Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! I get to do my Master Chen routine!

*Clears throat*

We haaaaave a winnah! \\^_^/)

Congratulations to Guest and . . . Guest . . . Are you twins? Clouse, go ask if they're twins! Ask that third Guest if they're triplets!

But you, Guest and Guest, correctly guessed Cole's date; it is indeed Seliel! Congratulations! You win my amazing button-controlled chair, complete with spectator ambiance and various trapdoor controls. It'll be shipped to your residence shortly, courtesy of Master Chen's delicious noodles!

. . . What do you mean there are two residences and only one chair, Clouse? Well, don't just stand there! Cut it in half!

Haha, okayokay, no more Master Chen routine. I'm starting to get a strange urge to drop someone down a trapdoor . . . Anyway, thank you to both guest reviewers who guessed Seliel! Avid comic-readers both, I take it? ;) And thank you to the third Guest too. Have you ever seen Sonic X, or at least its theme song? You got me thinking of it with that "better move fast." :)

Darkrainbow: Thanks for the review! Well, depending on the power of that thing, Lloyd probably wouldn't want to throw it. Too close to a whole buncha people—and the poor sucker throwing it. XD

Angel Star Ninja: Ooh, let's hope Lloyd doesn't eat those words. XD Thanks for the review!

"Well, well? Kill it!" insisted Chamille, shifting impatiently just behind him. "What are you waiting for?!"

"I—I don't know how," stammered Lloyd. "I've never seen this type before."

"Just crack it open and yank some wires out!"

"Are you nuts? You can't just rip open a bomb, that could set it off!"

"Then what do we do?! I thought you knew what you were doing here!" wailed Chamille.

"Hold on, hold on, stay calm already!" Lloyd raked a hand through his hair, forcing himself to think logically. The timer hit five minutes. There wouldn't be time to call someone over here, and anyway if he didn't recognize this type of bomb probably nobody would. "Okay, Chamille, we've got to get this thing out of here. I'll take it somewhere it can blow up without hurting anybody."

"Construction site! There's a construction site not too far from here, we can stuff it in the basement!" said Chamille eagerly. "Get in the van, I can show you the way!"

"Forget the van!" Lloyd jumped out the loading doors, fished in his pocket, and set off a signal flare. He waited five seconds, and a similar flare shot up from the edge of the audience. Now assured that one of his teammates would soon be arriving to take care of the unconscious criminals, he summoned his energy motorcycle and grabbed the bomb before hopping on. "If you're coming, then hurry!"

Chamille looked dubiously at this suddenly-appearing vehicle for only a second before scrambling on behind Lloyd.

"Down that street!" she hollered, pointing over his shoulder, and Lloyd yanked the bike around that way and took off.

Traffic was heavy due to the concert; Lloyd wove dangerously through red lights and alleyway shortcuts, breaking the speed limit by double-digits but not daring to slow down even slightly. Chamille hung onto him, howling directions in his ear. Luckily she seemed to know this area pretty well, but they still got lost a time or two.

The timer read less than two minutes by the time they reached the construction site. It looked to be some kind of one-floor office building, wide and low-slung, with many of its walls still unfinished. It stood in the center of a large torn-up lot, nothing but loose rubble and a few construction vehicles for a good two hundred feet in every direction.

"Are you sure this thing has a basement?" asked Lloyd tensely.

"It does, I swear it does!" Chamille was already swinging off the motorcycle and dashing towards the skeletal building. "Come on, follow me!"

Lloyd allowed the bike to disintegrate back into green glowing particles as he tore after her. Sure enough, there was a basement over in one corner, a hole in the floor with only a bare wooden stepladder leading down into the gloom. Lloyd and Chamille hustled downstairs, carrying the bomb between them so it wouldn't bump on the steps or (heaven forbid) fall.

It was pitch-dark at the bottom of the ladder. Lloyd summoned a ball of green light in one hand, illuminating the underground space eerily.

"There! That's perfect!" He placed their menacing payload in a little alcove in the wall, probably where an air vent was going to go.

"There's insulation!" shouted Chamille from across the room. "Can we put that on to muffle it when it blows up?"

"Yeah!" Lloyd came over and grabbed a large roll of the fluffy pink fiberglass, tumbling it across the basement. Chamille grabbed several loose sheets, and for a while they dashed back and forth stuffing insulation around the bomb and piling it on top.

Eventually they ran out of insulation. Panting, Lloyd knelt down and lifted away some of the pink jumble, peering underneath.

He was greeted by glowing blue numbers flashing 19 . . . 18 . . . 17 . . .

"Come on!" yelled Lloyd, grabbing Chamille's wrist and dragging her up the basement stairs. "We need to get out of here!"

They ran for dear life, darting through half-plastered walls and bare frameworks of studs, stumbling over discarded packages and construction materials. In seconds they made it outdoors, and only managed to dash a few dozen meters over the uneven rubble before Chamille caught her foot on a rock. Lloyd jolted to a stop as her hand pulled him back, and they both went sprawling, rubble clattering and scraping beneath them.

"Stay down! Cover the back of your neck and head!" gasped Lloyd, rolling over and draping one arm over Chamille to shield her.

For a few seconds they waited, construction dust stinging their throats as they panted. Time ticked by.

Nothing happened.

Eventually Lloyd stirred slightly, peeking over to Chamille, and found that she was also sneaking a glance at him. He looked over his shoulder to the still-silent building, then slowly rolled over and sat up. Chamille snapped upright as well.

"Well? That's it?" she demanded. Lloyd spread his hands, bewildered. Chamille stared first at him, then at the building, and finally made a sound of intense frustration.

"You dork! I was scared stiff!" she growled, giving Lloyd a shove. "I thought it was gonna—"

"Hey, hey, I thought so too!" Lloyd held her off, laughing sheepishly. "I didn't think it was—"

Then the building blew up. Chamille gave a scream and buried her face in Lloyd's chest, and Lloyd wrapped his arms around her reflexively as a wash of searing heat and force crashed over them.

It seemed to last forever. Finally it gave way, the last few flakes of wood and plaster peppered the two teenagers, and a wave of cool air followed in the wake of the inferno.

After a few silent seconds Chamille ventured to stir again.

"Are we alive?" she mumbled.

"Yeah." Lloyd ruffled a hand through her hair, feeling a little shaky himself. "We're okay. We're okay."

"That was awful."

"Yeah."

A bit more silence.

"Lemme go." Chamille squirmed free of Lloyd's hold, looking put-out. "This, uh . . . stays between us?"

"I definitely won't tell if you won't," said Lloyd. Chamille sighed, smoothing her hair back down where he'd scruffed it up.

"Wow. I'm reallllllly glad this is your regular job and not mine."

Lloyd studied her face for a second, wondering if this was a proverbial limb he wanted to go out on.

"Well hey. You were amazing," he said at last.

"Mehhhh." She rolled her eyes, still too wired for pleasantries.

"No, I'm serious." He pushed her shoulder lightly, trying to get her to look at him. "You stayed—well—pretty calm, considering—and you walked right in there disguised as Alf and led me to the construction site and stuck it out to the very end and everything. It's thanks to you that the bomb went off safely, with nobody hurt."

"Awh, get real." Chamille poked at a loose pebble, studying the ground intently. "C—c'mon already. Tonight was horrific enough without you being nice to me on top of everything else."

Lloyd chuckled and started to say something, but just then his communicator hummed. Gulping, he flicked it on.

"Lloyd? Report your position!" Cole sounded like he was having a mental break of fairly significant proportions. "The communicator lines are jammed with everyone asking everyone else where they are, where are you?! Did you see that explosion?!"

"I wasn't looking directly at it, but I kinda knew it was there," said Lloyd tactfully. "Chamille and I were—uh—pretty close to the site. We—"

"Are you okay?!"

"We're fine, we're fine." Lloyd fought back the urge to add "medium rare." "At least it's all taken care of, right? How are the crowds reacting, no panic?"

"They didn't even notice, the music was too loud. Or maybe they did, and they were just too tripped-out to care." Cole sounded exhausted now. "Say, do you know where anyone else is?"

"Sorry."

"Well, back to trying to force a call through," groaned Cole. "Why couldn't this thing just have a 'busy' signal so I know that someone's calling someone else and not buried under six tons of rubble or something?"

"I'm pretty sure everyone's fi—" Cole had already hung up.

"Poor Cole," sighed Lloyd, deactivating his communic

ator. He looked up and found that Chamille was now looking at him silently, her eyes wide. "What? What's wrong?"

"You're bleeding like crazy," said Chamille thinly, pointing at her head. Lloyd lifted his hand to his temple and blinked as it came away sticky and red. A piece of flying rubble must have grazed him.

"Oh no . . . Kai is going to kill me."

"You're about to die of blood loss, and that's what you're worried about?!"

"I'm not gonna die." Lloyd rolled his eyes good-naturedly, tugging off his mask and holding it to the abrasion. "It's just a 'bleeder,' I think. Shallow, and it'll stop soon. Heals up in no time." Privately he kinda hoped it would scar, though. He would've loved a cool battle scar like Kai and Jay had.

Police sirens were starting to wail in the distance, responding to the explosion. Lloyd glanced back in the direction they were coming from, then looked over to Chamille again. She looked tired, grubby, and still more than a little shaken; not really in any shape for a police investigation.

"Hey," he said. "How about we get out of here, clean ourselves up a little, and go back for the rest of tonight's concert?"

"What about the police?"

"I'll explain everything to them tomorrow," said Lloyd. He pushed himself to his feet and held out a hand. Chamille took it, then hesitated. For a second she blinked up at Lloyd silently—then before he even had a chance to say "uh-oh" he found himself sprawled next to her.

"You just don't learn, do you?" she deadpanned. Lloyd rolled onto his back and gave a long-suffering sigh.

"I am never offering you a hand up again," he said darkly.

Still, eventually he had to smile. Irritating as all heck she might be, but she really did have a pretty laugh.