Born Mad

Chapter Fourteen: Mister Holmes the Elder and Someone Higher

"WHY EXACTLY IS YOUR BROTHER WORKING IN A BLOODY ABANDONED FACTORY?!" I screamed at the detective a couple days or so later, jumping onto a table and latching onto the ceiling support beams as I stared down at the giant, rabid, black mastiff trying to bite my foot off. "Kill it!"

"Hang on, Aurora."

"What else am I going to do? Let go? 'Cause that's a bloody marvelous idea! Oh, schist."

I flinched as I heard the rafter I was clutching starting to crumble. "Doc!"

"Here boy! Come on! Look at me! Fresh meat!" Watson tried to distract it so Holmes could get to me, but I can't say it was going well.

"Why does everything want to kill me?" I whimpered, readjusting my hold on the cracking wood.

"You tend to have that effect on people."

"Would you just shut up, Mister Holmes?!"

"And I'm the snappy one?"

"If I get out of this alive, I will- Oh, good gracious."

I let out a yelp as the rafter broke, and I fell straight down in front of the dog. I couldn't do anything except brace myself for death as that thing leapt towards me.

"Aurora? Aurora, look at me. You're okay. It's dead. Come on. It's alright."

I opened my eyes, indeed finding myself in one piece. The Doc was kneeling in front of me, a relieved smile on his lips as he held my hands in his.

"There you are. You alright?"

I looked up, nodding numbly. I took his offered hand up, finding Holmes gone and a dead mastiff at my feet with a bullet lodged in its head.

"Wait. Doc, we don't have our guns... Who shot it?"

"She could have been killed!"

The Doc and I turned to find Sherlock Holmes glaring profusely at a man standing in front of him, passive, as the good detective screamed.

"Yet she wasn't, Sherlock. Miss Aurora, I must say you surprised me. You lasted much longer than I would have expected from someone of your ...strengths."

Oh, big mistake.

"And you want to know my strengths, huh?" I growled, pushing aside the doctor and storming straight up to that idiot who had immediately gotten on my bad side. I stood on my tiptoes in a futile attempt to get eye level with him. "Mycroft Holmes is it? Well, Mister British Government, my strengths happen to involve escaping from inescapable asylums, breaking free from a human smuggling ring, escaping crime lords, and managing to survive the unsurvivable. What can you say? That you rule the government that is currently trying a twelve year-old girl as both a fugitive and a terrorist? My, I wonder who holds the better record here. Care to venture a guess?"

Mycroft merely smiled. "I can have you killed within seconds."

"And as I told Headmaster Veneel, I can snap a neck within seconds. Come on; let's see who's better."

"You would not due to the fact that you need me."

"Confident are we?" I laughed. "Actually, I don't need you. I merely wish to use the easy way out. If I so desired, I could hack the main network, wipe my name from every file in the world, and change my identity completely. Then, if I wished, I could hijack an international jet and fly myself to America. As you can clearly see, I don't need you at all."

"You're the exact opposite of that mastiff. You are all bark and no bite."

"Oh, I've got bite-"