Armend looked around before grabbing a soft metal file used to get the bur off the edges of the hanging blades. He knelt down by Sean’s foot and slid of his shoe. Blood was trickling out of a large hole in his once white sock, and Armend looked up at the irishman with distaste. 

	“You know,” Armend started slowly, “dey make powder vor shoe odors.”

	When he got little in terms of a reply from the gagged man he shook his head and tried not to think about the foot odor as he brought a lighter under the file. It took a few minutes, and the humming of “putting on the ritz” before the file’s end turned a cherry red under the intense heat of the continuous fire. 

	He looked up to Sean, “do you vant to do it? Learn a little willpower in the face of pain?”

	His eyebrow cocked, then he realized he wasn’t going to get an answer from the incredulous man and decided to just get it over with. The metal hissed on the melting skin as Armend pinched the wound with one hand, and maneuvered the metal in the other. He worked quickly and expertly on pinching and sealing the wound. He even lifted the man’s foot to check the side the bullet had escaped from, closing the wound completely after scraping out flakes of the lead.

	“I vouldn’t run around for a little,” Armend said grimly, “if you can avoid it.”