She ducks and rolls - she's holding the orb in her hand -

- And Ash hears the whine of those energy guns from above her -

Oh, motherfucker-

"Fuck off, asscat! I ain't done shit to you!" she yells up, continuing to chase her thief.

"You got a bounty on your head, if you didn't notice!" she yells back at Ash -

- And she's basically caught up to the thief - 

Who looks behind her and then ducks and rolls to the side for no apparent reason even though this means Ash will probably catch her -

Hey, she's not going rag on her opponents for making mistakes in her favor.

This is the point at which she hears a horrifyingly wet sound from behind her, and what look like colorfully purple-pink octopus tentacles whip around her. 

She has maybe a heartbeat or two to react before she's grabbed; this thing is fast.

Energy blades vs tentacles, the energy blades usually win. Ash is fast, but now the question is if she's fast enough, whipping her arms up in front of her and uncrossing in a slashing motion.

Almost!

But almost isn't all, and two thick tentacles still wrap around her, like slimy bands of steel. 

Oh fuck that's gross.

Come on swords, there's still time to slice this shit off her!

She just barely gets herself free! 

But the thief - who's still pretty tightly holding onto her orb - is still entangled. Her knives don't seem to work as well as Ash's sword - and the tentacles are tensing to drag her back to - 

What appears to be the open, distorted mouth of the Totally Normal House Cat from earlier, actually. 

Oh hell no. Hell no.

Ash dives for her, trying to wrest the orb away.

No the orb is going inside her clothes - she takes that opportunity to get a vice grip on Ash though! 

And they both start sliding towards the Oh Hell No kitty. Who has some extra tentacles to make sure they get Ash too!

"What the fuck's your problem," she snarls, returning to slashing at the tentacles.

Through the power of slash and stab they can both get free! Though they should maybe get some distance - the thief definitely seems to think that, by how she immediately breaks into a sprint.

Ash goes after her. Again.

"Stop running, dammit!"

- At which point a soft golden light envelops the thief -

Ash, too.

(Seems they're being arrested, to the surprise of everyone except maybe Ash.)

Ugh.

Yeah, in retrospect that was way too much noise for this not to happen.

From the angry cussing, sounds like both the weird cat people are being arrested too. 

They deserve it, though.

Who just shoots at a person, honestly. Disrespectful.

They're pretty likely to get charged accordingly, at least. Though Ash is going to be in the jail for a bit before she gets to argue her case in court...

Argue her case in court, yeah, funny joke. The last thing the Nova will want is to be reminded of this once they've cleaned it up. Ash is either going to have to break out of the transport or whatever prison they dump her in.

The transport is pretty high security!