Volcatia shut the workshop's door behind herself.

"Alright, what the fuck's going on here?" she asked, taking in the assortment of patrician weaklings and their fancy cars that were disrupting her fun with Carl and his automaton fornicatiēns.

The leader of the idiots, a girl with a stupid-looking hairstyle, pointed at the main door of the workshop with one weapon-clad fist. "We—"

That was enough for Volcatia this time.

"Right, right," she interrupted, letting out a chuckle as she rubbed her fingers across her forehead.

Was this…

Was it a joke?

It had to be.

Except it wasn't.

Annoying.

"And how many times did you come back here for that?" she asked.

The stupid girl glared, raising her fists in a pathetic fighting stance. "W—"

That was also enough now.

"I'm in a good mood," Volcatia interrupted again, stepping forward into the girl's space. "Think not to intrude. Don't annoy me right now, do not toy with me, cow." She moved her head to the side to avoid a punch while she continued to speak. "If you raise my ire," she said, swaying to her left around another crude blow and clamping a hand around the caestus on the girl's wrist, "you craft your own pyre."

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It was a fucking great series of rhymes.

The syllables were perfectly matched, the rhyming sound was at the end where she liked it, and it still made her intent clear.

It was an old habit and one that she'd tried to break, but it was just too fucking satisfying sometimes.

Especially when she came up with a great one like this.

It hadn't even taken that much time!

"Stop rhyming!" she allowed the girl to say. "What, you think you're the fucking—"

"You've been doing the same thing day after day. You're boring," Volcatia said. She tossed the girl into another purple-wearing idiot who was swinging a gladius at her from behind, knocking him over and sending them both rolling on the ground for a short distance. "You're not stupid," she said to the remaining dozen or so, who were edging closer, "I've called people stupid, and that'd be insulting them. You're oblivious."

She snapped her fingers.

It was a fake gesture.

She'd found that people didn't always connect cause and effect without an obvious cause.

The annoying, slow cars crowding the street outside the workshop became ash.

The weapons carried by some of the annoying idiots became ash.

All manner of metal before her became ash in an instant.

The weaklings started edging away with whitening faces. "W-what are you?"

A grin formed on Volcatia's face when the expected words were actually said aloud. "You don't recognize me?" She laughed at the stupidity of it. "But you're in my city!"

She didn't particularly want to be known now, but this was getting too fucking weird.