Not sharing her delicate sense of decorum, he grabbed hold of her hand and pulled it around to his chest, fully looping her arm over his shoulder, and then without warning hoisted her up into a piggyback.

Roo first struggled to quieten her gasp and then subsequently struggled to keep from hacking up her lungs when she sucked too much air in, as Giovanni bounded out of the room and over the balcony railing. She clutched him tightly despite the impropriety of it all, miserably wondering in between stifled coughs, at what point her life had come to leaping from several stories on the backs of strangers to wander into demon-infested woods.

It was nowhere near as smooth as the way up, but Giovanni was able to carefully scale down the wall without losing his grip or his passenger. As soon as his foot hit soft earth, he eased her off with haste. "So, you know this compound better than I do-- we're working together on this, okay?"

"Right," she agreed, trying to gain her footing once more. "Um... um, we're in the back of the hold right now. So... there'll be patrols coming through here, but right now they're on the other side of the property, which means we have about... seven, six and a half minutes?" she'd made sure to time the security teams, but who knew how long their discussion had cost them? "Maybe less. There's also two borders that we'll have to slip through, and you've seen the watchtower. There'll be three guards in there to keep an eye on the left and right sides of the woods, as well as the inside of the Hold. So... if we can make it past all that..."