“Damn you, Rachel! You’ll pay for this!”
Elliott was extremely upset.
Turning back, he yelled at one of his followers, a count’s son, asking, “How is Margaret’s condition?!”
“Not good,” the young man said, shaking his head. “Her symptoms are still severe.”
“Damn her! Why, that devil; I’ll wring her goddamn neck! How dare she do this to Margaret! Damn it all! Is there no way to quickly rid myself of that plague demon?! Grrrr! I wish I could set fire to the dungeon and burn her!”
Elliott screamed until he slumped over. Meanwhile, behind him...
“Mweh heh heh heh... Adam’s marvelous pecs... They’re incredible...”
Margaret, who’d had a very good time at Rachel’s tea party, was drooling as her mind wandered around in fantasyland. Three days had passed, and her soul still hadn’t returned to her body.
The count’s son looked grim as he said, “We have to consider the worst-case scenario. It’s possible she might become an Adam Stewart fangirl.”
“Wha?! P-Please, spare me that, at least! Damn it! Why are there no doctors for this kind of illness?!”
As his hangers-on watched Elliott shout and lash out at the furniture, they whispered among themselves.
“If this keeps up, he might really torch the dungeon sometime this afternoon.”
“Yeah, but he’ll make us do the actual work, won’t he?”
“Of course he will. I don’t know that I want to murder someone over a little harassment, though.”
“Is there any way we can take his mind off it?”
Elliott’s associates quietly discussed what to do, without his noticing, and came up with a plan.
“Yeah, let’s go with that.”
“It’ll work, and it should let him blow off enough steam.”
“All right,” Wolanski said with a nod.
With their little meeting finished, Wolanski raised his hand as the representative of the group.
“Your Highness, a moment, if I may?”
“What?!” Elliott growled.
“Why don’t we do something to punish Miss Rachel for her arrogance?”
“Oh? Like what?”
Wolanski explained their plan while trying to calm Elliott’s nerves. The other boys were relieved to see that Elliott gradually came around to the idea, and they glanced at one another knowingly.
“Okay, let’s do it!” Elliott roared to rally the troops. “We act tonight! Get ready!”
“Yes, sir!”
In all their haste, no one noticed the small object hanging on to the curtain flapping in the wind.
“Ook!”
“Welcome home, Haley. Where were you off playing today?” Rachel asked as she softly embraced her pet monkey once he returned through the barred window.
After she gave him a thorough brushing, Haley jumped over to Rachel’s side table, satisfied. “Ooook, ook, ook?” He pointed to his temple and made a circling motion with his index finger, then formed his hand into a fist and mimicked an explosion.
“Oh, you went to see Prince Elliott?”
Haley picked up a nearby pen and grabbed the butt end of it. Then, with his other hand, he imitated striking a match and setting the other end of the pen on fire.
“Hmm, is he planning to bring fireworks and throw them in here?”
Haley nodded.
Rachel hugged Haley tight, stroking his little head. “Thank you, Haley. Now I can do something about it. Could I ask you to run over to the watchers?”
“Ook!”
Late at night, a group of men crept through the building that housed the dungeon.
“It looks like the lights are out,” Elliott whispered.
“Yeah,” Wolanski whispered back. “She’s gone to sleep. Perfect.”
Elliott and his associates fanned out as they approached the barred window, gently laying down the candlesticks and the newly bought packages they’d brought.
Of the toys available to them, one in particular was quite useful at times like this—the firework. When lit, they shot out of a tube and burst with a loud noise. It was like they’d been purposely designed for firing into Rachel’s cell. If they were larger, they’d probably be weapons, but at this size, they couldn’t do more than startle her with their noise. And that was exactly what they wanted to do today.
“Heh heh heh... I can see her panicking already. All right, open fire!” Elliott commanded.
“Yes, sir!”
They tore open the many bags of fireworks they’d bought, but just as they were about to light the first one...
Fwoosh!
There was a faint popping sound from inside the window, and a firework, the same kind they’d bought, flew out at them. And it wasn’t just one either.
“Whoa?!”
“What?!”
The fireworks landed among them and started going off. Elliott and his associates were spread out around the window, so the person inside the dungeon could fire at random and still hit some of them.
“Damn it! She struck first!”
“How can Miss Rachel fire so many?!”
Elliott ordered seven or eight guys to fire, but because of their wobbly trajectory, their shots rarely reached the barred window. Most flew off in the wrong direction.
“Why?!”
“This isn’t working at all!”
Things had not gone to plan, and now Elliott and his cronies were in a state of total confusion.
“This is rather amusing, you know?” Rachel said gleefully.
Rachel was lighting a series of fireworks she’d set up in advance on a piece of corrugated sheet metal. Once ignited, they traveled along the grooves of the sheet and then flew off on their own. She was landing hits much more often than Elliott and the boys, who had no experience with fireworks and were lighting and releasing them by hand.
“Ook!”
Next to Rachel, Haley happily set up the next sheet.
“Would you say it’s about time for our special fireworks?” Rachel asked.
“Ook!”
“Calm down!” Elliott shouted. “There’s only one of her! If we all aim together, we can win by sheer force of numbers!”
Crackle-crackle-cracle! Boom!
Another firework went off.
“What?!”
“Hey! That one was louder than the others!”
In the middle of all the incoming fire, a baron’s son dressed as a knight in training was able to make out what it was from its silhouette.
“She’s bundled the rockets together! I see three, no, four of them tied together, and there’s firecrackers on top!”
“You can do that?!” Elliott asked in disbelief.
While the fireworks weren’t that powerful, they’d still scare you for a second if they went off right beside you. And the fireworks coming toward them were louder and more explosive than theirs.
It was seven against one, and the guys were in the process of losing. But before they could gain the advantage, the next tragedy struck.
“Huh?”
When one of them reached for his next firework, he cocked his head and stared confusedly at the spot where his fireworks should’ve been. He looked around and saw the monkey with several bags of fireworks, and he was tying all of their fuses together.
“Ah! Hey, wait! If you light them like that...!”
As the monkey jumped away, the fireworks went off at random.