Not My First Rodeo

Tony woke up in the dark with a headache.

Both of these conditions were unusual as enough light from the hall seeped into his dormitory room to provide a minor amount of illumination and headaches generally occurred at the end of a long day, not immediately upon waking.

Therefore, something was decidedly wrong.

Add in the fact that he was on a cold, hard concrete floor instead of in bed, and the obvious conclusion was that he had been kidnapped yet again.

On the plus side, he hadn't been tied up and didn't seem injured. There wasn't a goose egg on his head, so chances are he was drugged. Oh, joy.

Moving carefully to avoid both making noise and hurting himself, Tony felt his way across the floor until he hit a wall... which took very little time at all, then followed the line of the wall looking for a door. He found something rather hot, first - fortunately not by running his face into it - and turned back the other way. Light switches were usually located close to the door and overhead obstacles usually were not, so once he found that he carefully stood up. Light switch located, he paused before flipping it, took off his shirt and bent down to carefully tuck it into the crack at the bottom so as not to alert anyone watching from the darkened room(?) beyond. Then he stood back up and flipped the switch.

It worked. He was actually a bit surprised at that. It was a single low-wattage bulb, but quite enough to have a good look at his current prison.

The hot spot he'd found earlier was shown to be a large boiler tucked into the corner of a fairly small storage room. The hinges were unfortunately on the outside of the door, so he wouldn't be escaping by simply knocking the pins out this time. Pity. Easy was always better.

A high shelf ran along the wall opposite the door and a sturdy wooden chest was tucked in the corner beneath it. It held tools for working on the boiler, a couple small garden tools and partial bags of soil amendments, a few randomly sized wrenches, a half-dozen mostly empty paint-sampler cans, a couple damaged screwdrivers, a badly rusted box cutter and a mostly-used spool of bailing twine. A quick (but cautious) check behind the boiler turned up a few short lengths of pipe and a piece of rebar. He could work with this. (And he really really hoped whatever was on the shelf would be equally useful.)

The chest was too heavy to move and too short to let him reach the shelf, and the room was a little too wide for him to brace against the walls and climb, so he grabbed one of the screwdrivers to chip at the wall beside the door. Instead of the cinderblock or drywall he was expecting, it proved to be plaster and lath. Old fashioned, but all the better for his plan. Tony carefully pried off bits of plaster until he found the gap between laths, then grabbed a crescent wrench to help break bits off until he had a hole just large enough to wedge a bit of pipe in securely. He then repeated the operation on the opposite wall, as close to level with the first hole as possible. Using the pipe pieces to extend the rebar, he soon had a horizontal bar at about his shoulder height which should let him reach the shelf.

After testing the strength of his creation by hanging his weight on it - so he'd only drop a couple inches if it gave instead of a few feet - he carefully levered himself up to see what bounty he might find. (Please, please. please let there be something useful) Using the doorjamb to steady himself as he stood, he was rewarded with an old can full of assorted screws, bolts and nails (possibly useful), a small radio (probably useful), and a box of cleaning supplies (pleasepleaseplease - yes!!!). He grinned. This, he could definitely work with.

Tony was not sure how long he'd been working, but he was nearly ready and hopefully (pleasepleaseplease) wouldn't get hurt so badly he couldn't run for it when the door blew. He'd used the (barely functional) box cutter start a hole in his sock so he could rip it in half. One was wrapped around his carefully measured 'charge' of shredded binding twine soaked in sticky dregs of varnish, surrounding fertilizer crystals and pinned to the door by the latch behind a warped paint can lid. Hopefully it worked like he thought it should.

The other half-sock was also nailed to the door to carefully hold a short fuse (more binding twine and varnish) and an improvised ignition switch (using batteries from the radio) in place.

He'd done what he could, and now was the moment of truth. He was getting just a touch dizzy from the fumes (and glad he'd thought to put out the boiler's pilot light) as he stuffed a wad of fine steel wool into the end of the longest piece of pipe and carefully pushed it into the ignition switch, completing the circuit, while staying as far away as he could. There was a flare of light as the steel wool sparked and smouldered, lighting the fuse. He immediately dropped the pipe - no longer caring about noise - and crouched down as much in the lee of the chest as he could to make as small a target as possible, using his forearms and shins as a shield to protect his face and torso in case of splintery shrapnel.

The charge didn't quite go 'boom' like he'd half hoped, but it did shatter a nice chunk of the door, dislodging the lock enough to allow the door to swing open. eh - good enough.

Grabbing the pouch (his other sock) of assorted screws and the makeshift sling (from the hem of his shirt) he'd prepared, Tony found himself in an empty hallway. The lack of windows implied that he was in a basement level, which really limited his options for escape. The other doors he passed were also locked, and he eventually found himself creeping upstairs, loaded sling at the ready.

He'd made it undetected through three hallways, and had a pretty good idea where to find the exit, before he realized he knew where he was. The shadows and unaccustomed silence had fooled him for a while - and the fact that he'd never been in the school's basement before. Well... that gave him a fair idea who was behind this. If those bullying bastards thought they'd get away with this, they were wrong. And since the school had just proven to be as bad as the one he'd been sent away from home to get away from... well.

It wasn't that hard to slip past the security office. And out the front gates. And down the street to the local police station where he told the whole story to the nice officer on duty, as well as his suggestion for what to do about it. When asked why he decided to blow the door instead of waiting, Tony's reply was 'This is not the first time I've rescued myself. It's what I do when I'm kidnapped. I was knocked out and woke up on the floor of a small, locked unfamiliar room. I had no idea where I was, who took me, or what they wanted. No difference from my side of things.'

The officer contacted his superiors, they the Headmaster directly, and tweaked the plan slightly.

Later that morning, three boys were shocked to see the door to the boiler room hanging open when they went to unlock it and release 'the little Yank'. Being accosted by the headmaster was also a surprise, and when one of them squawked "it was just a joke!", the police officer standing nearby didn't find it at all funny. In fact, no one did, and the officer let them know that 'the little Yank's' guardian was pressing charges for unlawful imprisonment and kidnapping and their parents would be billed for the damage done to the boiler room and informed exactly why: knocking out a young boy and locking him in a closet is not a joke. Their cries of 'we were gonna let him out' made no difference.

The headmaster explained as patiently (not very) as he could. "This is a child who has been kidnapped repeatedly, whose father is a big name in weapons, and who has friends in higher places than you do. And you just got yourselves - and maybe your parents - on his shit list. And he does have the connections to get them black listed or fired. So, you three are being thrown to the wolves despite your young age because you apparently have no concept of right and wrong and are a disgrace to this school."

The entire school got the announcement that morning "due to young messrs Rupert Smythe, Jack Donnelly, and Victor Cooke, there was an explosion in the boiler room last night. You may thank them all for the cold showers you'll make do with for the next few days while repairs are made."

A couple other students who stepped forward to ask if Tony was ok - it turned out they'd overheard plans for the 'joke' - were charged as accessories, and given suspension and detentions instead of being outright expelled.

And Tony... he was back at the Jarvises' house fast asleep after his rather eventful night.