Super Hero Rhapsody: 1975

Front Street narrows between wet brick walls and warehouse loading bays. Devlan and Sally slow as a heavy modified muscle car lurches sideways across their lane, headlights blazing through mist. The engine growls, then cuts low and mean.

Blaze steps out in biker leathers, cigar glowing at the corner of his mouth. Hot chains hang from his wrists, the links bright enough to paint orange reflections across the pavement. Behind him, a nervous bystander in a rain hood freezes beside a delivery crate, trapped in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Devlan shifts his stance, one hand near his pistol and the other angled to keep Sally behind him. Blaze rolls a shoulder, chain links sizzling as he sizes up both of them, but his eyes keep flicking to the hardcase in Devlan's grip and the crate by the curb.

Sally blurs forward, slips through the sedan’s steel skin, and comes out on Blaze’s blind side in a burst of rain and engine heat. Her shoulder clips the doorframe hard enough to sting, but she lands in his flank and forces his attention off the hardcase.

Blaze whips around too late, his glowing chains snapping up as he recoils from the sudden strike of motion. The hardcase stays with Devlan, and the crate by the curb jolts as the bystander flinches back from the shock of Sally’s arrival.

Sally’s phase leaves a bright ripple in the wet air, and the car’s side panel bends inward behind her with a metallic groan. The move works, but it costs her a flash of pain across the cut shoulder and makes the whole street know exactly where she is.

Devlan backs off toward the open lane with the hardcase hugged tight, while Blaze squares up on Sally instead of the gear. The weapon rig in the exposed case catches the streetlight as the bystander freezes, trapped between the car and the loading bay.