Chapter 10: Fugitive

"Put on your sneaking suit," Cami ordered, and they raced to get dressed. Along the way, they picked up every personal item that had gravitated to the office, like laptops and PDAs, along with clothes and even condom wrappers. Cami took the can of gasoline they had used to light little fires for Toothless and began applying it liberally throughout the office.

Hiccup raced back down to the main floor and used the abundance of tools to rip open the ports on every machine he had used that involved electronics, tearing out the motherboards and throwing them all in a metal bin. When Cami joined him, he had a sizeable collection of incriminating storage devices and things that might contain even the slightest bit of information regarding their identities or what they had been up to.

Cami emptied the rest of the gasoline into the metal bin and set it ablaze. The office was already a raging inferno, much to Toothless's delight, and Hiccup and Cami set about spraying any flammable liquid they could find over as much of the warehouse as they could reach: upending oil drums, cans of paint thinner, and even turning on a few machines and adjusting their settings to dangerous levels to make them rip themselves apart.

Helicopters were thundering directly overhead, and the fire was sure to have been spotted by observers. There were no sirens, no lights, as Sif wouldn't have wanted to warn them of her approach.

"You realise there's only one way we're getting out of here, right?" Hiccup said as they stood in the centre of the burning warehouse. Toothless frolicked through the flames around them like a shaman conducting an ancient ritual.

"Nobody would build a dragon that you can't ride," Cami responded, her eyes hard. "You least of all."

God help him, it was true; without even thinking about it, he had incorporated a saddle-like design into Toothless's back, with grips and loops for them to strap into.

"Get your mask on," he said.

Toothless lumbered out of the fire and stood before them, watching inquisitively as they donned their balaclavas. With leather straps and buckles, Hiccup tried to work out a system that would distribute their bodyweight evenly without slicing them into pieces the moment thrust was applied.

"You'll need to be tied to my back," Hiccup told Cami. "And we'll both be strapped in so hard it'll be difficult to get out when – if – we make it."

"Let's focus on the make it part and figure the rest out later," Cami said hurriedly.

The door at the far end of the warehouse exploded open, and two objects were thrown in. Cami clapped her hands over Hiccup's eyes as the warehouse briefly became as illuminated as the surface of the sun. They blindly finished tying themselves to Toothless's back in a configuration that didn't inspire confidence in either of them.

A chorus of deep, distorted voices roared conflicting commands as Berk Security forces thundered into the blazing warehouse, unheeding of the fire in their hardened suits and black visors. They looked like demons coming home to hell.

Hiccup tapped madly at the display screen on the back of Toothless's neck, enabling the EM engine and removing all restrictions. He glanced up at the ceiling, which, while covered in smoke, was still very much made of steel and tin.

"We'll be killed if we try to smash through," said Hiccup breathlessly. "We have to get outside."

He and Cami were pressed so tightly to Toothless's back that he could feel her racing heart right beside his own.

"Good thing they just opened the door for us," Cami replied through gritted teeth.

The incoming soldiers were spreading out through both the burning and unburnt areas of the warehouse, taking each row of machines and crates with clinical professionalism.

Toothless was half-crouched behind a thick curtain of smoke when Hiccup keyed the ignition of the EM engine. A low, electric whine filled the air, and a pulse of disrupted air radiated outwards from them.

In a single instant, the smoke was cleared in a wide circle around the Night Fury, who rose to his full height proudly. Flames bent away from the dragon, smoke swirled, and the soldiers watched with guns raised and mouths open as the blacker-than-black carbon monster became visible.

They stopped advancing. They stopped shouting. There was no protocol to turn to upon encountering an ancient beast. Should they shoot? If it was a real dragon, they would be crucified for killing something so valuable.

Their hesitation surprised Hiccup, but he didn't hesitate to use it to his advantage, initialising the flight systems and completing the final stages of preparation.

His head stuck out a little too far, and one of the soldiers saw it. The illusion broken, the man tapped his visor, possibly switching to thermal optics.

"It's a machine," the soldier said hoarsely, his voice distorted by his helmet to protect his identity. "It's just a machine! Driver's on the back!"

Toothless, who had seemed to be enjoying the awed reactions of these new, angry humans, chose that moment to leap forward and barrel through the soldiers between him and the exit. Gunfire roared from those still standing, but Toothless and his passengers were already swallowed by the smoke once more.

Toothless exploded out of the warehouse entrance with the same enthusiasm the soldiers had displayed on the way in.

A lot of things happened very quickly.

Hiccup had a brief look at the veritable army surrounding the warehouse – cars, trucks, barricades, nothing was left in reserve, and every angle was covered.

Toothless extended his wings.

There was a commotion as people reacted to the appearance of a titanic metal dragon.

Hiccup eyed the helicopters above. There were at least a dozen hanging in the air like dark vultures over a boneyard. He wondered how they were going to manoeuvre past them.

Toothless's 'take flight' impulse was transmitted through the adaptors and into his body.

The sound of the EM engine changed from a low whine to a piercing scream.

The acceleration nearly broke Hiccup's neck.

There was no manoeuvring past the helicopters, because there were no helicopters anymore.

There was no dodging the soldiers, because there were no soldiers anymore.

In fact, there was no ground anymore. Hiccup could see the curvature of the Earth.

He tasted blood, and frozen tears clung to his eyelashes. He realised he must have passed out from the g-forces when Toothless took off. Frantically, he tried to drag his consciousness back together and restore it to working condition. Clouds were below them!

Toothless was struggling, twisting and rolling erratically.

"Oh man, oh god!" Hiccup yelled as the lights, stars, and wind rushed around them.

"Hiccup, what's wrong?" Cami screamed. She sounded like she had just regained consciousness.

Hiccup glanced at the Flight Screen, which was blinking red messages in quick succession. "Power is fluctuating, the wings have design flaws that are causing damage to the body as a whole, other systems are getting damaged in the chaos – everything is wrong!"

"Why?"

"You've seen me design and build a few small things flawlessly, but this is a flight system for a robot dragon!"

"That's where you draw the line?!" she shrieked.

As they rolled through the vortex of spinning stars, clinging to the Night Fury for dear life, Hiccup noticed the light from the Emulator flickering the same way it had when Toothless first woke in his adult body. A shudder ran through the metal dragon, and for a moment Hiccup thought he saw a new signal being detected on the flight screen before they abruptly stopped spinning and levelled out.

Hiccup and Cami were panting heavily, shaken from the ordeal and trying to collect their thoughts. Toothless was flying smoothly now, and the red alert notifications on the flight screen were gone. The wings were still creaking from the strain being put on them, and Hiccup knew he would need to rebuild them to better withstand the stress of flying, but they no longer looked as though they were going to snap off.

Hiccup felt the urge to cheer, or puke, or perhaps a combination of the two. All he knew was that they were alive, somehow, and there was now a chance of them surviving the journey. The inside of his skin-tight sneaking suit was matted with compressed sweat, and he leaned forward to press his head to Toothless's back in order to let the blood flow back to his head.

It would be embarrassing to survive something like that only to faint and fall to his death.

"So, where to?" Hiccup choked out, a little hysterical in his relief.

"The Bog Burglar islands," said Cami in much the same tone of voice.

Hiccup opened the navigation part of the Flight Screen, and Cami indicated their destination. Just as Hiccup was about to wonder how to steer Toothless, the dragon adjusted course without being told.

"That's… weird," said Hiccup.

"Why?" asked Cami.

"The flight system doesn't interface directly with the Emulator. It's mainly for me to control the EM engine and other stuff that Toothless wouldn't be able to control with his instincts alone. He shouldn't be aware of our destination without us guiding him to it."

There was something to this, scratching at the back of Hiccup's mind. Something big and scary.

But the thoughts slipped away from him. He was hurting, and coming down from a wave of fear the likes of which he had never felt before. It was a primal sort of thing, the kind of instinct that compelled animals to retreat to dark, isolated places to lick their wounds and rest.

"Radar?" he asked as they began the descent.

"Yeah, and missile defences too, like every other island in the Archipelago," Cami said against his back. "But seeing as how Berk has the same stuff and we're still flying, maybe today is our lucky day?"

"Lucky," Hiccup said. "That's us."

Cami provided verbal directions that Hiccup punched into the computer, tracing a flight path that had them approach from the sea, low and fast in an (probably pointless, at this stage) effort to avoid notice.

The only light was from the moon, which was a little less light than Hiccup was hoping for when it came to his first landing. The EM engine cycled down as they let air drag decrease their speed. Hiccup cursed himself for not installing flaps and prayed he'd have the chance to do so.

They were gliding, poorly, by the time they reached their destination: one of the smaller outlying Bog Burglar islands, which rose in front of them in a huge, metallic silhouette. The waves crashed only a dozen or so metres below them, and if Hiccup had timed the deceleration incorrectly, they were about to get very wet.

Cami tapped at something on her wrist, and a huge, shining mouth opened in front of them. In reality, it was a wide, rectangular hole in an enormous artificial cliff face. Lights shone from within, illuminating a space about the same size as the warehouse.

"Toothless, we've gotta touch down gently and slide along the floor, alright?" Hiccup called. The dragon gave no sign that he had heard anything. "If you roll or stop suddenly, we'll die. Food for thought," he added hopelessly.

A few seconds later, they shot into the opening in the cliff just as their attempt at gliding failed completely. Hiccup disabled the EM engine and Toothless's four legs smacked onto the steel floor with a loud bang. There was a blur of light and wind as the smooth legs scrabbled around, unable to find a purchase, unintentionally spinning Hiccup and Cami around for the second time that night.

Finally, Toothless came to a stop at the far wall, which was composed of a series of high-tech cabinets and racks. The dragon, apparently sick of being unable to control its direction, flopped to the floor in a heap, causing Hiccup and Cami to smack their helmets together.

They fell into a heap of their own, too exhausted and shocked to move. Hiccup vaguely noticed their entry point closing up, sealing them away from the cold night air and the sound of the ocean.

"A secret cave built into a cliff, with a big door that you could only possibly enter if you were flying," Hiccup observed tiredly. "Did you prepare for this?"

Cami breathed a laugh. "This place was built ages ago. Every Bog Burglar island is riddled with hidden caves, tunnels, storage sheds, and labs. This one's mine. Or one of mine, anyway."

Hiccup made a gargantuan effort to raise his head and look around. It was huge, but most of the space was empty, especially towards the garage-door like mechanism that hid them from the ocean. At their end, there were Bog tools and supplies, a few spare sneaking suits hanging up, and not much else.

"Homey," he said, letting his head fall back to the floor.

Cami twitched, which Hiccup interpreted as a shrug. "It used to be full of high-val stock. Several shipping containers' worth. I had to liquidate to get Toothless's parts in time."

Hiccup felt a spear of guilt enter his gut. It was becoming a familiar sensation.

He reached out and took Cami's hand. "I'm really glad you did," he said honestly.

She turned to look him in the eyes, a smile quirking at the corners of her mouth. "No need to get angsty," she said, reading his mind as always. Her smile faded quickly. "But this is going to be difficult to explain to my mother."

"Does she have to know? This is a little sensitive, if you haven't noticed."

"I know we don't have an honourable reputation in the business world, but within the company, loyalty is everything. My mother receives full stock lists from every single member of the company, as well as information regarding ongoing operations and plans for the future."

Hiccup managed to sit up and remove his balaclava. Cami did the same.

"Who is your mother, exactly?" he asked slowly.

"The administrator of the Bog Burglars," she replied. "Her name's Bertha."

"God, how the hell did this happen? We're both the heirs to huge corporations? I can't believe I never asked about your family before."

"You did," she reminded him gently. "I always dodged the question. Eventually you stopped asking." She sighed. "Half the reason we became friends back in primary school was because I could tell you understood what it was like to be smarter than most kids, but still not enough for your parents. Or parent, in both our cases. The difference was you never tried to act like anyone but yourself. You never bowed to your father's wishes regarding your studies, your friends, your degree. It didn't matter if you were lacking in confidence or were unsure about yourself – you kept doing what you wanted no matter how awkward it made things between you and your dad." Cami's mouth twisted, and she avoided his eyes. "I envied you. You had this pure, moral strength inside you that I… lacked. I did do whatever my mother wanted me to do. I toed the party line on almost everything, no matter how I really felt. Everything except you. I've kept all of your real secrets from her, and I always will."

Hiccup didn't know what to say. His mouth opened and closed, but no words came to mind. He couldn't remember Cami ever being so open with him before. He had thought he understood her, but there was so much more she'd kept hidden.

"Cami, I…" he whispered, his voice hoarse. "There's no gesture… nothing I could say that could convey the depth of my gratitude. You've never asked me for anything, but I want you to know that I would stop at nothing to help you if you needed it. If you thought I was being extreme in my efforts to protect Toothless, you have no idea the lengths I would go to to protect you."

"Would you blow up a city?" she asked immediately, straight-faced.

Hiccup stuttered. "I… I mean, that… how would that protect you?"

But she was suddenly wearing her slightly feral grin, and Hiccup let out a heavy sigh at being taken in once again.

"One of these days," he muttered, pulling Cami into a hug, "I'm going to stop being so gullible. And then what will you do, huh? You'll be bored out of your mind."

She squeezed him harder than she usually did, and said nothing.

"So how are we going to play this?" said Hiccup. They had begun repairing and upgrading Toothless using the minimal tools at their disposal. "I don't think the ferry even goes to this island, so how on earth am I supposed to get back to Berk without arousing suspicion?"

"Well, gee, if only us thieves had a way of inserting into Berk without using tracked transportation," Cami said, putting on a dumb voice.

"Of course. You guys are prepared for everything, aren't you?"

"That's how we roll. You think Berk Security is too stupid to take photos of every female visitor to arrive on Berk via the ferry? Pshh! We've got them figured out."

Hiccup raised his eyebrows. "Well, alright, impress me then."

"Tunnels," she said simply.

"Tunnels," he repeated in a flat voice. "Under the ocean."

"Yep."

"I must be getting less gullible, because that sounds like complete bullshit to me."

Cami rolled her eyes and stopped working on Toothless for a moment so she could give Hiccup her full attention. "There are cables under the sea, providing power to all of the artificial islands that make up the Archipelago. The Bogs secretly own the company that maintains them."

"Wait," Hiccup interrupted. "Seriously? Tunnels under the sea?"

"Yes, seriously," Cami huffed. "They built the tunnels alongside the cables and integrated them into the deepest parts of every island in the Archipelago. It's our most valuable secret."

"And…" Hiccup paused, blinking. "And you just told me. The guy who couldn't stand up to tickling back in primary school."

"Nobody stands up to real torture, Hiccup. I don't expect you to. Thankfully, we've never faced that problem. We offer a hefty ransom for any captured operatives, after all, so long as they're undamaged. Not to mention, there are literally hundreds of exit points in the tunnel system, and they are all disguised and protected. Even if they were discovered, there would be no way to know who is using them, and why."

"But what if –"

"Hiccup," Cami said firmly, "Trust me when I say that we've spent generations ensuring the tunnel system remains secret. Hundreds of very intelligent people have examined the problem from every angle imaginable, and continue to do so every day."

"Alright," Hiccup relented. "I'm still trying to wrap my head around it." He checked his watch automatically. "And it's almost dawn. I need to be back there in case they call me in."

"Are you sure they aren't going to draw any lines between your absence and the break-out?"

Hiccup shrugged. "Why would they? The hot gossip is that I have a girlfriend who takes up a lot of my time. Astrid believes it, Gobber probably doesn't shut up about it, and even Sven thinks he knows what I'm up to. What's more believable, that I'm secretly aiding the Emulator thief, or that I'm currently wrapped up in bedsheets and oblivious to the world?"

After making sure Toothless was as comfortable as they could make him (and triple-checking that he would have no way of activating the EM engine on his own), Cami led Hiccup through six layers of disguised and misleading architecture down into the tunnels below. To Hiccup's surprise, it was comfortably warm, though his comfort waned somewhat when Cami explained the heat was radiating from the power cables outside the walls.

There was a rail system to provide ultrafast transport, big enough to carry three shipping containers lengthways. Hiccup and Cami sat on some old metal seats bolted to the moving platform, the wind whipping through their hair. Moving so quickly in such an enclosed space while being so far underwater did funny things to Hiccup's ears and sinuses, but he supposed it was better than suffering decompression sickness.

While they travelled back to Berk, Hiccup tapped determinedly at a PDA he'd swiped from Cami's cave. He didn't want to use his own in case it was being monitored after his botched attempt at bugging Astrid's laptop.

"What are you looking for?" asked Cami, leaning over.

"I've been lazy," said Hiccup. "My idleness nearly got you and Toothless killed." He was angry, he realised. "That isn't going to happen again."

On the PDA, he was constructing a list out of specifications and images from the internet.

Cami peered at his work. "Is that a flight helmet?"

The full-face liquid-crystal visor in the first image gave off no reflections, just like the carbon nanotubes that made up Toothless's body. There was a rebreather mask integrated into the lower half of the helmet, which would be a necessity at higher altitudes.

Hiccup remembered the way the Berk Security forces had emerged menacingly from the flames, unharmed and unhindered by the heat. He decided on a lightweight redesign of the hard suits worn by Berk Rapid-Response teams. Extra protection was given to the spines in the form of a series of overlapping metal scales up the centre of their backs, designed to allow flexibility while preventing the neck from being broken by sudden acceleration.

The rest of the list consisted of redesign notes for Toothless. The telescoping straight wing design was scrapped in favour of thicker, folding, curved wings more suitable to the stresses of high-speed flight.

Hiccup knew why he was doing this now and not later. It was a displacement activity, something to keep him from dwelling on the gravity of recent events. The adrenaline had long faded, leaving a gnawing void in his gut. Not even witnessing the Bog Burglar's greatest secret in action could distract him completely.

Lights occasionally flashed past them, tiny LEDs at even distances. They gave him a headache.

At the other end, it took a while to climb back up to the surface of Berk. Cami led him through labyrinthine corridors and tiny crawlspaces. They didn't talk much until the air became cold and fresh. After breathing scrubbed air for so long while in the tunnel, it had the effect of waking Hiccup out of his stupor.

"Wouldn't the neighbours notice different people coming out of this house after a while?" he said as they emerged from the basement of an unassuming house on the eastern part of the island.

"No, because we own this whole street," Cami informed him under her breath. "This kind of street is where Bogs go to retire if they still want to contribute to the company. They don't have to do anything except not notice anything weird about this house."

They walked down the quiet, dimly-lit street. Dawn had arrived, but its radiance was muffled by an overcast sky.

"You gonna be alright?" Cami asked quietly, bumping her shoulder into his.

"Yeah," Hiccup replied after a moment. "This is going to be rough."

After Cami left for her apartment in Berk's high-rise district, Hiccup stopped by a liquor store before catching a bus back to the facility. He felt a bit sleazy carrying a brown paper bag openly, but he had the beginnings of a plan in his mind and he didn't want to scrap it. He tried to look exhausted (which was easy) but cheerful (which was not), the kind of mix a guy might display after an evening of raucous sex followed by really good news in the morning.

God, he wished that was what had happened.

The intern team was sitting at their regular table in the cafeteria, eating slowly. Nobody was saying much, and even Ruff and Tuff were only bickering with whispers instead of shouts. Snotlout was glaring at his breakfast as though it was responsible for all the recent setbacks and only he knew how to punish it. Fishlegs was eating robotically, his eyes unfocused, the tell-tale sign of someone deep in thought.

And Astrid… had been staring right at Hiccup the moment he entered the room.

Hiccup didn't try to reclaim his pretend cheerfulness – she would have seen him notice the sorry state of the team. It would probably be better like this anyway since he wouldn't have to hide the stress he felt inside.

Heads turned as Hiccup reach their table. He awkwardly put the paper bag on the table and withdrew a bottle of champagne.

"Thought I'd contribute to the celebrations, but…" he muttered.

Astrid shuffled aside to make room for him and he took the seat gratefully.

"What happened?" Hiccup asked softly.

Astrid gave a long sigh, then visibly shook herself out of the blanket of disappointment that covered the table and ran her fingers through her hair. She'd forgotten to tie it up in her usual braid, so it hung in golden tangles to her neck.

"My mother launched the raid, like I told you," she said. "The Emulator was detected in a warehouse on the western docks. They sent a Berk Security high-risk team in after securing the perimeter. The thief – I can't believe I'm saying this – the thief installed the Emulator into a… robot dragon in the shape of an adult Night Fury."

Hiccup snorted back laughter and glanced around the table. "Right."

"I'm serious," Astrid insisted.

"A robot dragon," Hiccup repeated. The others nodded.

"And it could fly," Fishlegs murmured.

Hiccup pursed his lips like someone who knows he's being pranked but is willing to hear the whole joke. "How did it fly?" he asked.

Astrid answered. "It had an EM engine attached. Coincidentally, an EM engine went missing during a shipment not long ago, but my mother thinks it's unlikely to be the same one since it would take a team weeks to prepare and install something like that."

"Right," Hiccup said reasonably. "Because that would be beyond the realm of believability."

"It happened, Hiccup," Astrid said irritably. "We have full video evidence from the bodycams of the BS team and the perimeter team."

"BS is right," Hiccup shot back. "So the dragon flew away without being followed on radar or any of the other tracking technology the Foundation has installed? It evaded all of Berk's defence systems that are fast and intelligent enough to shoot down incoming ICBMs before any humans even know they're coming?"

"There were… malfunctions in those systems," Astrid said through gritted teeth. "Berk cybersecurity are investigating. We may have been attacked at the same time as the thief made their escape."

Hiccup was silent as he processed this. He let the mirth fade from his face and replaced it with a frown. Astrid seemed mollified that he was finally grasping the reality of the situation.

A cyberattack on Berk's defences? Hiccup knew nothing about that. They hadn't had time to think about that sort of thing when they were escaping the warehouse. There had been a vague plan in the back of his head to fly as close to the ocean and possible to try and avoid being tracked on radar, but the more he thought about it, the less likely their escape seemed.

Was someone helping them?

Or…

Hiccup crushed the thought. It was too dangerous and distracting to follow while undercover.

"What's Sif doing now?" he asked.

"The same thing she's been doing for months, only now she's pissed," said Snotlout.

Fishlegs broke out of his reverie with a shudder. "Losing the Emulator to a well-planned heist is one thing," he said, "But having it within reach only for it to slip out of her grasp… I can't imagine what she's going to do to the thief when she finds them."

"Have we been given any assignments?" Hiccup asked, ignoring the fear response in his chest.

"We sorta got pushed aside when it all went sideways," said Ruff, blowing a strand of hair out of her face.

Tuff snorted. "Was a hell of a mood whiplash. One second, we were invited upstairs to watch the triumphant recovery, the next, we were being shoved out the door while everyone's yelling at each other. Sif was wearing a combat suit, dude. For an older lady, she's built."

"I don't want to hear that again," Astrid growled.

"What? It was a compliment!"

"So… back to square one?" said Hiccup.

"Worse," Fishlegs said miserably. "Because the Emulator was modified and given access to external stimulus that wasn't monitored under lab conditions, the project is a bust. It's over. They obviously still want to recover the Emulator and salvage what they can, but the project as it was defined when it began has been aborted."

"What?" Hiccup sat up straight. "Then what happens to our team?"

"We're basically squatters," Ruff said bluntly. "We have no project, there is no team, but we're allowed to stay in our quarters and eat the cafeteria food."

"Director Ingerman was very kind when she broke the news," Astrid said stiffly. Hiccup noticed for the first time the bags beneath her eyes and the tension in her shoulders. Out of all of them, she seemed to be taking this latest failure the hardest. "The Foundation still values us. Apparently, we're something of a 'dream-team' in their eyes. The project was supposed to bring us into the fold very quickly, and apparently we were exceeding all of their expectations before… well, before those expectations ceased to have any meaning. With the project gone, and no other department in need of our skills, we've been left adrift. They want us here, but they don't have anything for us to do."

The table was quiet in the wake of such a sombre announcement. The cafeteria was empty except for them, rows of steel tables gleaming beneath fluorescent lights.

Hiccup's guilt was stifling, but the way it clashed with his desire to keep Toothless happy and free made it far worse. His stomach churned, tensing and relaxing in incremental spasms that made him feel as though he was being tied into a knot. He moved his hands below the table to grip his knees and hide the trembling. His skin felt hot.

Then his phone rang.

Hiccup leapt at the chance to get some distance from the situation, excusing himself with a murmur as he withdrew to his neglected dorm room.

"Hello?" he answered as soon as he was inside.

"Hiccup Haddock," said a female voice he didn't recognise. "I know about Toothless."

Hiccup's heart nearly stopped.

"What?" he said blankly.

"I know about Cami as well. Go to the coordinates that just appeared in your GPS app."

The call ended, and with a woozy groan, Hiccup fainted onto his bed.

Author's Notes:

I deliberately take a long time to write these chapters out of pure, undisguised malice. There are no other explanations.

Anyway, we're finally heading into the second act. It's not going to be nearly as long as the first, but it is going to be quite heavy-hitting.

Please review!