A/N: I've been so busy these last few months-trips, Band Camp, heinously long summer assignments, but I'll get to that later, because I know you're just dying to know what happens next. Hooray for cliffies!
Wrestling Carmelita and Nero was no easy task. Nero, who was so much heavier than Isadora, was a very formidable opponent, and even more so because he held the very implement that just happened to be threatening Isadora's life. And as for Carmelita, she held Klaus's baby sister hostage in her brutish, filthy arms. Klaus found it difficult trying to liberate himself, because he knew, as he tried to break free, that throwing Carmelita back would also hurt his baby sister.
So, needless to say, the two teens and one baby were in a bit of a pickle.
Nero grinned maniacally down at the captive Isadora, the knife dangling perilously close to Isadora's throat. "So, bratty orphan," he started. "You'll no longer be the chink in my armor. V.F.D. will fall, and you won't be able to stop it. As soon as we finish here, I'm off to murder your friends and you brother." A beam of light glinted off of the knife's blade. "Let's finish you."
Nero's knife arm rose, the hilt in his fist and with the reflexes of a cobra, the knife fell and sank finally into its new sheath…
…the office floorboards. Sighing with relief, Isadora found strength within her to break free from Nero's grasp. Intoxicated with adrenaline from her near-death experience, she knocked Carmelita over with a kick to her side, releasing Klaus, who was then free to grab Sunny and bolt towards the door.
"They'll be out after us any second now," said Isadora, using her outstretched arm to push the double doors of the office wide open.
"I know," Klaus affirmed as he ran with Isadora through the doors. "I just hope Violet and Duncan have finished that-"
"Trap," said Isadora and Klaus in unison, stopping short to marvel at the magnificent contraption that hung from the ceiling of the breezeway.
All too soon, the two of them heard the office doors open behind them. Klaus threw himself into Isadora's side, knocking her, himself, and Sunny to the floor at the right of the office doors, as a simultaneous shout of "Fire in the hole!" rang from the far end of the corridor. Water balloons pelted the startled figures of Carmelita and Nero in the doorway as the two were swept off of their feet and ended up upside-down and hanging from the ceiling.
All of a sudden, a tall, willowy figure in a turban emerged from the office as Duncan and Violet met up with their siblings and examined their captors. He smiled, folded his arms, and said, in a familiar, raspy voice, "Aren't you five supposed to be somewhere else?"
The children froze, their faces masks of horror, and, using the adrenaline that coursed through their bodies, ran from the scene.
"That's what I thought", the tall man said with a smirk.
Carmelita and Nero waited as the smirking Count Olaf dismantled the trap and freed them.