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Starlight Bandits     Underneath the pitch black desert sky, a path of light encapsulates a massive convoy. 10 nondescript trucks blaze across the faded road, surrounded on all sides by vast stretches of sandy wasteland. Were it just those, many would consider it a simple large-scale transport operation. Slightly unusual, but nothing to write home about. But that is not the case.

    Riding astride the trucks is a multitude of bikes. They run the gamut of shiny to grungy, store-bought to custom-made. The riders are all clad in leathers and helmets of farying designs. Some have passengers, either in a side car, or just riding on the back. However, they all seem armed to some capacity. Some have the bulge of holstered guns under their coats, others have crude melee weapons in arms reach on their bikes. Really, the only commonality between these bikers is the gang patch they wear on their back; that of a raptor with a bloody mouth riding atop a motorcycle, framed by the words 'RAPTOR CALAMITY.'

    And at the head of this convoy is a mountain of a man, riding a bike with so many chrome exhausts that from head on, it seems as if he's riding atop a motorised throne. He rides without a helmet, his wild beard tousled by the wind, dark eyes hidden behind riding goggles. The patch on his back is especially faded, and one sleeve of his jacket is removed entirely to display the tattoo upon his bicep. A heart, bearing the name 'Belle.' This is Joe Thug, the leader of the gang, ferrying his troops across the country to a new headquarters.

    Given their guard, there's no doubt that the convoy contains mere shipped goods. Within those trucks is the liquidized assets of the Raptor Calamity gang. Cash, drugs, jewellery, weapons, entire bikes... but not only their wealth, also their trophies. The studded bat that brought down Bite-Sized Biff and won the Raptors the entire East coast. The bullet that took the life of Commissioner Southward, who put undercover agents into the gang and got hundreds sent to jail. And most important of all, the jacket of Hells Belle, the fallen wife of Joe Thug. It is a thing of artistry, and the sole thing Joe has to remember her by.

    And on this night, one half of the Starlight Bandits has his sights set on it.

    As the convoy passes by the Medula Mesa, a figure jumps off from it, falling fast but spreading a cloak to slow their fall and angle their landing to be upon the tenth truck at the back of the pack. They begin their approach, running along the rood of the truck. Their thumping footsteps are loud, they clearly have no intent on doing this sneakily.
The Janitor      In the distance far ahead, a lone figure stands by the side of the road. Androgynous, nondescript, wearing green oil-stained coveralls and a matching cap. In her right hand is a tire iron; in her left, a brown paper sandwich bag. The headlights silhouette her against the desert sand. She looks like a hitchhiker; maybe someone who broke down.

     Then she steps out into the middle of the road, staring Joe Thug down. Her eyes are hidden by the brim of her cap, but her shoulders are relaxed in an easy slouch. To all the world, she looks like someone who just decided to commit suicide-by-bike. If he swerves, she steps to the side to stay directly in front of him.

     At the last instant before impact, she swings the tire iron at his head with preternaturally ruthless intent, braces her other hand against his handlebars, and vaults over his bike into the air to land on the roof of the truck behind- a whole convoy's length away, but she still stares right at the Bandit at the other end. The sandwich bag rips open. Peanut butter and jelly on white bread. The mechanic takes a bite.

     Time to go to work.     
Corona Arclite The desert was not a pleasant place. The fall of darkness did little to change that, just the fading of light and heat to night's dark cold embrace meant entirely different creatures lurked. Waited in the shadows. Waited for their prey to cross their fateful bath.

It's just after the convoy has passed the Masa and it looks like the first leg of their trip is going to go unaccousted. Eerie red beacons alight in the darkness, the wail of exhausts and the mechanical growl of an engine blaring out of idle abruptly cries through the noctural shadows. The whine of treads on pavement follows, dust kicking into the air with the fumes in a ominous plume and the two bloody lights coming visible behind the convoy as their source pulls onto the course.

The last lingers of light flash across the front of what is only in the general sense a motorcycle. The entire front has been recast in the shape of a great snarling beast, metal fangs bared in the darkness between the two crimson glows of the headlamp eyes. Between spiked front struts the pavement is gripped not by tire but some manner of studded tread, the oversized back wheel reinforced in some gritty framework of it's own to handle the additional stressed torque of that vicious sounding motor. Exhausts jut out the back at an angle, two to a side, occasionally hissing flares of ignited fumes from they scorched egresses.
( https://drive.google.com/file/d/10sqC91G2VQOIB6N2hoLNzb0-luBJTmYb/view?usp=sharing )

Upon the fierce machine sat one figure, clad in dark red poncho the faint glisten of goggle lenses obscuring her eyes. The only real hint to her identity is the two big fox ears jutting out from beneath the brim of a wasterlander stetson and the matching tail flicking in the airflow, while some sort of mechanical rabbit-like thing sits on the seat behind her.

One lone frontier rider has come to give the Raptor's hell, and retake some of those ill-gotten assets.
Starlight Bandits     As Joe Thug rolls forward, someone steps out into the road. In lieu of any kind of horn or anything, he simply bellows loud enough to be clearly heard over the roar of the engines. "Get the hell outta the way!" he shouts. He does not, in fact, swerve in the slightest. He barrels straight on ahead, scowling as the Janitor does not move. "Fine! Ya wanna play chicken?! You're gonna lose either way!" He then actually accelerates, fully intent on running the mysterious figure down.

    But they instead leap, taking a swing at the biker leader's head with a tyre iron. It connects solidly, making his head rock back and a grunt issue from his throat. But though he swerves and wobbles, his bike remains on the road, and he remains coherent enough to actually make a grab at The Janitor as she leaps over his head. He comes short however, and she now stands upon the head truck. Joe Thug grabs a radio receiver from his bike's dashboard and speaks into it. "Raptor, this is Pack Leader! We got some batshit bitch on the top of the head truck!"

    Meanwhile, at the back of the convoy, someone radios in response as they look up at Irvine, and see the screaming hellbike coming up in their rear mirror. "Pack Leader, this is Johnny Young! We got someone else dropping in from the Mesa on the rear truck, and another bike coming from behind!" With these reports coming in, the Raptors move in unison. They bunch up around the trucks, and those who have passengers leave the handlebars in said passengers care as they leap to grab the roof of the trucks and pull themselves up.

    Meanwhile, two of the rearmost bikes turn to be driving behind the rear truck, and fiddle with some kind of tank on the sides of their bikes. They pass them back to their rear passengers, who begins dumping the contents onto the road behind them. An oil slick spreads across the dusty roads, spreading and reducing friction for their pursuer. And then one of them flicks a lighter and tosses it, rendering the road aflame!

    Meanwhile, Janitor and Irvine both are faced down by three hard men apiece, with others waiting to join them. The Janitor is menaced with a bike chain being swing at her head, while another goes low and swipes at her knees with their own tyre iron! The third hangs back, brandishing a crowbar.

    Irvine though... laughs, and flourishes his cape? And adjusts his domino mask and wide-brimmed hat? "Hahah! I do not fear fat hairy men!" he says, swiping his gun-machete in a dramatic flourish! "For I am... La Avispa!" Oh no, he's doing a bit. Thankfully, he's immediately dogpiled by said fat, hairy men.
The Janitor      The three bikers have Jane on the defensive- but what a defense it is. She leans back to duck under the swung chain Matrix-style, relying on the onrushing wind to push her back upright. As the second man brings up the tire iron, she kicks his hand before the swing can gather momentum, knocking the blow back before it can begin. With her second of breathing room, she steps backwards towards the hood, seemingly retreating...

     And then kicks viciously through the windshield, aiming to drive a shard of broken glass through the driver's head as she drops down into the compartment. If he's incapacitated- or if she can wrestle the steering wheel away- she'll slam on the gas and swerve in a J-turn, aiming to throw the bikers on top onto the road and sideswipe Joe Thug in the process!

     Whatever her goal here is, it seems to start- if not end- with the gang's leader dead on the asphalt.
Corona Arclite     Oil is spilled out on the road, and turned into a literal highway to hell via discarded flame. If there wasn't enough acrid smoke in the air from the giant convoy there definately was now as putrid black smoke rises from the smoldering mess.

    "Heh. Someone has a taste for the classics." A faint smirk grazes her muzzle before Corona pulls her neckerchief up to help keep that foul smoke out of her breath, rising flames reflecting in her goggles as she hunched forward against her machine and, of all things, opens the throttle up wide.
    A flaming oil slick would devestate a normal cycle. But the studded tread in front of this roaring machine dig through the viscous obstacle to grip the terrain below and keep control. Flames lick across the sides with a horrid cackle as they snap and hiss into the smokey skies beyond, rolling across the angles of the unearthly alloys the protective exteriors were forged from.

    Though all the bikers in the back would see was their dastardly bonfire being parted as their beastily pursuer tears through, backlight by the inferno that barely deterred it.

    "Gonna take more than that to stop the Chupacabra!" Corona hoots as she sits back up afterward. "But you really shouldn't be carryin' around such flammable stuff~"

    Case in point as Corona draws her oversized firearm, the unorthadox firing systems evident in how it has a cylinderic chamber close to the front of the weapon instead of the position a revolver would. It rotates into place, kicks angerily as she fires, then rotates and repeats as she fires off several high calibre rounds at the rear bikes of the convoy. The handcannon puts out enough force to punch those rounds through metal with little difficulty.

    It'll be an especially Bad Time for someone if she hits one of those oil dispenser tanks.
Starlight Bandits     The bikers slowly advance on Jane Doe, the one whose arm got kicked away bearing bloody murder in their eyes. The one with the chain is smirking and swirling it lazily, thinking he's got the assassin on the run. But in a sudden explosion of violence, she's kicked the windshield in and killed the truck driver with a shard of glass. The wheel is grappled, and the truck overtaken. The guy in the passenger seat is, for the moment, too stunned to stop Jane as she sharply turns the truck. The three bikes on the roof go flying off, and several of the biker guards are sideswiped, their bikes and bodies going under the wheels.

    "Christ Almighty!" Joe Thug yells, throttling his bike as blue flames leap from the many exhausts, giving him enough speed to dodge the truck. "Crazy bitch! I didn't become head of the Raptors by being easy to kill!" he shouts, pulling a sawed-off shotgun from a saddlebag and shooting it at the Janitor. The wide spread catches the passenger and hits something important, so at least she doesn't have that to worry about.

    Meanwhile, at the back of the convoy, Corona's bullets catch the oil tanks, sending them up in plumes of fire. The bike passengers are immolated, and fall from their rides in their attempt to pat out the flames. The drivers turn to retaliate, but one of her shots hits a gas tank and a whole bike explodes, the force enough to send the other spinning out. It's also enough to distract the three bikers pinning Irvine-sorry, La Avispa-and allowing him to get free.

    "Hey! You up there! Cease your shenanigans at once! I'll have no one claim I had help in this! What's the point of getting a birthday gift for someone you care about if you need help to get it for them?!" He breaks into a sprint with the bikers in pursuit, and leaps from the rear tuck to the second-most rear truck, shooting the driver of the rear truck mid-flip.

    This makes said truck jack-knife hard enough to trip, becoming a horizontal rolling hazard for Corona and taking out several bikers in one go. The loading doors are torn open on impact, and thousands of dollars of bills scatters into the air and across the road.

    "Sorry back there! I promise I didn't steal that idea from them!" La Avispa shouts at Corona before rushing along the new rearmost truck, heading straight for the first one, and for Jane.
The Janitor      Jane ducks down beneath the dashboard as Joe opens fire, using the truck itself as a shield as she swerves to the side and pulls the parking brake before snapping off the stick-shift. The truck immediately lets out a grinding shriek, then starts to log-roll on its side, unable to take the hairpin turn with its wheels locked. She turns the key in the ignition, dives out the driver's-side window, runs along the side of the flipping car like it's a rolling log, stomps her tire-iron into its gas tank in a precise spot as it flips over, then leaps onto the roof of the next truck down.

     The embedded iron conducts the spark plug's electrical current directly into the now-exposed-to-oxygen gas tank. Anyone who's watched a Michael Bay movie knows what happens next.

     Silhouetted against the explosion lighting up the night, Jane takes another bite of her sandwich as she watches Irvine's approach. It's gonna be a long day. You've got to keep your blood sugar up, you know.
Corona Arclite     I take that previous thought back. Some hazards you can't just barrel your way through.

    Whatever Corona cusses under her breath is muffled by the bandana as she holsters the handcannon back in it's slot on the side of the cycle so the auto-loader can refill the chambers. She grabs a lever and pulls it, then regrips the handlebars with both gloved hands. Followed by clenching the brake just enough to momentarily stall the rear wheel and make the entire Chupacabra buck upwards in a wheelie.
    The quad of exhuast swing down horizontal at the sides of the wheel and erupt in powerful plumes as nitro and who-knows-what is pumped through, turning them into a set of roaring booster jets that fling the machine into the air. The jump isn't enough to clear the rolling truck, but it is enough to land against what was one of the sides when it was upright. Sparks fly from rending metal as track and wheel fight for purchase and speed up the quickly moving surface to blaze off into the air just before it roll over onto that side.

    Metal strains with the clatter as the machine drops back to the pavement hard, suspension having a struggle to keep the cycle up and moving, and Corona gritting her teeth just as tightly. While making a mental note to have some of her drones sent out to pick up the scattered cash.

    "Yer up li'l pardner," she comments over her shoulder to her passanger, who's probably putting dents in the seat with his metal paws holding on through those stunts. Even in the ruckus around them it's audible when his joints unlock and he crawls up in front of her.

    When he rises over the handlebars it becomes shockingly apparent that besides being an automaton he's no ordinary 'rabbit'. Not with the way sparks and crackling up and down the jackalope antlers on his head like angry tesla coils.

    A great arc of electricity is released down the road, threatening to short out electrical systems in any of the other vehicles it may hit.
Starlight Bandits     The front truck flips through the air, with the Janitor sprinting across the turning surface, slamming a tyre iron through to connect the liquid fuel to the spark plug. This has entirely predictable results, the resulting explosion filling the night, and forcing the convoy to come to a full halt. The truck immediately behind the first slams right into it, and the one behind that hard brakes, forcing the one behind that to brake and so on. It's a cascading disaster, with trucks ploughing into trucks and unlucky bikers getting crushed in the chaos.

    Both La Avispa and Joe Thug scream "NOOOOOOOOOOO!", with the latter putting the brakes on his monster bike and dismounting to rush to the burning tangle of metal. With the carriage totally crumpled by the impact of the other trucks, he takes a discarded knife and crowbar to the hot metal and actually manages to wrench open a hole big enough to squeeze through. He vanishes into the smoke and flames for a long while, before emerging clutching a metal foot locker to his chest. The heat has made it scorching hot, but he ignores the scalding on his skin as he frantically fiddles with the combination lock. "Oh no no, don't worry baby, I'm right here..." he mutters to himself, his voice choked with emotion.

    La Avispa was thrown off the convoy by the chain impacts, landing on the desert sand, slow to get up. Meanwhile, the arcing electricity launched from Corona's construct friend has a bigger impact that she probably anticipated. With the convoy halted, and all that metal in close contact with each other, sparks arc about, electrocuting many surviving bikers, and igniting a lot of fuel. Explosions start popping off, one after another, lighting up the dark sky with noxious flames. A lot of bikers are dead at this point.
Corona Arclite     ... Well that's going to complicate things. Sure, the convoy has been stopped, but they've inadvertantly set off a lot more explosions in the process, which is going to endanger a lot of what's inside the trucks.

    You know, the valuable stuff they kind of want to at least recover some of.

    A screeching wail rings across the wrecked convoy as Corona skids her ride to a stop, and as soon as it's ceased moving both her and her companion hop off. "If there's somethin' yer looking for," she shouts in the direction La Avispa went tumbling. "Ya better get off yer ass and find it!" She makes a face at the comm, but now isn't time to sweat over the living disaster zone sort of revealing herself.

    Taking her own words to heart Corona runs towards the back of the pileup, vaulting over dead biker bodies and ruined bikes with Hopalong living up to his name to keep pace. She goes for one of the trucks that had a chance to partially stop and was in less immeadiately ruined and exploding state. Sure, they took out most of the gang by this point, but if she doesn't come back with something of worth to show for it the mission was still a wreck.

    As she rounds the back of the truck she clenches a fist, igniting the plasma cutting torch built into the back of her glove, and going to slice off whatever locking mechanism the doors have. The grabs Hopalong and holds him up by the legs so he can shove his front paws into the door seam and Corona can use him like a hydraulic jack to try and pry the doors open.
The Janitor      Jane lands on the desert sand on her feet, her sneakers scarcely making a noise. A piece of sharp, twisted, vaguely triangular steel from the widespread wreckage is clutched in one of her hands. The remaining half of her sandwich is in the other. She walks towards Joe with the easy posture and focused gait of someone who's got somewhere to be; the surrounding flames underlight her with an unearthly glow, but somehow her eyes are still shadowed.

     A sadist would salt the wound; torment Joe Thug in his moment of weakness. A thug might wait for him to open the locker before attacking him. Jane is something else. She uses the surrounding flames to hide her looming shadow, uses the oily asphalt to hide her footsteps, and moves to conceal the rustle of the fabric of her clothes. To those who see her, it's as traceless as a ghost's levitation. But for Joe, she's precisely in his blind spot- and maneuvers to remain so even should he turn his head.

     It's not until she's close enough to shake his hand that she lunges, piece of sharpened metal in her hand, and tries to slide the cruel shrapnel right between the vertebrae of his neck like a card shuffled into a deck.
Starlight Bandits     Corona goes straight for the goodies, heedless or mindless of the personal drama happening up ahead. Her blowtorch cuts right through the shutter, and Hopalong starts prying it open. But not all the bikers are dead. A frenzied yell comes before a brick is swung at the fennec's head by a bloodied man covered in cuts. He and 10 others are swarming around, prepared to take any kind of retribution with blood. "You fuckers RUINED EVERYTHING!" one shouts before swiping with a long pipe, as another just throws a molotov while choking on the smoke and crying.

    Meanwhile, Jane Doe looms over the sobbing Joe Thug, a shard of metal readied to end his life. As it descends, the biker bolts upright, the shard fiding his toned back rather than his neck and burying deep, but not making a lethal wound. He swings his arm back as he turns, yelling in the same kind of frenzy a wounded animal displays. "I'm gonna kill you, pack your corpse with salt and leave you out here to dry, you little whore. And after that, your bones are going to adorn my ride!" he roars.

    Only for a single gunshot to punctuate the air.

    La Avispa stands there, whirling his gun-kukri and flourishing his cape. "A fine debacle you've made of things!" he says to The Janitor. His appearance and general demeanour has Thug stalled for a moment, but he's still well on guard. "But thankfully, it looks like Sir Thug has salvaged what I came for. Now... one way or another, I'm walking out of here with that coat! But since my solo act has been botched already, I might as well roll with it. Improvisation and all that!"

    He offers a big smile to the slim woman and giant man. "Jane, wasn't it? If you promise to deliver me the contents of that chest, I'll help you bring down Mister Thug. Mister Thug! If you give me the contents of that chest, I'll help you kill this woman. Whoever makes me the better deal today secures my services!"

    He has has radio on as he says this, so if Corona wants to bargain as well, she has well overheard the offer.
The Janitor      Jane leaves the metal in the wound and brings up her forearm to take Joe's blow with a snap-rustle of fabric, shifting her feet into a defensive posture. Her other elbow draws back, ready to jab him beneath the ribs-

     And then the gunshot, and she twists blindingly quickly to look at Irvine. She doesn't say anything in response to his request, not that she's been particularly talkative so far. She's just taking the momentary lull as a chance to finish her sandwich and dust off the crumbs on her hip, to free up her left hand.

     When he's done talking, she holds out her closed right hand. A thin trickle of blood runs between her fingers. She opens it, and Irvine's bullet falls to clink on the asphalt. That's her answer: contempt.

     Then, and only then, does she pivot on her heel to sock Joe right in the goggles with a prizefighter's hook.
Corona Arclite     Corona isn't so much ignoring the drama at the front of the former convoy as she is not letting it distract her from other objectives. At this point she doesn't really care what she can recover, as long as its valuable enough it can be used to help some of the people that have had their lives and livelihoods ruined by these outlaws. If those two want to fight over whatever Joe is hording in that trunk, that's up to them to settle.

    'Jane Doe' is a big heap of trouble, but that's something for her paranoia to worry about later on. Right now she's more a peripheral point of chaos than a direct concern.

    Corona is use to working on and around loud machinery, so even with the noise of Hopalong prying open the doors she's not entirely unaware of the movement behind her thanks to her exceptional hearing. At the last moment she jerks her head and the only thing the brick slams against the back of the truck is her hat. "Sunnova--"
    *TWANG* The pipe swing has a bit better luck, catching her in the shoulder and knocking her over.

    The molotov missed her since she fell over, but that's not really helping anything. The whole point of a molotov is to shatter and spread sticky burning stuff all over, so now the vicinity of the truck is not going to be less fiery and explody for very long.

    Corona rolls over on her back... and pulls more guns from her hammerspace inventory as she does, coming up with a pair of smaller modified handguns. "Karma fer all the lives ya pisshole fiddleheads have ruined." One shot is specifically aimed to knock that pipe out of the thug's hand like the sharpshooter she is, followed by general rapid fire 'bullet hell' volley to get the rest of them to back off.
Starlight Bandits     Jane Doe not only rejects La Avispa's generous offer, she does so in the /coolest way possible./ Catching bullets is rad, but the rejection has the veins in the costumed man's neck bulging furiously. He looks to Joe Thug who only barks, "I ain't givin' you Belle's coat, you little shit! But you wait right there, I'll break your spine in a moment!" He takes the prizefighter jab, the goggles digging into sensitive flesh and pressing against his eyes, but he fights back. He fights like a boxing infighter, using his left jabs and hooks to dominate the area around Jane and keep her off-balance before lining up the meatiest right possible aimed to remove her entire head.

    Corona shoots the pipe from her assailant's hand. The hail of gunfire drives most of them back, but the chunkiest of the lot barrels forward. Based on the exhaust pipe sticking through him, he didn't have much longer anyway, and now he's aiming to go out pinning down the Raptor's enemies.

    But suddenly, over the roar of the flames and the sounds of combat, the sound of a revving engine. Jane and Joe see it first. It's Joe Thug's throne bike, mounted by La Avispa, gunning the engine as hard as he can. "Get off my bike!" Joe yells as the rider blasts past the two, aiming it at the blockade of trucks before him, jumping off right before impact. A bike vs. a truck is usually no contest, but this bike is so fast and bulky that it succeeds in clearing a path, ploughing through metal and pushing aside carriages to leave a path.

    A path between the surviving bikers and their leader.

    "Gentlemen!" shouts 'The Wasp' from atop a burning truck. "I understand you have grievances with us! But that one," he pivots and points dramatically at The Janitor. "Is trying to kill your leader! I think that takes priority, no?"

    Corona's assailants pause for a moment. This place is not a place of deep logic, but what is being spun here is simple enough for them to get. They begin pouring through the cleared path, aiming to menace The Janitor alongside their leader, pouring in and taking swings!

    "You're welcome~" La Avispa says to Corona. "Now, get what you're here for and be away!" He too makes a run for his goal, hopping across vehicles to slide at the locked chest and try to claim it for his own!
Corona Arclite     Corona was just lining up a shot on the impaled guy when the gangbangers all stop at Avispa's proclimation, and change objective in a hurry. With a huff she grabs her hat, tugging it out from under the brick that knocked it off her head. And briefly raising in it an acknowledging salute to the other before bolting inside the truck her sidekick had pried open.

    At this point it doesn't matter -what- so much, she's just going to grab as much of whatever value she can find, and get the hell out of here! Of course, there's the matter of getting back to her bi--

    Abruptly the Chupacabra's eye-beacons light up, engine growling back to life as it appears to shift out of idle on its own, wheel around and speed towards the truck Corona is in the process of hopefully looting.

    --Or not, as apparently the thing has some manner of remote control.

    At least we hope it's remote control. That thing is ferocious enough without some kind of AI...
The Janitor      Funnily enough, Jane doesn't dispute Irvine's rabblerousing characterization. For sure, some of that's because she's currently locked in battle with Joe Thug: she's moving in a bizarre orientation-agnostic capoeira-like dance, sweeping at his tendons with shards of glass, blocking his punches by kicking his arms, and performing acrobatic maneuvers that'd exhaust and nauseate anyone of lesser constitution.

     But mostly, it's because she really is there to kill them all, and more aggro can only put them through the meatgrinder faster.

     Her dance doesn't stop as they swarm around her- it turns into a sweeping, cutting ballroom waltz, covering distance and spinning across the floor. Most of her movements follow a ruthless arithmetic of violence, serving a direct if unpredictable purpose in offense or defense- blocking attacks with a hubcap, slipping someone on oil, slitting someone's neck with the remains of a rearview mirror- but others are more arcane.

     One jumper cable half-stripped and hooked to a battery. A barrel of volatile drug precursors burst with a thrown hatchet. A prize bike from the back of a truck jammed to full throttle with a rock. Puzzle pieces slide into place.

     Finally, she peels herself away from the murderous mob just far enough to turn the ignition on the prize motorcycle and clamp the jumper cable to its metal kickstand. It peels out, riderless and kicking up sparks from its kickstand-lean, as it cuts a circle defined by the jumper-cable leash. It encircles and lassos the mob in an electrifying net in a second, and then the precursor-chemicals ignite from the sparks.

     The Janitor stands by, a sharpened fragment of a license plate in her hand, and watches them burn. Any who make it out of the pyre, she'll gut herself. At some point the cellphone in her pocket vibrates and lights up green. Job's finished.
Starlight Bandits     An immolating pyre springs up, cleaning the world. Sometimes it takes more than bleach to get out a stain, something the Janitor likely knows well. Several bikers die instantly, but those who stagger out are cut down immediately. One of them is Joe Thug, who cried out with scorched vocal cords, "Belle!..." right before being put down for good. In a single night, the Calamity Raptors, the bane of multiple law agencies and other outlaws, are snuffed out.

    Corona manages to lit out with her stolen goods. There's a lot of singed cash to claim, but also things that hold their value in the heat. Gold and jewellery can be melted and recast over and over, while bike parts are made to withstand a certain amount of heat. All in all, a pretty worthwhile raid, and all the offenders who took it are dead. Chalk one up for the Watch and vigilantism!

    Once a ways away from the burning wrecks, La Avispa discards his hat, cloak, and mask to reveal... Irvine Lune! Jamming the blade of his kukri in between the ldie and case of the foot locker, he wrenches it open to reveal his quarry. The beautifully designed jacket of Hells Belle, the perfect birthday gift for Molly. And since 'La Avispa' was the one who stole it, she won't find out that Irvine did a job without her.

    Is that stupid? Yeah, but so is Irvine, and so is Molly.

    He neatly folds the jacket and produces Terminal Getaway as he begins to sing to himself. To himself, or perhaps for the soul of Joe Thug. "And I know that I'm damned if I never get out/ and maybe I'm damned if I do/but with other beat I got left in my heart/you know I'd rather be damned with you."

    And with a bip, he's gone.