• Published 31st Aug 2018
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SAPR - Scipio Smith



Sunset, Jaune, Pyrrha and Ruby are Team SAPR, and together they fight to defeat the malice of Salem, uncover the truth about Ruby's past and fill the emptiness within their souls.

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Busted Taillight (New)

Busted Taillight

The girl who sat next to Gilda in the front of the truck looked human.

Pretty much, anyway; there were a few markings on her face, and on her hands and shoulders too, that looked like they might be freckles, or else some kind of skin condition, but which Gilda thought were actually speckles, or maybe even isolated scales.

She still wasn’t quite sure exactly what kind of faunus the other girl was though, and she could pass for human, pretty much, which was why she was sitting in the cab of the truck with Gilda while the rest of the infiltration unit that the High Leader had assigned to her for this mission was shoved into the back like the sacks of coffee that, according to the logo on the side of the lorry, they were supposed to be carrying.

The girl’s name was Ilia, Ilia Amitola, and it was probably a bit rich of Gilda to call her a girl when there probably wasn't much in it between them in terms of age. She was smaller than Gilda, and slighter too, with blue-grey eyes and reddish-brown hair worn in a long high ponytail that rose up behind her head and then dropped down to her waist. The cap that she was wearing, a cheap grey thing to go along with the cheap, crumpled grey jumpsuit that she was wearing to complement her look as a delivery person, had a hole in the back to let the ponytail out.

Gilda was dressed just the same way, although she was wearing a larger suit than she really needed so that she could wear her black bodysuit underneath.

What she couldn’t have with her was her swords. Ilia didn’t have her weapon with her either; it was in the back with Gilda’s blades and the rest of the crew.

Hopefully, they wouldn’t have any problems. If they did have problems … then they would deal with it.

For now, they had not had any problems. Gilda’s fake ID had gotten them through the Atlesian troops manning the Green Line, and now they were approaching the Red Line, the walls of Vale that served as its main defence against an attack by the grimm.

Gilda kept her hands on the steering wheel, even as she shifted her body uncomfortably in her seat. This seat wasn’t made for bird faunus, and having to keep her wings tucked up behind her was really cramping them, not to mention the fact that every time she even tried to lean back, she hurt her wings from crushing them, which meant that she had to lean forwards all the time, and her back was starting to protest.

She would be very glad when they reached the safehouse they were heading to — a place in one of the majority faunus districts of the city, where they could lie low with little chance of being betrayed — and she could get out of this truck and stretch her wings.

Of course, when they did reach the safehouse, then they would also be that much closer to their goal, to the mission that the High Leader had assigned her: the deaths of Blake and Dashie.

Their deaths for the crime of helping the faunus and attacking the SDC.

Their crimes of making the White Fang look bad by the fact that two Atlesians were able to get more results than them.

The High Leader had a way of talking, and her reasons, her motivations, sounded reasonable, plausible … but Gilda couldn’t help but think that there was something vindictive about all this, something spiteful and petty. ‘You’ve shown me up, so I’ll kill you.’

Or perhaps Gilda just didn’t want to go through with it, and so she was thinking up reasons why it would be a bad thing to do.

She didn’t really want to do this, not even to become leader of the Vale Chapter. She would do it, because she was a good soldier, a loyal and dutiful soldier, and she would follow her orders, but she didn’t want to do it.

She didn’t want to kill Rainbow Dash because Dashie was still her friend in spite of everything, and she didn’t want to kill Blake because … it was harder to say why she didn’t want to kill Blake. Blake, far more than Rainbow, had it coming: she had betrayed her mask, joined with hated Atlas; she had abandoned Adam and the cause.

But she had also fought alongside them before she left, which might be said to make the betrayal even worse, or it might … it would be easy to say that Blake had never stood shoulder to shoulder with them, but then people might say the same about her after the way she’d behaved with Adam and Cinder and Mountain Glenn and the rest.

Blake had stood shoulder to shoulder with them, as much as Adam would let her, until it became too much for her to take.

It was hard for Gilda to judge her for that. After all, they were all outlaws, renegades, criminals in the eyes of the law. They had no laws of their own; they had no uniforms, no officers. All they had, really, was their belief in the cause, and if that belief stopped … who was to say you couldn’t walk away?

Ideally, you wouldn’t walk away and then put on an Atlesian uniform afterwards, but Gilda didn’t think that had been Blake’s plan when she left.

It had become the plan, obviously, but sometimes, life came at you fast, didn’t it?

And she was Lady Belladonna’s daughter, the daughter of the High Chieftain of Menagerie, but more importantly, she was the daughter of the woman who had made it possible for Gilda’s parents to retire to Menagerie, to leave their lives of graft in the Low Town cold behind and live it up on some sunny beach, drinking fresh mango juice while goldfish nibbled at their toes, to hear them tell it. That reminded her; she should check on that PO box she had in the city while she was here, there might be more letters from home. Gilda’s letters were frequently terse, mostly because she was lying through her teeth about her life in Vale, but her parents' letters were more expansive; they couldn’t wait to tell her all about what a wonderful time they were having in Menagerie, a land without work, without business, without laws or cops, without fences or boundaries, without debts or slaves or servants. A land where all were idle, and nature’s bounty supplied all their needs without the need to toil for them, as though the God of Animals himself had blessed the land, or blessed the people that the land should keep them.

They made it sound like a paradise. Such a paradise, in fact, that the idea that the faunus had fought a war to avoid having to go there seemed ridiculous.

And it was all thanks to Blake’s mother, who sponsored so many poor and humble faunus like Gilda’s folks to make the journey to paradise.

And for that, Gilda was going to kill her daughter? It didn’t seem right. It stuck in her craw.

She shook her head; it wasn’t doing her any good to think about this, just thoughts going around and round in her head, nothing new or good coming out of them.

“Everything okay?” Ilia asked.

They were the first words she’d spoken to Gilda since they got in the truck. Until then, she’d been content to stare out of the windscreen, eyes on the road ahead, acting like Gilda wasn’t there — or as though she, Ilia, were somewhere else.

“I’m fine,” Gilda muttered. She furrowed her brow. “You’ve come from Menagerie, right?”

“Yeah,” Ilia said. “What about it?”

“What’s it like?” Gilda asked.

Ilia glanced at her. “Why? You want a transfer?”

“No,” Gilda said quickly. “My folks live there. I want to know if it’s as awesome as they say it is or if they’re hyping it up too much.”

Ilia was quiet for a moment.

“Menagerie isn’t perfect,” she said quietly. “The interior isn’t really habitable — the wildlife is too dangerous, and water is too scarce — so our people have to live on the coast. That means there isn’t enough space; that means people live cramped together, all except for the Belladonnas, who get to live in their big house on the hill lording it over the rest of us!”

“Privilege of being in charge,” Gilda said.

“At the expense of their people?” Ilia asked.

“The High Leader’s hall isn’t small, is it?” Gilda replied.

“The High Leader doesn’t live in Kuo Kuana,” Ilia answered. “The White Fang headquarters are in the interior.”

“But you just said—”

“Water is scarce, but you can find it if you look,” Ilia explained. “And we have nothing to fear from the local wildlife. We’re not taking space that others desperately need.”

“Hmm,” Gilda murmured. “My parents tell me that nobody works. That the land provides for everyone.”

“That’s not entirely true, but I can see why they said it,” Ilia said. “There are those who work, either in Kuo Kuana or on the coast, or even braving the inland; there are vineyards, and fishing boats, but … but your folks aren’t wrong. It’s like crops just spring up out of the ground, fruit trees sprout with no urging and always bring forth so much, and so succulent, soft and juicy too. It’s not quite right to say that no one works, but it is right to say that no one has to work. Nobody has to crawl into the dangerous darkness to add more zeroes to Jacques Schnee’s bank balance; nobody has to break their backs to pay rent to the Mistralian lord who owns the land; nobody has to live in terror of the bailiff or the debtor’s cell, the pink slip or the eviction notice. In Atlas, they say ‘is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?’, but in Menagerie we ask ‘is a man not entitled to a share in the common wealth?’”

“Sounds as idyllic as my parents speak of it,” Gilda murmured.

“Your parents weren’t born there, were they?” Ilia asked. “They moved.”

Gilda nodded. “From Low Town, under Atlas.”

“Menagerie might not be perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than Atlas,” Ilia said, almost growling.

“And you don’t think the Belladonnas have something to do with that?” Gilda asked. “Something that warrants the big house, maybe.”

Ilia scowled. “No one deserves to have so much more than the rest,” she said.

Gilda supposed she could see that argument, whether she agreed with it or not. “So why did you leave? What makes you want to leave a place like Menagerie and fight in Vale or Mistral?”

Ilia was quiet for a moment. “For the cause,” she said shortly, and kind of sharply too. “I’m not going to shirk my duty to our brothers and sisters in the rest of Remnant, who need someone to fight for them.”

That sounded … it sounded a little like she’d memorized it, perhaps to answer questions like the one that Gilda had just asked. But, if that was the case, then it was no doubt because she didn’t want to share the real answer with just anyone, and that was fair enough in Gilda’s book. They’d only just met after all, and they weren’t friends.

No, you’re going to kill your friend.

Gilda ignored that thought. The point was that she and Ilia were only here because the High Leader had commanded it so; it wasn’t as though they were going to hang out once this mission was over. Once the mission was over, they would probably never see each other again.

So she let the conversation lapse, let the silence fall, let the only sound be the noise of the truck, its engine grumbling as it devoured the road on the way to Vale.

The Red Line was directly ahead of them now, the wall rising up out of the ground to bar their way. The defence of Vale was a mixture of concrete and metal, a solid rampart with a solid metal gate — one of several — built into it, with firing slits in the wall and guns built into it and resting on top of it, all pointing outwards towards any grimm horde that might head towards the city. How many of those guns were still in good condition, how many people could fire out of those firing slits, Gilda couldn’t have said; Vale had a bit of a reputation for letting its defences slide, but they certainly looked impressive enough. She wouldn’t have wanted to attack them head on, any more than she had really wanted to go through that tunnel and the Breach.

There were a few men who could be seen moving up on top of the solid walls, but there was no one manning the gate as Gilda drove the truck up to it. Instead, there was a camera and a microphone mounted on top of a metal pole painted yellow. Gilda pushed down on the brake, pulling the truck up next to the camera, and leaned out of the window to press the button that would alert whoever was monitoring the camera to her presence.

There was a moment’s pause before a voice emerged out of the tinny speakers. “What’s your business?”

“Coffee business,” Gilda said, “Magic Beans coffee business. We just got back from a delivery.”

“They make you deliver outside of Vale in a truck?

“Airships cost too much,” Gilda said.

The voice on the other end of the line whistled. “I do not envy you, buddy. ID please.”

Gilda got out the fake ID, identifying her as Goldie Fawn, Valish born and bred.

She flashed it in front of the camera.

“I’m opening the gate for you now,” the voice said. “Welcome home.”

“Thanks, Mister,” Gilda said. “It’s good to be back.”

There was a moment’s pause before the gate opened, the metal sheet — painted in Valish green, with red and black warning stripes along the base — rising up into the wall itself, opening up a view into Vale itself, or at least its outer limits. Nobody really lived so close to the defences; even if they didn’t really worry that the defences might not hold, nobody wanted to live right up against a wall where there might be soldiers marching around or test firing artillery or generally making it difficult to get a good night’s sleep. It would be like having neighbours who really loved their fireworks. And so, as Gilda drove the truck through the open gate, it was clear that most of the buildings were warehouses, for storing the kind of things that wouldn’t be disturbed by marching feet or guns going off.

As they drove through the gate, Gilda turned on the CCTNav; she’d already programmed in their destination, and shortly, a little map of Vale, or at least the part of Vale they were in now, appeared on the dashboard, with a yellow line indicating what road to take.

Gilda turned right, as directed.

Ilia looked down at her hands. They were clasped together in her lap.

“You’ve seen Blake, haven’t you?” she asked.

Gilda kept her eyes on the road. “'Blake'?”

“Blake Belladonna,” Ilia said, as though there might be a different Blake in the Vale Chapter of the White Fang. “You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”

“Sort of,” Gilda said. “It was in the middle of a battle, so I didn’t get a good look.”

“In Mountain Glenn?” Ilia asked.

“No, I … actually, yes, I did catch a glimpse of her in Mountain Glenn,” Gilda admitted. She’d forgotten that, until Ilia reminded her. “She was running to catch a train.”

“How did she look?”

“How do you mean?” Gilda replied. “Do you want to know if she looked happy, healthy? I told you, I was busy, and I didn’t get a good look at her.”

“Forget it,” Ilia muttered, looking away out the window as she rested her elbow on the door.

Gilda let it lie for a moment, focusing on the navigation, taking the turning indicated, before she said, “Did you know her?”

Ilia took a second to answer. “We were in the Mistral Chapter together. She … she was my friend.”

“I didn’t know Blake had any friends,” Gilda muttered.

“Well, she did,” Ilia snapped. “I shouldn’t have let her go to Vale by herself.”

“She was with Adam,” Gilda pointed out.

“Obviously, that wasn’t enough, was it?” Ilia demanded.

“No, I guess not,” Gilda murmured. “I wish she’d stuck around too.” She frowned. “Listen, I know what it’s like. I’ve got a friend with the Atlesians too.”

“The other one that we’ve been ordered to kill, right?” Ilia asked.

Gilda nodded slowly. “That’s right. Rainbow Dash.”

“Is that going to be a problem for you?”

“Is killing Blake going to be a problem for you?” Gilda shot back.

Ilia didn’t respond. “What do you think made her do it?” she asked.

“Quit?”

“Sell us out,” Ilia said, “to Atlas.” She spat the name with all the venom of an adder.

Gilda took a deep breath. “I can’t speak to why she decided to wear the Atlas uniform, but she left the White Fang because she couldn’t stand … I think it’s because she couldn’t stand the killing anymore. I don’t know what happened on that train job to push her over the edge, but I think it must have been more of a last straw kind of thing.”

“And so she betrayed us?” Ilia demanded. “And so she doesn’t just leave, she doesn’t even just go to Beacon, she joins Atlas? Atlas? After everything that they’ve done to m—” She stopped. “After everything that they’ve done to us, to our people, she chooses them, she chooses … what would make her do something like that? After all Blake has been through, after all we went through together—”

“You two were close, huh?”

“I…” Ilia didn’t finish whatever sentence she’d just about begun. “Blake … was my hope. I thought that she would be the one to lead us to freedom.”

“I thought the same about Adam, once.”

“Adam was never … Adam was always a dog,” Ilia declared. “Blake was made of the right stuff. Or at least, I thought she was. The High Leader thought so too; that’s why she was grooming Blake to succeed her.”

“Then why didn’t she make Blake leader of the Vale Chapter?”

“The High Leader said she needed to learn to follow before she’d be ready to lead,” Ilia explained.

“That worked out well,” Gilda muttered.

Ilia said, “And you’ve no idea why she decided to join … them?”

“I haven’t been in a position to ask her about it,” Gilda pointed out.

“What about your friend, why did she join Atlas?” asked Ilia.

Gilda huffed. “A bunch of humans got their claws into her. They did things to her brain.”

“Maybe your friend got her claws into Blake,” Ilia suggested. She was silent for a few seconds. “The answer is yes.”

“Yes … what?”

“Yes,” Ilia said. “I can kill her. I’ll kill them both by myself if I have to. For the cause.”

“Right,” Gilda said. “For the cause.”

Or for yourself?

Gilda made the next turn, coming onto a two-lane street sandwiched between some suburban houses, with modest front gardens with lawns and flowerbeds and garden gnomes fishing in the tiny ponds.

Whatever else Gilda and Ilia might have said to one another was interrupted by the sound of a siren blaring behind them.

Gilda looked out of one of the wing mirrors; the first thing she saw was a red and blue light flashing brightly, almost blindingly so, but once she could look beyond the white light, she could make out the cop car that was flashing those lights.

Gilda cursed under her breath even as she started to pull over on the side of the road, easing the truck to a stop.

The cop car pulled up behind them. It was a blocky vehicle, mostly black with a big white stripe running down the middle of it and the letters 'VPD' written on the hood. The siren stopped, but the lights remained on, flashing red and blue, as the doors of the car opened and two police officers emerged.

They were both humans, two men, their sleeves rolled up to expose their muscular arms, each with one hand hovering above the holsters of their blocky Valish pistols as they split up, each walking around one side of the truck.

“What do we do?” Ilia asked. “Fight?”

“'Fight'?” Gilda repeated. “I thought you were supposed to be an infiltration specialist; no, we’re going to talk our way out of this.” She kept her hands on the wheel.

One police officer appeared beside her, looking up at her with his brown eyes, a sneer playing on a sallow face that might have been cute if it hadn’t been for the disgusted way that he was looking at her.

Gilda could see no sign of his partner.

Gilda tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “Is there a problem, officer?”

“You’ve got a busted taillight,” the cop said.

“No, we don’t,” Gilda said.

There was the sound of breaking glass from the back of the truck.

“Yeah,” the cop said, “You do.” He smirked. “Better not contradict me too much, feathers; it makes you sound hostile. Hostility makes me nervous.”

The other police officer appeared on the other side of the truck, facing Ilia. He was the older looking of the two, with sunken cheeks and heavy brows that overshadowed their eyes.

“What’s a good-looking girl like you doing with a bird like this?” He leered. “Why don’t you come for a ride in our car, love; I promise it goes a lot faster than this thing.”

“I’ll pass, thanks,” Ilia said flatly.

“Look, officers,” Gilda said, “we’ve got a job to do, a lot of deliveries to make—”

“I’m going to have to ask you to watch your tone,” the cop standing at Gilda’s door said.

“There’s nothing wrong with my tone!” Gilda squawked.

“Calm down!” the cop snapped, hand going to the grip of his weapon. “Keep your hands on the wheel.”

Gilda’s knuckles went white as she gripped the wheel so tightly it might crack. With their aura, she and Ilia could certainly kill these two if it came to it, without the help of any of the guys stuffed in the back of the truck, but that might bring attention to them which they really didn’t want.

But what was the alternative? Get shot? Drive off and get chased all through Vale?

Hope that these cops weren’t actually in the mood to shoot someone.

“Where did you get this van, eh?” the cop standing opposite Ilia asked. “Did you steal it?”

As a matter of fact, they had, or at least the White Fang had. Ilia said, “It belongs to our company; read what it says on the side.”

“I can read,” Ilia’s cop said. “I just don’t believe any self-respecting company would employ a bird to drive for them.”

“Let me see your licence and registration,” Gilda’s officer demanded.

Gilda took one hand off the wheel to get the fake ID.

Her cop drew his weapon and pointed it at Gilda’s head. “Put your hands on the wheel now!” he roared.

“But you just—”

“Hands!”

Gilda put her hands back on the wheel. “There, my hands are on the wheel.” It took a great deal of self-restraint not to add ‘are you happy now?’

She didn't say it, but she might as well have, because there was little doubt in her mind at this point that these two meant to shoot them.

They were going to shoot them, and then they were going to say that Gilda had been hostile, that she'd made them afraid for their lives — and, yes, they might well be afraid for their lives with the White Fang around, but they didn't know that Gilda and Ilia were White Fang, and if they had known that, they wouldn't have dared pull them over without backup — and so, really, who could blame them for pulling the trigger?

And if Gilda and Ilia hadn't been in the White Fang, if they hadn't had aura, if they weren't able to kill these two basically whenever they chose, then…

Then we'd be dead.

This was why the White Fang was necessary. Stuff just like this, stuff that Blake and Dash, for all their good intentions, would never stop, would probably never even see, stuff like this that went on every day in Vale, and Mantle, and Mistral, and everywhere faunus and humans lived together. This was what the White Fang was for, when you got right down to it, to stand up against stuff like this, to bite back every once in a while.

Maybe the White Fang hadn't exposed slavery on the part of the SDC, maybe they hadn't started a strike in Mantle, maybe they hadn't changed the world yet, but they could strike back against small injustices, they could revenge wrongs done to the faunus, and they could make sure that a couple of bad cops wouldn't get the chance to hurt any faunus who were less prepared for trouble than she was.

Yeah. Yeah, Gilda was going to kill them both. That hadn't been the plan at first, and it would not be without its problems, but … well, first of all, it didn't look like these cops were going to give them the chance to drive away peacefully, and secondly, they were really starting to get on her nerves.

"This isn't a city for faunus any more," said Ilia's cop. "The real Valish are taking our kingdom back."

Gilda didn't look at Ilia. No doubt one of the High Leader's elite would know what to do once Gilda made a move.

Three, two—

There was the sound of another car pulling up behind the truck and the cop car, although Gilda couldn't see what kind of car because she didn't want to look in her mirror to check. She heard a door open and then slam shut.

"What's going on here, fellas?" asked the new voice. It was a woman's voice, with a thick, strong accent.

"Get back in your car, love; this is an ongoing incident," said Ilia's cop.

"It's 'Lieutenant' to you, darlin'," the apparent lieutenant said. "Lieutenant Martinez, Flying Squad. Now, I'm going to ask you again: what's going on here?"

"Pulled this truck over for a broken taillight," said Gilda's cop, looking away from Gilda. "The driver became hostile."

"Is that so?" asked Martinez flatly. "Probably because you broke their taillight."

"We—"

"Yeah, you did," Martinez said. "And I know you did because I can see the glass on the ground. Or am I supposed to believe that's a coincidence?"

Gilda's cop snorted. "You want to watch yourself, Lieutenant. The kind of cops who throw accusations like that around find that nobody answers when they call for backup."

"I'll take my chances," Martinez growled. "Now, why don't you two get back in your car and drive on?"

There was a moment's pause. Neither of the two uniformed cops moved.

"Now!" Martinez barked.

Now, they moved. Too slow for Gilda's liking, and with obvious reluctance, but they moved all the same. Out of her mirror, she watched them slouch back to their car, slamming the doors petulantly as they went. They turned off the bright flashing lights that meant that Gilda had to squint to look at them.

Their engine growled as they started to drive away.

They both stared out of their windows at Gilda and Ilia as they drove past.

As the squad car disappeared down the road, Lieutenant Martinez walked into view. She was a faunus, which was at once surprising — a faunus lieutenant in the police — and at the same time unsurprising, because who else would have bothered to stick up for them like that? She was a tall woman, with shoulder-length brown hair and kind of ducky lips that made her look as if she was permanently pouting, all set in an oval-shaped face. She wore a dark grey trouser suit with a white blouse, and a brown horse tail emerged from out of her pants to drop towards the floor.

"I'm sorry about that," she said. "On behalf of the VPD, I apologise."

"Thanks for the help, Lieutenant," Gilda replied.

"Yeah, well," Martinez muttered. "Do you have long to go?"

"Why?"

"Because now you really do have a busted taillight, and anyone else who wants to pull you over will have an excuse," Martinez explained. "So get where you're going as fast as you can."

"Should we be worried?" asks Gilda.

Martinez frowned. "This city … ever since the Breach, something has been different about it. And I'm not just talking about people being on edge — that you could understand — I'm talking about people blaming the faunus. People … being more open about how they feel. There have always been my fellow officers who didn't like me — they were there when I joined, and some of them will still be there when I take my pension — but now it's like they feel they can say it louder than they used to."

"But you still work for them," Ilia said.

"It's not all of us, kid," Martinez replied. "It's a few rotten apples; there are plenty of good cops, and I happen to think I'm one of them."

"One rotten apple spoils the whole barrel," said Ilia. "That's the point."

Martinez snorted. "Well, if I get left to have my head kicked in the next time I call for backup, I'll know you were right, but you haven't been right yet." She took a step back. "Best of luck to both of you."

"And you, Lieutenant," Gilda said. "Thanks again." She put her foot on the accelerator, gently easing the truck forward off the curb and back onto the road.

"She's deluding herself," Ilia muttered.

"Same as Rainbow Dash," Gilda replied. "Same as Blake too, probably."

Doesn't mean that they deserve to die for it though.

But her doubts … her doubts were lessened now; they didn't shout so loud, they didn't grab at her attention so easily. What had just happened had quietened them down by reminding her of the importance of the cause, of the struggle. Reminding her that they were fighting to bring an end to things like that, as only the White Fang could.

"The High Leader's right," she said. "Dashie, Blake, the things they're doing … they might do some big flashy stuff, convince people that things are changing for the better, but all it does is paper over stuff like this, stuff that happens to ordinary faunus, stuff that doesn't mean headlines or get attention but which has to be stopped."

"And that's why they have to be stopped," Ilia said. "That's why we have to stop them. And we will." She clenched her hand into a fist. "Blake is going to pay the price for her betrayal."

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