Board Thread:Role Plays/@comment-5999656-20190205035159/@comment-5999656-20191128200250

Lustra looked down at her own body at the words of the Bluthardt medic. Her blazer's fabric had retained its shape even after being dunked into the sea, but her thin white blouse was plastered by rainwater to her feminine form tightly enough to expose the outlines of her bra. She glanced back up at the medic, totally unamused. Of all the things she was ashamed of, her toned physicality was not one of them, and that an old man stranger was telling her to cover up was a modern irony that wasn't lost on the young Huntress.

"Okay, senior citizen," she said dismissively.

Shortly after Dust had returned. Lustra had raised her eyebrows at the transforming display of the sword, and listened intently as the cowboy admissioned that she return to police headquarters and retreat for the night. It was a chivalrous suggestion, one that was halfway appealing to the tired, fury-driven Huntress, but also half unpleasant. She watched as the briefly reunited siblings parted ways to walk on opposite sides of the law once again, and when Hazel disappeared, Lustra turned back to Dust, and finally shook her head.

"Sorry, Dust," she said. "You're stuck with me till backup gets here."

Leaving a battered cowboy with a shredded arm and a girl who was clearly about to pass out alone in a ship full of helmed criminals when all three of them were on the verge of making it out alive was not only foolish, it was disrespectful. That Dust had even suggested that Lustra run off into the night while they were still surrounded by enemies was disrespectful to her - to her abilities, to her sense of duty, and her credentials as a Huntress.

Lustra lifted her left arm into the air, and over the burned pink skin dangled a broken cuff, with tiny circuitry and wires exposed to the open air. It was a tracking device, originally installed on the Huntress as a monitor when she was newly released from prison, but now the means by which her superiors in law enforcement knew her location at all times.

"Nozomi will be here soon. Signal probably ran out when I got burned by the squid, but our location was still narrowed down to a certain vicinity. I'd give it ten, maybe fifteen minutes at most, especially since the entire city's police force probably knows about the auction house by now."

Lustra let her arm fall, and disengaged from the scene close to her for a moment to look at the Bluthardt soldiers still swarming around the deck like armored cockroaches. Just a stone's throw away, their boat drifted in the shallow water, with more soldiers standing behind the railing and watching everything going on in the wreck of the yacht. With the inevitable scores of officers and Hunters converging on their general position, Lustra wondered what the large group's escape strategy was for getting away together without a single one of them being sighted and arrested. The thought of Brunhilde getting handcuffed while illuminated by dozens of police flashlights crossed her mind. The image made her strangely uncomfortable, and she pushed it away as she returned to the bigger picture.

All they needed was a single captive to implicate the entire family. Denying involvement at this point would be impossible. Lustra studied the nearby medic carefully as he packed up his supplies, watching and checking for the convoy's next move.

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Now that Sorrel was no longer in Tragoedia's grasp, Maris returned to the bigger problem - how to get out of here with the dead body of her cousin without getting nailed by police. She could escape on her own easy, get signal and call HQ... but carrying so much weight behind her while doing so was going to be a problem, especially seeing as the exposed flesh of Sorrel's neck was still leaking bodily fluids everywhere it rested.

A sudden thought crossed Maris's mind, and she swallowed hard. There was a way to take care of Sorrel without leaving his body behind, something that she alone was equipped to do. But it meant that his family would never get the chance to say goodbye, or bury their son's body, or visit their brother's grave.

But the evidence had to be destroyed. Spies always vanished without a trace. And her family needed secrecy now more than ever. So Maris reached down and with a tight lump in her throat, seized Sorrel's corpse by the ankles, and dragged it back up the stairs to the bridge.

She stepped over the red puddles pooled on the floorboards, around the chunks of earth left by her brief fight with Hazel, and deposited Sorrel's body on the still sparking controls of the boat. Then she went and locked the door of the bridge. It wouldn't keep anyone out forever, but it would give her enough privacy to finish what she was about to do. She turned around, and her eyes began to glow a brilliant red.

The underlying machinery began to superheat as she spread her semblance as wide as it could go. The yacht had stopped working because it was broken by the squid, not because it had run out of gas. Maris moved the focus point of her semblance around to try and speed up the process - to the control board, to the oil tank, to the still-dry wooden planks hidden directly underfoot. Not longer after, the exposed machinery began smoking, the plumes billowing out around Sorrel's body. As the edges of Sorrel's clothes began to blacken and curl inwards, Maris stepped back, still directing her semblance inwards, but ready to bolt once the flames truly began to spread.