'I should have known that meeting them would lead to something like this,' Nahara growled, ducking behind the truck for cover. Bullets ricocheted across its cab - smashing the window in a maelstrom of glass and noise. Nahara had known when she first stepped foot on the dock that something was wrong. It was deathly quiet. When you arranged a meeting with the mob, they tended to grumble. But the dock had been so silent Nahara had actually heard the water lapping against the lichen splattered stones.

So it wasn't really a surprise when ten blokes - completely clad in black from head to toe - stepped out of the shadows and started shooting at them.

'How's that bomb coming along?' Nahara asked Nigella.

The other girl was crouched, wide-eyed beside her. But Nigella's hands were steady as she combined chemicals with barely a second glance.

'One minute and thirty-two seconds,' Nigella nodded, cocking her head at the sudden streaks of steam erupting from the beakers in her hands. 'Make that one minute seventeen seconds,' she amended.

'Alright,' Nahara replied, 'I'll keep these boys busy.'

With that, she launched herself at their assailants.

Fighting was something Nahara knew. The rhythm of a fight was more familiar and more comfortable to her than any conversation, any stuffy board meeting. Her fists sang when she sent them sailing through the air, her entire body humming with rightness when her knuckles found flesh.

And she wasn't stupid. She knew she couldn't take ten guys by herself - at least not in a minute. All she had to do was keep them distracted long enough for Nigella to-

BOOOOOM!

The blast threw Nahara back, colliding with another mob member and crashing to the ground. But where the man lay on the ground, groaning, Nahara leapt to her feet, mindless of the way her vision wavered.

'Nigella!' she screamed. 'Nigella, where are you?'

The air was thick with smoke and the coppery stench of blood, so strong it made Nahara's water. At least, she told herself that was why tears streaked down her cheeks.

'Please,' she choked, 'please.'

Another cough answered her, pitched at high enough a frequency to only belong to-

'Nigella!' Nahara ran in what she thought was the direction of the truck. It's smoldering embers painting the entire dock crimson.

A figure stumbled out from beside the blaze, bent double with wracking coughs. Nahara easily took the crumpled demolitionist in her arms - she was a scrap of a thing without her layers of petticoats - and turned them towards the river.

'Sorry about this,' Nahara said, 'but seeing how the water's the only thing not on fire...'