the old, cursed weather.]

…a great, consulting detective! All you need now is a pipe and a few woeful tales of crime to relate to rapt listeners.

[notched]

[ The bleary flutter of a smile and then it settles. She pulls the brim down a little onto her head. ]

Coffee, instead... maybe?

[ Something warm to hold. There, she has identified something more tangible to ask after. ]

[retroductions]

[Humor is a good, grounding sign, at least. And Sholmes can hand his own out in droves, even if it’s often veiled with ridiculousness.]

I could do for a cup of coffee, too. It would only be my fourth for the day.

[He points in a general direction.]

Shall we return to headquarters, then? The walk should be far less menacing now. And I’m sure there’s a fresh brew waiting to be made when we return. I can see to it myself.

[notched]

Mm.

[ She agrees softly, still hugging the coat in around herself. She turns to walk that way with him. She wonders if Yharnam will still be alive, like this, when she finally fulfills her contract here and frees it from the Great Ones. Or will it be dead like Loran; windswept and bestial? ]

The sun is nice.

[retroductions]

[His strides are long, but he falls in step beside her as they walk. The streets are still slicked crimson—he can only imagine the clean-up work that’s to follow all of this—but she’s right: the sun is nice.

Herlock hums in agreement, sticking a hand in a pocket. His fingers fiddle with whatever tidbits he’s collected and forgotten about — coins, scribbles notes, maybe a plastic figurine kept from a gacha capsule.]

Anything is better than all that blasted blood. My clothes are nigh ruined because of it.

[notched]

S'what an overcoat is for.

[ She answers with blithe good humor. ]

And a big hat.

[ Have you seen her hat. ]

[retroductions]

[Good humor with some underlying practicality.]

I am a coat and hat man myself, of course.

[But, the big hat...]

Though you have me beaten in the hat department! Yours, as I recall it, is far more mysterious and... a bit foreboding.

[notched]

Hm.

[ Yes, it probably is. They weren't meant to look like simple humans, the leathers the Hunters wear fleshes them out into something just a little more. Unyielding. ]

Keeps the blood out of my eyes.

[ Foreboding indeed. ]