Liberty or Death Between Missions

Bishop stretched backward, simultaneously popping his back, knuckles, elbows and shoulders. To those unused to it, it sounded quite painful like movie sound effects for broken bones.
“Well my air conditioning is working too hard. The bedroom is colder than the fridge. Decided I’d take a walk. I was passing through so I figured I’d bum here for a while. At least till the rain let’s up.” He watched Lou trance out. He waved his hand in front of her eyes, snapped a couple of times. No reaction.
“Addormentato” he said in Italian.(Rough translation: Dead to the World. Drowsy ect.) She looked oddly serene, especially compared to her usual hyperactive behavior. He never quite understood Technomancers. Most other clerics he knew condemned them as near demonic people, and that their abilities were unnatural. To his understanding they were just magicians of technology, in a sense.

Gretel stops as the Johnnies come to a halt near the warehouse, hiding herself around a corner and thankful for the heavy rain, which impeded her sight very little but would make it hard for anyone without vision enhancement to see. She waits there, using her cybereye to magnify her view and search for what formed the focus of the gang's attentions. She caressed her gun, her heart fluttering as she imagined the sight of blood mingling with rain as it dribbled into the gutters, flowing away from faces masked with horror and pain. Her smile grew wider.
"We should be patient, frater mai mic," she whispers.
He replies, "Sora mai mare, patience is a virtue, to have if you can, seldom found in woman, never in man."
She giggles. "Who said that?"
"Ed Gein, I think," he says, shrugging.
She nods. "Yes. It sounds like something he would have said."
The whispered conversation continues, an inaudible whisper muffled by the pouring sky.

Sparkler glances at Lou, and chuckles. "She's online, doing something. I never really know what she does when she logs on... hopefully she'll come up with something useful, and tell us about it when she gets back. She probably won't, but I can always hope."

Waving Bishop to follow him, he starts making his way back towards the impromptu dining area. "You're welcome to whatever you want... not that we've got much that's fancy or high-quality... but I keep a decent supply of clean water for my lab, if you want to make some of that boiled grass you drink." He grins as he finishes, and starts over towards the fridge to get out one of his jugs of water.

With a dramatic flourish, Lou came out of the closet to admire the inside of this new node. "Waaaghh, so small!" She wandered around the room glancing at the filing cabinet before being drawn to the monitor array. "Oooh, the teevee!" With no regard to the original layout of the wall, she yanked out some of the monitors and put them together on the bottom row, just the ones she wanted. They held different images, slices of various streets and the forms of gangers prowling across them, all of the locations close to their warehouse. "Tee vee bee cee pee... Lee... Gee!" Lou forwarded the videos to Sparkler, popping up in his AR view as a chibi icon of herself lying on her back on top of a stack of ancient 2D televisions. "Lookit what Looouuuu foooouuuuunnnnd!"

Something elsewhere made her icon look away, and she toppled off the boxes. "Ummm!" was all she had the presence of mind to say to Sparkler before she wandered off, leaving the pile of TVs in front of his eyes for him to watch or deal with as he felt necessary.

Back in the utility room, a door burst open, and Lou turned like a thief caught in a security spotlight. Something was connecting to the node, and Lou panicked, pulling a gigantic monkey wrench out of nowhere and charging the newcomer. She leapt into the air and swung the hefty hunk of metal at the man who stepped inside. Too her surprise, the wrench landed a sickening blow to the wall behind him, phasing through where he stood without affecting him. The man looked at her with a bemused grin, and then turned to slam down an alarm lever on the wall. Immediately the node turned hostile, an angry red hue replacing the sterile white illumination.

Lou meeped and covered her mouth. That hadn't gone like she had planned. The other icon capitalized on her confusion and pulled out a handgun, firing off a round. It missed entirely, but the shot ricocheted off a wall, bouncing dangerously around the tiny room. Time to get out! A loud series of beeps resounded as Lou hit some buttons on a whimsical-looking electronic device embedded in a wad of chalky white material. Then she tossed it into the air, and the whole thing stuck to the ceiling with a loud plop!, pointless wires shivering and a giant red light flashing periodically to the beat of a loud beeping sound.

The other icon seemed to take offense to that, and clicked on a flashlight that he held opposite his handgun. He began tracking her down with the torch's beam, hunting for her in the shadows of the room. But Lou was done, the sounds of footsteps from outside the node growing louder. With one last look, she waved farewell, and watched the digital world melt around her. It slid down into pools of wax that drained away into the ground as she opened her eyes to the warehouse. For a second she seemed relaxed- like usual it didn't last long. Lou jumped to her feet, calling out, "Gonna blow!" as she sprinted across the warehouse floor, bare feet padding against the polished surface. She leapt and landed in a huddle against the far wall, covering her ears with both hands and keeping her eyes squinted closed. She remained in that position for a while, with seemingly nothing happening inside the warehouse (besides the box of TVs in Sparkler's AR view toppling over and disappearing in a cloud of smoke).

Sparkler is lifting a jug of water out of the fridge when a row of TVs and Lou's icon pop up in front of his vision. Stopping, he says "What?", then focuses on what the screens display. After a moment, he sets the water jug back in the fridge and closes it. "Well, it seems Lou has actually been..." and is interrupted by Lou running across the room and huddling against the wall. Her cry makes him look upwards towards his lab in alarm, but when the only explosion seems to be online, he sighs in relief and goes back to speaking. "It seems one of the local gangs has taken exception to our operation here... and we're going to need to teach them some respect. Unfortunately, it seems Lou... or somebody... crashed the security cameras before I got a good read on them."

Even as he finishes speaking, his own security system starts beeping in alarm, and he thumbs his commlink to bring up the feed from the relevant cameras. Grimacing, he says "Yep, they're here. Shall we get ready to greet them?"

“Il Signore nostro Dio è il mio pastore (the lord is my shepherd)” Bishop slipped on his shock gloves, stray sparks flew between them. He punched his fists together.

“E io sono un suo strumento di ira (And I am an instrument of his wrath)” Bishop removed the safety on his Slavette Guardian, and cocked it on the edge of the crate.

“Nel nome del Padre, del Figlio e dello spirito santo (in the name of the father, the son and the Holy Spirit.)” Bishop let loose a bloodthirsty grin. It looked almost evil with his red pupils.

“Let’s kick some back!” he said with conviction, finishing his prayer.

“Hey spark! You think you have enough time to jury rig a claymore or something?” He asked.

The rain continues to pour down, miniature hammers that set up a choir of chaos off the metal roofs and beaten streets. Sheets of thicker water cascading through the few street lights that are left, pushing inward until the lampbeams are mere coloumns of meaningless bright white in an ocean of writhing, noisy dark. The thin snakes of water have swelled until they are fat anacondas, practically living things that squeeze against the sidewalks - and occasionally swallow them whole in mass puddles caught within the mad rush to nowhere. Any sane person would be indoors.

These are not the sanest of people.

The Johnnies, their clothes soaked, their features cast into skull-like crevices in the dim light, all line up along the street; A classic formation of soldiers everywhere, to display their numbers. Chains clink through thick mitts, pipes hum hollowly with the trapped wind, and the soft sound of guns clicking is heard. If they are aware that their battle royale is about to occur practically on the warehouse's front door, they show no remorse; They are the vanguard, sent to defend their territory.

The other group, on the other hand, do not stand so stoically; They bark and cackle, showing gums filed away and teeth crudely sharpened. They bang stolen pieces of equipment together, howling nonsensically in a drug fueled boost of courage and madness. They are smaller, but they are fiercer. Their 'leader', who's blood shot eyes are wild and wide, seems the most normal of the group - and the only one holding them in check with an outstretched hand and a cheshire's grin.

Dead Johnny steps forward, a cheap pistol loosley held in his hand. "You're on the wrong fraggin' side of the tracks, chummer. Turn around and back out, and we'll only mostly kick your chump dreck." There is a murmur of sniggering from the soggy brutes beside him. Dead Johnny glances back behind him, grinning at his bangers, before looking back towards the nuttier group.

Just in time for his name to be far ironic than poetic. A splurt of red joins the wash of water around his feet, and he slowly falls forward; Just a sack of meat now, leaking crimson. There is a stunned silence from the ranks of the Johnnies..

Before the Loco Nails roars his warhowl, his outstretched hand still holding the smoking pistols. And the entire nut-filled gang charges...

Gretel mounted her bike, giving her minigun a soft kiss. Her mouth curls into a gentle smile. "Time to call down angels for them."

With a revving whir, she roars down the alley, one hand controlling the bike while the other operates the the massive gun, which swivels to aim 60 degrees from her heading. As she nears the melee, the gun's barrels begin to spin with an ominous whirrrr. She fires.
There are no streaking lines of fire. There is no thundering staccato. There is just a high pitched DZZZZZT, the detonations of EX Explosive rounds hitting flesh and concrete, and the joyous laughter of a little girl.

A macabre scene draws the eye in as Gretel unleashed her own special brand of bullet hell. The Johnnies pull up their various metal weaponry, preparing to meet the insane charge of the Locos. The thunder ripples overhead, as if the very sky itself were preparing to be torn asunder by this miniature war. And just as the screaming fanatics - mouths briefly sillouetted in a flash of lighting - close with their far more numerous opponents, something comes roaring out of the alleyway. Muzzle flashes are brighter than the lights, sharper than the lightning, illuminating the craters and holes that suddenly spout in the midst of the chaotic group like hell's own boils. A few of the Johnnies manage to duck low, to avoid the majority of the fire by simply flattening themselves...

Everyone else is not so lucky. The Locos, hardly wearing any armor at all, are torn apart - almost literally. Joints explode outwards, limbs collapse towards the ground as they are thrown from their feet almost to a man. Necks are punctured, blood - a rich brown color from the abdomen - stains and swirls into the water around them, which has become infused with unidentifiable pieces. One Loco, whose leg disappears mid-thigh, even manages to comically stab himself on his own shattered knife. The entire gang looking as if a giant cleaver had clumsily diced them. Of the twelve that began the charge, seven remain alive, including Loco Nails himself. But, strangely, their screams are not of pain. But of RAGE. Those that still have eyes turn their burning hatred towards an entirely new target...

The Johnnies fare much better, having - in addition to numbers to soak the bullets - a far more traditional armored garb than the Locos. However, this fares them only so much that they lose five members to the sudden roar of bullets, heads jerked off and bodies spun about. Most of their number is knocked to the ground as well, holes blown through vital and non-vital parts alike. It was a foul wind that blew upon the battle today - and will likely fan a much larger war to come. The Johnnies that are left, however, are not in much better shape than the Locos, but at least a few of their number is still able to stand..

The warehouse itself suddenly seems to come under attack as bullets rip apart the buildings around the wrought destruction. Glass shatters from a few stray ricochets, and even the thunder cannot hide the roar of ex-explosive bullets being used against non-military personnel. What had started as a muted shout and a few loud pops to counterpoint the thunder has turned into something horrible.

Gretel giggles as she shreds the gangers with gunfire. Those weird naked ones are funny! They scream so weird when they bleed!
They were so icky, though, and they stopped screaming. Maybe if she kept shooting them, they'd scream again?

"Will you scream for me?" she calls out, her voice a drifting, distant call that floats in with the smoke of the barrage.

Then she trains her targeting reticule on the Locos (though she didn't know that's what they were called) and sends another hail of exploding bullets at them, laughing as she empties her magazine into the bleeding, bewildered crowd.

As the ripping sound of a minigun roars through the rain outside, Sparkler swears several times, rather vehemently. "I don't know who's got that weapon, but they're not a regular ganger, that's for sure. Bishop, you guard the door, I'm going to go get something heavier."

Dashing up the stairs, he grabs several sticks of dynamite he had left near the top of the stairs for this purpose, with short lengths of fuse stuck in the ends - ideal for lighting and throwing at someone, or something... not really very powerful, but decent for scaring off a group of thugs. Stuffing the sticks in his pocket, he dashes back downstairs and makes for the front door, keeping one eye on the security feed of what was happening outside.

Dull, resounding thuds against the warehouse walls, and suddenly Lou's spot cowering against the wall wasn't so crazy after all. Isaac ran over to her on short stubby legs, his eye wide with what was clearly concern, but no such fear gripped the young technomancer. She leaned over a box and stared at the wall, a wide grin under her shiny green goggles. "Raining sideways!" She called out in amusement, and looked ready to jump out from behind cover, but the dog had other ideas. He bit down on her shorts, growling quietly as he looked up at her with pleading eyes. The move was unexpected, and Lou glanced down in surprise, before sinking back to the floor. "Poor puppy, so scared!" She commented and petted Isaac's head. The Welsh Corgi merely rolled its eyes.

Electrons tumble down what is, for them, wide open plains of circuitry, throwing lines of switches as they propogate. Each new electric charge sending hundreds of others scurrying along like a demonic game of dominoes, zipping at speeds approaching light through x-ray carved channels. Their propogation complete, the flow is stymied and slowly dies off, leaving only the blinking numbers upon the wireless Nodes.

8:28:23

Gretel has unleashed a brand new hell upon the gangers, catching them completely by surprise, mowing down a large swathe of the more manical cadre in a spurt of blood and gore, broken pieces of masonry and debris floating gently through the air. Electrons spill once more, flooding down their causeways.

8:28:24

A slight shift of the arm, the bike inching forward as the delighted child shifts her aim thirty more degrees, the minigun's barrels languidly spinning as it empties itself at the gangs - more specifically, at the Locos. Skulls gracefully collapse inwards, holes blossom along chest, bones splinter and crack. Speckles of floating red crash like liquid cymbals into fat, lazy raindrops. Tiny explosions calmly walk their way towards the Johnnies, the front row of injured - having barely had time to fall down and back - are chewed open once more, their flesh mingling with that of their foes in quivering, airborne pieces. Fifteen more souls part ways with the world, the sharp zing of ricochets bouncing off a warehouse far more heavily armored than its unfortunate neighbors. Glass flutters about like strange butterflies. Electrons stampede outwards once again.

8:28:25, 8:28:26, 27, 28,29..

Gretel's bike finishes it's ripping course Northwest, disappearing into the depths of an alleyway, depriving her of targets - for the moment. Time begins to speed up, each gelled moment collapsing in on itself until what was once a glorious ballet of destruction is now just a wailing mass of pain, confusion, and fear. A few Johnnies, unharmed still, begin the process of trying to drag their fellows away. Those who are less courageous begin to scatter, darwin's best taking hold.

CHAK.
Her left hand keeping control of the bike, Gretel uses her right to eject the empty clip. She pulls out a full one, which is marked with a strip of blue tape, and fits it deftly into the feed. The bike leans, slashing up an arc of water as it curves around a building, entering an alley that opens up due west of the battlefield.

Rounding the bend, she sees the Johnnys trying to flee.
"Now, now," she says, scolding playfully, the same sleepy grin never faltering, "You're not allowed to run away."

Her gun raises up, targeting the nearest fleeing Johnny.
DZZZZZT
Another stream of bullets flies out in a fanning stream, the bullets crackling with blue lightning.

The figure, turned to a blob of bobbing darkness by the heavy downpour and the inadequate light, has begun to pour all of its energy into running; And nothing but. What had started out as a simple throwdown between the Johnnies lowest vanguard and a splinter of the Locos has turned into a blood bath on either side; Whether by some member of the Locos going off the rocker and murdering his own in wanton destruction, or by some third group taking advantage of the chaos. Either way, the mind turns to one thing; Run. Run before the serrated doppler effect of the motorcycle's departure begins to rise in octave again.

Run.

Slim Johnny can feel time slipping away from him as he sprints, leaving men behind that he had sworn a life oath too. But he doesn't care. Escape is there, just a few steps in front of him. Some part of his brain, disconnected from the trauma, quietly wonders about the sudden blue light growing behind him, and the static discharge crackling off his armored jacket. That is his last coherent thought for a while, as a single stick n' shock nails him directly in the back. Blue arcs of lightning leap across his body, even as other darts fired in a wide spread ping off the walls and ground around him. Slim Johnny's legs seize up, and he collapses downwards, muscles taken by a seizure that causes his stained eyes to roll upwards and froth to appear at the corner of his mouth.

The other Johnnies are scattering; At least four of them bolting out right and in all directions in the rain, leaving their wounded behind. Who, themselves, are doing their best to stagger or stumble away. The cohesion - and the cluster - are gone. Those exiting the warehouse can see two of the Johnnies running full tilt - as if the devil herself were on their tails - right for the warehouse itself.

Bishop couldn’t hear anything besides the downpour after the hail of gunfire. Usually that’s a bad thing. It pays to be prepared. He furrowed his eyes as he began to mold his magic. To the untrained, it would have looked like he simply stood there in deep thought. It felt like running up a flight of stairs with a bag of groceries after he was done. His jacket by the door was still dripping wet. One drop fell. It slowed to a crawl partway. “God bless magic.”

He trained his pistol on the door, waiting for some unlucky sap to barge in.

[OOC: cast Improve Reflexes at force 4, got 1S drain; now Delayed action to fire his gun at the first person to enter the warehouse, unless told other wise by his teammates.]

Sparkler comes racing back downstairs, having left the improvised grenades behind entirely after what he'd seen of the battle outdoors. Moving towards the door, he glances up, then at Bishop. "Well, something just flew over us. Not sure what. That's a question for later. For now, we've got somebody out there with a machine gun or something that just completely massacred two gangs that were all set to bash each other up. A few of the stragglers are headed our way."

Pulling his pistol from its holster, he holds it pointed towards the ceiling, and starts moving towards the door.

Gretel lets go of the minigun, letting the vest's gyros support the heavy weapon. Using one hand to maintain control, she reaches into her dress and pulls out a small rod, painted black and fitted with a molded grip. Her smile widens, now manic and obviously insane. She turns her bike towards one of the Johnnies running towards the warehouse, slowing slightly on her approach.

"An itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout..." she sings.

A flick of the wrist. The end of the black rod flings outwards suddenly, snapping out towards the ganger like a whip, though the line attaching it to the handle is so thin as to be invisible. The Johnny tries to dodge it but it does little to prevent the wire from slicing him shoulder to ear. Hideous wounds sprout across his neck, dying the downpour with showering red.

The wire retracts. Riding through the storm, the little girl laughs, her voice like Spring rain.

Slit Johnny knew they were in over their head. The entire vanguard, scattered like sand tossed into the ocean; An oddly prophetic metaphor, considering he could barely see the road in front of his feet. The pounding feet beside him, and the harsh gutteral cussing of Dakka Johnny, at least eased his worries about hitting something in the dark; Dakka would hit it first.

"WHAT THE FRAG WAS THAT?" Sputtered Dakka Johnny, wiping rain out of his face with a vicious swipe, neither bothering to look back as they flat out ran.

"G'CK!" Was Slit Johnny's reply; They'd heard the sudden rising doppler of the bike engine too late. Slit stumbled to the ground, half spun about, a thin line drawn from his shoulder, across his throat, and up to his ear. He looks positively startled, before the wounds open and brown blood begins to pour out. He can't even scream with his vocal cords cut, only gurgle and desperately try to hold the wound closed as he topples into the gushing water.

Dakka Johnny spins, a shoulder slamming into the warehouse's walls - a gun up in his hand as he screams in an animal howl of fear and panic. Muzzle flashes competeing with the grumbling thunder as he fires blindly towards the sound of the bike. But with his legs still pumping, hands scrabbling and tearing themselves along the brickwork, looking for anything he can duck into, it's unlikely he'll hit more than pavement and building.

Sparkler's alarms scream their warnings. Three hostiles, one decidedly armed, one dying, and the third groping for a door in the pouring black.

The other Johnnies have all but disappeared. Ducked into alleyways, down other streets. Those that are wounded leaning on what they can, painting walls and gutters with their life's crimson..

Except for one, who shudders back near the point of contact, muscles caught in a seizure. That's rapidly fading.

The mounted figure turns sideways, using a nearby puddle to finish slowing to a stop. The bullets miss wildly. Gretel looks at the panicking ganger, her eyes wide with fascinated curiosity, the electrocuted Johnny temporarily forgotten. Where she stops, one of the lights from the warehouse cast across her face, illuminating her long silver hair and elfin features. Her lips are still curled in that serene smile and her eyes are bright with the light of childish innocence.

She kicks down the bike stand and steps off the bike. It is a bizarre tableau: the Ganger, rough and scarred with gun in hand, cowers in terror. The little girl, glowing with delicate loveliness in the light, watches with carefree interest, the molded black rod in her hand as harmless looking as a child's toy. She hugs the massive minigun to her left side, the little doll on a keychain jingling merrily, and the rain pitterpatters softly on the cello case strapped to her back. Both are longer than she is tall, and an onlooker would wonder how she were ever able to even lift up one of them, much less carry both so nonchalantly, like a schoolgirl with a backpack and notebook.

She giggles.

"Mister, would you like to play with me?"

Dakka Johnnie spits out a stuttered curse, working the slide on his gun as he hammers his shoulder into the door again and again; No avail. It's built too sturdily. She is such a small girl; But in the half-light cast by the dimmed street lamp, she is the devil itself, and there's no hiding those massive weapons. Lips peel back from broken teeth once more as Dakka clears the jammed cartridge, and points the weapon once again at the little girl.

"DIE YOU STUPID SLITCH!" He screams, voice gone hoarse from fear, finger squeezing the trigger of his machine pistol.

Slit, meanwhile, has begun crawling away on three limbs - his other hand wrapped about his bleeding throat, a mixture of saliva and crimson leaking out from the penetrated flesh. Bubbles brew along his nape, where the windpipe had been opened - but the cut is so fine, so neat, that the crimson flow isn't quite a death sentence. There's still time! An animal hope for survival that drags the deathly wounded ganger forward.

The rumbling thunder is suddenly underwritten by a reverberating thrumming sound, sharp, harsh white lights stabbing downward towards where the gang fight had originally begun. A massive VTOL, outlined by another flash of lightning, hovering overhead as The Voice of Authority rolls outwards.

"This is Knight Errant. Throw down your weapons and place your-" There is a pause as the spotlight sweeps over pieces of bodies and gangers thrown about like mutilated ragdolls. The swerving lights beginning to spread further and further from the original source of the destruction, seeking more survivors.

Upon seeing the ganger raise his weapon, Gretel's arm blurs, the whip lashing out. Only the arm moves; the rest of her remains utterly motionless, as if the arm were not even part of her body. The wire wraps around the gun, diverting Dakka Johnny's aim and turning the weapon into a misshapen lump of scrap.

The whip retracts. "Awwww," she says, her voice sing-song, "Johnny said a rude word! We should clean his mouth, shouldn't we, Frater mai mic?"
Her smile broadens, her hand rising to lash out again.

"This is Knight Errant."

The hand stops, the voice seeming to have an electrifying effect on the girl. Her whole body whips around, eyes scanning the air like a startled animal. Then, in a blurred second, she jumps onto the bike, revs up its engine, and darts away into the rainy evening, her prey forgotten.

As Sparkler sees and hears the KE VTOL make its appearance, he goes from on edge to seriously unhappy. Muttering several choice swear words, he turns to Bishop. "We've got problems. Knight Errant just showed up, and they damn well shouldn't have. For one thing, in this neighborhood, there's no way they'd bother to show up for something as little as a gang scuffle... and even if they did, it would be by ground, in a couple hours at least. Not by VTOL within a minute of when things started. Hell, their HQ is all the way across town, so they must have been on their way even before stuff started, which means this is a setup."

Turning his gaze on Lou, he says "Can you get tap their communications or something, and try to get an idea what the hell they're doing here? Try your best not to let them catch you... we don't need to attract any attention right now. If I thought I could get away with it, I'd go out there and chase those two gangers away from our front door to avoid having KE knocking here... but I haven't got the time."

The reverberating thrum of the VTOL's powerful engines increase in tempo, lifting the hand of Authority higher from the streets as those sharp white lights lance outwards - brushing across where Gretel's bike had been mere moments before. There is a hesitancy, a tendency for the lights to swing back to the site of the massacre, as if the inhabitants were truly expecting to find something else entirely. The sound of Gretel's bike is hidden by the rolling thunder and the thump of the VTOL's own engines. Dark figures beginning to slide down on ropes in a manner far too akin to a military drop to be a simple police raid..

Dakka Johnny watches the nutty slitch ride off, his eyes - still wide with fear and adrenaline - turning back to the VTOL's sharp lights and the dark figures. And he begins to laugh, displaying those crooked and busted teeth. If there was ever a time he was happy to see a pigfragger...

A moment later he ducks into the alley, following the bloody trail of Slit Johnny. In a moment of comraderie, Dakka puts Slit's arm over his own shoulder, and half-carries the other Johnny off.

Knight Errant quickly secures a perimeter around the broken and torn bodies of the rival gangs, their professional demeanor screaming of performance beyond what one would expect of your day to day 'street cops'. Sparkler's systems begin to chirp warnings, obviously nervous about all the firepower hovering just a little ways down the street in the cold, splashing rain...

Several streets away, hidden in a ramshackle dwelling, Gretel is unhappy. And confused. Unhappy and confused. Neither mental state being proper for a young lady, the experience distresses her.

This is Knight Errant.
The words reverberate in Gretel's head, but no matter how she looks at it, the sequence of events didn't make any sense. She finds new toys, she plays with new toys, and eventually the Ares people or those lonely star-people come and clean up after she's done. That's how the world works. They aren't supposed to interrupt her when she's having fun. What happened today was unnatural and she does not like it.

She pouts, even as she reflects that sulking is unbecoming a young lady of noble birth. Well, she certainly can't walk down the street in such attire, so she slips out of the gyro harness and stows her gun and vest back in the cello case. Clipping it shut, she sits down in a dark corner, humming a soft tune as she waits for the storm to pass.