The rain flattened the night to a featureless sizzle. Carnicia flitted barely seen black-winged on black sky, whispering, You need more bullets.
    In the floodlights in front of the bunkhouse, a white Escalade glowed. Eli find a new car?
    A look through the heatscope showed the white dots of infra-red motion detectors.
    No white or pink figures outside the house.  The dorm glowed hot in the rec room. The other girls would be quick when alerted, though, from boredom. You don’t have teens to be taught burglary and classical ninjitsu and expect they aren’t going to get all rammy. Sandra loped quiet to the power connections and communications pedestals, and left her little surprises.
    Carnicia swept by, a grasshopper punked up, Use them now! Don’t give them a chance! Knock all of it down, walk in and blast them.
    “I’m not killing anybody.” Anger and disappointment ground in Sandra like grit, but she wasn’t going to kill anybody today. She just had to keep Carnicia her fairy-god-hitwoman calm.
The doors and windows were wired, but that vent into the attic crawlspace? Saw it out with a kay-bar knife from the utility belt, and in you go. No motion detectors active in the attic,  or down in the halls.
    How many times had Sandra walked down this hall, down the stairs, to the door? Which was open just enough to see: Quentin, with his big shin and silk running jacket. Then another man, tall and beige, in entertainment for sure.
    Quentin jabbed the air, “Lydia! Kicked! Ass! Those gangbangers never had a chance! That friggin’ thing she did with the knife –“
    “What loose ends, Marston?” said the beige man, “Cops lo-o-ove your work you said. What’s the problem?”
    “The police are but one factor, Joss. There are more governmental agencies regulating children then there are for crime. Makes you wonder, frankly.”
    Joss Whedon! Oh my god Sandra loved his shows!
    “It is empowering them!” said Quentin, “These girls would have been dead in warzones! Or worse!”
    “Wait. Why do you have to worry about agencies?”  Whedon leaned, “And all your girls are accounted for.”
    There’s an awkward silence! “The ones worth counting.”
    Groans around the room, “No!” “Which one?”
    “The oldest, Sandra. My first work. She took the brunt of my mistakes, as first children do. You never saw her. She…didn’t inspire.”
    The disappointment grew to broken glass.
    Carnicia whispered, You’re not going to kill anyone. Uh uh. Not you.
    “Shut –“ Sandra choked her snarl.
    Marston announced, “Someone’s here.”
    Sandra held her breath.  Carnicia’s giggle echoed in her head, old and familiar.
    Marston’s wrinkled face was awash with video monitor glow. The buzzer to unlock the front door.
    More the merrier! Said Carnicia.
    Eli Roth stumbled past mere inches from where Sandra pressed herself.
    Said her old padre, “I told you, Eli. The girls are not mercenaries.”
    The young man shrieked, “My car almost went over the Palisades! The studio’s mechanic said the brake lines had been worked over with paraffin so they would catch on fire.”
    Carnicia sang, I told you to use more acc-el-erant.
    Quentin asked, “Has one of your girls gone –“ He whistled a cuckoo tone.
    “Then,” Eli paced, “Invent some story like you always tell them.”
“Like high-government Mafia types are after us?” said Whedon.
    “Devil-worshipping cult,” argued Eli, “has more emotional impact.”
    Quentin waved his hands, “Government crap’s been done to death. Yakuza!”
    The old man said, “No. The girls have no emotional investment in you. If they even knew you paid to watch  their mission footage, that would impact the sincerity of their actions.”
    The fairy was now the same size as Sandra, “Hah! ‘Trust funds’, he told you. These shmoes pay for mission footage.”
     The grit grew to gravel. Marsten didn’t run a secret anti-crime agency with glamorous Hollywood connections.
    “Here we go,” Sandra and Carnicia said, and Sandra walked in.
    She knew what they saw: five-foot-three, a body that liked punching, beer and lasagna. They’d have mistaken her for the cable installer, but the k-bar knife and the pistol holsters kept their attention.