Elissa couldn’t believe the sight of Patch. He’d beaten himself up, somehow, though she had no idea how. Such wounds threatened to make her faint, though rationally she knew they weren’t serious, just cleverly placed. Still, seeing one of her friends bruised and bleeding was almost enough to push her over the edge.

[i]Focus, Ellie, focus, don’t fall apart or Fox will die or worse. Focus, you idiot girl, or another friend is going to die because of your own ineptitude.[/i] Such thoughts tumbled through the small girl’s head as she scrambled for something to say, anything to say.
[i]Well, I can either leave Fox and save the rest of us, which I’d never do, or say something totally incriminating and get the other two let go and myself killed, or just say something to let Archangel know how terribly screwed we are…[/i]

She wanted to avert her eyes from the scene before her, Fox bound and gagged and helpless, exactly the way… exactly the way…[i]N-no… Not now, Elissa, n-not now, g-get it together…[/i]
Forcing the thought from her mind and the emotion from her face, she looked right at Fox, though she kept her eyes unfocused to avoid really seeing him.

“I don’t know who that is, specifically, but I’ve seen him around town before. Sometimes he comes into the vet clinic that I work at, that’s what I do when I’m not studying and doing deliveries, I’m an intern at Happy Paws Veterinary Clinic.” She let her voice tremble a little from nervousness, not too much but enough to imply that she wasn’t entirely comfortable in this scenario, the way a normal teenaged person would be. She tried to change the subject a little bit, “getting sidetracked” by the very mention of animals. “I don’t remember his name, but I remember his kitties. One’s named [i]Angel[/i], he was the first kitty I ever got to meet, right after I was [i]sent[/i] to live in this town—Anyway,  One’s named [i]Everett[/i] and one’s named [i]Condor[/i]… After Condor ate some [i]Birdseed[/i] I had to [i]help save[/i] her, because kitties can’t eat bird food, and—Oh yeah, that’s his name! Mr. Turpin! Mr. Turpin let me babysit his kitties when he went out of town!” She let out a giggle.

[color=ed1c24]“Answer the questions, and don’t prattle about kitties.”[/color]

“R-right. I’m Elissa Tunis. I just finished my senior year at an online school. I needed to make some extra cash to [i]cover[/i] my college expenses, so I signed up as a “mercenary deliverygirl”. I didn’t expect to have my delivery [i]blown[/i] the first time I ever took something more exciting than a pizza though.” Again she giggled.

Ellie stopped her nonsense babbling, grinning nervously at the guards. She hoped Angel had been listening carefully enough to catch her message, and also that the guards were inattentive enough to have missed it. [i]Angel send Everett Condor Birdseed help save cover blown.[/i]

If that failed, she supposed that she might have confused the guards enough with her play at being a nervous, hyperactive teenager, in order to get them all out of here.