Foolish For You
Chapter Twenty
Kill Zone Braggadocios

- mirage -

Roy was staring at the steering wheel, but for the moment he saw nothing. The pain of the shot was blinding, and the blow to his head brought a single agonizing and unending moment. The bullet made his arm became a furnace affixed to his core, and like a pipe with a puncture, it was jetting blood down his skin and onto his left thigh.

In nothing but this inferno, Roy existed until thought return like a distant light growing brighter. His body began to remember there was more than this plague. There were parts unharmed, and his vision came as a camera into focus, and the discomfort of his dry tongue under his heavy breaths followed. The ear to impact against the glass was ringing, and distantly, Roy understood the car was jostling and he should respond, but he wasn't yet clear of the shock brought on by a piece of manmade metal ripping open his Brachial vein, and springing a human leak like a blood bag with a hole, to understand Ed was in hysterics and under attack.

Ed was stuck on his back, buckled to the car seat, and with full use of only his two upper limbs. He was in turbulent hysteria, with his entire body struggling under the instinct to move defensively. There was the capable flesh arm, trying to secure leverage, the weak automail leg, squirreling about in effete kicks to push Ed's heavy immobile body backward for safety, and the formidable automail arm trying to help manage all three tasks. Like any person suddenly under attack, Ed was sabotaged by a frenzy of confusion and lack of prioritized decision. What do I do first? Attack? Seek Safety? Fall back? Charge forward?

The assailant's hands were reaching into the car to secure Ed. They were black leather gloves, nameless symbols of a kidnapper, clawing at Ed's shins and knees trying to take hold as if Ed were a rope that could be secured and heaved forward.

The intruder did not duck into the car. They felt their task to be quick and easy. With confidence they presumed swiping the badly injured, and heavily drugged, Fullmetal Alchemist to be elementary, but Ed was floored with excitement and rage. Screaming offensive profanity he worked the automail arm like a metal hammer, driving it down on the reaching hands and arms, while trying to wiggle his hips out of the seat belt tying him to the cushion. Unable to fully dedicate time to either process, the first few moments of the attack looked comedically like a kindergartener's fight, with both pairs of hands slapping at each other.

"What the hell is—get off me!" Ed screamed. The paroxysms of self-preservation drove him into higher action, while his mind pulled itself to the corner of skull closest to Roy. Where did the bullet hit! Where did the bullet hit! Ed was desperate for reassurance Roy was safe. "Roy!" Ed screamed. "Roy, come on! Roy!"

Roy lifted his head the bit it had tipped forward. Ed's voice was almost enough to bring him back entirely.

Ed was kicking with all he had, but a foreign grasp on his thigh sent wild pain up his leg and gave the sensation of a small boulder dropping straight onto his groin. Ed tossed his head back screaming a loud, "Ow!" before crying out for backup, "Roy, come on!"

The stranger managed a grip on both of Ed's ankles, and jerked Ed down the backseat. Ed was losing strength rapidly. His body felt to be shutting down below the hips. The pain was so intense his nervous system was eroding into crumbling railways incapable of passing the simplest command. Like a flesh leash on his operating torso, Ed's legs became useless dangling strings in easy reach, and he screamed, "Let go of me!" With true strength in his voice, he screamed, "Let go of me!" He could no longer kick, and the stranger was greedily pawing over his shins and knees for purchase.A strong leather hand managed a grip high up on the inside of Ed's thigh, and that part of Ed's body felt as if a meat grinder had chewed everything to shreds and his skin was just the bag holding it. Ed howled in pain, and what little was left in his bottom half-shut down as thoroughly as his spine flicking a switch. Out of commission, it said, hope you can make it on your own.

Taking advantage of Ed's sudden distraction the stranger pulled from the car, opened the back passenger side at Ed's feet, and reached in with greater mobility.

In torment, Ed's spine had snapped straight in an upward arch, as if being electrocuted, and Ed lost the ability to understand anything but the agony caused by the assailant's careless grope on his injured body. Eyes closed, Ed's jaw was locked tight enough to crack a tooth, and the skittish mannerisms of their unknown attacker calmed the way a hunter's walk slows after prey is secured.

With Ed in a black world of pain the stranger took a careful, but strong hold on the automail ankle, and it sent no alerting sensory data to Ed's mind. The flesh ankle was taken next, and this entrapment fired upward through Ed's leg, hips, ribs, and neck, where it deposited into the swarming hurricane of roaring noise in Ed's brain.

Responding, Ed's mind spit back in one tiny word.

ALCHEMY.

Void of understanding, and functioning on instinct alone, Ed clapped for alchemy and slapped his hands flat to the car seat. His mind was a control panel absent the conductor, receiving without giving feed, until his ankle cried out with such intensity, an entire equation was born.

It fired off in a flash of blue alchemic light, and the smell of hot leather and aluminum took the air. Ed screamed, "Roy!" and began repeating Roy's name at the top of his lungs while the car's back driver's side turned into steel rod jousting poles. Without disconnecting, they shot forward like spikes in a protective steel cage above Ed's helpless body, but their enemy was an alchemist, and he jumped back, retaliating with a transmutation that dropped the back car seat to floor level, and turned the leather cushions into a sack capturing Ed's body. It opened like a leather mouth and swallowed Ed inside.

Roy jerked up when Ed began repeatedly screaming his name, and turned to the scene behind him. The visual of the familiar body bag from war, with Ed inside, terrified Roy, and jolted him back into action. He reached back, on instinct, to grab hold of Ed, but his body faltered. His injured arm spasmed under the order, and couldn't properly lift. His head rang out in a consuming warmth of pain from the sensation, and he broke into several rough pants, slouching onto his side and accomplishing nothing.

Roy's incapability was explosive to him, and drowning in the panic of his own sudden failure and worthlessness, he began screaming, "Fullmetal! Seal the car doors! Close the car!"

Trapped in the leather coffin, Ed was struggling like an animal in a net before a transmutation fired, and the automail appeared in a blade slicing out the front. Ed sent it forward in a right hook, and the vicious upward thrust unintentionally stabbed it through the roof of the car. Razor sharp, it embedded to Ed's wrist, and when the stranger heaved on the end of the bag to pull it free of the car, Ed was staked in place. The body bag jerked downward, yanking as if stuck on a nail, and Roy screamed again, "Ed! Transmute and seal the car!"

The attacker became insistent, viciously pulling on Ed's bag to disconnect Ed from the car, or Ed from his arm. The yanking lifted the body bag entirely from the seat and smack into the frame of the metal cage Ed had crafted. The impact was that of a metal gate slamming shut on Ed's body, and Ed screamed, "Son of a bitch!" Ed grabbed the steel rods, choking out a sob under the anguish of his bottom half being tossed around so carelessly. "Let go! This fucking hurts!" Ed cried senselessly. "Get the fuck off me!"

Roy continued screaming demands for Ed to seal the car closed and protect them. He couldn't do it himself. Without his gloves he could not produce alchemy on demand, and it would take him too long to draw any circle of use.

Ed's was skewered to the car via his arm, and the attack on the body bag holding him became frantic. The assailant began shaking the bag, jerking it back and forth, and beating Ed into the steel poles of the cage with strength too great to be human. Ed looked like a rag doll, and gave several short screams of pain with the automail caught in an awkward dance flinging him around. A horrible crunching noise began cranking as the car roof surrendered to the arm's transmuted sawing blade, and screaming the word fuck, Ed broke into an untamed desperate fight to escape the torture, and transmuted his metal arm.

The automail blade protruding outside the roof shot forward toward the passenger side car in thin dangerous steel needles. They spread downward over the open door in the spindled fashion of a rake, and their attacker jumped back evasively.

Clutching his bleeding shoulder, and yelling directions, Roy abandoned the scene behind him, and looked wildly about the front of the car for a weapon. There, lying on the passenger seat, was the enemy's revolver. Roy snatched the pistol, and tossing his good arm into the back, began emptying the clip nearly point blank at their enemy.

Their assailant fled, dropping what bit of the body bag was still held. Ed's legs crashed to the car floor, and left him hanging from his arm in delirium.

"Edward!" Roy was screaming. "Look at me! Look at me!" Roy was in a seizure of panic. Ed's arm was nearly disabled, and doing little more than dangling him from a bent metal structure like a human Christmas ornament. Its impressive metal girth had reallocated into a long thin form so Ed's impressive shoulder port appeared to be screwed into a length of water piping.

Their attacker would return quickly, and they needed to obtain some type of defense. "Edward, get down!" Roy demanded. "Ed! Get down!"

Ed was not responding. His head drooped back, hanging from his neck, and Ed was heaving deep cries trying to cope.

Roy was alarmed with this behavior. He looked to the windows, in shock and disgust he was proving so useless, and frantically searched for their enemy. A gun, huh? Hawkeye would be so proud. "Ed!" Roy said, desperate for a workable approach. For the moment Ed was busy crying in pain from a battle wound, something soldiers did not scorn, but there was no time for it now, and Roy yelled, "I have been shot! Get down now, this is a direct order!"

Ed's flesh hand lifted, and feebly pressed against the ceiling, fruitlessly attempting to obey while in overwhelming metal disorder.

In a merciless tone of absolute command, Roy yelled, "Edward! I will court-martial you! Obey my commands!"

A dark malevolence shadow returned to the open car door in mass and size of a standing bear, and Roy fired off several shots. Moving inhumanly quick, it pulled to the side, and backed around the car. Roy followed, firing. He was a good aim, and his bullets whizzed around Ed's dangling body with nothing but a precautious inch. Two bullets kissed the air directly above Ed's abdominals, and one at the low of Ed's spine. Those fired past the automail were closer, almost shaving the metal, and the rear view window shattered with the first bullet and fell like confetti in fat chunks of safety glass diamonds.

"Don't shoot me!" Ed sobbed, hanging limply, every part of him in too much pain to move. "I am trying to listen!" Ed cried pitifully. "Don't shoot me! I am listening Roy! This hurts so much!"

Roy dropped the gun. The clip was empty, and Ed's sorrow-felt words overcame him. He reached to Ed, grabbing what bit of Ed's chest he could, and said softly, "I know you are. Now get yourself down." He was determined to be their pillar of strength. Although he hadn't seen Ed's wound he understood enough to fantasize accurately over the ramifications. He imagined Ed's body like a first century cloth doll with ugly black stitching outlining its human form and beginning to unravel between Ed's legs. The more the black thread was pulled, the more fluffy white stuffing tried to escape.

For the moment Roy had the unfortunate clarity for the pain of a bullet, and he could relate to some of what Ed was feeling. The advantage was that his wound was new, and the disadvantage was that Ed's was old. Ed's raw open skin would be tired, no longer healthily elastic, but shredding in tiny ripping tears. Ed's bullet wasn't in a tolerable limb, such as an arm, it was in Ed's groin, sending hot pain up and down like fire. Seeping into the meat of his thighs and making them bruised and tender, as if with rot. Spreading upward clenching organs and destroying Ed's stomach so it wasn't just the puncture, it wasn't just the laceration, or stitches, or swelling, that radiated injury, it was an entire landmine of anatomy.

"It's okay," Roy repeated. "Get yourself down."

"I can't," Ed cried, and Roy didn't understand. "I…" Then Roy understood. It was why he carried a rifle with him even when they gave him the false Philosopher's Stone in Ishval. Transmutations took something from you, and it was more than just energy, it was thought. It wasn't an effortless process, it required metal focus and physical strength, and Ed looked too destroyed to perform basic addition, let alone safely recompose his arm, and the steel frame of the car for defense.

"Try and calm your mind," Roy said firmly, and as he spoke, he felt his strength give out the slightest bit. For the first time he began to fear how much he was bleeding. "We are going to have to work together here." They needed a plan. "Ed, I cannot get you down, you have to do it." Roy looked at Ed's legs. Ed hadn't moved them, the weight of his body was in his automail port, and the position did not look comfortable. "I think I am," Roy began to say, I think I am bleeding heavier that I thought, when Ed's torso suddenly convulsed and he vomited. "Okay," Roy said softly. For the moment their enemy seemed to think they were in possession of ammunition that made them wary, but this would not last long.

Ed gave a single hurl and emptied his stomach to the side, over part of his automail and the bag he was in, before lifting his head in a slow daze. He was drooling slightly, but licked his lips, spit, and asked, "Where did the bullet hit?" while sounding ready to continue heaving.

"My shoulder."

"Is it still inside?" Ed reached back toward the roof and rested his flesh hand against it.

"Yes."

"Okay," Ed rasped, pulling himself together. Ed still wasn't moving, but there was something about his presence that appeared to be recollecting. The drifting haze that had taken his gaze was clearing, and the golden color was growing stronger. "Just give me a minute," Ed said, breathing heavily, and gathering his bearings. "I am going to destroy this fuckface fucking with us."

Roy felt himself smile. "I like this plan," he said, trying to mask the pain in his voice. He added some dry humor. "I could always sit here and bleed out while you impersonate a human ornament."

Ed rasped a small, "Jokes?" while tipping his head back to study the roof of the car and his reconfigured arm. "At a time like this?" Ed dry heaved, but kept his mouth firmly clenched so nothing more than a quick bulge of his cheeks flared. Then he moved his flesh hand to the metal and Roy watched.

"Go ahead Ed, clear head, transmute." Ed's flesh hand was shaking heavily, and Roy imagined Ed's brain as a string of math equations swirling round and round in dirty water above a black hole.

Their enemy's patience gave way, and brick sized pieces of asphalt shaped into spikes suddenly fired upward and rained down into the side of the car and roof. Instinctively Roy ducked, closing his eyes and covering his head with his good arm. The sound was a hail storm of stones that lasted only a few seconds, and then became a distant drumming as Ed transmuted.

In a flash of blue light, Ed's arm returned. He dropped from the ceiling to the car floor, and the entire height of the car collapsed to its stomach with the material from the wheels reshaping to secure each door. The effect was that of stepping indoors and closing the shutters on a hurricane.

The demolition radiated upward in a vicious shutter, and the quaking vibration made Roy feel like he was in a blender, and he clutched at his bleeding arm in pain. He worried for Ed, but as soon as the transmutation was over, the automail hand seized the back of the front seats, and Ed pulled himself up by both arms and began dragging himself into the front.

Roy was astonished Ed had the intrepid strength to move, and watched Ed pull himself through the gap between the front seats, wheezing, sweating, and crying. It was a herculean act of raw power. Ed climbed free from the black leather body bag engulfing him, with his skin shimmering, and a stress-born paralysis reducing his coordination and eloquence into a shaky and jerking motor function, so his body looked as if it were short circuiting as it moved.

Roy tried to help. Irrationally, he felt compelled to keep a grip on Ed, as if this might keep Ed safe, and he was smearing blood from his fingers about Ed's bare chest in red zebra stripes.

"Ed," Roy rasped, when Ed managed to get his upper half into the front. "Are…you hurt?" Roy swallowed to keep his voice steady.

Ed was delirious, and the question was lost on him. His flesh hand was pulling him forward with his wet fingers screeching against the leather seats as if he was pawing a balloon. With the sound of Roy's voice, Ed grabbed the front of Roy's shirt, and used Roy like an anchor to pull himself closer. Ed's body was trembling in a way that looked hypothermic, and crying out into his locked jaw, Ed slid his hips into the front, before loudly announcing, "Okay!" Ed looked up, panting furiously from the exertion and pain, and his expression was stricken into a crazed mask of adrenaline-freed aggression.

Ed was an animal. He looked wildly to all windows, trying to find their enemy. In the pale glow of the street lamps outlining the parking lot, Ed's eyes were bulbous white mushroom heads stuffed into his face. "Where is he!" Ed demanded. His tone was rabid, and the force of his speech caused spittle. "Where is the asshole!" The parking lot was an empty black field with dotted cars, and with no imminent attack Ed turned to Roy, and cried out, "Roy! Oh my god!" Ed's focus became Roy's bleeding arm. "Where did the bullet hit!" Roy tried to answer, moving at the slower speed of a freshly wounded person, but Ed plowed on with a quick, "Don't worry Roy." Ed did not sound reassuring, he sounded insane. "I'll get help," Ed said firmly, before angrily declaring, "This is bullshit!"

Roy's eyebrows lifted in dazed and surreal comprehension, and a weak smile took the corner of his mouth with comedic irony someone in Ed's state was trying to reassure him: The Colonel. Unaware of the transmutation details, Roy now felt safe, and his priority was Edward. His insides felt cold with fearful dread Ed might open and bleed the way Ed had insisted he would. The memory of Ed's body with a red paint-roller stripe down his front was burned into Roy's mind. Of the two of them, although he had a bullet lodged inside, he put Ed's injury first, and it was becoming obvious Ed did not agree.

"I can't believe this!" Ed cried, struggling to push himself up with his flesh arm. "I can't fucking be—where's the bullet!"

"My shoulder." It felt like a piece of coal near Roy's ball and socket. It stopped things from working the same way Roy imagined a red ember would sit burning though his tissue and muscle. The smell was disgusting. It was the scent of an open body, of uncooked red meat being sawed open and spread.

"Let's get it out!" Ed sounded crazy. "Let's close the wound!" Ed reached into his mouth, plucked a half dissolved pill from his tongue, and offered it to Roy. "Eat this." Roy looked at the white crumb. His vision was blurry and there were two images of Ed's hand, a stationary hand, and one orbiting. "Roy." Ed moved his hand to Roy's lips and pushed the pill inside. "Chew, chew it. Roy, chew it." Ed said quickly, pushing Roy's chin up to close his mouth. Roy obeyed weakly, confused, and flabbergasted.

"What is it?"

"Relief," Ed said, trembling fiercely with his eyes full of tears. They were gorgeous. Despite everything, Roy found himself staring at Ed's large capable eyes. They had become glass pearls with a window to the burning Elric furnace, and in command of Ed's face the way a beating heart commands a body. The sand foundation of Ed's expression had his features dancing in a constant twitch of pain endurance and panic, but the eyes were conducting. Like fire, Roy's mind whispered with approval. They were formidable ivory cradles to the orchestra of Ed's being, and Ed's being looked impenetrable.

Burning like fire, Ed's natural power seemed unstoppable.

"You're bleeding down your damn arm Roy!" Ed dropped to his metal elbow under the strain of holding himself up. "Come on, let's tie this off with something!" Ed grabbed at Roy's blood soaked limb. "You know basic first aid dammit! Stop sitting on your ass!"

These medicated tones sounded obnoxiously familiar from eight thirty that night, and staring at Ed's eyes Roy slowly realized why Ed's eyes looked so enamoring, and he stopped chewing the pill in his mouth. Ed's pupils were three times their normal size.

"Ed, what am I eating?" Was it possible hard drugs were considered a contingency?

"A prescription." Ed dropped his forehead to the seat cushion to rest. "A heavy fucking prescription, you'll love it." Suddenly Ed's wild edge identified itself to Roy, and he didn't know if he should criticize, or be thankful it was distracting Ed from sobbing his way toward dehydration in a fetal position. "It's going to take the pain away," Ed said, groaning into the seat cushion. "I don't take it a lot because it's so strong, but, like for an emergency I keep some in my, and I have more, but I mean real fucking strong, so, and it's probably reacting to maybe ten million things I am already on, but, what the hell! Why the fuck not!" Ed lifted his flesh hand and slapped it against the seat with frustration. "I am going to smash the fucker toying with us, and if I have to do it baked on prescription meds, so fucking be it!"

Roy spit the rest of the pill from his mouth. It had a sour chalky taste, and what little he consumed was all he wanted. He needed his head. "This might not be a good time for that Ed, what do you think?" he asked, tone a bit snarky.

Ed's head snapped up, and the blood on the seat cushion had stamped a large wet mark down the left side. "You can pass judgment on me, after someone tries to castrate you!" Ed said, clapping and sparking a brief transmutation below him. A bit of seat cushion slithered off in a leather snake and fell to the floor. It made a sturdy tourniquet, and Ed offered it looking too spent to help attach it. "Can you start this thing?" Ed asked weakly.

Roy looked at the wires hanging from the steering wheel. He moved his arm the best he could and fit the leather strap to fasten it. "I thought we lost the wheels?"

"If I put them back!" Ed said quickly, taking a stabilizing grip on the dashboard and dragging himself an inch closer. The movement in Ed's blood swelled hips caused him to tip his head down in pain, and Roy suddenly felt like an asshole criticizing anything Ed was doing. The fact Ed was moving, talking, and participating was nothing short of a miracle. If Ed wanted to smoke a joint right now, would that be the end of the world all things considered?

"Ed, I am sorry," Roy said softly, laying his hand in Ed's hair. He was beginning to feel better, and his guilt increased as he understood it was due to Ed's prescription.

"It's…fine," Ed managed, taking a few pain enduring breaths. "Can you start it? Can you drive?" Ed lifted his head enough to peek up, and looked ready to empty his stomach again. "Can you start it? Start it, I'll fucking drive, if Alphonse can do it, I fucking can too!"

Without any warning the front passenger side window was smashed in, and the unnamed arms reached in for Ed.

Ed ducked when the safety glass flew in and pelted him like stones, before crying out when he was grabbed fiercely about the legs and pulled backward. "Roy!" Ed screamed, wrapping his flesh arm about Roy's thigh and hugging it.

Roy choked out Ed's name, frantically trying to manage a grip on the boy. Their attacker's dedication seemed inconceivable, and Roy's bleeding arm felt like a metal shackle nailing him in place. His body did not want to help, his upper half was in pulsing agony like the right of his body was infected with a horrible cancer. His movement caused a fat squirt of new blood from the bullet hole and it felt like a jet of hot water firing at his arm.

"Roy!" Ed cried. "Get him off! Fucking help me, lazy fuck!"

Ed was doing fine on his own. Screaming obscenities and clinging to Roy, Ed transmuted his arm back into a blade. Roy felt the heat from the transmutation kick out, and for a brief moment he could smell the iron in the metal.

Ed threw the metal arm behind him in a wide swiping pass as if swinging a razor blade. It slashed through the dashboard in a metal curling sound of sparks and resistance, hit the glove box with a slam, slowed briefly, dragging wires from the dials and electrics, before cutting loose and slicing over the assailant's arm. A male cry was heard, and the reaching hands frantically retracted to avoid more of the blade as it hit the side of the car, crunched through the metal as if peeling back the lid of a can, and then stabbed into the seat.

The move was incredible, the glove box resistance caused Ed's arm to spring forward with so much force the flesh it severed went unnoticed, and it tore up the seat and car frame like a knife into tin. A puff of cushion stuffing spit into the air, and while their attacker was crying out in pain, Ed was screaming his own wild sound of suffering.

The pitch of it was feral, and it was a savage and human sound Roy recognized from building three that frightened him. Ed pawed at Roy for safety, breaking into hallucinatory pain, and sobbing into Roy's thigh while trying to drag his heavy unresponsive legs inward for safety. Ed was shaking in an absolute seizure, with tears tumbling down his face like an open faucet, before he clapped and his transmutation removed the arm's blade, shook the frame of the car, and dimmed the windows significantly.

Roy felt the sudden rise in temperature as the transmutation altered the car's metal like a chemical reaction. About the front windshield long black lines slithered into brilliant swirls and angles before freezing into a seal. It was part of a transmutation circle, and Roy blinked heavily, trying to read it, but his mind wasn't focusing.

"Ed," Roy said firmly, staring at the black carvings in the windshield and trying to force his physical self under his control. A shoulder wound was nothing! A shoulder wound won't kill you! Get it together, get it together, get it together. "Ed!" Ed was crying horribly. "Ed! You need to get a transmutation to the soldiers."

Ed found his voice and sobbed a loud, "Ow, fuck! Are you serious!" while clinging to Roy's leg. He sounded hysterical shrieking out the word fuck, and choking out the rest of his sentence in bawling sobs.

"Ed!" Roy said loudly. "Now, we can't wait any longer! Get up!" His tone was nonnegotiable. "Transmute now, that's a direct order!"

Ed pushed himself up with both arms, body convulsing as if to vomit, and clapped for a seventh transmutation. He slapped his hands to the dashboard, but all the car did was tremor sloppily. It was clear Ed's focus was too weak, and Ed sobbed louder with the failed result, and cried out, "I can't! We're fucking stuck in this fucking car!"

"Transmute!" Roy ordered viciously. The last option he could see was pushing Ed into one last heave of adrenaline strength.

"I am sorry!" Ed sobbed. "My strength is giving out, I think I am bleeding!"

With the windshield dimmed and not blackened, they were visible in the front seat, and Ed's hands on the dashboard provoked a transmutation from their enemy. It exploded in blue color several yards in front of them, and fired at the car in a bolt of lightning.

The front headlight took the impact and the bulbs exploded. Ed screamed a single word of profanity, and slapped Roy back from the steering wheel with his automail hand. To Roy the blow felt like a metal frying pan swung full force at his chest, and he choked, but fell back in time to avoid the electrical surge firing up the car hood and destroying the dashboard.

The front dials popped outward in bits of glass, and yellow embers sprayed from the main controls. Ed moved to shield Roy's blood wet body, but Roy viciously shoved Ed back with his bloody palm. The thought of a passing current jumping to Ed's conductive parts terrified Roy, and strength leapt into his arm and hand. Roy pressed Ed's head toward the leather seats, and when the vents began flashing with reaching sparks, Ed dropped to his stomach and rolled to the seat back, huddling down, and curling his metal parts under his flesh to help protect them, screaming, "This enemy is a fucking dick!"

The car was fed so much electricity the surged died almost as fast as it happened, and left nothing but the stench of burned and charged metal in the air. Roy had his face turned away and his dry shoulder forward to tip his wet into the seat. Ed was panting, and for a moment everything was silent.

Bits of wire crackled and pieces which couldn't burst to relieve pressure had heated to an intimidating red and were now cooling.

Ed took a large shaky breath, uprooted his face from the seat cushion, and sent an investigatory hand to Roy to confirm he was safe.

"Ed, for god's sake," Roy said. His blood loss made him feel as if Ed were moving in unending squirreling activity, when Ed was barely moving at all. There goes the car, Roy's mind said softly. It was one thing for Ed to transmute a workable engine in his condition, but there was no way Ed was going to repair a broken and burned one. Their limited resources brought a sickness of dread to Roy's stomach. "Stay still, rest for a minute. You have to get some strength together to…" Roy paused, somehow he was out of breath. "...to…"

Ed tipped his head back and looked up at Roy with frightened disbelief. His bottom lip was wobbling uncontrollably and he was crying silently. His expression spoke one painful thought: You're going to make me do it? I can't do it!

Sounding tired even to himself Roy said, "Yes you can." There was nothing about Mustang's command that was soft, and he licked his lips and said, "You can and you will." Now was not the time to waiver and crumble under fear you were bleeding, or bleeding to death. Now was the time for irrational confidence.

"Roy," Ed whined, sounding desperate. "I am in a lot of pain right now."

Exhausted, Roy muttered, "They are our ace in the hole." It was almost ridiculous this was happening on military property. He added, "You have to do this Ed," and then fell silent. Ed was crying with pain and stress, and Roy felt a drifting sinking feeling, and imagined himself flouting downward to a state of pulverized inability where Ed lay.

There was something about bullets that tapped your strength. Like tiny leaches, they sucked at you from the inside. "We can't go down like this," Roy said softly. In his mind he heard himself speaking to Hawkeye in building three, asking if Ed was in combat when she reported he was in danger, as if the natural response had to be the occurring response, and simply because they were powerful, meant they were invincible. He had been a fool, and Ed had almost died. Was it too silly to think he might bleed himself into unconsciousness in this car, and Ed might be hauled out a smashed window or open door like a bag of groceries? Or was it accurate? Was it viable, and worse, was it imminent?

"We're in big fucking shit," Ed whispered, sniveling toward Roy's lap. Ed snaked his arm about Roy's waist and hugged, seeking comfort. His body seemed to have finally collapsed in intense need of rest, and Ed pressed his face into the tops of Roy's knees so his heavy breathing puffed down Roy's wet leg like wind through a tunnel.

"You may not be bleeding," Roy said optimistically. Ed was in a loose fetal position with Roy's larger pants hanging off his waist. Nothing was blood soaked, but Ed would have to saturate his bandages first. "Are you in a lot of pain?"

"Yes, I am in a lot of fucking pain!"

Roy nodded softly. He swallowed the coppery taste in his mouth and looked around them. For the time being Ed's last transmutation appeared a strong deterrent. Their attacker had retreated, and they would have a few minutes until a new plan of attack was established. "What…number is that?" Roy asked. "Your pain."

"A ten!" Ed screamed. "I am a big fucking big ten!" Ed wiggled a shaking hand between his legs whining loudly. "You don't know what this does to me," Ed said. "I don't usually cry like a pussy like this. I really don't like doing it!"

Roy forced a weak smile with his half-open eyes diligently scanning the parking lot. "I won't tell anyone," he teased. There was a cool breeze outside and it was rustling the trees and minimal vegetation. It gave a calm appearance, but also made you feel as if the enemy was everywhere.

"Oh god," Ed sobbed, hand in his pants. "I am bleeding."

Roy looked to Ed's clean pants. "Ed, you're not bleeding," he said firmly. He lifted his own hand and examined his wet shoulder. Things were not looking good.

"I am bleeding." Ed slowly pulling his hand up from his groin and his fingers were bright, as if he'd dipped them into red paint. "I am soaking through all of this! It's going to start going down my legs!"

"Okay, keep your head," Roy said, carefully crafting his tone and words into what he considered his Colonel-Tone. "We won't bleed to death in a parking lot, so we need to keep thinking."

Ed lifted his gaze from his blood streaked hand to Roy. He was comforted with the strength in Roy's voice and confident eyes, before Melander leaned into the window alongside Roy's face grinning a wide thin smile, with his eyes perked into crescents of excitement.

Ed recoiled so abruptly Roy startled, and jerked back from the window.

"Shit!" Roy cried, overcome with the eeriness of the man's sudden, and very close, arrival.

"Edward." Melander lowered his gaze to Ed, and his smile faded. "You are using alchemy against me, and I thought we said we'd never do this." Melander moved to the hood of the car and stepped onto it. The addition of his mass tipped the frame and jostled everything. There was nothing about him overly identifiable, his body was shrouded in a dark cloak, and Roy was disgusted that even now, Melander was somehow elusive. In the night he stood as a black figure towering over them and blocking out the stars.

"You're breaking our friendship son," Melander added.

"I thought our friendship was pretty much over when you tried to chop off my cock!" Ed screamed, breaking into a violent tremor of fury. "You asshole!"

Melander advanced. He walked up the front of the car in a heavy pair of boots so each footstep was a drum beat. The frame protested, quivering under the weight and fortitude of the man, and groaning when Melander stepped onto the roof.

Ed followed Melander with wide panic-stricken eyes. Melander walked to the center of the roof and paused in motion just long enough for Roy to later envision the man putting his back into the strong swing of his weapon. Wielding something brunt, Melander struck the top of the car so forcefully it dented inward. The sound was magnificent, blasting like gunfire.

Ed flinched down into Roy's legs, and screamed, "Fuck!" Melander swung again, and the sound was a metal bat into a metal bell, and the ceiling dented further. "Roy, he's going to get us," Ed whispered, twitching in pain as if beginning cardiac arrest. His wet skin was growing pale, and his expression was beginning to consistently confess to nausea.

Roy had his eyes closed in the depression of a final rest, and he cracked his right and peeked at Ed. It was now sorely obvious his shoulder had bled too long. He should have tied it immediately, and a frenetic part of his mind was demanding to know why, why had he been so careless at such a crucial time, but he couldn't accurately remember reasoning for what he had done. There was only the visual of Ed, hanging from the ceiling by his arm, and screaming as Melander pulled at his legs as if they were the intestinal reigns to his flesh torso.

It was fear that had eradicated Roy's need for protection, by transferring it fully to another person, and wasn't that the definition of love? Not the swooning caressing words of romantic fantasy, but the throat-cracking screams of agony for another as if it was yourself.

For a moment, Roy had truly feared Ed might be dragged from the car, and packed into a sack where his weak pawing would mean nothing for escape, and his constant bleeding would fill a well for him to drown in. For this period, Roy's brain had no log of his own condition and care, only Edwards.

"Roy, are you with me?" Ed whispered.

In an optimistic tease, Roy said softly, "I am saving my strength." Ed reached for Roy's shirt and took a tight grip, curling his blood coated fingers in like a cat. "When he gets in, I'll fight," Roy said softly. "I won't let him take you." He meant this.

"This is all my fault," Ed whimpered, closing his eyes. Melander swung again, and Ed's body physically jerked with the violence of the sound. It was a shotgun firing into the thin metal roof, and it left a piercing hallow ring. "I am so sorry Roy." Ed looked to Roy's pale and sweating face. "I am sorry that—I—that all this is happening and…"

Roy slid his bloody hand over Ed's mouth, and traced Ed's lips with loving appreciation. Carefully, and even though it caused great pain, he bent forward and brought his mouth to Ed's. He didn't know how to put into words he was thankful to be in this car. It went beyond the significance he was so deeply involved in Ed's life. Beyond the fact he was glad Ed was not alone at this moment, and perhaps even beyond the fact he was not alone.

It was gratitude for raw and blinding fear he could lose something he loved, because he'd been granted the opportunity to love it.

Roy reached Ed's lips just as Melander broke through the roof. Ed cried out into Roy's mouth, and Roy felt a tear slip from Ed's eye and meet his cheek. It sat between them while Melander wedged his weapon out of the halo sized hole above them, then it slipped onto Roy's face, and dripped off Roy's chin.

Roy finished his kiss with Ed's lips trembling, and looked up into the hole in his roof. Loudly he announced, "Jacob Melander!" His voice was strong, the declaration of an uninjured and capable man. "Get off my car." Melander leaned down and set his face to the hole, smiling. "You're inviting more indictments against yourself."

Melander laughed at Roy's threat, and moved his gaze to Ed. Ed's expression tightened with repulsion and concern. He knew how he looked, sprawled out, clutching Roy in distress, and immobile. He looked like easy prey, and Ed was not used to being easy prey. Neither of them were.

"Edward, things will work out perfect," Melander said tenderly. "I know the concept of failure seems more prominent to you due to your past transmutations, but I have vast experience and knowledge in this way." Melander looked more than excited; he was bright with celebration. He did not see the car as an obstacle, and it was clear he did not see the Flame Alchemist as one either. He was digging his way inside as if he were opening a present, and when the top was off, Ed would be his new toy. His new possession.

Kindly, Melander said, "I know once you stop and think about things, you'll see what an amazing break through this will be, and come to your senses." Ed was speechless in the face of this madness. Yes, your secret best friend was crazy crazy crazy, just like they said he was. "Also, on a brighter note, you'll no longer have to stoop to taking your sex in the ass." Ed balked, and physically gagged with such intimate slander. "I'll build you a vagina that is fully functional."

Ed broke out shaking with rage, and screamed, "I don't want a vagina!" Ed bared his teeth toward Melander's grinning face, and looking too furious to continue speech, cried out, "I am a man!" Ed cleared his sinuses and spit phlegm at Melander's face. A hot wad accurately pegged the man in the right eye, and Melander jerked back, wincing an expression of appalled disgust, and slapping at his cheek and eye socket. "Make me your wife, and I'll leave you!" Ed was overcome with nauseating wrath, and a growing sickness of dread Melander could, and might, win.

"What?" Melander gasped, utterly stunned.

"And what a whore I'll be," Ed sneered, curling back his lips like a rabid animal. "I'll wander from town to town, lifting my skirt for anyone who asks." Melander was overridden, and went mute, staring with blank eyes and an open mouth. "I'll be a delicious little slut, and I'll take it in the ass too, all the time in the ass." Ed taunted viciously, before screaming, "Because, that's, how, I like it!"

Melander pulled back and stood up. Angrily he announced, "You will do no such thing Edward!" He hefted a large steel mace over his shoulder, and drove it into the top of the car. "If I have to take that automail from you, then that is what I'll do."

Ed grabbed his metal shoulder with immediate panic before latching onto Roy's torso. "Roy! I need some of that fifty-fifty harmonizing now!" Ed whined, hugging fiercely. "What are we going to do!"

Roy looked up at the growing hole. With his right arm disabled he couldn't carry Ed to safety. He wasn't going to fool himself and make like he had a chance, but this archaic tactic of stabbing into the car was confusing him. "Ed, why doesn't Melander just transmute a hole and come in?" he asked. Ed was rubbing his face back and forth over Roy's stomach. "Ed?"

Ed whined loudly into Roy's belly button. "Cause I placed a transmutation on the car. If he touches it with any type of alchemic reaction, either the product of transmutation, or the intent to initiate a transmutation, it will activate my array, and set the entire thing on fire."

"Fire!" Roy cried with alarm. "Edward, there is a gas tank in this car!"

Ed lifted his gaze, and his pupils were still dilated. "I have faith a flame alchemist will get us out." Ed forced a weak smile, and Roy groaned. "It was the only thing I could think of," Ed whined. "He doesn't want to kill me Roy, so I doubt he'll try and cook me." This didn't say much about what Melander would do to slow-moving colonels once Ed was out of the car.

Roy set his hand in Ed's hair and stroked the boy's bangs back with affection. The blood on his fingers matted Ed's fine strands, and Roy winced. They weren't looking too good. "It was a fine idea," he said softly.

Melander reached into his sizable hole, and peeled back the shreds of metal as if he were opening a tin can. "Edward, please stop making this harder than it has to be." Melander's voice was pleasant as he worked. "And colonel," Melander pulled back a large strip so above them the night sky appeared twinkling beautifully, "what shall I do with you?" Melander asked, sounding eagerly keen.

Ed looked up with immediate concern, and nervously asked, "Jacob, what do you mean by that?"

"He's such a fine specimen Ed. You have an ardent taste, surely you see it, now wouldn't you say?" Melander had opened a hole like a skylight, and Roy felt his heart pounding in his chest. They were all being civil about the unspoken arrangement of combat, but in a moment that would change. Melander would reach into the car, and Roy would break into zealous warfare. Ed would be at his side, charging into battle, and with the bullet in Roy's arm draining him like a spigot, and Ed's body opening itself at the inseam, it would go on until one side fell.

It would go on until Melander stopped moving, or it would go on until they did.

Roy closed his eyes and took his last moment of rest. He refused to acknowledge the competence of Melander's attack, and turned his mind to the memory where he first made fire.

His young fourteen year old hand had slowly and gracelessly snapped its fingers and lit a flame that scolded first degree burns across his palm. The pain had made him cry, but the dazzling power had made him hungry. Like a god, he gave birth to fire with his own power, and he promised never to forget it.

"There is to be nothing but inconceivability that we will not succeed," Roy said, speaking to Ed in a calm and powerful voice. Melander was clawing at the roof. "There will be absolute success." He was giving his orders. They would beat Melander, and they would beat him, because the alternative was, him beating them.

Ed suddenly sat up, and the abrupt movement startled Roy. Ed raised with both arms, so he was dangerously close to the hole, and in confusion Roy blurted a quick, "Ed, what are you doing?"

"I got us both into this," Ed said. "I won't make you hurt for my mistake."

Roy felt these words come out and slap him. His memory crumbled to pieces, and in its place came the heavy burden of his office title and rank. The bold lettering of his status said he was responsible for his men, and if they lived it was of his leadership, and if they died, it was of his failure. Edward was his charge! Flabbergasted, and horrified, Roy managed a soft, "What?"

Ed used the back of the seat to pull himself up to his knees, and demanded, "Help me get us both out of this!" Ed's movement disintegrated his composure into gulping pain filled breaths, and he stooped over, whining in his throat.

The word SACRIFICE exploded into Roy's vision in bright bursting bulbs that shattered into sparkling confetti.

Ed was scared for him, and was trying to save him the only way Ed knew he could. The decision was noble and sound. Analytically Roy understood Ed was right, their probability of success increased with him as cavalry rather casualty, but emotionally, he was choking up his heart!

"Ed!" Roy yelled, lubricated fingers pawing uselessly at Ed's body. His tutelage movement was more than that of a lover. He wanted to jerk Ed down, overrule Ed's decision, and scold and berate him for putting his safety in jeopardy, but Roy was too weak. His limp torpid hold could not keep Ed grounded!

Ed climbed to the hole, placing himself in easy reach, and Melander did not let the opportunity pass. Roy saw the mace move, and he knew the man was swooping in. Briefly bits of yellow coloring on Melander's form caught Roy's peripheral and he thought of a descending wasp.

"Ed!" Roy screamed. Ed was the only one capable of thwarting his own plan. Roy's strength was gone. "Don't be a little idiot!"

In agony, Ed was whining softly, but this statement broke him into snarling, and he turned to Roy with a pain-blanched expression of anger, and snapped, "Don't say little!" In fact Ed said, don't say lit, and Roy's mind finished the rest. Melander's hands reached in, and with rabid hunger, yanked Ed into the hole so quickly, it cut Ed's sentence off.

Roy's blood-red fingers streaked down Ed's body offering nothing of resistance. They bounced over Ed's abs, caught slightly against the fabric of his pants, and then hit the metal knee cap. Roy latched on with a loud, "Stop!" Melander was using something to amplify his strength, and Roy's grip interfered only long enough for Roy to look up. He felt like he was looking into an animal's open mouth, and it was gobbling Ed.

Melander had stooped over the hole, and his black pupils moved, meeting Roy's gaze. The man's smile widened a fraction of an inch. He did not fear the Flame Alchemist, and this certitude destroyed Roy. Then Melander pulled, uprooting Ed from the car, and suddenly Roy was alone.

The front seat was empty, and the desolate leather smeared with bits of Ed's blood became the last trace of the boy. Roy looked at his bloody palm in shock it hadn't anchored Ed indefinitely, and he felt like he could smell Ed rising off his skin.

"Ed!" Roy screamed, reaching to the driver's door. The metal latch was slick under his bloody fingers and he fumbled, before yanking it up. "Ed!"

The door gave way, and his body followed. Roy fell onto his back grasping his injured shoulder in pain. The damp blacktop was ice-cold in the night air. The spring breeze brought the smell of soil and forming dew, and Roy's world was spinning.

Melander reigned outward from the car like a king. He appeared as an infinite darkness extending up into the sky as if his body were a black growing stalk. He became every shadow, and every shadow became him. The white of his teeth went stretching indefinitely, so the twinkle of the stars became his mouth and eyes, and the best Roy could understand was that Melander was stationary, and tucked under his arm like a doll, was Ed.

The drumming of Roy's heart beat brought an overwhelming pulsing in his shoulder and throbbing in his head. With each thump his vision pulsed, as if his eyes were bloated white olives pumping with his heart. Roy rolled to his side with the strength and speed of a toddler, closed his eyes, and fought the twisted delusion of his current state. The fall from the car, felt like a fall from his own body, demotion from the craft of his uniform to a weak flesh mass that terrified him. Tighter and tighter he squeezed his eyes, determined to fight free of this nightmare, and return to the common ground of command. Think, think, his mind was relentless, holding fervently to the tether of authority. Roy envisioned his formidable blue Amestrian uniform, and Ed's loud red coat, and dove into the colors so he was swimming in a world of thunderous primaries, and the wealth of Melander's shadow was gone. In his mind he was painting every inch of his skin in a merging red and blue ink, and when his mental-self opened its eyes, they were bright lights like Edward's, and Roy found his voice.

"Melander?" The question was an accusation.

Melander walked the length of the car and hopped off. Under the paralysis of intense pain, Ed was motionless. His hands were between his legs holding his groin in anguish, and his bangs hung over his face like a golden veil.

Melander turned small black pupils toward Roy, and looked on like a man who'd stepped on half a bug and felt no need to finish the deed. There was task-satisfaction, but also disinterest. Melander gave the bleeding colonel a snake-like grin, and with no hate, and no pity, said, "It's been a pleasure." He turned, ready to leave, and added, "Colonel Mustang."

Roy croaked a soft and awkward noise of alarm when Melander began a confident walk into the dark. The height of the man easily carried Ed several feet above the ground, with the comfort of one carrying an extra jacket and not the additional hundred and seven pounds of Ed's body, and forty-three pounds of automail.

Roy tried to call out, and small specks of light invaded his vision. His dread was causing a heavy cold sweat, and he pawed uselessly at the ground, trying to pull his legs beneath him without success. "H—Hey!" he cried, struggling with his equilibrium. His body needed rest, but there was no time! The insistency and stark panic of it all was sabotaging! Again, he closed his eyes under absolute strain, and his inner-self was peacefully rubbing hands of wet red and blue paint about its face in ecstasy, before suddenly growing angry. As if interrupted, it turned its blazing eyes at Roy and screamed, "Think!" The anger was frightening. In Ed's voice, it yelled, "When did we become afraid of discovery!"

Roy's searching palm found a small white crumb on the ground. The bit of Ed's medication he'd spit out, and he gobbled it hungrily. He remembered Ed's red X beneath his feet in building three. The vision of the alchemic manipulation of the floor bubbled in his mind, changing the red X into thin red lines of a simple transmutation circle. "Will you really wait until you lose him?" his mind asked.

Roy lifted his hand to the open car door and drew the same transmutation circle in the red ink of his blood. It was one of the first he'd learned: a circle with four shapes. He sparked it, and in the dark night it was a light bulb popping. It heated its imprint into a hot red that melted off in a metal soup. The transmutation did only two things, warmed quickly, and cooled just as quickly, nothing else. It was a fire alchemist's beginning exercise, and was useless in combat. But today we didn't want this array for combat.

Roy stared at Melander's fading body smelling the car's bubbling paint, and the stench of heating asphalt. "Get…back here!" he demanded. A coaster sized puddle of red liquid metal sat on the pavement, cooling into a large soft coin. Without care of his fingers, Roy lifted it, and swiped it quickly over his bullet wound. It seared in a loud sizzling, so he imagined the fat in his arm coming to fry in oil. The wet blood curled and dried, and his skin baked into a thin peel. He was careful. He didn't want to seal the bullet inside. Later he wanted a scalpel to get in easily, when they would pluck the metal ball from his shoulder the way you would a marble. Fighting with a hole in his body was no longer an option, and Roy took a deep whiff of his cooking skin with memories of Ishval taking hold, and reminded himself of what he could live through.

Be ready, Roy's mind whispered, be thankful. Roy pressed his right hand to the pavement to push himself up, and tried to remember to be thankful. His body was sweating heavily from the branding, and a tremulous reaction had taken his limbs and made the world feel as if it were shaking around his unmoving pupils.

Roy reminded himself he could still feel his arm, and therefore could still use his arm, while staring after Melander. He reminded himself he could still think, could still speak, could still draw a basic circle, and that meant he wasn't down for the count yet, while staring after Ed.

"Hey!" Roy yelled at Melander's departing form. Roy threw the hot metal piece forward. He swallowed heavily, and managed the loud baritone of his voice for the first time, with an intense, "Hey!"

The hot metal skipped across the parking lot like a stone on the surface of a pond. There was no hope of it impacting, or even making it close to Melander, but that wasn't the point. Roy wanted the man's attention, for even a moment. He wanted to stop the retreat he couldn't seem to derail. All he needed was Melander to stop walking. Just stop walking, stop disappearing, stop taking Ed away.

Roy's right arm was extended, and it dropped back to the blacktop curling into a fist. He was too dizzy to rise. His head slumped downward and his body followed. With sickening defeat he fell, and was somehow out of breath again while imagining his severed artery leaking like a pipe with a rag tied about it, when he heard it.

From the distance a small uncertain female voice spoke in a soft questioning tone, "Colonel?"

With something near confusion, and more accurately described as disbelief, Roy looked toward the voice. Across the parking lot, standing in the glow of the entrance light to the Elric building, holding the door with one foot inside, was Cindy's small and slender figure. She was staring into the inky outline of the parking lot, unseeing, and skeptical of her own ears. Her expression was twisted with bewildered nervousness after a glowing oval the size of a saucer jumped across the parking lot from a black undistinguishable lump.

Roy felt his jaw drop. It seemed inconceivable she would be here; that he would be kissed with help the exact moment he needed it most. Dazed, and suspicious he was falling unconscious and hallucinating, Roy lifted his head a fraction of an inch. Bits of blacktop and a blade of grass stuck to his cheek, and he felt the green stalk slide down and slip off just as Alphonse appeared.

While it seemed minimally plausible hallucinations might involve the dainty angelic figure of a slender female body, taking the shape of Cindy, Roy felt certain none of his dreams would contain Alphonse. Blood loss or not, the sight of Alphonse shot a current of real hope through Roy, and he gasped.

Cindy had stopped entering the building, and Alphonse, who had led her along, returned to her side. He didn't understand her hesitation, and with a look of confusion, and the apartment keys hanging from his mouth, squinted curiously into the parking lot.

Cindy was pointing in Roy's direction, and Roy saw her mouth moving, but couldn't hear her speak. He could imagine her saying, 'I saw something,' or perhaps, 'I heard something.' He knew it would not be the much needed, 'Alphonse, it looks as if the colonel is badly injured, and we should go to him, and call the base for reinforcements right away,' so Roy filled his lungs and emptied them as loudly as he could.

"Alphonse!" Roy screamed. "Alphonse!" He roared the boy's name, and Alphonse darted out of the barrack doorway and into the parking lot, in three quick disbelieving steps. "He has your brother!" Roy threw a pointing hand toward Melander, and Alphonse's head snapped in that direction. Wildly confused Alphonse was motionless just long enough to understand something, which appeared to have Ed, was lumbering across the parking lot. Then the keys dropped from his mouth and be broke into action.

Chapter 20, end.

I hope you enjoyed, I seriously hope you did. I toiled relentlessly on Chapter 16, 20, and 21 of this story. Please leave a review for me. We are at our final stage, and I desperately want to hear your thoughts.

Chapter 21: Fate Groveling Mercature, will be up Next Friday 11/22/13. Hope to see you there.