Timebomb

"You will have five minutes to get in and out of the building," Paris informed his client, who was standing to his left, looking stone-faced as he slipped both of his hands into a pair of leather gloves.

"That won't be a problem," he replied.

"On my mark," Paris told him as he continued to tinker with the lock before him, which had been enchanted by the owner of the building to alert the Ministry of intruders after five minutes of being picked. He gently twisted his torsion wrench in one direction, but the lock would not have it. He steadied his grip around his lock pick in one hand, and gave the torsion wrench a twist in a different direction with his other hand, his fingers moving fluently.

Click.

It had taken him ten minutes to finish; he'd defeated his previous personal record.

"Go..." Paris stated, and stood from his hunched position in front of the door's security system.

The man slid inside the building, and disappeared into the shadows, leaving Paris on his own outside.

"It will be a problem," Paris spoke to himself, and shook his head firmly; he'd seen too many failed robbery attempts to believe that this client would be any more successful at beating a five-minute, ticking timebomb than any of the others had been.

He grinned to himself when he realized that his heart rate had sped up during the time that it had taken him to break into the building; no matter how much experience Paris had in robberies, the thrill never seemed to wear off.

"Four minutes and forty-nine seconds..." he began to count down.

It was a nice night, and Chase was walking along the road, not really hurrying, but wanting to get home. She had gotten out of work late.. really late, and she was kind of in a hurry. She still had her work clothes on, which were singed in places, and even her hair was as well, her nose seemed to have been bleeding at least once that day, and it looked a little crooked, as though it had also been broken and snapped back into place. She had a backpack slung over her back, with a few essential items, and her wand was stowed up her sleeve, she never went anywhere without it being completely accessible to her at all times.

As she walked along, she suddenly saw a person appear out of the gloom in front of her. It was late, and she was confused as to why someone would be standing outside a building, maybe they were having a smoke? The very thought prompted Chase to want to pull out a cigarette and light it up right there and then, but something about this man told her he wasn't smoking. Maybe the absence of smoke? She didn't know, but she was wary of him. Her every impulse told her that she should just, go around him, and try not to bother him.. but something about him... there was something wrong with the way he was looking up at the building he was standing in front of.

"Excuse me? What are you doing?" Chase asked once she was within range to speak to him.

“Oh!” Paris exclaimed as a voice other than his own reached his ears. The street that his client’s building of choice was located on had been empty for hours, and thus it came as quite a surprise to Paris to have heard an unfamiliar female voice while watching the seconds tick away on the watch around his wrist. He turned immediately to face the stranger, and with his usual grin, he greeted the woman, “Bonjour, Mademoiselle.”

Perhaps French would scare her off – but in case that brilliant plan failed, Paris took a step away from the building, and towards the newcomer in an attempt to draw her attention towards himself, rather than the crime that was being committed just a few feat away.

“Enjoying the evening – something which you seem to have been doing a bit too much of,” Paris replied after examining the woman’s visible injuries with a quick flick of his eyes. “Are you alright?” he asked her, though his concerned tone of voice seemed somewhat false when paired with his eternally amused facial expression.

“How much longer have I got left, Radborn?” A voice shouted from within the building.

Paris continued to smile at the woman before him, ignoring the direct question that he’d received from his client in the hopes that the daft man would catch on.

“Oi! I asked you a question, mate!” he shouted, and in the doorway he appeared, clutching a large, meticulously framed painting to his chest.

A sigh crawled its way up Paris’ throat. “I was routing for you – really, I was; the others may not have been capable of beating the clock, but who was to say that you wouldn’t be the first? OH but then you just had to come outside…” Paris informed his client as he turned to face him once more, though his words were somewhat fabricated.

Chase frowned at the man who suddenly spoke French at her, and she frowned, biting her lower lip. He... something wasn't right about this man.. He was almost.. to nervous. She saw his eyes sweep over her burntish clothing, and hair, the scars on her face, and other visible injuries that were obviously old, and obviously meant she had been through a lot, and when he spoke about them, she frowned, and found herself flushing, glad it was dark outside right then. "I work in a dangerous profession.. and if often ends up me being hurt is all.. I'm fine, really I am.." she said nodding him, noticing the obvious way he walked away from the building, and suddenly a voice shouted from the house. Chase's eyes were immediately drawn to the man who emerged, holding a painting. Chase's eyes grew wide, and her jaw literally dropped.

"You.. You.. I.. How.. Could... You... YOUR ROBBING THIS PLACE!" She screeched, hands going over her mouth, staring at him and backing away slowly. She had had one to many near death experiences with dark people, and robbing was right up there on her list of dark person. Her hands were over her mouth, her eyes staring at the man who was obviously not a very trained robber, or he wouldn't have shouted down to this man on the street, or looked so guilty, holding the painting in his hands, which looked relatively worthless anyway, but he seemed to think it had some worth. "What are you doing! How dare you do that! Someone worked hard for that stuff! You think you can just go and take it away! How dare you!" Chase's wand fell into her hand from her sleeve, and she found herself gripping it, her hair getting a little bit frizzy due to her agitation.

“Shut her up!”

Paris cast the man an incredulous look. “I am not going to shut her up,” he replied. His words were followed by a loud bark of laughter, which only added on to the patronizing way in which he’d previously spoken to the thief. To say that the reaction that he'd received from Paris displeased him would have been an understatement.

He dropped the painting in the doorway and darted towards the redheaded woman who had called them out – but Paris was faster. “OH no you don’t!” he exclaimed with a grin and slipped in front of the woman.

“Get out of my way!”

Paris laughed once more in disagreement.

“Radborn, I swear, I won’t give you a bloody penny if you don’t move!” The thief attempted to slither his way around Paris, but to no avail. Paris mirrored the man’s actions, and faced him once more.

Paris turned his head towards the woman and offered her a smile, if only to assure her that she was in no immediate danger.

“She is going to get me arrested!” This statement earned yet another giggle from Paris, who’s enjoyment only seemed to increase as the situation worsened. “Vous n'avez pas besoin d'aide avec cela,” Paris replied in his native tongue, before then deciding to give his client a fair warning; one that he would understand.“Three more minutes!”

Chase gasped when the man who had been robbing the place nearly charged her, but the man she had first talked to, blocked his path over and over. Chase was terrified and she found herself backing up farther and farther. She didn't understand what they said in French, but she did understand that the man was angry at her. She frowned, her hands still over her mouth in shock, as she looked around at the two, turning her head side to side, looking for an escape, but the way she wanted home was straight, and she wasn't about to take a cut through worse parts of town to get home.. she was already beat up enough.. she didn't need kidnapped more then once anyway.

"what are you doing? You should not be robbing this place!" She said, her voice sounding very shrill in the night air. It was a lot cooler then it had been during the day, and she found herself shivering now that she realized that she was in the presence of.. not nice people. "I swear, I won't tell a soul.. just.. let me go home okay?" She said, trying to edge around the man she had first seen in an attempt to flea that way. She was worried that they wouldn't let her go, but the first man seemed intent on protecting her from the new man, who she was deadly afraid of she realized, and was shivering with the thought of what he would do to her if he did manage to get ahold of her to 'shut her up'.

Fear. Paris could almost smell the fear that radiated off of the woman as she cowered behind him. Fear was such a dreadful emotion – to most. Unlike the bundle of bad luck that Paris stood before, and continued in his attempt to separate from his ignorant client, Paris found himself enjoying the situation. Surely, if the thief could go so far as to act entirely on instinct (an example of this being the way in which he’d run after the woman, as well as robbing a building), he was capable of harming Paris in order to get to the girl.

But the idea only excited Paris.

He was incapable of reacting in the way that he should to such things – and it was for this very reason that he had been so easily distracted by the terror that the girl was exhibiting.

In perhaps the dimmest moment of his life, Paris turned his attention towards her, and provided his client with a window of opportunity. As Paris examined the girl’s facial expression with mild interest, suddenly, the face was removed from his field of vision, and he was left with nothing in front of him except for the chilled evening air.

Despite Paris’ usual skills in identifying the connections in a particular situation, it took the man a moment to come to the realization that the thief had grabbed hold of the girl that he’d been so keen to keep out of harm’s way.

“Oh,” he announced as each fact connected with the other, quite like the pieces to a puzzle.

"Now... give me more time or i'll hurt her!"

Paris dented his smile as he grazed his bottom lip with a single tooth before responding.

“Merde,” he added with an disbelieving shake of his head.

Chase was in shock, the man who had been attempting to help her, suddenly turned and looked at her with interest, and in that same second, the man who had been trying to get to her, jumped forward and grabbed her arm, and she felt a thin blade under her chin. "Merlin... oh Merlin." She whispered, pleading as he held her close to him, demanding something about more time. "Please." she whispered, begging the man, as she kept her chin held up high, trying to keep away from the thin blade that was pressed against her neck. She could feel the cold steel biting her skin. "Please..." She whimpered, staring at the man. "Do what he wants.. I didn't do anything!" She said, to afraid to struggle against the much stronger man.

Chase was wide eyed, tears pooling, she had been kidnapped, strangled, beat up, and now this man was going to kill her because she had stumbled upon the scene of a theft. She hated it, she hated being weak, and she knew what would happen if she tried to be strong, they would kill her, kidnap her, upset her, hurt her family, her friends, her PETS! She had lost everything at one point or other to a crazy, bad man, and she knew if she fought, she would die, it was the fact of life for Chase. She relied on others to save her, because when she tried to save herself.. things, people, lives, were torn apart.

What had once been an intriguing situation was immediately transformed into the stuff of nightmares – and the best of Paris’ dreams. He became giddy at the sight of his client holding a razor to an innocent bystander, in spite of his attempts to react in the proper manner to the threat. A life was now hanging in the balance – perhaps two lives, if the thief was feeling particularly bloodthirsty – but Paris could muster no other expression than the one that could so commonly be found upon his face.

Evidently, the thief had not expected to receive pure glee in response to holding a woman hostage as a method of blackmailing Paris. At once the defiance that had previously glinted in his blue irises was replaced by one of shock, and even more noticeably, irritation. “You barmy! You f*cking psychopath!” Clearly, the man did not see the irony in labeling Paris as a psychopath, when he himself was mere inches from slitting the throat of a terrified young woman.

That was not to say, however, that Paris had not picked the irony out of his statement. A bark of laughter tore through Perry’s throat as it occurred to him. A laugh that echoed throughout the empty streets. “Stop it – I can’t breathe; you’re too much,” Paris managed to speak through his sudden, uncontrollable fit of giggles. He clutched at his sides, and slowly curled in on himself until the ends of his untidy hair were mere inches from the gravel. Small tears tickled the corners of Perry’s eyes – which he wiped away as he attempted to calm himself.

“Shut it!” The thief ordered, having grown tired of being mocked in such a way. Having stolen the redhead from Paris and placing a knife beneath her chin, he had assumed that he would gain the upper hand. Thus far, however, this assumption had only lead to disappointment. The man released one arm from the girl, and lunged forward with the half of his body that he wasn’t using to prevent her from escaping. He shot his first towards Paris’ face, aiming for his mouth in hopes that a broken lip would quiet him.

Paris had only just returned his head to its natural, upright position when he’d been assaulted, and thus, had ducked with only a second to spare. As his client’s crumpled hand shot past him, Paris was certain that he’d felt the man’s fingernails catch in his hair. “Wow!” Perry exclaimed, and tossed his gaze in the woman’s direction once more. “That was a close call, wasn’t it?”

Without permitting the thief the opportunity to right his stance, Paris darted towards the female whom the man continued to hold loosely against his side, and grabbed hold of her hand as he ran past. In a fluent running/spinning motion, Paris turned backwards to meet eyes with the stranger whom he hoped he’d managed to pull far enough away from Danger. He offered her an encouraging smile. “Run!”

OOC: Feel free to contradict anything that I have said about Chase in this post. =P I hope that it didn’t come off as me godmodding. I am simply trying to move the thread along. We only have three minutes, after all.

[OOC: haha, don't worry about it, I liked it I would have given you permission anyway, I don't usually have a problem with stuff like what Paris did]

Chase's eyes were wide as the man she had been pleading to help her, was suddenly laughing uncontrollably. She could feel the rage from the man behind her, and she knew that this could get bad. The dagger was cutting into her chin somewhat, and she knew she would have a mark to explain to Calvin, hopefully her burnt and tattered skin and clothing would be enough to distract him, not the thin line that was now showing up on the underside of her chin. If he did ask, she'd simply say she had been cause by something sharp during the fight, a claw or a tooth, and shrug it off. She didn't want him knowing what happened when she decided to walk home. She didn't want to scare him. But it hurt knowing that she would have to lie to him.. lying to Calvin made her feel like a monster, and she decided right then she would tell the truth if he asked, but only if he asked.

Suddenly Chase was dragged forward, and to the side, and she nearly stumbled as the man holding her took a swing at the laughing man. The madman holding her missed by inches, and Chase found herself almost face to face with the man who looked seriously shocked. Suddenly she was pulled away and staring at the man, only a small scratch on her chin showing that the knife had cut into her a bit by the man's knife, and she looked up at the house and the stumbling man, before she looked at Paris. "Thank you!!" She whispered and kissed his cheek and after taking one more glance back at the larger man who was seriously angry, she turned on her heel and fled.

[OOC: Sorry it's kinda short... I don't know how you want to handle the whole... time left notion XD I don't even know what's going on! XD]