Hommy rose to his feet with a quiet grunt before exhaling another stream of smoke into the air, the risen sunlight catching briefly against the pale haze drifting from his lips.
"All this talk is making me tired."
The words carried no real irritation anymore, only the weary indifference of a man who had long since grown exhausted with people in general.
His gaze shifted afterward toward Leonidas.
"Oi, Leo… are ya planning on sitting there all day? Ya've at least regained enough strength to take ya and those brats home."
Leonidas answered with a soft chuckle before slowly pushing himself upright, though the movement still carried the stiffness of someone whose body had not fully forgiven him yet.
Bubbles hurried over almost immediately to support him, fussing over the man with anxious care the moment he looked even slightly unsteady.
Leonidas allowed it without complaint.
Perhaps because resisting would only worry the boy more.
With a tired motion, he tore away the damaged cloth hanging loosely from his waist before casting another glance toward Jurgen. The young man still looked distant, his thoughts lingering somewhere far behind the present moment, trapped amidst the remnants of everything that had happened earlier.
Though honestly, no one could truly blame him for that. Some experiences do not leave the mind quietly. They linger like smoke after a fire, subtle but impossible to ignore.
Jurgen noticed the look and raised his gaze in return, squinting through eyes still swollen from the beating he had endured. The bruising remained visible across his battered face, though the healers had thankfully reduced the worst of it. Compared to how he looked earlier, it was almost miraculous work.
Almost.
"Just so you know," Nyugen scoffed from nearby, folding his arms loosely,
"I still don't acknowledge you as our leader."
The remark earned a small laugh from Jurgen, rough around the edges but genuine enough.
Still…
The words lingered longer than they probably should have.
Nyugen had clearly meant it as a joke, yet somewhere beneath the humor sat an uncomfortable truth Jurgen could not entirely dismiss. Throughout the mission, he had not inspired anyone. Had not commanded anything significant. If anything, the most memorable contribution he had made was getting beaten half to death while the others struggled to survive around him.
The thought settled heavily within him.
Because leadership was a strange thing. It was not something granted by titles or expectation alone. People followed strength. Conviction. Presence.
And right now, standing there bruised beneath the already risen sunlight while his body ached from failure, Jurgen could not help but wonder if he possessed any of those things at all.
"And who, then, would lead this group? Certainly not you."
Jurgen finally spoke through his exhaustion, sparing enough strength to throw back at least a little humor despite the ache weighing down his body.
Nyugen's face immediately twisted into exaggerated outrage.
"I am more than capable of leading this group," he declared proudly, as though the matter had already been settled by divine decree alone.
He quickly turned toward Arrow, who still remained seated against the scorched ground, and pointed dramatically toward himself.
"Right?! Arrowlius!"
Arrow's eye twitched.
"Arrowlius!"
"Shut it, you fool," he snapped without even opening his eyes properly.
"I can't catch a single moment of rest around you people. And it's simply Arrow, not Arrowlius."
Nyugen clicked his tongue awkwardly before folding his arms and looking away with exaggerated annoyance, resembling a sulking child moments after being scolded by an irritated parent.
Well, to be fair, he had been scolded.
"Who the hell names themselves Arrow anyway…" he muttered beneath his breath.
Nearby, Bubbles hurriedly tried to dissolve the brewing argument before it escalated any further, his hands waving nervously through the air as though physically pushing the conflict apart.
"C-calm down… there's no need to fight…"
The entire exchange was so absurdly normal that, for a brief moment, it became easy to forget the ruined district surrounding them. The blood. The rubble. The corpses still waiting to be carried away.
And perhaps that was why laughter suddenly broke through the air.
Hommy.
The man stood there watching them with open amusement now, smoke drifting lazily from the cigar hanging between his fingers. He was not the only one either. The members of his division had fallen strangely quiet at some point, each of them unconsciously pausing to observe the strange little group bickering amongst themselves amidst the aftermath of disaster.
"You've got yourself some strange ones, Leo."
Leonidas chuckled softly at that before raising a hand.
The Grace of Teleportation unfolded quietly afterward, pale light stretching outward in thin shimmering currents until it wrapped around Jurgen and the others. The ability looked unstable compared to usual, its glow flickering faintly under the strain, and even without being told, it was obvious Leonidas was forcing far more from his exhausted body than he should have been.
Still, he pushed through it.
Just before vanishing completely, he spared Hommy one final grin.
A triumphant one.
A sharp, wicked and childishly satisfied smile.
Hommy immediately cursed at him.
Then, after taking another drag from his cigar, he abruptly whipped his head sideways.
"Takumi!"
"I'm right beside you, Hommy-san," Takumi protested instantly, mild frustration finally slipping into his voice for once.
Hommy blinked.
"Oh."
For perhaps the first time all day, genuine awkwardness crossed his face. His eyes shifted briefly toward the other division members, then slowly returned toward Takumi again.
"Then why didn't ya say something?" he shot back immediately, deflecting blame with shameless speed.
The excuse was so terrible that even the surrounding members could only stare at him in silence.
Hommy tossed aside the nearly finished stub of his cigar before grabbing another from the tray, lighting it with the smooth familiarity of a man who had repeated the action thousands upon thousands of times.
Then he noticed the stares lingering on him.
"And what the hell are ya looking at?" he barked defensively.
"I'm not the one to blame here."
The silence somehow became worse afterward.
Awkward and heavy.
Almost disrespectfully awkward.
Hommy ground his teeth together.
"I'll kill anyone who so much as looks at me again!" he roared toward the unfortunate crowd.
Several heads immediately snapped away.
"And ya two over there," he added sharply while pointing toward the men handling Thorner's corpse,
"better carry that body with care!"
The order echoed across the ruined district while smoke curled upward into the fading evening sky, and despite everything that had happened that day, despite the death and destruction lingering heavily over the battlefield…
Life, strangely enough, continued stumbling forward anyway.