Now Tooth, as some readers may have surmised, was the brawns of the operation. He was also - and this may come as a surprise to some - the brains of the operation.
And also the wizard of the operation.
And the face of the operation.
And the fiscal overseer of the operation.
And the musician of the operation.
And the one who did all their scouting.
Also the guy who baked muffins and made little handmade mittens for festive occasions.
Snaggle was the member of the operation who just really, really liked explosions.
Which is not to say - lest some get the wrong idea - that he was the sort of maniac who went about throwing bombs all willy nilly while cackling insanely at the destruction he was causing.
Piddering popinjays of that sort lacked flair and style; and Snaggle, well, he certainly had both. Snaggle was a maistro di sprezzatura, and when he struck he struck with panache.
The rigging had been truly beautiful. There would be a rumble, and then a great cataclysmic explosion as Gonzorbo’s - fading, but still faintly visible in the gloaming, as the area hung in the aether between worlds - went up in smoke and fire. Then would follow a moment of silence, followed by a chain of explosions, striking closer, ever closer, until finally the office assistant would find herself annihilated in a burst of flame.
And then, then they would have her.
He depressed the trigger.
There was a protracted moment of silence, the sole sounds that of the gentle patter of rain on the wooden bridge and the rush of a river down below, hidden under the layers of surrounding foliage within the cloying dark.
Nothing happened.
After another long silence Sophie began to clap, whistling appreciatively, the human gesture surprisingly loud in the incipient night.
“Bravo, bravo, a fine showing,” she drawled, as the short Very Strange Fellow pressed the button on his detonator repeatedly, muttering under his breath.
“And now it is my turn to beg your pardon, sirrah - what was that supposed to do?” The knight asked innocently.
The Very Strange Fellow said several unrepeatable words, pressing the detonator trigger several more times before finally accepting that it wouldn’t do anything and throwing it to the side in disgust. “Of all the- that should have reduced her house and its surroundings to charcoal.”
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Sophie wasn’t sure where, exactly, the explosion was supposed to have been - the building was, as I have said, still faintly visible, but whatever otherworld the Very Strange Fellows had brought them to (and an otherworld it must be) had grown and blossomed till they were no longer in a forest at all but rather were standing atop a swaying wooden bridge, braced against the rains, the trees and vines extending up over the guardrail from railing rapids far below.
There was another moment of silence, the Very Strange Fellows internalising what had happened, before Tooth spit over the balustrade. “Evidently our discussion is at an end, then.”
“Indeed,” the knight agreed, and faster than Sophie could follow he blurred forwards, and brought his sword down in an overhand blow at Tooth’s head.
Tooth punched the sword, stopping it in midair.
And then the bridge exploded.
“Aha! I got it to work,” sung Snaggle, failing for the moment to notice that the main victim of his blast had not been the building but the bridge supports. These gave out with nary a sound, the base of the bridge dropping - party in tow - until it crashed with an unceremonious clatter upon another bridge some thirty feet below.
The group was sent sprawling.
Sophie was the first back onto her feet, but Tooth was nearly as fleet, and springing like a uncommonly rotund tiger he made a leap for the office assistant. She crossed her arms, bringing them up in a vain attempt to block - an attempt that proved unnecessary, as midway through his charge a rondel was embedded in Tooth’s head.
The behemoth swung back about, cursing, only to be slammed in the face with the knight’s shield.
“Avast, ye brigand, ye shan’t touch a hair of the fair lady’s head,” cried said knight, and then swept the Very Strange Fellow’s legs out from under him.
Sophie, meanwhile, was already moving. She had no idea what was going on or why, and equally little clue as to what she could do to stop it, but she was absolutely certain that if there was anything she could do it would not be in a three way brawl.
She was in the middle of circling about the group, all sneaky sneaky like, when Snaggle blocked her path. Streaks of curious crackling light spun about the small Fellow’s hands, spinning faster and faster until they took the form of a pair of grenades.
“Use the umbrella!” The knight called unhelpfully, from where he was getting Tooth in the rare East Anglian Three Fingered Toad Grapple. In spite of herself, Sophie reached involuntarily for her umbrella, only to remember that the forecast had been good that morning and she’d left it at home.
Snaggle didn’t fail to notice her twitch. He grinned. “What, you want to dance, but you don’t know it takes two to tango?”
“I don’t think you understand what that idiom means,” Sophie replied, desperately thinking about what she could do.
It was only then, with her back against the bridge, that Sophie remembered she still had her purse.
Now a lady's purse, as any who has seen one can attest, is a wonderful thing. Within its endless depths can be found all manner of strange and fantastical objects, from the relatively mundane (lip gloss, pieces of string, loose screws) to the utterly bizarre (a dead rat, three false IDs, a one way ticket to Timbuktu).
In Sophie's case, she had precisely what she needed for her work as a Rogue Administrative Assistant - no more and no less; if it was incumbent upon a worker of the nation’s offices, she could be expected to have it in her possession.
All of which is to say that upon being cornered by Snaggle she promptly pulled out her derringer (it was pink, and had cute capybara prints on the handle) and shot the Very Strange Fellow in the head.
Snaggle caught the bullet in his teeth.