Day Nineteen : Mot juste - Keeping it in the Family

Mot juste

Definition: 

the exactly right word or phrasing

English was apparently unable to come up with its own mot juste to refer to a word or phrase
that expresses exactly what the writer or speaker is trying to say, and so borrowed the French
term instead.

“I have to say.” My mate remarked as he watched my sister throw yet another international assassin
through one of the solid doors (both bullet AND blast proof and yet still in keeping with the rest of our
tastefully decorated suburban home) of our house. “Your sister is a right bad arse.”

I glared at him. The light from the various monitors from our internal security system was flickering
eerily over his face, casting strange shadows over his completely laconic expression. 

“That is so not helping.” I snarled at him. I went back to pondering the electronic keypad that was
currently keeping us locked in the house’s safe room. My sister had thrown and locked us in here the
second the assassins had broken in. Only she knew the code to the door. 

Of course. Should something happen to her, the door would open of its own accord once the danger
had been presumed to have passed. Last time I mentioned it, my sister said she had set it for a week. 

Within the safe room, there was enough water and food to last us easily two months. She’d even
installed a 3D gaming system to help pass the time. My sister was the paranoid sort and thought that
there was no such thing as being too careful.

I sighed. 

“Come on.” my mate groused. “You’ve been glaring at that since we got here.”

“I have not!” I said indignantly. I paused. “I’ve also stared at the other one.”

‘The other one’ was the lock on the artillery room my sister kept down here. She’d never allowed me
inside but she kept all her heavy weaponry here. I once saw my sister casually use a flame thrower to
deal with ‘some pests’ as she called them and he once blew up a mobster’s hideout with a rocket
launcher because he’d cut her up in traffic. 

The army, despite her being a magnificent fighter and one of the best they’d seen in generations, had
thrown my sister out due to ‘anger management issues that made her a threat to the enemy and also
to her own side.’ She now made a living as a mercenary for hire. She had a bit of a reputation for
being, well, I’d call her pretty  happy go lucky in all aspects except personal safety and the safety of
her family. Other people tended to use the term ‘loose cannon’. 

I dreaded to think what she termed ‘heavy weaponry.’

I sighed again.

“You’re never going to get it.” my mate said as he fiddled with a rubix cube I'd been working on for
years. “It’s not a number keypad - it’s a word one. And you know your sister - she’s a word fanatic!”

This was true. My sister loved words almost more than anything - she was the only person I knew
who read the dictionary for fun and bought every edition that was ever released. My friend was right,
there was no way ‘d be able to guess whatever random and esoteric word or words she’d picked as
her password of the day. 

I glumly kicked the bottom of the impenetrable steel door. It was so well insulated and disguised, my
foot didn’t make much more noise than a muffled thump. 

“I just want to help.” I said piteously. 

He shrugged and went back to fiddling with the rubix cube. He’d already completed two sides i noticed.

I tried not to scowl at that. Instead I looked up at the monitors. My big sister was currently choking
one assassin with one of those bendy wire coat hangers (which we kept for expressly this purpose -
I mean, why would you try and hang clothes on them? They bent out of shape almost immediately
and always made weird dents in your clothes. Why else would you ever consider keeping them?)
and elegantly kicking the other one repeatedly in the stomach, all while balancing, perfectly poised,
on one leg. 

I wonder if mum would be proud to know that her daughter was still utilizing her childhood ballet
classes. 

Probably, knowing my mum. Dad might be a bit sad though. He was the one who had painted her
bedroom pink when she was a little girl, and then cried when she asked it to be changed to a
camouflage style. He still did it though. They compromised and went for the blue, water camouflage
pattern. 

“I know she doesn’t need it but i really do just want to help her.” I said sadly. “It sucks that she always
has to take care of me.”

My friend looked at me slyly. “Well, we could always try hacking the keypad.” 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I said cautiously.

“Chicken?” He grinned at me. 

“If I was chicken I'd be quite happy to stay in here where it’s safe.” I said flatly. “Chicken or not has got
nothing to do with it. I just know how paranoid my sister gets on the best of days. I can’t imagine what
kind of traps she’s put on a door designed to keep me safe.”

Seriously. I couldn’t. I didn’t know if it was all the books she read or what, but my sister’s imagination
when it comes to traps, protection or just general mayhem was off the charts.  Speaking of chickens,
when i was little and we lived out in the sticks, she once actually trained a squadron of chickens to act
as my bodyguard pets, thinking if you could do it to geese, why not chickens? I reckon she would have
tried to train geese if we could have gotten our hands on any. I think i’m still quite grateful we couldn’t.

The guard chickens, once up and running so to speak, fended off; a large dog, a strange man in a
trench coat that tried to give me candy (come to think of it, he was wearing no socks or visible
trousers under hei coat so well spotted chickens!) and a small guerrilla force from some despot
somewhere that my sister had pissed off when she deposed him from power. 

They were small but mighty. 

We had to leave them behind when we moved again after the guerrilla attack. Sometimes, when I'm
feeling nostalgic, i read the local newspaper from that area on line and i’m always glad to hear that
they’re doing well. They settled into the children’s playground after we left and spent their time
guarding the children from perverts and pests, training their own chicks in their ways as they did so.
I hear they’ve been quite successful at it and the village in question has given up eating chicken in
their honour. 

“Why not give it a go?” My friend’s wheedling voice brought me back to the present. “I’ve even got one
of those code cracking machines in my bag.”

“Why do you have a code cracking machine in your bag?”

He shrugged. “It was going for cheap in the Science & Engineering magazine - who wouldn’t buy it?”

True. Still, I hesitated. 

“Come on.” He urged. “Look, we’ll try it on the armoury safe door first - that way, if it doesn’t work, the
bad guys still won’t be able to get in but your sister will. If it does work, then hey presto! We can grab
some weapons and go help your sister.”

“I guess so.” I said reluctantly.

He grinned and rummaged in his bag, pulling out a very professional looking electronic safe cracker.
He hurried over to the armoury door. 

I followed, slowly. The rubix cube had four sides completed now. My eyes flicked up to the screens. Yep,
my sister was still going strong. I counted the number of opponents still running about. Another fifteen
minutes and she’s be done i reckon. After all this time i was getting good at analysing fights. I’d seen
enough of them after all, usually from the safe distance of a monitor screen, but not always. 

I was good at analysing people too. 

“By the way.” I said casually, coming up behind him as he grunted at the keypad, his enthusiasm causing
him to be impatient.

I looked at the cracker device he was trying to plug in and suppressed a little smirk. That version, despite
being oh so slick, was about two generations behind what was needed to open my sister’s safe.

“What?” he asked crankily as his little read out showed nothing but useless, streaming green numbers. 

“Is it that you think i’m stupid or you’e just really that stupid yourself?” I asked sweetly.

“Wha?” he started to turn and ask but I whacked him in the fact with the Oxford dictionary before he had
a chance to finish. He crumpled to the floor, unconscious.

Mm, I nodded to myself, satisfied. I grabbed my cable ties from my pocket and began expertly trussing
him up. Subduing torture vic, ah, i mean prisoners, had been my role since i was five and i was more
than adept at it by now. 

Fifteen minutes later on the dot, my big sister popped her head round the door. 

“You alright babe?” she asked cheerfully. 

I was sitting quite comfortably on top of my captured prisoner, reading my sister’s annotated copy of the
Oxford English dictionary. I was still no closer to puzzling out which word she’d used as the password. 

“You know, you could have let me help.” I said. “Then I wouldn't have had to miss Strictly on telly.”

She shrugged. “There’s always catch up.”

“It’s not the same and you know it.”

“I let you have the baby one.” She pointed at my prisoner. “See, I'm ‘relaxing the reigns’ or whatever it is
that mum says.”

“Exactly.” I huffed. “The baby. He clearly didn’t think to do any research. Not only did he not think it odd
that I'd drag him to our safe room instead of just leaving the premises, he didn’t even think I'd find it
weird that he ‘just happened to have’ a safe cracker on him which he got from the back of a magazine!
I mean, come on!”

“I, for one, can’t believe they’d try to honey pot a thirteen year old!” 

“He’s not even that cute.” I sulked.

“He’s a bit cute.” my sister offered. “I though young girls liked that whole, floppy haired, brooding thing.”

“Well i don’t.” I said flatly. 

She shrugged again. “At least they try to send you eye candy.” she said. “No one’s ever tried
honeypotting me.”

“That’s because you run thorough background checks on every person you meet - including the
postman!” I paused. “Plus you’re even scarier to people you do like.”

She threw bloodied pencil at me. “Brat!”

I dodged, easily. My heel went into the honeypotters side though and caused him to go ‘oof!’, drawing
my sister’s attention. 

She walked over and looked down at him, bound and gagged on the floor. I could feel him start to
tremble and a wide, savage grin took over her face. 

“Now then, my little spy.” She cooed. “What shall we do with you?”