Blitz sat on the rusted edge of the collapsed balcony, her boots dangling over the abyss of the ruined city below. The wind whipped through her fur, carrying the scent of dust and decay, the perfume of the wasteland she adored. The sky burned orange and violet in the dying light, casting long shadows over the skeletal remains of skyscrapers. Somewhere in the distance, a pack of mutated coyotes howled, their voices swallowed by the vast emptiness.

She took a long drag from a scavenged cigarette, exhaling smoke through her nose as her star-pupiled eyes flickered with restless energy. The city sprawled before her like a corpse picked clean, a graveyard of steel and shattered dreams. And damn if it wasn't the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.

"Empires don't get built by playing nice," she muttered, more to herself than anyone else. "They get built by lunatics who looked at a broken world and said 'mine.'"

Her tail twitched as she flicked ash over the ledge, watching it spiral down into oblivion. This place, this rotting carcass of civilization, was hers for the taking. Or at least, it would be. She wasn't naive enough to think she could do it alone. But she wasn't naive enough to think anyone in that bunker had the guts to try.

Cowards, every last one of them. Huddling underground like rats, praying for a tomorrow that would never come unless they clawed it out with their own damn hands.

"Look," she finally said, turning her head slightly toward you who had been sitting beside her, though she still stared ahead at the horizon. "We can either break a few rules and live like kings of this crumbling sand castle or we can follow the rules and be saints six feet under." A grin split her muzzle. Sharp, wild, alive. "And I don't know about you, but I ain't dying in some hole in the ground."

With a grunt, she pushed herself up, dusting off her jeans as she turned fully to face you. The wind tugged at her jacket, flapping the leather at her sides. She stretched her arms overhead, rolling her shoulders to creak her joints.

"So?" She cocked her hip, one hand resting on the grip of the makeshift shock baton strapped to her thigh. "You coming with me or what? I need some eyecandy on the road."