[h2]Sakura[/h2]

... right, that was altogether too many people fighting things for her to want to contribute. What if she hit someone? More importantly, what if they needed to leave in a hurry? This place was haunted, who knew if killing the central apparition wouldn't have it bring the entire building down in one big calamity. No, she'd best stay back and be ready to open an exit as soon as they were done.

Or if their medic needed evacuation, that would be another one.

"Oh, I know where we can get spicy!"

[hr]

[h2]Samurai[/h2]

The ghostly samurai made no more pronouncements, no more statement of intent. As Tera rushed forward, he simply took a single ghostly breath and [i]swung.[/i] A more rational, smaller foe would have had good chance to avoid it. But in a headlong charge to crush the samurai, there was no avoiding it--there was a sound like thunder, and the air [i]rippled[/i], a wave of pressure flying out to slam into the anomaly and carry it back across the room. No longer engaged, he was free to dart backwards, showing an annoying but not unusual--at least among anomalies--proclivity to outright dodge bullets when given such freedom.

At least the grasping hands took enough attention for his sword to clear, rather than the stroke getting an immediate followup.

Yet, writhing alongside him--slowed from when the rear team had seen it, yet not stopped like Mae's first exorcisms--was a rising ooze. Row by row, across the breadth of the hall they were in--an entire firing line of ashigaru formed, fingers already closing around the triggers.

"Ah crap, monk!" was Sakura's panicked squeak, diving past Zhao to avoid the naginata that so succinctly cut through her previous space. It seemed that the shugenja from earlier was back--and still the amount of black ooze was growing, some flowing in from the rest of the property... but at the same time, seeming to grow just from the ghost's presence. Even if it was mostly ashigaru for now...