Lockpicking for Dummies

One night wasn’t exactly a ton of time to plan an entire heist. Especially not when the plan was to break into the head nun’s office at the church of sulfur! Jackal let Misty use her bed for the night since Lyra was sitting down, obviously still freaking out about their plan, even though she’d had a good idea to distract Mercy away from their office! 

Jackal let out a soft huff as she watched Lyra get lost in her own head.

“Hey,” Jackal cut through Lyra’s spiraling with just one word. “Come on, it’s not that big a deal. You act like you’ve never picked a door in your life.”

Lyra didn’t say anything, but apparently her silent shock spoke for her because Jackal decided to continue.

“You…haven’t picked a door before.” Jackal sank down on the futon next to Lyra, just staring out in front of her. “Maybe we do have our work cut out for us,” she said before she glanced around her apartment.

“Wait here, I’ve got some padlocks we can practice on tonight, that way even if one of us gets caught, the other one can get into the office tomorrow afternoon.” Jackal got up from the couch and disappeared from Lyra’s view for a few minutes, but she could still hear the other doll rummaging around through some things.

She finally made it back with a pair of padlocks and some other equipment that Lyra had to guess was used when picking locks. Jackal sat back down on the couch beside her and took one of the sets of tools and padlock.

“Alright so, first things first, this is your wrench and this is your pick,” she said as she lifted them both into her hands one at a time. “We’re going to start with the wrench.”

She moved a little closer to Lyra on the couch and taught her about keeping tension on the pins and how to tell when a pin was in place. It took quite a while, but after about an hour Lyra had managed to open the lock all on her own.

“Look! Jackal I did it!” She was grinning and so, so proud of herself.

Jackal couldn’t help the fond little smile on her face as she watched Lyra celebrate. She quickly cleared her throat and let her expression fall back to neutral.

“Good job, but it’s time to do it again. We won’t have an hour to get into Mercy’s office.”

Lyra nodded in response and locked the padlock again. The two of them sat together, practicing the entire night together. By the time morning came, Lyra had managed to pick the padlock in under ten minutes. She was a little nervous that she’d just gotten used to this particular lock, but if worse came to worst she should be able to pick Mercy’s office.

To keep herself from overthinking and spiraling again, Lyra fixed them breakfast with what few ingredients Jackal actually kept in her fridge. After a quick breakfast, they were off to the church.

Lyra’s first job was to get Oleander to call Mercy out of their office. She made up a little white lie about Mercy being pent up and needing some stress relief, which of course had Oleander immediately calling on Mercy. Lyra hurried to meet up with Jackal before they headed to the head nun’s office together. 

Once there, Jackal shoved the lockpick into Lyra’s hands instead of doing it herself. She gave her a confident grin and nodded quickly.

“You’ve got this, Lyra,” she reassured the lust bun.

Lyra’s eyes went a little wide with nerves for a moment before she set to work. She didn’t have too long to get this right. After a few more minutes finally she heard a click and she was able to unlock the door and open it for her and Jackal.