A shorter girl walks through the dancing crowd, pressing close against various women she passes, wearing a pleated red skirt, a black bustier with silver trim over a dark red tank top, black boots, and a black steel bracelet patterned with silver rose etchings on each wrist. Her black hair fades to dark red at the tips, and her eyes are a bright silver. She takes her time, dancing with some of the girls around her as she goes, enjoying the closeness, making her way toward an enormous window.

This place is almost precision designed to ensure you lose track of who you are dancing with. With hungry hands they attempt to latch on from behind.

She blushes a bit and lets herself grind against people for a bit here and there. She's not in a hurry to get to the window, she just needs to get there while the party's still fully going, and while the Hornet's still busy. This is an infiltration, not a sprint.

Little by little, she makes her way over.

Teeth drag against her neck, another dancer finds themself in front of you. A kiss to Ruby's neck, hands run up her hips.

Blush.

She shivers and squirms as she grinds between the dancers for a few minutes, then pulls herself free and keeps going, breathing a little heavier.

They lose track of her, opting to make out with one another as Ruby leaves. The window is within reach.

She crosses the remaining distance and looks down at the courtyard below, grinning confidently as she checks to make sure this is her drop point.

It's night, and dark, not that that is enough to impede her senses. Thirty-two people, two in power armor, though realistically only Hornet's matters. The other is a nobody clad in a blunt brick of a suit that is about as basic as it comes. The most notable thing about it is that it allows her to effectively wield a minigun, though it is across a room from her as somebody else tinkers with it. Hornet is another thing entirely, her suit is biological in nature, with insectoid wings granting her fast and agile flight. She is a long ranged combatant, using her Quill Rifle to pick off distant targets with heavy supersonic bone darts. Six shots before her suit needs to generate more ammo. She also has two shoulder mounted weapons, an Acid Launcher and a Bone Shard Rifle. She is currently indoors, along with a bunch of her goons, but the warehouse she's in has a fairly thin sheet metal roof. It's mostly open, with some thin walls to divvy out some space and give the boss her own room, a number of bunk beds and desks are scattered around, along with tools.

That's her alright.

She takes a breath, channeling a thread of ether through her bracelets, a faint red glow tracing through the engravings.

And then she throws a punch into the window faster than the eye can see.

It's like a bullet, passing almost unimpeded through the fragile material. The sound is basically unheard, and only a couple of women near her that were actually paying attention even notice that something happened. Cracks spiderweb through the glass and one person has the wherewithal to pull her companion away from the window they were just leaning on before it gives way entirely.

Oh good. It shattered cleanly.

Her right hand drops to her side, blood dripping softly to the floor — she split her knuckles for sure, and probably fractured some bones in her hand, but that'll knit before she gets down.

Then she turns to the crowd, blushing a bit at having interrupted their party, and grins at them, wind whipping at her clothes. 

They stare, bewildered, some have turned due to the cold winds now making their way inside. They're more confused than frightened. There is somebody trying to push through the crowd brandishing a pistol.

Her grin turns playful, and she throws the crowd a wink and a jaunty salute with her left hand. "It's been fun!"

Then she tips backward out the window.

Clearly the partygoers are not all there, leaning out the window to gawk at the falling girl while putting their hands on the edges of the broken window and cutting their hands for it, but nobody suffers a fatal fall for it. The targets are below.

She pumps her fists as she falls, mentally triggering her suit.

Metal slides out from her bracelets, wrapping gauntlets around her hands, bracers around her arms, and sliding upward to swiftly encase the rest of her body.

A skintight suit of black power armor forms around her, with red and silver accents, glowing silver eyes, and collapsed weapons adhered to her back and hips. An etheric cloak of her signature red power trails behind her, flapping apart into small motes that curl like rose petals as she falls.

She reaches behind her back to grab one hilt in particular, the weapon unfolding in her grip to form a grenade launcher. Ballistic curves flash through her HUD as she aims.

With a soft fwhump fwhump, a pair of tear gas grenades shoot into the air above her.

Then she stows the launcher, collapsing it once more, before twisting through the air to get her feet under her and her back to the building, preparing to hit the warehouse roof.

It's common knowledge that people don't look up as much as they should, especially in a world where some enterprising youngster in a power suit could fall like a meteor into your place of residence at any moment. The ancestral environment has failed humanity once more as each and every one of them is caught off guard.

Right in the middle of the crowd of gangers drops a small, power-armored girl, in a classic superhero landing.

"Hello, girls."

Startled, they blink in recognition. "Rose!" One screams before being enveloped in crimson teargas from the two canisters placed perfectly in the center of the nearest two clusters. Chaos and coughing ensues. Hornet readies her Quill Rifle and deploys her wings.

Possibilities flit through her cybernetically-enhanced mind, before locking in on a single path.

Her hand finds the stock of her heavy railgun easily where it's clipped to her back, a long, black rifle with red trim expanding out to over a meter and a half as she straightens up.

A perfectly aimed, hypersonic sabot flashes out with a crack, targeting center-mass on Hornet.

She takes flight almost the instant Rose fires upon her, but she can't accelerate in time to avoid the projectile fully passing through her midsection. Hornet drips a yellow fluid as her trajectory begins to propel her out the window. She manages to aim and fire a Quill as a parting gift.

How would Hornet like to instead be shooting at a blur that darts between her troops?

Ruby kicks into a flash step even as Hornet pulls the trigger, railgun snapping back to its mountpoint on her back and a hilt flashing out from her hip to expand into a beam saber. In a heartbeat, she's sliding past the first woman in Hornet's ranks, sword slicing through her waist, fading etheric rose petals tracing her path. Another lunge dashes her through two more on the way to a fourth across the warehouse, etheric cloak flapping and stretching out behind her.

The quill passes through the space where the Rose just was, a wall, two bunk beds, a beloved stuffed teddy bear, a goon's calf and another wall before tumbling out of the air a distance away from the warehouse. Hornet fires her acid launcher at Rose's current position before she smashes out of a window, putting distance between the ground and her, 

Typical Hornet. The consequences of her pillaging the town are coming home to roost, and she wants none of it.

Years killing people's children, friends, mothers.

Wives, girlfriends.

Sisters.

"It ends here, Hornet!"

Rose dashes toward the window, springing from gangoon to gangoon, cutting them down efficiently as she bounds up toward the shattered glass.

The glob of acid explodes behind Ruby, screams behind her of the people she cut in half that are now dissolving alive from the carelessly aimed attack. Hornet trains her shoulder mounted Bone Shard Rifle at Ruby and fires a hail of fire at her.

She lunges upward at the windowsill, arm raised to activate her shield and blitz through the shards. Another lunge from the window launches her toward Hornet in the air.

She fires another quill even as she fails to put distance between Ruby and her. "Just die!" She screams as she fires another glob of acid.

Ruby slices the quill out of the air with her plasma sword, then brings her shield back up to splash past the acid.

Her aim is true, and she crashes directly into Hornet, feet against her stomach, right arm wrapped around her neck, left arm swinging her sword down Hornet's back to sever her wings.

"You first, Hornet," she growls in reply.

Then she flash-kicks off Hornet, launching the armored woman at the ground while soaring higher into the air.

She falls to Earth like a meteor, wind knocked out of her. She slams against the ground, a plume of dust shooting up from the impact.

Ruby backflips gracefully through the air, deactivating and stowing her sword and drawing her railgun.

She sights on Hornet, carefully aiming for her heart.

CRACK

The shot rings out like thunder, the dust clears in its wake. There is a hole the size of a tennis ball where Hornet's heart used to be.

She wasn't using it anyways.

Ruby lands in a crouch and walks to Hornet, sighing softly.

"You shouldn't have killed civvies. I wish we could've  talked things out or something."

She picks the armored body up and tosses it over her left shoulder, then draws her tranq rifle with her free hand and stomps toward the warehouse again. Is anyone still standing, there, or did Hornet's remaining conscious goons scatter?

They scattered, however the brick suit has been taken, somebody got in and is making a break for it with the minigun.

They just can't stop being stupid jerks, can they? Ruby sighs to herself and lets Hornet's body fall to the ground, and draws her railgun.

She puts a shot into the fleeing girl's chest, and another in her stomach.

She tumbles to the ground, totally lifeless.

Another killer stopped. Ruby sighs tiredly and picks Hornet's body back up, then she mentally nudges her suit AI as she keeps walking. {Could you bring the truck up to the warehouse, please?}

{Yes, Boss!}

Her truck takes a minute to speed into view before skidding to a stop in front of the warehouse.

{Thanks, Saph,} she replies.

In that time, Ruby's dropped Hornet in the warehouse and started hauling the other armored body over as well. She tosses her into the truck, then does the same with Hornet, before carefully searching the warehouse for any information, tools, parts, or valuables.

Hornet's suit is still alive and has conveniently healed the hole Rose put in her, though Hornet herself remains very dead, without a wielder the suit is totally harmless. The warehouse contains some odds and ends, nothing major. An extra drum of ammo for the minigun, a tank of fluid that's probably food for Hornet's suit, repair tools, extra parts for the brick suit, a fridge with food, etc. But also there's a tablet in Hornet's room.

The ammo, suit-food, tools, and parts all get tossed in the truck, then she sits down with the tablet. Is it locked?

It is, and with more than just a passcode. One of the ports on the side is clearly biological, with tiny serrated teeth to collect a genetic sample. The security could also be more layered than that, it's hard to tell at a glance.

She frowns.

{Sapphire, do you think you can break this, or should I try to press Hornet's finger against it?}

{Plug me into it first.}

Okay. She pulls her personal link out from a wrist and connects her suit to the data port on the tablet.

The tablet flashes with warnings, numbers, symbols and code. {Ok, put Hornet's suit finger in the slot, then Hornet's actual finger in it.}

She hums to herself a bit and heads over to the truck, pulling Hornet's arm off the edge a bit as she follows Sapphire's instructions. Suit finger, check, then she carefully cuts away a bit of the suit and presses her actual finger.

{Alright, give me a minute, this is fairly elaborate.}

{Thanks, Sapphire. I really appreciate it.}

Ruby walks over to the fridge and starts inspecting the food, making a mental list of what she's going to take and what she'll leave behind, tablet still in her hand and hooked up to her suit link.

{No problem!} It takes a couple of minutes, during which the tablet heats up a worrying amount, but by the end it has fully unlocked. {Ok! Done. I've downloaded and backed up all of its contents, I've taken the liberty of removing all the security measures from the tablet.}

"Yeah!"

{You rock, Saph. After we've gotten everything back home, let's reformat it for our own use. Anything in there that I need to handle while I'm still at the warehouse, or tell Sheriff Winters about?}

She disconnects the link cable, then grabs a load of food to start hauling to the truck, setting that and the tablet in the back. Might as well take advantage of free food.

{Nothing immediately relevant. Hornet has been acting on Whispersilk's orders for a long time now, there's a chatlog between them going back years.}

She blows out a breath and nods, gathering the rest of the food, closing the back doors of the truck, and then hopping into the driver's seat.

{We're still working up toward Whispersilk. We'll get her eventually, though.}

She starts the truck and heads toward where Sheriff Winters has been hiding out.

The drive is uneventful, Sheriff Winters gives Rose a defeated look before her expression becomes one of bewilderment. "Wait, that commotion, that was you?"

Ruby manages a shy, tired smile. "Yeeaaahhhhhh, that was me." 

She sighs for a moment, then continues, "Hornet and the other thug she had in a spare mech are dead. Her girls are dead and scattered. You've got a chance to start fixing things, now."

She blinks, then grins. "Oh! Yes! Yeah, thank you!" She turns back and yells. "Alright girls, we're taking the tower!" She turns back to Rose. "Are the mecha functional?"