"You're worse than an eager little child, my dearest [i]aniki[/i], sneaking to peak beneath the tree on Christmas Eve... " Of course Galina could not know if Souma had the least idea of her reference, but surely he could not miss the tease in her matchless voice. As Souma began to edge the horse team forward toward the exit, she peered nonchalantly over her shoulder from beneath the brim of her wide hat, her dark eyes inscrutable. The warehouse supervisor had only just begun to gesticulate wildly, slamming the tip of one thick finger into the stack of paper he held in the other hand, and then peering back at the pair of brothers and their newly loaded wagon.

Galina's gaze returned to Souma beside her, letting a long, longsuffering sigh from her nose as she shrugged her shoulders. Nothing to be done for it of course, though they'd come [i]so close[/i] to getting away completely clean. No matter, no matter - this wouldn't be the first time Galina managed a [i]tromp l'oeil[/i] in her line of work, though perhaps not one near so brilliant as she intended now.

"You'd best be as good a horseman as you are a thief," she whispered once more in his ear, "Because you've got about twenty seconds left to impress the [i]hell[/i] out of me." 

Galina scrambled over the back of the wagon seat once more, dropping down into the bed and crawling nimbly over the tarps that had already been lashed down. But for the supervisor and the underlings harangued who the eagle-eyed Souma had noted, no one else in the loading area gave any of them so much as a second glance. Sliding easily back into the role of the younger brother once more, fingers already scratched and torn from the ropes still worked nimbly to loosen them but for a moment, reaching down to the canvas bag beneath, reassuring himself that it too had been loaded and his elder brother need not worry they failed to pick up the entirety of their supplies.

Hunched over where she perched precariously against the wagon's edge and the tarp-covered supplies, Galina broke the seal, snatching at the pin that ignited the ten-second fuse. Unnoticed in the bustle of the warehouse, she shoved it swiftly through the wooden slats. The squat iron ball rolled some yards away, lodging itself neatly beneath a plank of shelving.

[i]'10'[/i]

Galina leapt nimbly back into the seat beside Souma, her hiss of a whisper carrying all the weight of her sudden and most appropriate urgency as the bag fell from her shoulders to her lap. "Oh! Yes, this would be the point where you impress the hell out of me. And you've about nine seconds to do it now, or we're dead." She reached for the hilt of the [i]shashka[/i] within, pulling it forward as she let the rest, with the nitro and the dynamite, lay beneath her feet. Leaning forward, she steadied herself against the coming jolt, though whether from a sudden and desperate forward motion or from the heated death of a grenade blast, she could not possibly have guessed. 

[i]'8'[/i]

Under her breath, she whispered the Lord's Prayer nonetheless.

[i]'7'[/i]