Up above the hole in the ground, Ira is speaking to her watch:
"Are you certain?"
"It's not that I don't trust you. It's just that you said we didn't do this until after..."
"But this reduces our advantage-"
Up above the hole in the ground, Ira is speaking to her watch:
"Are you certain?"
"It's not that I don't trust you. It's just that you said we didn't do this until after..."
"But this reduces our advantage-"
Jenn wraps her arms around Bina - letting go of the door in the process - and tries to pull her away from the hands.
The hand is pretty firmly grasping, but the wiggly can't get much more of itself out with the door dropped on it.
In fact this part off the arm appears to be detaching.
Oh look it came off.
It's still moving.
Bina's gasping for sweet, sweet air for the second time in twenty minutes, never mind that it smells like burned barbecue.
Jenn pulls her close, so that Bina can lean against Jenn's shoulders, and counts her own breathing quietly.
Gradually Bina manages to sync her breath with Jenn's -
There's a roar from inside, the 'hnng' sound getting larger as the wiggly slams against the gate -
"Oh shut up!" Bina half-yells at it.
It does.
"Can and should are different things. You just had this very heavy door on your ribs. Let me help you."
"Fine." She knows she shouldn't be snippy with Jenn but her pride's bruised and her ribs are worse.
Jenn doesn't hold it against her. "I've broken my ribs," she says conversationally as she gets Bina onto her back. "Even if you haven't, bruised ribs aren't much fun."
"This and that," she says as she starts walking back towards their current base. "I grew up all over, sometimes in warzones. Recently I've been doing a little bit of security for my mother, but she talked me into actually going to college."
"That sounds tough. But - I'm not really surprised you do security? You just. Seem to have it together."
She's tired and maybe drifting off a bit, but fighting to stay awake.
"Yeah. It's a good job, and I'm good at it." She tilts her head back very slightly. "What about you? What do you do?"
"Just. Find stories. Help people? My grandparents worked at the newspaper. My grandmother was always doing investigative stuff. Revealing corrupt bureaucrats and all."
"Heh. Thanks. Need to get better at - noticing stuff. I guess. Didn't believe the weird stuff until I got eaten. Thought I was tired."
Jenn is quiet for a moment. "To be fair. With what we knew before we got grabbed by tall, red and crazy, that wasn't a bad hypothesis."