[Hana] Sleight of Hand

“The distraction is only one part of the plan. It’s very likely that Mercy’s office will be locked, and we can’t have that, can we?”

“So we’re breaking the door?”

“…we’re picking the lock.”

“Oh. Yeah. That makes sense.”

Jackal and Hana were sitting opposite of each other on a plush rug that the envy bun managed to find in a secondhand shop. Misty, on the other hand, was somewhere in the other room, making more tea. The starry bun didn’t even know that Jackal owned a tea kettle, but she quickly put together that it was recently bought for their mysterious guest, who seemed very happy about the purchase.

In front of the pair was a large piece of paper that had some crude drawings on it (neither of them were skilled in that field). A few key words were highlighted, such as the word DISTRACTION and INFILTRATION in big bold letters, and arrows pointing to possible options. With Hana’s suggestion, the names Oleander and Angora were written underneath the distraction category, though as to how they would distract Mercy, it was going to be a surprise for all of them. It would be up to Hana to play by ear, but they figured that there must be some lie that sounded convincing enough. These buns leaned hard on their vices, after all.

“You’re picking the lock, right?” Hana asked, tail swishing idly.

“If everything goes smoothly, but in case I get held up, you might have to go in alone.”

“Wait huh?! But I don’t know how to pick a lock!”

“You’ll have to learn how then.”

Easier said than done, Hana thought; her tail swishing even more frantically now. “So are you teaching me?”

“There’s Buntube.”

“Oh come on..!”

But Jackal was having none of it. She was still scribbling and mumbling about Plan B’s, C’s and D’s, maybe all the way to Z’s. Pouting, Hana thought about practicing on Jackal’s own house to see how she would feel about it, only to realize that her door wasn’t exactly locked with a key, but with a bunch of other mechanisms. She would have to practice with other doors and find a suitable video to teach her. 

She decided that she could hit up her good friend Hops, for surely the casino had doors that had locks ripe for picking. After sending a few messages and getting to the establishment later in the evening, however, she was rather disappointed to hear that the bartender was not so keen on her idea.

“You’re just trying to get me in trouble with Angora, aren’t you?”

“I thought you were into that?”

“Not if I’m getting blamed for someone else causing trouble!”

But Hops had to admit that she was intrigued with what Mercy was hiding, as well as being concerned about the mysterious stranger that Hana and Jackal brought the other day. Hana was eventually able to convince Hops to practice on something inconsequential, like a janitor’s closet. It had a lock, but there was little concern whether or not the lockpicking was a success there, right? As she arrived when it was still early evening, Hana had to wait until things quieted down a little in the bar before Hops could take a break and take her to the correct door. In the meantime, she was surfing Buntube to find suitable videos, to which there were actually quite a lot (she shouldn’t be surprised, since this was Burrowgatory, but wouldn’t there only be so many ways you could pick a lock? She did notice that the videos often became something more like…“I Picked A Bunllionaire’s Penthouse” (some uploads were months ago, and she wondered if they were serving jail time or something).

Eventually she settled on a pretty straightforward instructional video. She didn’t have professional-looking tools, but there were other options, such as any sort of sturdy card (like a credit card) and paper clips. She had both in her possession–the card because every bun needed one, and the clips she bought from the store before entering the bar–so she would pass the time watching semi-intently while taking some sips of the new drink on the block.

It was in the middle of a video about imps doing silly things that Hops called her attention to the back room. Grabbing her phone off the counter and her half-finished drink, she followed her friend to a hallway, noting the many doors she passed by and never really got to enter, as they were almost always shut tight. Hops stopped in front of a door she was not familiar with, and Hana took another sip of her Snowslide.

“One janitor’s closet for practicing lockpicking.”

“Did you check if it’s locked?”

“‘Course I did! I locked it myself.”

And Hana trusted Hops, so she got to work copying what she remembered from the videos. Taking out her trusty credit card, she inserted it in the gap between the door and the frame, wiggling it to hopefully pop the lock. After five minutes of clicking and frantic jiggling, however, it only seemed like she was going to damage her precious credit card, and it would be a pain to get a new one. Oh, that wasn’t a fold on the card, was it? Oh no…

Okay, so it was time for the paper clip. Since this door had a keyhole, all she really had to do was bend the clip into the shape that was shown in the video and jiggle it in. She had many more clips in case something went wrong with this one, though after a minute, she could feel that Hops was getting rather restless of the whole thing.

“Can’t you lockpick it faster?”

“I’m trying! Actually lemme play the video again–”

Hops glanced at both sides of the hallway, hoping that no one was going to pass by, before watching the video with Hana. The voice was calming and soothing, which did not fit the situation they were in, but as the bun drawled on about the different tools for lockpicking, the knob suddenly turned, which made both buns recoil from shock.

“I thought you said–”

Hana didn’t even get to finish her sentence, since the moment the door opened, a menacing aura spilled out into the semi-darkness.

“And that’s why you’re working for Angora?” Jackal asked with her arms crossed as Hana finished recounting the tale of her current woes.

“Not for too long! Just until she feels satisfied about our little lockpicking incident, hehe.”

Jackal exhaled sharply, “I guess you can find a way to make her distract Mercy while you’re there.”

“Oh yeah, sure, I can do that!”

“Can you make it to Mercy’s office like we originally planned though?”

“I’m sure I can sneak out while she’s busy!”

“Isn’t that just going to make your work even longer?”

“It’s fineeee, don’t worry ‘bout it!”

Jackal decided that for her own peace of mind, she was going to let Hana handle it.