fandomhighdorms | The gym, Sunday afternoon

"Naah, I'm good. Already did enough reps." Dinah hopped off the bench, and walked over to the backpack with the handcuffs and other restraints, grabbing it and heading to one of the mats. "Maybe we should do some stretching first, so you can be limber enough for a couple of these tricks. It's all in the arms, mostly."

"I warmed up on the way over," he admitted, mostly because it'd recalled memories of his old training sessions on Sundays.

"But a stretch would do nicely."

Dinah grinned and started stretching out her arms over her head, behind her back, as far in front of her as they'd go, stretching out her fingers and joints. "Have you been back home since the last time we did this? Anything changed there?"

He followed suit.

"Just the once," he admitted, "for a bit of business. And to let Amber meet Nanny. I wonder what she'll think when I tell her Amber's gone."

He sighed and breathed out.

"Trism'll be disappointed, but hopefully he'll like Joan well enough. If they should ever meet. Other than that, though, it's just been letters, a note here or there. I'm... reasonably certain he's started working for the Home Guard again. Trism, I mean."

Which had strained things between them.

"That's your friend, that got on some people's nerves, you said," Dinah remembered from before. "I hope he's okay? I know things are unsettled there."

She cracked her neck, and gave him a serious look. "You still wanna do this? Still gonna need it?" She fished out a pair of standard police handcuffs, and handed them to him to look over. "Are these anything like the ones the people back in Oz would use?"

"The ones they'd use are heavy iron, thicker but not nearly as tight to the wrist," he admitted as he looked at the handcuffs.

"And I'm certainly going to need it. I'm still the son of a known terrorist, as well as the nephew of the Emperor... who'd probably like to see me killed or tortured at this point, come to think of it."

He said it with a quick, brittle smile.

"Trism's fine. At least, he says he's fine. He's working in animal husbandry for the military, though don't ask me what that could be as I don't know."

"Maybe he gets cows for them, for milk?" No, that didn't make sense to Dinah either. Weird. "I'm glad he's okay, though."

And she definitely needed to show Liir how to do this right, then, if there were still WANTED posters with his face out there, or the equivalent.

She pulled out a set of cuffs for herself. "Okay then. These may not be too similar, but some of the tricks are probably the same. There's three ways out of cuffs. Picking them, breaking them, and slipping out of them. If you can get a set of their cuffs, and have a key made? They usually use ones that are all the same. You could hide it on yourself in case you get caught." Dinah held up a bobby pin. "If you can't, one of these, maybe a little stronger or thicker for a heavier set of cuffs, should work."

He nodded to what she was saying, all of it really.

"I'll see about the keys. I might be able to ask Lady Glinda about some of this, considering."

"Professor Glinda? Who was in the play?" Dinah frowned, trying to remember if she'd known they were from the same place. "Cool. Yeah, I mean, you said these soldiers, some might be professionals, some might not, so they might not search you for a key, thinking you wouldn't even have one. There's sneaky places to hide them on yourself, too." Dinah grinned. "Okay, all of this involves you remembering how to get your arms from behind your back to your front again, or getting them to cuff you in the front." She snicked the cuffs onto herself, and turned them so the keyhole was visible, then put the bobby pin in her mouth. "And getting left alone for two minutes."

"Lady Glinda," he told her with a little nod to say yes, the one who was in the play.

"She was the ruler of my country, before the Scarecrow" who hadn't been the right one anyway, "and the Emperor. Someone who stepped in after the Wizard left. She's been, well, teaching me magic as she can. Shiz magic. It's a little odd, but I seem to have a knack for it as well."

"Coooooool." Dinah beamed at him, and said, "You can probably figure out how to break these open with magic easier than this, but. Just in case you're too tired or something." She bent the bobby pin one way into the keyhole, then the other way, and withdrew it. "See how it's a little square now? You can feel around for the catch, and..." Snick! The cuffs opened. "Try it on there without the cuffs on first," she said, handing it over to Liir. She put her chin on her hands to watch. "What kind of magic is Shiz magic? How is that different?"

He watched her carefully and took the cuffs into his hands before shaking his head and snapping them on. Best he learned in the right situation.

"Shiz magic is just what I'd call the kind of things you'd learn at Shiz. It's different from the books I got from the O.Z. The kind of magic that the Witch did. It's like..."

He considered it for a moment.

"It's the difference between multiple choice and essays, if I had to put it down. What Lady Glinda teaches me is how to do this or that. What the books show me is how magic works and then it's my job to put it together to do what I need it to do. There's more to it than that, I suppose, but that's the only way I can think to put it in words."

He took the bobby pin as well and started to try manipulating it, getting a feel for the mechanism.

"It's always" twist "best to have" scritch push "a mundane" tuuuurn "solution."

Not quite yet.

"Yup." It was weird, and good, that handcuffs were just handcuffs again, and didn't have any weird erotic symbolism, now that she'd talked to Aphrodite and Cal about that. She didn't need to get weird about one of the basic pieces of equipment for her job. She watched Liir trying and said, "A little more to the left... Do they have anything back there that can take away powers?" Dinah made a face. "They can make collars, where I'm from, that can shut them off. They're expensive and hard to come by, but still. That's why I need to know this."

"Soooo, she's teaching you the specific things to do, and the books tell you how it's all supposed to work. Hunh. That's cool of her.... and the Emperor's ruling the country now, though."

Edited 2009-09-20 20:19 (UTC)

"She stepped down. Everyone expected it as she's not exactly a leading figure in politics. In the right place at the right time is how most people put it. The Scarecrow stepped in after that, though he was an obvious strawman for certain interests, and now those interests have come to light in a manner of speaking in the form of the Emperor."

He listened to her advice and the handcuffs gave a sort of clunk noise before opening.

"Ha!"

Dinah clapped and grinned. "Woooo! There you go. Practice it 'til it's just thirty seconds, and you can do it with a pen, or a paperclip. Whatever works." She paused. "Straw man. Seriously."

Did he come from Pun World?

He nodded as he considered items he could keep on himself to act as lock picks for 'cuffs of any sort.

"Well, he certainly wasn't the Scarecrow. Not the one that traveled with Dorothy, anyway, though that was the line that was fed to the rest of Oz. It's not as if that damn Lion was about to say anything, the coward, and Nick's been off dealing with tik toks since he got his heart, at least that's what the stories say.

"One Scarecrow looks very like another to most, though it's strange since they're usually more unique. People don't look when they don't want to see, unfortunately."

Dinah was following maybe one fourth of this, but got the general gist. "O... kay. Pretender on the throne. And now an evil Emperor." She paused. "This is why it's good you'll be escaping a lot." She put the cuffs back on her self. "Other way out of these? Break the links if you can. Hard to do on these, but not as hard, I'm guessing, on the ones you'd be locked into. Find anything harder, or, better yet?" She pulled a small metal file out of her pocket. "Carry one of these, again, keep it concealed. or pass it off as something else. Links on a necklace. Part of a shoe heel." She twisted so he could see the links. "The one next to the link that chains them to the cuffs is usually a weaker one. It's got more stress put on it." SHe paused. "Ooo, political metaphor!"

"An Emperor who claims the blessing of the Unnamed God," he said with obvious distaste before listening to her on the handcuffs.

"I'll keep in mind what you said about the chain, though. That'll be useful, no doubt."

"Unnamed God. Why not just say 'God'?" Dinah shook her head. "Enh. Emperors." She put the cuffs back on herself, saying, "Watch, my wrists," as she did so, tightening both hsnds into fists, keeping them bent, then holding them up. "A little tiiiny bit more slack in there now. If you've got sloppy jailers, it's the same as those rope tricks I showed you. You can wriggle out with practice."

She pulled out a set of thumb cuffs. "These? Are even easier." Dinah tensed her hands, tucking her thumb inside of her fingers and squeezing hard--- then turned her fingers to show that the thumb cuffs now had plenty of slack. "Same principle. Act scared, act tense, tighten every muscle, and they'll miss that you just left yourself leeway."

Liir tried each of the things she was saying as she spoke them, clenching and unclenching, the forms his hands should take and shouldn't.

"Because He has never given His name. At least, that's what the Unionists say. I don't go in for the follderol be it Unionist or Lurlinist, but that's what He's called."

Liir had his own theories but he'd keep them to himself.

"None of the jailer's I've met have ever seemed especially attentive. Nosy, but not particularly worried about their jobs."

"Well, they get bored. It's a repetitive job, and usually full of stupid people-- drunks or impulse bar fighters; why would they try?" Dinah added, "I haven't tried it myself, but Helena showed me how on some of those straight-bar cuffs, all you have to do is hit it in the right place, and they pop open. It's just a matter of leverage." ~~ahem.~~ She took a breath. "Okay. Watch this. Don't do it. I'm... not a professional, but I know how to fix it."

She put the cuffs on. Tight. No slack. Held them up to show them.

Then gritted her teeth, and popped her thumb -- ow ow ow-- to dislocate it, against the floor, and slipped the cuffs off, wincing in pain.

As someone who'd served someone else for most of his life, someone he didn't particularly like even if he did love her, he privately thought that that was no excuse for a sloppy job. Of course he'd be glad of a sloppy job if he was captured, so he didn't say anything.

"Easier than breaking it," he said with a nod.

Dinah nodded, bit her lip, and popped her thumb back in, shaking out her hand, and then holding it to her chest. "If you do that, there's a good chance you'll break your thumb, or sprain it, I should warn you. And it's going to hurt no matter what, even if you do it right, and hurt for a while." Ow. "But. It's a good way to get out of cuffs if you absolutely have to, like, you really don't wanna be there whenever your captors come back." Better a broken thumb than other things.

"You can't really pull the same trick on leg cuffs, but all that stuff I told you about wearing boots and heavy clothes, and working your way out of them, still applies." She smiled and rubbed her hand. "My sister said that the guy who trained her had her work her way out of a straitjacket. Hanging upside down. I can't do that yet, but it's the same principle. Dislocate a shoulder, shrug out of it, then pop it back in."

He took the cuffs from her thoughtfully, put them on tight, and without a second thought, dislocated his thumb to pull his fingers through. He swallowed, a touch of pain in his eyes, before popping it back into place. He winced just a little, but once he was done, he nodded.

"I've had to put myself back together a time or two. I just wanted to see if I could."

He wiggled the thumb a little and stashed the pain away to be dealt with later, in private.

"Is your hand all right?"

"Liir!!" Dinah's jaw dropped and she almost hit him for doing what she just said not to, gesturing with the hand that was still sore. "Dude, you could've -- yes, my hand is okay, just owie." Muscle torsion, bruise underneath from doing that. As usual. "And I guess it's good you know, but still!"

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