#fenixtj

"Lock down the Freehold, let no one in or out except me and Symond!" she orders Phobos as she passes.

Symond's eyes bug out! "Furk! I .. I need to get my tools. Be right there!" And boy does she move fast, going into her room grabbing a tool box that clatters and coming out again "You done good ,Twinklestar. This could be .. very important" ANd she races towrads the exterior Atrium

Symond did NOT say that Ellie COULDN'T follow

Grown-ups are weird.

Phobos says "Right away!"

Symond comes up behind Jessica, "I thought you said the Atrium? Where is it? twinklestar told me what it looked like. I know what it SOUNDS like"

The nocker has a toolkit

Jessica is standing outside holding an honest-to-Dreaming LOOKS LIKE a bomb, and sweating. "Can you help me out here? I know what this looks like."

"Hold on, hold on... I gotta use some science here!" Symond moves forward, touches it, running fingers back and forth over and over along the wiring and clay looking stuff

Jess holds very very still.

Then the nocker says in a whisper (Always surprising when nockers whisper)"Are you a furking bomb?"

"I ARE Bomb!" answers the device cheerily and sounding like if it were a D&D character, it would use intelligence as a dump stat "I go boom"

"Who?" she whispers softly to Symond.

"Who made you?" Symond asks

"Nocker like you, work cheap, named Blitzy" The bomb says

She looks at Jessica to see what she wants her to ask next

"How do we disarm?" a suggestion.

"Best way to disarm you?" Symon says

"Red, White, THEN Blue...Murica!" It says

Then stops answering

"That's what I was going with" Symond says and begins to cut the wires

Jessica hears a scream from in the hold, but she's holding a BOMB right now

She holds in place.

"Shit shit shit.." Symond heard it too!

And she gets the red one, white and blue to go

"Don't rush." tightly "Take your time, do it right. No shortcuts."

"Yeah yeah... don't want to die in an explosion, join the club. This is a C4 knock off, it would blow a hole through a concrete wall and keep going. I get it"

She swallows.

"Where was it?" She asks Jessica as she works on the white wire

"Where was what?" she whispers.

"The bomb..what part of the hold? Twinklestar didn't have much time to tell me details"

"A vase near my chamber. I didn't recognize it, but it was in pieces."

White done. Now working on the last "Your chamber? yeah, this would have blown up during your sleep time and killed you."

"Ok." whispered.

AND SNIP "DONE! Hand me the bomb and see what's going on in there!"

Jess does exactly this, at a run.

(Let's take this to Anywhere and join the scene already in progress there)

********

Symond is on the phone "What the furk are you tearing ME a new hole for? I'm a damned hero... hold on, I'll see if she's hear." Symond tilts her head "JESSSICAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And then waits

After a bit "Guess she's not here and is telling you to kiss off.."

With the Lady Highfeather settled in and secured, in the ritual room if needed, Jessica has taken the unusual (for her) step of fortifying herself with a shot of tequilla and then a margarita. She makes her way to the source of the shouting.

As Jessica approaches, she might hear a string of indistinct cursing on the other end of the phone.

"Don't do that, you'll short the wiring! Look, Tweak, I just disarmed a bomb that could have blown up in my FACE... oh sure, Bluetooth's hands too, but that's neither here nor there... so having faced death I'm not really frazzled by the threats. " Ooo someone has gotten big for her britches and forgotten there are worse things than death

A sigh "Okay. I'll try again. I'm really going out of my way here" A breath "BLUUUUEETOOOTH, it's TWEAK! You wanna talk to the cranky ole #$## and so, or not?"

"I'm here, I'm here...." calmly "Tweak's on the phone?"

There's a zap of static from the phone to Symond's hands. Completely coincidental, of course.

"Son of..." She nearly drops the phone "Yeah... said something about getting word about you wanting to talk to her? " She offers the phone

"Right! Yeah... thanks." She takes the phone. "Hi, Tweak?"

"Holy crap, B, that pissant girl gonna be the death of me." Of course, Tweak holds Symond in pretty high regard. "Lissen, I'm hearin' all kinds of shit, and I be gettin' orders to hold a nocker named Blitzy for questionin'?"