Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.

As he opened his eyes, Chance found himself in a cavern-like prison cell, shackled to the wall with his hands and feet, but with rather long chains – the ceiling here was as low as it had been in the vault, so the gnomes hadn't been able to attach him directly to the wall as they apparently usually did. He managed to loosen his ties with a bobby pin hidden on the inside of his sleeve, and the door of the prison cell didn't seem to pose much of an obstacle either.

On a less positive note, picking the locks of the chains the pixies' wings, hands and feet were bound with was a mission impossible – he would have needed surgical needles to get into those microscopic constructions. At least they weren't chained to the wall. He would have no choice but to carry them again. Unfortunately they didn't seem completely taken by that idea. Every time he reached for them, they shrank farther away from him. "I won't hurt you, I promise", he told them.

"Chance?" Winston's voice. Oh, good. The gnomes hadn't discovered the earpiece.

"Leda, is there anything else I should know about pixies except that eating them would ruin my teeth? I keep telling them I won't harm them, but they seem scared to death of me!"

"Well, they probably don't understand you. Multilingualism isn't held in high esteem among pixies. Have you tried telling them in Pixish?"

Chance took a deep breath. One day he would look back on this and laugh.

One day in the remote future.

The very remote future.

"Leda…"

"HE DOESN'T SPEAK PIXISH!", both Winston and Guerrero yelled at Leda simultaneously.

Chance decided to waste no more time. He broke open the prison cell's door, grabbed the squirming pixies and ran. "I'm heading northbound. Tell me there's an exit somewhere!"

A shrill alert signal started sounding. Seconds later the trip-trap of tiny feet reverberated from every wall, making the fortress sound like a giant hive filled with angry bees.

"Depends on how fast you can swim…", Leda began.

Back in the office it was now Guerrero's turn to take a deep breath. He didn't even want to know why it was essential that Chance could swim fast. This wasn't going well at all.

Time for the contingency plan?

"Two miles down the corridor you'll find a bifurcation. If you head northwest, the passage will end at the shores of a small pond. It's fed by rainwater coming in through a small hole that leads into a narrow pipe that in turn leads to the city's sewage channels. I you make it through that hole you're safe."

"Is the hole big enough for a normal sized human to fit through?" Chance hissed. One of the pixies had just bitten him.

"Yes."

"Then why did you say "if"?"

"The pond is inhabited."

Guerrero had heard enough.

He slipped away, unnoticed by Winston or Leda. Melinda, sleeping on the sofa, didn't notice anything either.

Time for the contingency plan.

"It's inhabited by a kraken, actually a quite friendly one, unless of course the gnomes didn't feed it regularly… which I advised them to do… only hungry krakens are good watchdogs…"

Winston rolled his eyes. This was getting better and better.

Chance, meanwhile, had reached the pond. Damn, the water looked cold. He had made a decision. Getting past a hungry watchkraken, how hard could that be? All he needed to do was swim with slow, long strokes. Kraken don't see very well; it would probably mistake his movements for the wash of the waves.

Good plan. Pity he couldn't explain it to the pixies.

The moment he entered the pond and their tiny pink dresses got wet they started wriggling panicky, emitting high-pitched, horrible screams. Unless the gnomes had kept the kraken so hungry that it had effected its sensory perception, it was bound to notice.

Well, garden gnomes aren't stupid.

The kraken's senses were working perfectly.

A thick, slippery tentacle wrapped around Chance's ankle. Chance wheeled around and turned himself upside down, hoping to twist it and cause the animal to let go, but its grip was hard as iron.

Damn, from the second Leda had engulfed the bird he had had the feeling this job would boil down to an eat-or-get-eaten- situation.

Another tentacle wrapped around his chest.

A/N: Thank you to my anonymous reviewer for taking the time to leave a comment, it means a lot to me! The "Chance in cold water" part was suggested by niagaraweasel – thanks for the input!