“Alert! Alert! All squads report in! We have reports of a stolen police car; tag GHJ543E. Repeat: we have reports of a stolen squad car!”<br/><br/>Officer Jace Mackles snorted at the all-points-bulletin blaring through the radio and turned to his partner. “Seriously? Who’s dumb enough to steal a cop car?”<br/><br/>Officer Sherri Bain shrugged noncommittally. “People are stupid.” She ran a hand through her auburn hair and glanced at the road. “Is it coming this way? I’ve never been in a chase before.” A bit of genuine excitement slipped through her uninterested mask.<br/><br/>Jace examined his partner when he thought she wouldn’t notice. Although difficult to tell, squeezed into the ridiculously small squad car they had been assigned, Sherri really was quite beautiful. She was taller than him by a few inches (and he was nearly six feet, himself), which had intimidated most of the other men at the academy, but not Jace. No, he had been attracted to her from the first and had been lucky enough to be assigned as her partner.<br/><br/>Sherri knew he was watching her and let him, mostly because she hadn’t quite sorted her feeling about him quite yet. He was somewhat handsome, in a generic cop sort of way with the dark crew-cut and brown eyes, but didn’t appear to have much of a life outside of the job. Still, he was a genuinely nice person who had stuck around with her when most others, men and women, shied away from her stature. No doubt that had something to do with his attraction to her, but he’d never pushed their relationship, such as it was.<br/><br/>She turned back to consider the alert going out again and Jace adjusted his gaze slightly, hoping she wouldn’t notice. She couldn’t help but smile and hoped he attributed it to her desire for a police chase. They were nearing a full year on the force and nothing exciting had happened for them—well, really exciting.<br/><br/>“Hey,” Jace said suddenly. “It’s coming our way.”<br/><br/>Sherri frowned, having not heard that part of the alert, but he pointed past her at the road they were parked by to catch speeders. No one used this road ever, so rookies were always given that assignment. Soon, a new batch would arrive and they would be cycled out to another route. Sure enough, Sherri could see the lights of approaching squad cars.<br/><br/>“Time to roll.”<br/><br/>The lead car, the one being chased, outpaced the nearest pursuers by an insane distance. Jace waited and punched the gas as soon as the rogue car was close, putting him way ahead of the other pursuers. Was it his imagination or was the alleged thief…pink?<br/><br/>-<br/><br/>It certainly wasn’t Jace’s imagination. Said rouge car had indeed been stolen by a pink girl. Stella, to be exact. A ninja. The pinkest ninja you’ve ever seen. Or not. You might not have seen her before. What a shame for you, to have never encountered Stella. And yet, what a joy, for you are about to.<br/><br/>“Alert! Alert! All squads report in! We have reports of a stolen police car; tag GHJ543E. Repeat: we have reports of a stolen squad car!”<br/><br/>Grinning, Stella took the radio and said over the police channel, “Breaker breaker, this is NinjaGurl69, do you copy?”<br/><br/>There was a stunned silence before, “Are…are you the one who stole the cop car?”<br/><br/>“Yeah, hi, I’d like to order a McSextuple Bypass Aneurism with extra Pepto Bismol.”<br/><br/>“What? No! Look. Pull over, alright? If you just return the car you stole, we can end this without any violence.”<br/><br/>“Pull over, I can’t pull over! The fuzz are after me!” She swerved abruptly to avoid hitting a telephone pole. She wasn’t on the road anymore.<br/><br/>“Yes they—We—you stole a car!”<br/><br/>“Well,” she huffed, adopting an indignant tone, “maybe you shouldn’t have left it unguarded, huh?”<br/><br/>A different voice came over the radio. “It wasn’t unguarded! You punched out the window, threw me out, shouting something about having to get medicine to some sick kids in Alaska (wherever that is) and then hit four other cars as you tried to escape!”<br/><br/>Stella glanced at the driver’s side window; it was indeed shattered. “Yeah, I don’t believe you, poo-poo-head!”<br/><br/>“Pull over! This is your last warning!”<br/><br/>“Tell that to the driver!”<br/><br/>“What?”<br/><br/>Stella, curiously seated in the passenger seat handed the radio over to the actual driver of the car, a miniature UFO that hovered in the seat. Flexible appendages gripped the wheel and depressed the pedals.<br/><br/>“Beep boop,” the UFO said.<br/><br/>“Yeaaaah, he’s reaa~aaally upset with me right now. He thinks I stole a car. Can you believe it!”<br/><br/>“I…I can actually.” The voice on the radio sighed. “Deadly force authorized.”<br/><br/>Suddenly gunfire began to pepper the rear of the stole squad car. Stella leaped into the backseat, evidently not wearing a seatbelt and made a face through the now-shattered rear window. “Hey! Meanypants! Don’t shoot my car or I’m going to call the police on you!”<br/><br/>Faintly, over the roar of tire on roar, the rush of winds a high speed, and the occasional gunshot, someone shouted, “But we are the police!”<br/><br/>Having not heard, Stella produced two handfuls of glowing neon shuriken. “Guess I gots to hold you off til the po-po get here!” Bright whirling blades of death erupted from the rear of the stolen squad car. The shuriken found home in windows, tires, and the occasional gas tanks. Boy, was there an explosion! Yeah, I know gas tanks don’t explode on impact, but hey, she’s a ninja. Who says those shuriken weren’t explosive? Not me, that’s for sure.<br/><br/>But one car escaped the carnage, the 53 car pileup that was developing behind them. Yep. The car driven by Jace and Sherri closed the gap, shuriken stuck in various places all over the car. Sherri leaned out of the window and aimed her pistol…<br/><br/>But Stella was too quick! The top of the stolen car fell away, sliced off by Stella in those few seconds with her neon-blue katana. With the UFO still driving, she stood up, undaunted by the buffeting wind. Jace swerved to avoid the car roof that slammed into the road. “My name is Stella, the greatest space ninja who ever lived! Just who do you plebes think you are?”<br/><br/>“The police?”<br/><br/>“I hate that band! Let’s go, Mr. UFO!”<br/><br/>“Beep boop. The UFO relinquished control of the car, zooming away. Stella DID A BACKFLIP and landed on the hood, crushing it, and flipping it up into the air. In the same motion, she spun, and twisted for a Kirk-style full-horizontal drop-kick.<br/><br/>“Plane of the Ecliptic………KICK!” As soon as her feet made contact with the car again, it shot backwards, glowing with Cosmic energy, and crashed into Jace and Sherri’s car. With the same energy, Stella rocketed forwards, continuing to twist in the air. “Space Tunnel Fast Travel!” she shouted as she achieved Mach 5.<br/><br/>-<br/><br/>Jace and Sherri picked their way out of the smoldering wreckage of a one and a half police cars, collapsing onto the ground and heaving with real relief at being alive. She turned her head towards him and decided that, yeah, he was someone she could put up with. After they got back to the station, she was going to ask him to go for a drink.<br/><br/>He wasn’t paying attention, however. Jace had sat up and was staring at the wreckage. Somehow, the two cars had fused together and become an impossibly detailed statue of Stella sticking her tongue out and flashing the V sign.<br/><br/>“Holy fizz, she’s dangerously insane.”<br/><br/>-<br/><br/>Stella finally slowed to a more realistic speed after a few minutes of travel, although she was now several hundred miles away. Not that it mattered; she landed with both feet flat on the ground and hands in the hair. “Stuck the landing, motherfizzers.” She might have been talking to herself. Or she might have been talking to the hobos she had landed on. We’ll probably never know.<br/><br/>“Hmm. Weee~lll that was fun, but I guess I should find my way back home so that…can…” She blinked. It was back. The bright light on the ground. A entire childhood of memories fluttered back into existence, of chasing the mysterious lights all day and night, never to once hold them in her hands. She had never achieved her true potential because of that.<br/><br/>“Don’t worry, Sensei. I’ll avenge you!”<br/><br/>And she pounced, following the pretty light on all fours as it darted from place to place, perpetually out of reach. “I’ll defeat the shiny lights for you!” And down the path she went…