Watson lunged at Sherlock, grabbing his collar and pulling them nose to nose. He snarled a string of curses into Sherlock's face.

     "John, what on earth are you doing?" Sherlock sputtered in surprise, trying to pull back from Watson's hot breath.

      John spat his strongest curse in Sherlock's face. "When I'm through with you, the police will be finding pieces of your body for decades."

    Sherlock gawped at him, and tried to pry Watson's fingers off. "Have you lost your mind? What's wrong with you?!"

    "Have I lost my mind," John chuckled mirthlessly, shaking his head. "Have I lost my mind." He began to laugh louder, humorlessly, manically, yanking an astonished Sherlock around the room. Abruptly, his laughter ceased and he bared his teeth at Sherlock. "Chess?! It was never chess!"

     Sherlock strained to get free of Watson's iron grip. "Get ahold of yourself, John!" he sputtered. "I don't know what you're talking about! I was working on the Moriarty problem, I wasn’t playing chess!"

     "I know," Watson growled. "I know everything." Steam was practically boiling from his beet-red face, veins bursting from his temples.

     "Stop this, John! We need to focus on Moriarty! We can't afford to waste any time, or we'll be playing right into his hands!"

     Watson rattled Sherlock vigorously. "It's my hands you should be worried about. When I'm finished with you -" He was interrupted by a blow to his stomach from Sherlock's knee. "Weak. Weak. Let me show you how it's really done, Sonny Jim." A few infuriated thuds from Watson left Holmes curled on the floor, tears streaming from his eyes, gasping like a fish. Watson stepped over his fallen flatmate and handcuffed him behind his back. "We're always prepared, aren't we," he breathed in Sherlock's ear. "Top notch handcuffs these are. You're not getting out of them. Ever." Watson continued to bind Holmes thoroughly, with practiced skill and efficiency. He began to drag the detective out of the room, but he paused. After a moment's hesitation, he quickly turned back for the pack of playing cards, then continued to haul the restrained man out the door.

 

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               A Few Weeks Ago

 

     "Sherlock?" Mrs. Hudson called through the door. "Sherlock, your rent's due soon." The tall man lounging across the couch said nothing, and didn't even look over to the door. John Watson glanced at his roommate.

     "Have you got your half of the rent, Sherlock?" Sherlock ignored him and continued playing with the pistol in his hand, finger dangerously close to the trigger. "Can't you put that thing away? You're going to shoot something!"

     "I'm bored," Sherlock drawled. "We haven't had a good case in ages."

     "You've had three cases this week, and it's only Wednesday." John replied.

     "Pitiful, all of them. The most difficult only took 90 minutes, once we got that idiot client to stop babbling and let me work," Sherlock sneered.

     Watson began to sort through the mail that had recently arrived, while Sherlock tossed the gun up into the air and caught it again. It was true that there hadn't been many challenging cases lately. That was worrisome; cases were just about the only thing that could keep Holmes' attention for any length of time, he was easily bored, and when he got bored, he tended to find trouble. In the past, he'd gotten into fights, experimented with gun tricks, and practiced diffusing real, live bombs. He'd broken into a bank vault and evaded detection, just for the thrill of it; to Watson's knowledge, he hadn't even taken any money. He'd snuck aboard a flight carrying the Prince of Wales. He had gotten caught that time, just before landing, but Sherlock's brother Mycroft, an important man in the British government, had managed to smooth it over.

      As problematic as these were, they didn't worry Watson all that much. Sherlock was extraordinarily skilled at unarmed combat, sharpshooting, and explosives handling, so odds were he wouldn't encounter something he couldn't handle. And if Sherlock got himself into legal trouble, it was Mycroft's problem. No, the boredom habit that unsettled John the most, and that Sherlock fell back on the most often, was a tendency to take a plethora of illegal drugs.

     As a medical doctor, Watson was grimly aware of the dangers of treating your body as a chemistry lab. He knew that Sherlock knew as well, but took them anyways. Watson was suspicious that Sherlock may have picked up the habit again, due to the dry spell of interesting cases. Sherlock had been acting somewhat distracted - more than normal, at any rate - and had disappeared for several hours at odd times of day. Admittedly, he had a tendency to disappear when he discovered a lead on a case, but there hadn't been any big cases lately.

     "Here's a minor case for you. There's no return address on this envelope," He tossed a letter over to his flatmate, who caught it without looking. His green eyes darted quickly over the surface, almost spastic in their enthusiasm to examine the whole surface. He sat up quickly, setting the gun aside and staring at the letter. "Sherlock?"  Sherlock ignored him and tore open the envelope. He turned it over, and three scraps of paper fell out. Sherlock glanced at them and then promptly turned his attention back to the envelope. John picked them up. They were cut out of some sort of magazine. "Come and Play?" John read aloud. "What's that supposed to mean?"

     "Moriarty's targeting the journalist Catherine Shaw and he's daring me to try and stop him."

     "Wait, how'd you get all that from the words 'come and play?' Moriarty's name isn't even on the envelope."

     "The words were all cut out of a magazine; if you look at the background, you can identify the magazine and article in question. All three words happen to come from the titles of articles written by Catherine Shaw. The words 'come and play' are in themselves a challenge, thus indicating that there will be an intended murder, since it's Moriarty we're dealing with. Since Catherine Shaw wrote the articles, she's our target. Why Moriarty, do you say? Moriarty is an Irish name meaning 'sea navigator,' and look, the stamp has a picture of a boat and sailor on it. Our address is printed, not written, and Moriarty habitually hides any identifying information about himself, including his handwriting. He picked that ghastly font Constantina, he uses that one a lot, I have no idea why, it's absolutely appalling to look at. And if that wasn't clue enough, look how he made the M in Holmes in a different color, emphasizing it. Moriarty's our man." Sherlock's quick flow of words stopped with the same punctuated abruptness as snapping shut a book.

     "First off, that looks like a perfectly ordinary font to me - " John started, but Sherlock cut across him.

     "By 'ordinary' I assume you mean Times New Roman, a commonly accepted font. However, the serifs in Constantina are distinctly different, noticeably less smooth, and the proportions of the letters are unattractively wider - "

     "- but more importantly, how are you going to do anything about it?" John plowed through, uninterested in his flatmate's opinions on the minutia of typeface. "Lestrade's the only one who might believe you got all that from three magazine clippings and a nameless envelope," John watched Sherlock, waiting for an answer.

     "Why do you assume I'm going to the police?" Sherlock looked puzzled. "Moriarty issued me the challenge, not the police. I doubt it very much if he'd like it if I got Lestrade involved. Besides, they'd just slow me down."

     "This journalist-- you think she's going to believe you when you just show up and tell her she's about to be murdered? She doesn't have a clue who you are."

     Sherlock stood up and straightened the collar of his jacket, ignoring John. "Come on now, time to give a woman an interview."

 

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     Watson shuffled through some papers he had printed off about Catherine Shaw. She was a tree-hugging environmentalist, and had written several articles recently denouncing deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, arguing about endangered species. "Why would Moriarty target Shaw? It doesn't seem like she's done anything to hurt him. All she seems to care about is saving some South American frogs," John asked Sherlock.

     "I don't know yet; I haven't met her yet. Give me a minute." His quick eyes darted around, scanning the area.

     "How do you know she'll be here?"

     "Does it matter?" Sherlock didn't even look at John, and started off quickly through the crowd.

     "Sherlock!" John shouted at him. "Oy," he sighed, rolling his eyes, before starting after his tall friend. "Where exactly are we going?" John asked when he caught up.

     "You've researched her, she's obsessed with the Amazon. Have you been paying attention to the news recently?"

     "Well, we're here at the London Zoo. Aren't they getting some new animal soon?"

     "Yes, in fact; today they get a new pair of Alagoas curassow. Since they're an endangered animal from the Amazon, how could she resist but to show up and make a scene?"

     John glanced over a map of the zoo in his hand. "So is that Blackburn Pavilion or Snowdown Aviary?"

     "Just follow me!" Sherlock called back. John looked up from his map and realized his flatmate was leaving him behind again. He swore under his breath as he started faster after his friend.

 

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     "These poor animals are already extinct in the wild; we are their only hope to survive," the tour guide was explaining to the crowd gathered to see the new birds. Watson had followed Holmes to the midst of the crowd, and now was trying to find his way through the mass of people towards Holmes, whose head he could see peering over the other people.

     "Excuse me, 'scuse me," he muttered as he shuffled around people towards his friend, who was now standing near a woman with a notepad.

     "It won't be a shooting; too many people in the way," Sherlock began as soon as John reached him. "Not that he's afraid of other casualties, but there's nowhere here that he can reliably hit her with so many people in the way. Even I couldn't make that shot." If Sherlock couldn't make that shot, it must be impossible, John figured. Sherlock could hit a dime with a pistol from 50 metres away. "He'd have to stand right here in front of her, and I don't think even Moriarty could escape getting caught after that. Now the next question is--how is he going to kill her if he doesn't shoot her? Can't stab her--same problem; too many people to escape afterwards. That leaves other indirect murders-- a bomb or poison, most likely. The question is which." Holmes steepled his fingers, and Watson glanced around.

     "How would you find and stop a bomb, if that's what he's using?" Watson asked.

     "Thinking," was Sherlock's short reply, fingers pressed to his temples, eyes squeezed shut. John looked around. The tour guide had finished talking about the new curassow, and was now showing off a young parrot with green feathers.

     "This young bird is also from the Amazon, just like the curassow. He's got nice plumage, doesn't he? Believe it or not, records say it's possible to use frogs to make him grow red and yellow feathers, instead of green. Yes, question in the back? How, you said? There's a kind of frog, called the dyeing dart frog. It has a poison in its skin that usually isn't harmful, but when a mixture of this poison is rubbed on a parrot's skin, the feathers grow back as red or yellow instead of green..." the tour guide rambled. The woman with the notepad standing near the front snapped a few pictures of the tour guide and scribbled some notes. She licked her finger, delicately turned the page, and scribbled some more.

     "So, uh, which one is Catherine Shaw?" Watson whispered to Sherlock.

     "Notepad," was all he said. Must be the lady right in front of them, Watson figured, since she was the only person around he saw with a notepad. She licked her finger again and turned the page and continued writing furiously.

     "Right. Well, uh, should we look around the area to try to find out if there's a bomb?" John asked.

     "Waste of time," Sherlock answered. "More efficient to just figure it out."

     "While you're doing that, I'm going to go have a look around," Watson told Holmes. The arrogant detective might be smarter, but that didn't make Watson an idiot. As he worked his way out of the crowd clogging the pathways, he scanned the area looking for signs of anything unusual. You couldn't share a flat with someone like Sherlock Holmes without picking up a thing or two about observation.

     Explosives or poison? Both could be possible, but right here, right now, which was more likely? Sherlock had said that Moriarty would use an 'indirect' killing method, so he couldn't inject her with a deadly drug. Shaw wasn't eating, so administering an ingested poison wouldn't be very likely here. Perhaps later, when she was eating, but likely not now. They were outdoors and surrounded by people, so an airborne toxin would both affect all passersby and disperse into the atmosphere, not to mention the fact that Shaw could just walk away. It would be difficult to control. Contact poisons were possible too, but how would you force Shaw to touch it? And, as it was a public place, you'd have to find a way to ensure the hundreds of other guests didn't use up all the poison before she got dosed. While poison was possible, John reckoned that an explosive would be easier to manage.

     The security cameras, zookeepers, tour guides, and tourists would make it very hard to set a bomb. An explosive would have to be nondescript, easy to plant and hard to recognize as an explosive, possibly disguised as something else. Something could be thrown into a trash can, Watson figured. No one would go rooting around in the trash, and perhaps the guards watching the surveillance footage wouldn't recognize it as an explosive, especially if it was hidden. There was only one trash can anywhere near Shaw, so if there was a bomb in a trash can, it would be this one. John headed straight over to the trash can, leaned over and peered in... at an empty can liner. The trash can had been recently emptied and there was nothing in the bottom. So much for that theory.

     John racked his brain. How do you poison someone in the middle of a crowd or plant a bomb while surrounded by security cameras? Waston hadn't seen anything unusual in his search around the area, and had absolutely no leads. He was parched, so he decided to get himself a bottle of water and check in on Sherlock. As he opened his wallet to pay the vendor, something fell out. When he stooped down to pick it up, he saw it was a picture, one that he hadn't put in there. The photograph was of Catherine Shaw, the journalist who had been threatened. A red feather had been stabbed into the picture.

     "' 'Allo?" the street vendor asked with a thick accent. "You gonna pay for tha'?"

     "Oh, right," John said, fishing the money out of his wallet. He grabbed the bottled water and headed briskly towards where Sherlock had been standing.

     When Watson arrived back to where Sherlock was, the tour guide had moved on and only a few tourists and the journalist Shaw remained. "Sherlock--" John started.

     "I told you looking around would be a waste of time," Sherlock interrupted. "Thinking there was a bomb in the trash can--you're starting to get better at picturing different possible scenarios, but you have to think them all the way through. They take out the trash regularly; of course that wasn't going to work. Now, you've seen the security cameras,--" Sherlock continued.

     "Sherlock!" John tried to interject, but Holmes kept on talking and steamrolled right over him.

     "--so a bomb would have to be planted in a place the security cameras can't see, which extremely limits possible locations, or disguised as something non-threatening, just like your trash can idea."

     "Sherlock! I found a message from Moriarty!" John shouted. Sherlock stopped mid-sentence.

     "A message?" John pulled the picture out of his wallet, feather still poked partway through.

     "Someone put this in my wallet. I think it must have been Moriarty, since it's a picture of his target." Holmes's eyes scanned over the photograph.

     "Was the feather already in the photograph?" he asked.

     "Yeah, it was," Watson answered. "Isn't that one of those poison feathers?" Sherlock looked quizzically at John.

     "What do you mean poison feathers? This isn't toxic."

     "Wasn't the tour guide who was here earlier talking about some dead poison frog making the feathers red?"

     "Ah, yes, the dyeing dart frog; dyeing as in color," Sherlock started, plucking up the feather and holding it up to the light. The journalist  shot him a dirty look for making a commotion while she was trying to take notes, then turned her attention back to her notepad, licked a finger, and turned the page. Holmes continued with his stream of words "Their pumiliotoxin can't enter the body through the skin--" Sherlock broke off, mouth wide open, dropping the feather. As it started downward by the irresistible pull of gravity, for Sherlock it was as if a curtain hiding the answer was falling along with the feather. Everything seemed to him to move as if in slow motion, held back by time, slowly falling through the neck of the hourglass. His eyes widened in understanding as he spun, reaching out his long arm towards the journalist. The shock on her face echoed the shock on Watson's as Sherlock smacked the notepad out of her hand and it fell, fell towards the ground, just like the feather had.

     The slap of the notepad hitting the ground returned time to its proper speed for Sherlock, as abrupt as a shattering hourglass. What had seemed to him like an endless, slow hour had been to John Watson and Catherine Shaw only a fraction of a second. "Don’t touch that," Sherlock said, looking at the notepad.