Buck carefully guards the moon rock, wary of distractions, while Hex throws a ball at the statues, hoping to draw the guard's attention up there.

Hex: Sleight of hand: +5 Roll: +0 Total: +5 Difficulty: +3

The guard's eyes follow the ball, and he looks up... just as both statues fall off the shelf. The security guard who is checking Drake's pulse just has time to say "He'll be fi-" before one of the statues hits him on the head, knocking him out; the more alert one, seeing the statue fall, has a chance to jump back and avoid it.

Snake's head is soon visible, peering over the edge of the shelf. "Hey, Lou, we missed one. An' the alarm's goin' off, already. What do you say we pack it in, come back another night?" he asks.

Hex pulls out another juggling ball and throws it at the snakes head, hoping to distract or otherwise make it freeze long enough for the human to do something about it.

Hex: Sleight of hand: 5 Roll: -1 Total: +4
Snake: Taken by surprise: +0 Roll: +0 Total: +0

Hex's ball hits Snake in the eye. "Yowch!" he yells, shaking his head, and twists around to see Hex with his other eye. "There's a rat!" he says. "Throwing things!"

Spider pops into view next to Snake. "Oh, good grief, him again. Look, I'll -"

*CRASH!*

--------------

Glass rains down on Buck as something smashes through the skylight, sending glass and windowframe in all directions. It smashes right into the display case, and is soon revealed to be Winifred, the cleaning lady, complete with vacuum cleaner (no longer airborne). She seems somewhat surprised by this turn of events. "Crumpets! My cauldron!" she yells.

--------------

Ignoring Snake and Spider, the security guard rushes towards the sound of the human voice.

OOG: Bah, stupid laptop, didn't mean to hit enter yet.



Hex waves cheerily at the spider.
"Heya, Stinky," He calls.



Seeing the woman crash through the ceiling and land where his friend had been, Hex dashes over to to the rock's display case to find Buck.

Buck spirals through the air like a leaf on the wind, doing his best to avoid falling glass, and get to the moon rock before Winifred gets enough of her wits about her to grab it for herself.

Hex discovers that Buck is perfectly alright; in fact, he swoops down to grab the moon rock before Winifred can touch it.

"Don't move!" The remaining security guard enters the room behind Hex, and points his taser at Winifred.

"Furious featherdusters!" she says, drawing her scrubbing brush and pointing it at the museum guard.

He almost bursts into laughter at the sight of her unconventional choice of projectile weapon. A few sparks fizzle from the end, but nothing else happens.

"My cauldron!" she yells, reaching for the moon rock - it's not there.

*BOOOOOOOOOM!*

There's a distant explosion; the ground shakes, windows crack, and the security guard is distracted for a moment. Winifred takes advantage of this distraction by leaping onto the vacuum cleaner.

It stays firmly on the ground.

"What blithering idiot's been bothering my cauldron?" she yells, angrily.

There's a double *click* steps up and neatly handcuffs her.

Hex grins. "Well, that appears to be that."

He turns back to the snake and spider to make sure they're not going to try anything, if they leave he'll let them go, but he'll stick around to make sure the "Freddie" get's collected by the police before moving on.

Buck zips up to the plane carrying the moon rock, and drops it inside, He'll return it once Spider, Snake, and Winifred are gone. He then proceeds to follow Hex.


He is worried by that explosion, however. Big Booms are usually a bad thing, unless he's the one setting them off.

Snake and Spider are peering in at the door.

"They got Freddie." whispers Snake.

"DON'T CALL ME FREDDIE!" yells the lady in question.

"I didn't!" objects the puzzled guard.

"Everything's goin' wrong here." whispers Spider. "C'mon, Bud, let's get out of here while the going's good."

"I'm with you, Lou. Maybe we can find a nice cushy place at the zoo?"

Snake and Spider stroll away, trying for a walk that is nonchalant, innocent, and as fast as possible. (Well, Spider does; Snake moves in more of a slither than a walk. He does, however, have the innocent whistling down pat).

The one thing that the security guard can't figure out is what she did with the moon rock; it's not on her, she didn't have time to hide it elsewhere in the room, and he can't see the inside of the Plane from down here.

--------------

Police involvement has to wait until Drake wakes up again; apparently (as far as Hex and Buck can figure out from what the night watchman says on the phone) all the rest of the policemen are off dealing with... something to do with that big boom that they'd heard earlier. Fortunately, he, Plato, and the other security guard all wake up with nothing worse than a headache; Drake takes the handcuffed Winifred in custody and leaves the museum with her in tow. Twelve hours from now, she'll be busy mopping the prison floor, facing charges of petty theft and breaking and entering.

Feeling suave, Buck will leave the moon rock on the curator's desk, along with a note reading:



The R.R. is written in as elegant and flowing a script as he can manage. Afterwards, he will take the plane to see what all the fireworks was about.

Hex climbs back into the plane.

"Well, shall we go see what that boom was?" he asks Buck. "Anything that loud is bound to be visible from the air."

"Indubitably old chap. You might want to buckle up for this."

Buck fires up the engines and gets them up to speed in a hover before uncoupling the cables suspending the craft from the roof. Whereupon he punches it for the skylight in an unlimited takeoff, grinning like a madmouse. At a cruising altitude of a couple of hundred meters, he levels off, and heads toward the site of the blast.

"Now where did I put that potato chip?"

The potato chip is on the back seat.

Hex and Buck have no trouble finding the site of the explosion... there's quite a pillar of dust and debris where the cafe Kip went to was.