"Good-- g'night, Colonel!" Radar yelled once more in the VIP tent's general direction, then turned, his face becoming illuminated in the camp's lamplight, eyes growing wide with the pain that overtook him, then squinting at the bright light that suddenly shone in his eyes.

Clutching his stomach and lurching a bit as he walked, Radar stumbled back across the compound and flopped out in the inviting arms of the rickety old lawn chair.

"You, too." Radar mumbled in some sort of comment to the chair's embrace. Holy cow, that was unpleasant! The cold sickness gnawed at his shoulder, where the contact with the corpse had been longest, but it immediately bore its way down to the pit of his belly and made him feel as nauseated as he's ever been. He squeezed his eyes shut against the slight lightening of the sky, half hoping that the morning sun would begin to warm him soon, half hoping that the sunrise would just destroy him like it would one of the vampires, and make all this ache go away.

At Ban's admonitory chirrup, he picked off his glasses and hung them on the back of the lawn char, really not wanting to hear it, right now. The chimerae were right, of course... Colonel Blake had really become rather a drain on Radar's fae health. But it was the last thing the stubborn little changeling would admit.

To say that Radar thought of Colonel Blake as a friend would be the understatement of the century. How could Colonel Blake be behind all this pain, vampire or not? It didn't make any sense! He'd much prefer to believe that the source of all the trouble was someone a little bit more obvious: the most dreary... grey... pragmatic... BORING mortal in the entire camp! Yep, none other than the font of all banality himself, Major Fr---

Radar shuddered in the midst of these thoughts, an oppressive cold weighing down on his already cold and sore dreaming.

"Gold brick!" Frank snorted. Radar opened a bleary eye.

"Hmph! Imagine! I go on R&R for one week, and we've got insignificant little non-com-poops camping outside our door waiting for a discharge so they can go running home to mommy!"

Radar's other eye opened slowly, and he tried to speak, his forehead knotted up in pre-emptive anguish as, even without the help of Bantelhopp, he saw where this was going. But his quick tongue had been sufficiently slowed so as to let him be cut off before he even uttered a syllable.

Radar's now-opened eyes crossed as Frank leaned down and stuck his smirking face in his, and kept at him:

"Well, I'll tell you right now, mister, I don't believe it for a minute! You might be able to fool those two idiots inside, but this is one idiot that's no fool, no sirree!"

Frank's eyes shifted left and right as he tried to re-think that last statement, but he finally gave up and just kept ranting.

"You're making it all up!"

Radar squirmed as the sheer force of Frank's disbelief cut him to the bone as surely as any knife.

"It's all a lie!"

Radar whimpered softly as the pain intruded further.

"And if you think that that little act is going to get an ounce of pity out of me, mister, you've got another think coming!"

The Swamp door opened. Whether it was opening from the outside or from the inside, Radar couldn't tell, having fainted before the fact could fully register.

~