Scene #8231: A Fire at the Station! But not the firestation

Owner	Pose
Ritsuka Fujimaru	The scene at the police station that Jeanne's been located at is weirdly peaceful despite everything that's been seen so far. Sure, fire has claimed the front of the police station along with the parking lot filled with smoking husks of cruisers, and there's even several charred bodies near those vehicles and the entrance, but it sounds like there's nobody actually fighting right now. The culprit isn't even in front of the building. No, Jeanne is actually across the street, standing in front of a lamp post at the opposite corner. She's messing with a phone in her hand with an irritated grimace on her face, tapping away at the screen and uttering the occasional angry curse at it. Her flag is braced against her shoulder, and there's a few bullet holes in her cape, but she doesn't seem to be paying much attention to anyone in or trying to escape the station at all. It's like something else has gotten her attention, and she's incredibly annoyed about it.
Kale Hearthward	KALE HEARTHWARD IS ON VACATION And yet he still ends up here, just by chance. There's a decent amount of things a wind mage can do w/r/t building on fire, so he focuses on that first, while at his signal his ship has arrived with a fully loaded medical hospital on board. He glances over at Jeanne as he and his crew do what they can - though he can't afford to give her any attention yet, at least until she does something more important than saving lives.
James Bond	A black Aston Martin tears down the street, tires squealing as it sides around the corner. "Good God," utters the driver, in mute shock as the car pulls up to the front of the burning police station. Stepping out, he reaches for a pistol concealed in a shoulder holster. PPK raised, Bond nearly gags from the smell, stifling the impulse through force of will and checking the eerily silent entrance. Not here. Where? His lips form a thin, grim scowl as he turns and spots her across the street. Both hands on the pistol, he levels it at her. "Technical difficulties, Jeanne?" he calls. "I'd take it as a sign, if I were you. You're finished here."
DRYCLEAN-SIGINT	The KEYHOLE was already here. Maybe it's been here for an hour, maybe two minutes. It bristles above the city, above perception, and its watchful gaze keeps tabs on the carnage. Another gazes alongside it. There is no movement in the upper atmosphere. There has not been movement in the upper atmosphere since it arrived. A phone conversation below is observed, though the contents are predictable, to some degree. Worth checking out the broad strokes anyhow. Information for later. Faint static crackles through Jeanne's phone at this, waves pulsing, in-time with waves through the phones of the nearby dead or soon-to-be. Audio, sight beyond, a tree in the forest. Anticipatory. There's movement, then. A carrier, a mage, a car, an agent. Pulses through equipment. The vessel realigns, as the vessel sets up a plastic folding chair far down the street. DRYCLEAN sits, and watches.
Blemishine	Where there's Jeanne d'Arc, there's...a little more than often, a very much equine knight slash mechanic girl. Quite the mainstay, even when entire French national landmarks are absent. For the very simple reason that when the Avenger is making a very literal show out of her acts, it's impossible for her to ignore them. Especially when this one seems even more petty than any of the previous ones... ...or is it? Either way, also arriving on the scene with a grim expression on her face is one Maria Nearl, with white armor hastily thrown on and cape fluttering with the speed of her approach. Shield on her arm and sword at her waist, it's more than obvious what she's come to expect. "She really did it...!" She only stops to close one eye and try to hold back the strained look on her face at the sight of the station, but there's little she can do about the building itself compared to Kale and his crew. Which is why she steps next to Bond and finally does draw the blade to point tip-first at Jeanne, not that she expects the threat to do actually do much. After a swallow, she asks slowly, "...Have you made the point you wanted to make, Miss Jeanne?"
Ritsuka Fujimaru	The arrival of Kale's VTOL gets a glance from Jeanne along with a nonplussed noise. "Oh, it's you. Well, someone was bound to show up." She blows some strands of hair out of her face, then pushes off the lamp post to turn around. Although she's clearly looking at the airship, she doesn't make any motion to intercept it at all even as some people start to filter into it with the wounded. "Afraid so. Some jackass got my account banned!" She replies to Bond as he arrives with that showing of his pistol, grumbling in frustration and waving her phone once for emphasis. She doesn't notice the crackling on the phone, thankfully, instead just looking irritated more about what had happened rather than what is already happening with DRYCLEAN probing into it. "Try to do one good thing for someone and... Meh. I can get those subscribers back later, anyway. Word spreads." Turns out, it wasn't a conversation at all she was having on her phone at all. Jeanne was just really annoyed at being told about the ban right after starting her little arson spree at the station, as streaming that is most definitely against Tw*tch's TOS. Her irritation does fade somewhat, however, as she hears someone else documenting her antics on the broadband, and she even snickers a moment later. Blemishine's question, though, gets an indifferent shrug from the Dragon Witch. "Who knows? I never did get a straight answer, and..." She glances around slowly at firstWith a dramatic sigh, she brandishes her flag and sword with dramatic flourishes at each side, gripping the significantly larger weapon in front of her while the sword hangs at her side. "Don't think that's my only reason for coming here, though. Turnabout's fair play, haven't you heard?" And so, Jeanne goes on the attack, lighting her flag on fire with that magic of hers as she rushes right at the gathered Elites (or at least the ones in front). She whirls that banner around like a woman possessed, disguising some of her spinning strikes with that flaming banner before it comes in fast while other sweeps of the flag hide her sword as it comes in for swift slashes and thrusts. The rapid movements launch plenty of stray flames into the air and around the street as well, proving to be quite dangerous (if perhaps not as much) to those trying to escape, to Kale as he's working on evacuating the survivors, and to DRYCLEAN('s chair) even without being a direct target of Jeanne's charge.
Kale Hearthward	"This is - because your account got banned? What?" Kale's focus is finally divided somewhat, with that pronouncement. "Are you for real?" Fire gets flung towards Kale and his crew (along with the people he's trying to help). Immediately, he gets into action, spinning around and giving Jeanne his full attention. "Wind Wall!" A pulse of air forms between his group and Jeanne, throwing the fire off course. "And then... Pressure Bomb!" He twists the air into a pair of orbs in his hands, and fastballs them one after the other directly at Jeanne. "Tell me you've got my spare swords on the ship!" he calls over at his crew. "They might be in the back!" "Alright then... just wind magic for now!" he says, and starts rapid-fire hurling pressure bombs at Jeanne, shaping and flinging them with both hands, one after the other.
James Bond	Jeanne rushes in swinging. She would, wouldn't she. Bond squeezes the trigger, but knows better than to expect that would dissuade her. Three shots, before she's on him, aimed in a tightly clustered grouping at her center of mass. The safety is switched on, and rather than try and get clear of her, he utilizes the gun in close-quarters, checking her flag with one hand and using the other to deflect the sword with the frame of the Walther. It's hardly the optimal tool for the situation, and her sword rakes across the back of his hand, but its brutal simplicity is nevertheless effective. Stifling a cry of pain from the cut, squinting from the heat of the flames, he seizes upon a momentary opening to send his fist racing towards her throat, one leg placed between hers as his elbow promptly surges forth with a strike aimed at her temple. Flowing around her, he shoulder-checks her, attmepting to shove her off-balance in Blemishine's direction.
Blemishine	If Blemishine had to answer one way or another, she would probably say turnabout is /not/ fair play at all, at least in this situation. She'd also express some extremely mixed feelings on DRYCLEAN vocalizing everything going on here, though there's not terribly much time for any of that once Jeanne goes on the attack. Hard, at that. "Miss Jeanne...!" Fortunately, having a shield already at the ready helps quite a lot, and it's what's standing between her and the barrage of flaming strikes coming in hot. They're all still sudden and powerful enough that the knight-ess is forced back a step with each and every impact, with strained grunts from both the physical exertion and realizing that there's going to be collateral damage coming in. But she also doesn't step out of melee range, and when Bond goes to try and set her up, her blade is finally put to use swinging low and upwards to try and catch the Avenger with a low slash to the midriff. And then a second, reared back and then pushed forward in a stab - before a flurry of several more thrusts right behind it keep coming, to put the pressure on! "Is it possible for you to do a 'good thing' for someone without hurting anyone else!? Or is this just the only way you know how to do that? I'm sure you're capable of better than that!"
DRYCLEAN-SIGINT	They'd already started scooching their folding chair across the pavement as the fire begins to rain down around the street. The plastic scraping is pretty loud, and it would look pretty stupid, watching a monolith like them just shifting around like a schoolchild, but attention is drawn elsewhere. A burst of flame impacts the precise spot they were sitting, but they've pushed far enough away it only licks the edge of their coat. They then nearly topple over from the air pressure of the wind magic thrown up in defense. Smooth. They adjust their antennae. Concurrently, a shifting arcane circle forms around Jeanne's position. Realignment. Inner geometries rotate, converge, faster and faster, light pulsing across the ground. A thin line extends to the heavens; a laser cutter from the gods. It slowly tracks the pyromancer's position, always in the worst spot, as her follow-throughs and stumbles take her right back into the beam. It's not a strong beam, but it adds up. Neither Bond nor Blemishine ever feel in danger of running into it.
Ritsuka Fujimaru	'This is - because your account got banned? What?' "What? No, that happened separately!" Jeanne corrects Kale even as she's in the middle of swinging her weapons about, gripping the end of her flag to flick it and its flames sideways before pointing her sword at the birdman. "I was making a point about fighting, and the banning happened after the fact!" There. With the record set straight, she can refocus on the fight! Bond's first few shots from (sort of) range draw her attention as they strike her armor head on, and she joins him in that close range dance almost too earnestly. The blade against the pistol is drawn downwards in a rapid swiping motion to try and cause that much more pain, and she's forced to jerk back by that punch aimed at the throat. It distracts her for long enough that the elbow strike collides against her helmet, dazing her long enough to send her staggering back with that shoulder-check into Blemishine. Blemishine is able to capitalize quite easily thanks to that, too, as that slash at center mass already draws some blood before Jeanne can regain her bearings. The first stab gets deflected with a quick shove of her sword from the side, although she can't quite get her footing back completely as the followups keep poking holes into her defenses (and also her). "I think you and I both know the answer to that, little knight. People like you and her both need someone to clash against!" She doesn't elaborate further there. Instead, her attention goes right back to Kale when he starts hurling those air bombs at her, though, and she only has enough time to get her flag back in front of her before the repeated impacts can throw her completely off her feet. Although she manages to keep herself upright, she doesn't actually stay on solid ground as she's forced to back away considerably from the police station, giving those focusing on the evacuation more precious time to get everyone that's still alive out of there. What's more, the repeated blasts getting her attention mean Jeanne doesn't notice the thin laser from the sky burning into her armor at first. It's an irritating feeling at first, of course, but she chalks it up to ambient fire at first until she notices that it's getting a bit too hot even for herself to ignore. By the time she's thought to leap away from the horrid laser, her armor has already become red hot in spots, and Jeanne has to figure out a new plan of attack. In this case, it involves charging right back in. Bond and Blemishine both get to deal with Jeanne coming back in at close range as she tries taking them both on at once initially, hurling her sword into the air before taking broad two-handed swings at them with her burning flag. The first swing is, of course, at center mass, but it curves upwards at the last moment before coming back in from the other side in a powerful hooking swipe to try and throw them both off their feet. Keeping that momentum moving forward, Jeanne plants the far end of her flag into the ground to vault herself towards the sword, kicking it at DRYCLEAN in a clear attempt to show off before following that up with a much less flashy volley of conjured (and flaming) spears. She springs off the flag with more of those spears in hand as she dives at Kale next, driving both of those blackened steel weapons down towards him before starting to rush him with a flurry of stabs similar to those Blemishine just used one her moments ago.
Ritsuka Fujimaru	Those with the ability to detect ambient magic in the air (or even just generalized DANGER SENSE), meanwhile, might notice that said magical ambience is building rapidly around Jeanne. It's not huge enough to be dangerous yet, but there's certainly /something/ building up within the witch, and it just might come to bear sooner rather than later!
Kale Hearthward	Kale gets dived at. If Jeanne has pretentions towards dragonity, she'll first have to deal with someone else who has dragon breath of their own. Kale plants both feet in the ground, takes a deep breath, and exhales. It's like being point blank against a wind tunnel. Hurricane force winds buffet Jeanne, trying to push her back even as she's trying to close in on Kale - and further push her off course as she tries to attack everyone else! "Throwing a tantrum because you didn't like how your points got you banned - give me a break!"
DRYCLEAN-SIGINT	DRYCLEAN stands, picks up and folds their chair, watching Jeanne. Listening, and listening, and- kick. Plastic moves through the air in a graceless swing. Milliseconds tick. Keep time in combat, quarter rests, a polyrhythm of fire and metal. One, two, three, CLANG The sword flies past them, slammed to the side. It strikes a building at a strange angle and ricochets directly into the ground, impaling itself a foot into the concrete. <B-anter> DRYCLEAN-SIGINT says, "What, an intentional runabout? I respect th'effort, ha-" A spear smashes right through their arm. Static screeches through Jeanne's phone as the limb hits the floor; deafening, focus-breaking, rhythmic. They set their chair back down, hurriedly readjusting their jacket antennae. Knocked out of alignment by the disarmament. Ha ha. The beam continues to grow as more and more circles converge. Still a thin line as always, but the air begins to burn around it. The pavement smolders from two sources.
James Bond	There's a momentary reprieve, thanks to Kale. As he had before, Bond capitalizes--though after his second shot, Jeanne closes in, forcing him into a block that knocks the gun from his grip. Fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with Blemishine, Bond circle-strafes to grant the knight some room for her swings--and to force broader swings from Jeanne. "Even if that were true," says Bond, his sleeve shifting as a hidden, vicious looking combat knife is slipped into his palm, "You could just ask and save the rest of us this bloody horror show." Sparks fly as the knife flicks to parry the second swing of the flag, a grating screech of metal on metal ringing out. It takes both hands to counter her strength, teeth gritted, sweat beading on his forehead from the heat. His pistol is out of reach, slid too far to be worth going after, resting against the curb. So he doesn't go after it, when she breaks off to go after DRYCLEAN. Twisting the bezel on his wristwatch, he activates a defense system on the Aston. A panel on the door, cleverly concealed, swings out and reverses itself to reveal two thick tubes--the business end of some integrated weapon. With a sharp 'THOONK' sound, an adhesive-covered grenade races after Jeanne, sticking fast and delivering a devastating electrical charge before detaching. Bond sprints after her, vaulting over parked cars to leap towards her. Dress shoes meet armor as he attempts to mount and grapple, vying for an armbar to hurl her to the ground!
Blemishine	A laser--? Though Blemishine doesn't immediately know what in the world the source of that could be, she can make a decently educated guess judging from the fact they have a 'warzone reporter' doing his own thing hanging around. She minds it, though she also doesn't think she'll have to terribly much, and focuses far more on the much more blatant threat of the extremely angry Frenchwoman in their faces. The feint maneuver actually catches her off-guard compared to the straightforwardness of before, which gets a confused sounding 'bweh!?' out of her before the flag impacts her in the back and bowls her over. However, she turns out to be a fair bit more agile than that armor would let on at first, and smoothly transitions it into a forward roll that puts her on her knees and then allows her to spring back to a stand. "I'm not like that!" She calls back towards Jeanne as she leaps away, giving chase from ground level. "The kind of knight--the kind of /person/ I want to be isn't one that needs an enemy! It's the opposite!" She might be a tad late, but she'll catch up with Jeanne while she's contending with Kale's wind tunnel - using the Avenger's own body to shield herself against it for a clean charge! And what she's doing with all of that momentum is bracing her shield in front of her and using it as a battering ram, to slam into her full-force and try to tackle her right down to the asphault. Hard. Either her or Bond are definitely going to succeed at that much, probably! And she needs to restrain her sooner rather than later, with what she thinks is coming...
Ritsuka Fujimaru	"What? Is it in one ear out the other with you?!" Somehow, Jeanne is still taken aback by Kale's focus on her banning rather than her attempts to prove something vague to AME. "The ban came after I already started burning this place down!" The distraction created by that incredulous reaction is enough to keep her attention focused on Kale as Blemishine slams into her from behind, knocking her off balance long enough that she's pinned between a hard place and those headwinds while DRYCLEAN's sky laser continues boring holes into the Dragon Witch's armor. "Not like that, you say...? A knight needs someone strong to fight, or they might as well just be a noble in fancy armor, waiting to stab everyone else in the back and stomp on the weak. Which one are you, Blemishine?!" The screeching from Jeanne's phone, sadly, has to go ignored from now. It's annoying as hell and distracting for sure, but she's a little too busy trying not to get a flaming hole punched through her. It takes a bit before she finds an opportunity to slip out of being pinned, though, tossing her spears aside and conjuring new ones to drop down at Blemishine and Kale while she kicks off the ground to fling herself up and backwards towards Bond. She still hasn't gotten her footing back completely by the time she lands, though, and she finds herself caught up in range of the Aston's electrical explosives. "So that's where you are! Between you and that DRYCLEANer-" Perhaps mistaking the Aston for something/someone else, Jeanne is cut off with a sharp yelp as the electrical discharge stuns her momentarily, giving Bond ample time to catch up and fling her to the ground. With her arm caught up in that precarious position, Jeanne has to scramble along the ground against the secret agent, practically flinging herself off the ground towards him before he can really wrench that hold in and risk breaking her arm. She needs that arm to do things, after all. "Just ask? Ah, you don't know me that well yet, do you? The show is my existence, Spyman! Or did you think Jeanne d'Arc was really just an innocent little saint willing to die for traitors so quietly?"" Instead of trying to pry him off, Jeanne grabs at Bond's belt for additional leverage with her free hand to pick him up off the ground. It's a short-lived carry, though, as she swings both arms back down to try and smash him into the pavement while excessively long spears start appearing in the air around Jeanne. Those with those enhanced senses (for the supernatural or otherwise) will notice that there's a massive concentration of that magical energy around those spears, too, as Jeanne stands back up straight. "Enough of this...! You've had enough time to get those pigs out of here, so let's end things off with a bang!" Jeanne starts launching those pikes* towards Kale, Blemishine, and DRYCLEAN alike. Bond might be lucky enough to avoid those spears getting thrown at him due to being right next to Jeanne, but it might be of little comfort if he's still holding on long enough for her to use him as a hammer to smash against the back of each and every one of those spikes that burst into horrible black flames as they hurtle through the air at their targets. *Actually pikes, not just regular ground-fighting spears!
Kale Hearthward	The pike manages to wing Kale (pun not intended), scraping against his side and drawing blood. He falls back, putting more distance between him and Jeanne. "D-darn you..." "I don't care... if you 'need' to fight. I don't really care... who you are, either! If you're Jeanne d'Arc, or Janette Darlene!" "All I care is, if you're the sort of person who takes your petty feelings out on those who don't deserve it, and can't defend themselves..." He runs back in, both hands raised - and tries to slam an air blast point blank into her! "Then you're the sort of person who pisses me off!"
James Bond	Thrown clear, Bond's vision momentarily blurs, his ears ring--Jeanne is strong. More than strong enough to pick him up while he's still dazed from the grapple. His back hits the ground, hard enough to crack the pavement beneath him. Up and down, he's slammed--legs wrapping around her arm in an effort to leverage himself up and go for a cross along her jaw. He certainly hadn't expected her to swing him bodily into one of those spikes. Rather than attempt to match her strength a third time, he again turns to help from his gadgets. "If I thought you were a saint, I wouldn't have offered the Bollinger," he boldly utters. A ring around his index is twisted. It produces a shrill, ear-piercing directed sonic blast, enough to induce nausea and buy him enough time to wriggle free. His suit, apparently no ordinary outfit, only now begins to show the signs of being burnt by the flames--but he's even more stubborn than the stuff it's made of, taking off at a sprint and headed for the Aston once more. If nothing else, the sonic blast ought to give the knight he'd been fighting alongside a moment's reprieve.
Blemishine	Jeanne's question shouted towards her gets Blemishine to flinch, with a noticable gritting of her teeth - though that expression only keeps her still and lasts as long as it takes for the Avenger to go back on the attack, and the flurry of spears coming from overhead forces her to use a combination of shield and sword to bat them out of the air. As precise and steady as she is though, getting all of them is simply impossible. Attacks mount up, but the real deal is yet to come, and she knows it. The fresh storm of pikes (not spears) bears down, and trying to weather the utter tide of them is a very familiar feeling for her. "Ngh...!" Right down to them exploding into black fire, scorching and singing at her body even when they narrowly miss. Experiencing it before doesn't make it any easier to handle, but nevertheless, she manages to stay standing. On shaky legs, but still. From over the rim of her shield, she squints... And breaks out into a sprint, seizing a gap in the assault. Sidestep one, jump over two, duck and roll under three, brace through four. And the next, she bisects down the center as her blade's edge shines with golden light, leaving the flames to part aside as she moves past. "'To be a knight is to be the noble light that illuminates the land!' That's my family motto, Miss Jeanne! Having a strong foe or a great corruption to fight against might be a part of that...!" And after an overly dramatic momentum-driven skid to get past more, Blemishine springs to her feet and carries it forward into a lung, her weapon still agleam! And ahead it's stabbed on the tail end of Kale's airburst and Bond's sonic assault, aimed to pierce into Jeanne's midriff at an angle! A clean blow might just go out the other end, although it's decidedly not meant to be an outright lethal blow, just a decisive one. "--But what it really means is protecting those who need to be protected, and being the beacon of light they can look towards! I might not be that person right now, but...!"
DRYCLEAN-SIGINT	One, two. The pike is launched far, far faster than they are capable of reacting to. Though one monitor, the next, and onwards, eventually clattering to the ground at the end of the street. They stand nearly motionless, sparks and dark fluid pouring from the broken fixtures. They remove their jacket and set it on their chair, a slow affair with the missing arm, and begin a slow trudge towards Jeanne. They're standing at an angle where hitting them wouldn't follow through into their stuff. Some sort of bizarre gesture, maybe. Ionization. Molecules reform around the beam. Circles continue to converge, but the heat is incredible; perhaps there is a more full power, but whether they keep it on long enough to show it is up in the air. They don't really look all that good!
Ritsuka Fujimaru	"'Don't deserve it'? Hah! And I thought the other me was a dumbass!" Jeanne laughs boldly at Kale's response despite looking somewhat winded from unloading so much magic in such a short amount of time. "Think next time before you jump to someone's defense, and maybe you'll finally be able to impress somebody with all that hot air!" "Y... You've really got a way with words, don't you?" Somehow, despite the clear difference in raw physical and magical power, Bond is still able to keep Jeanne off balance. The vague implications are certainly working better than they should, but the technology helps a lot, too. And then Kale impresses all of that air right into her from close range, closing the gap and buffeting the Dragon Witch right where she isn't expecting him to. The last she had seen him, he was still waaaay over there, so getting hit with that and Bond's point-blank sonic blast, combined with that continued screeching from Jeanne's phone, mucks up her balance enough that she loses her grip on the agent. The hot part of hot air comes from DRYCLEAN's ever present sky laser, still searing the Avenger despite her natural affinity for fire. She's been stuck underneath it for far too long throughout this battle, and having to contend with those those balance-destroying maneuvers along with the constant pain-line isn't getting any easier. It certainly doesn't help when combined with the sudden shift in carrying an entire person's weight on one side of her body to no weight at all, throwing her off balance again and nearly off her feet entirely. Instead of getting tossed around, though, it puts her right into the path of Blemishine's charge. She only has enough time to bring her gauntleted hand up to divert the blade from center mass so it stabs through her side rather than directly through her gut, althought it's still enough to draw a pained shout from Jeanne. Dragon Witch or not, it still hurts like hell getting a sword straight through part of her torso. "Fighting corruption and evil absolutely is, Blemishine... And you'd better not forget that!" She spits out some blood while bringing her forearm up, swinging it up at Blemishine's chin while shoving her other palm forward to get some distance from her (and also to get that sword out of her body). Pulling her flag back out of the ground, Jeanne keeps her gaze fixed on the four Elites as the banner becomes engulfed in flames once more. She twirls it around herself once before sweeping it towards them all, disguising her movements just long enough that she's no longer standing there moments later. Instead, they can see her banner flapping beneath her as she holds it at her side, her other arm gripped in the claws of a wyvern while it flies off. "The people you're defending today... They might very well be the ones turning their weapons on you tomorrow. Don't you forget that, or you'll become a pawn just like she was!" Jeanne shouts as she clambers onto her trusty mount, letting it carry her away. As Jeanne makes her escape, the sounds of oncoming fire trucks grow louder and their flashing lights grow brighter, signaling that it might just be time to let the non-Elite forces get to work dousing the flames in the aftermath of all that fighting.
James Bond	Bond lifts a forearm to shield his eyes from the flames, diving behind a bus stop to take cover from an attack that doesn't come. He readies his watch, the 'analog' face in truth a clever digitial deception that flips away into a menu. Prepared to turn it against Jeanne, he peeks, using the reflective surface, only to see the shrinking shape of her mount. >Don't you forget that, or you'll become a pawn just like I was! "That warning's a lifetime too late," says Bond quietly. His suit is in one piece--technically--but it's covered in burn marks, and the dress clothes beneath are matted to his body with sweat. His exposed hands bear cuts from Jeanne's sword and angry red burns from her flames. Despite this, he straightens his tie, and without a further word, makes for the Aston. With a sullen 'whump' he shuts the door after climbing into the driver's seat. The car's V8 roars to life, tires squeal, and it disappears around the corner, sticking to side streets to keep the main roads clear for the firefighters.
DRYCLEAN-SIGINT	The beam disappears. It's anticlimactic; no wind-down, just an intermittent scour through the pavement and the scent of ozone to mark its passing. DRYCLEAN stops in the middle of the street. They cut a... figure, of some sort, a barely-humanoid sillhouette of shattered glass and dark fluid, amidst the still smoldering remnants of the onslaught. As Jeanne departs, the static diminishes somewhat, and after a moment they straighten slightly and turn on the balls of their feet, striding right back to their chair and returning the coat to their battered form. After a few seconds of readjustment, they look... relatively normal, for whatever baseline they have. That dark fluid still coats their monitors, jumpsuit, hand. They pick up the severed arm off the ground, and jam it back into the stump which it was detached from. A second passes. Two. Cabling bursts from the arm itself, writhing, grasping, reattaching. After a second it pulls tight, and only a gap in the exterior plating marks the break. The hand flexes. A confident stride, then, over to the rest of the group, though they pause as Bond departs immediately following the fight. After staring at where the car turned for a few moments, they direct whatever attention could be gleaned from their shattered monitors to the other two. "Quite the showing, there, ha ha. Glad you folks were the ones t'show up."
Blemishine	'Fighting corruption and evil absolutely is, Blemishine... And you'd better not forget that!' There's another of those grit-teeth expressions, although there's no chance for a retort, as Jeanne promptly separates the two of them with a bash to the chin that leaves her head ringing and her defenses down, pushed away and left to stumble backwards. Just in time for her to glance back with a wince, struggling to keep her footing as the Avenger prepares to depart on wyvernback. There are no last-minute retorts or snapbacks this time, only a growing frown as the parting words are left and the sight of their foe begins fading off into the distance. "A pawn just like she was..." She murmurs, as the adrenaline dies out and she takes a knee, using her sword for support with a heavy sigh. "...I know very well that that can happen, Miss Jeanne. Better than you think. But you're entirely hung up on..." She murmurs completely to herself, collecting her breath again. Though she does glance up as DRYCLEAN approaches, before sharply inhaling to get back to her feet - only a little shakily - and shake her head with a very small smile. "Ahaha...that's sort of our job, after all, so don't mention it! I just wish..." She looks back over her shoulder towards the station. "...it didn't happen at all."
Kale Hearthward	"Turning their weapons on me next..." Kale scoffs. "Yeah, sure. As if. I'm their star."