• Published 3rd Apr 2020
  • 4,539 Views, 51 Comments

Equestrian Security SUCKS! - Twilight Glimmer



After Canterlot Castle is blown up, Twilight, Luna, and Celestia realized something that they should have noticed long ago. The Royal Guard SUCKS.

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What Do These Ponies Get Paid For?!

Canterlot Castle was in ruins. Nopony really knew why the castle was in ruins, but there it was. A beautiful piece of architecture reduced to a pile of rubble. The castle’s inhabitants slowly got out of the rubble, surprisingly unharmed. Luna gave Celestia a deadpan stare. “Tia, if this is supposed to be one of your little jokes, I do not find it to be very funny.”

“I didn’t do this, Luna, I was, erm, working on writing tax law, when suddenly I heard a loud explosion, by the time I woke up, I was sitting on a pile of rubble.”

“Uh-huh, and by writing tax law, do you mean stuffing your face with cake?”

“What do you mean?”

“You have icing smeared all over your face.”

Celestia sheepishly wiped her face with her hoof. “I’m going to call Twilight.”

“Isn’t that what you always do?” Luna replied.

“She’ll probably help us in some way. Maybe she’ll find some spell in the castle library that can fix this whole mess!”

“What castle library?”

“Oh, right.”

Looks like we’re going to need all the help we can get,” Luna muttered.


"So, let me get this straight," Twilight began, still trying to process the information that was just relayed to her. "While Luna was sleeping and you were doing paperwork, the castle just suddenly exploded and neither of you has any clue why." Luna and Celestia looked at each other for a second and nodded. Twilight couldn't decide which was worse, the fact that the princesses were so calm about the situation at hand, or that they thought that she was the best one to handle it. "Have you tried asking the servants, or the townspeople, or the guards if they saw anything out of the ordinary?”

“Not exactly,” Celestia admitted.

“Did you guys try doing anything yourselves before you called me?!”

“We got ourselves out of the rubble!” Celestia said. Twilight gave her a deadpan stare.

“We called you here to see if you could find a way to fix the castle,” Luna said. “My sister and I couldn’t recall any construction spells, we hoped you would be able to.”

"Well, I suppose I can try.” Massive amounts of energy began running through Twilights horn. Luna and Celestia watched in awe as an exact replica of Canterlot Castle began to appear. When Twilight finished casting the spell, she stumbled a little to catch her balance. The castle stood tall at a whopping 3 feet in height.

“Um, Twilight,” Luna said, “this looks more like a foal’s plaything than a home.”

“I’m so sorry. I only know how to construct things under 3 feet. Your castle is just too big.”

“It’s alright, Twilight. We can at least use it to show the construction ponies what they’re supposed to be building,” Celestia said.

“How about we try and figure out why the castle exploded while it’s being reconstructed?” Twilight suggested.

“That sounds good to me,” Celestia agreed.


“So you have no clue what happened?!” Twilight asked exasperatedly.

“I’m sorry, your highnesses, but I don’t know what happened that caused all of this,” the guard responded. Twilight sighed and turned to face the princesses.

“There are fourteen hundred seventy-three guards, and not a single one of them knows how the castle was destroyed!”

“Twilight, perhaps this is a lost cause,” Luna said.

“Maybe you’re right,” Twilight relented. Suddenly, she felt someone tugging on her tail. She looked down and saw a yellow filly with purple hair and big green eyes.

“Uh, excuse me,” the filly said. “I wanted to say sorry for blowing up the castle.” She looked at Celestia. “I didn’t mean it, I swear, it just sorta happened.”

Celestia looked at the filly. “You blew up the castle, Cheerful Breeze?”

The filly nodded. “Yes, your highness. It was an accident. I’m so sorry!” She was trembling at this point and had tears in her eyes. “Please don’t throw me in the dungeon!”

Celestia was beyond confused at this point. “How did you accidentally blow up an entire castle?”

“I was researching how to build a smoke bomb for science class, and I decided to build a vintage one to try and get some extra credit. I had heard ponies talking about how there was a secret room in the castle that contained numerous artifacts from previous wars, including weapons that stopped being used in battle because of technological advances. One day, I decided to ask a guard if what I had been hearing was correct. And he told me that it was true. There was a room that contained enough old weapons to win The 'Goumen ak Boom Boom Gwo' four times, and have a firework show afterward. He explained that it was a secret, and nopony knew where it was, but he said it was okay if I look for it."

"And he just let you in the private sectors of the castle?" Celestia asked.

"They asked me if I liked friendship, and I said yeah, then they just let me through."

"Well, I suppose I'll be having a talk with him tonight. Please continue."

"I spent a few minutes roaming the halls, then I found another guard. I asked him if he knew where the secret room was so that I could do my assignment. He smiled and handed me a map with the locations of all of the storage rooms in the castle. Then he told me that he hopes the map will help me with my project."

Celestia was beyond stunned at this point. "He had a map?!" she asked. Cheerful Breeze nodded. Celestia sighed. "So we've established a reoccurring issue. I'll need to address this even more so later, apparently. Go on."

"I made my way through the castle when I came down to a dead end. I was confused because the map said that there were nine storage rooms in that hallway. But luckily, I was able to figure out where the secret room was!"

"Wait a minute," Luna interjected, "if it was a secret room, then how were you able to find it so quickly?"

"I found a plaque that said 'secret room six paces east', but it was in a different language."

The three princesses glanced at each other, all equally bewildered. "And that would be?" Luna asked.

"It was in Bird Latin, your majesty."

"Bird Latin?!" The princesses exclaimed.

"Why would anypony write something like that in Bird Latin?! That's one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world!" Twilight remarked in disbelief.

Luna nodded. "Indeed, it is one of the few languages that is shared between the ponies, griffins, dragons, and even the yaks. Who would be so ignorant to use it on a sign that directs someone to a room full of dangerous weapons?!"

Realization dawned as Twilight and Luna turned to face Celestia, who was smiling nervously.

"Pray tell, dear sister, what compelled you to give instructions for our enemies to commit regicide?" Luna pressed.

"Well, ponies are always asking me to donate mementos to various museums and such, and I needed a place to store them where nopony could get to them so they won't get broken or stolen. So I ordered for the secret room to be built. Over time, I started getting more and more requests for contributions, and I didn't have the time to figure out which room was the one I was looking for, so I wrote myself some instructions. Besides, there are guards stationed there so that if anypony were to be snooping around in there, they would be stopped immediately."

...

"And where were those guards today?"

"They were on their lunch break?" Celestia suggested.

"Lunch was three hours ago," responded Twilight.

"And the Solar Guard traditionally has two standbys for every active station, so there should have been at least one pony, if not more to cover for him if he was taking a break." Luna pointed out.

If Cheerful had been uncomfortable before, it was nothing compared to what she was feeling now. She mustered up all the courage she held in her small body. "Pardon me, your majesties, but did you want me to finish my story?"

Celestia sighed. "Please cut to the chase".

"Okay then. I put the passcode into the magic lock, and no offense princess, but I hardly think 0000 is a secure code. Anyway, I opened the door and I was looking around at all of the cool stuff then I tripped and fell and-"

"Thank you, Cheerful Breeze. That will be all for now, but I will be speaking to your guardians about this in the coming days."

"Y-you aren't going to throw me in the dungeon?!" Cheerful asked nervously.

"Even if I wanted to, there isn't exactly a dungeon for me to keep you in right now. Now, go find your parents, they must be worried sick about you."

Cheerful nodded, bowed, then ran off.

"I knew you weren't exactly the greatest warrior back in the day, but I cannot believe that you managed to survive this long with this kind of security!" Luna shouted in disbelief.

"I wasn't that bad! And do you honestly think I approve of this behavior?!"

"Well apparently you do, you haven't bothered to fix it yet!"

"I'll be having a long discussion with all of the guards and the captains as soon as the castle is rebuilt. They will-"

"Name one time in the last decade where they were useful when they needed to be."

"Uh... Well, how about the... They certainly helped during the... Twilight! Didn't the guards help you look for Luna and I when the Everfree took over?"

"They helped a little, but they didn't exactly contribute much to the search party."

"And how about Chrysalis? They fell for her lies and allowed you to be captured. I never saw any of them attempt to stop Tirek, even before their magic was stolen. Then they let both of us get thrown into Tartarus. And that's just the big stuff! I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've caught someone picking flowers from our garden, or sampling from the kitchen when the poor chefs have their backs turned. I've even found a pony sniffing my pillowcase once!"

"Maybe this is a bigger problem than I gave it credit for."

"You think?! I can't believe it's taken this long for you to see it!"

"Wait, Twilight, your brother was one of the best captains Equestria has ever had. Did he show you some of his techniques, by any chance?"

"Well, we sort of lost touch once he became captain. He's incredibly strong, and his shields are almost unbreakable, but as much as I love my brother, he wasn't exactly the brightest crayon in the box. I saw one of his spelling tests once, he put a 'd' in the word 'orange'."

"Well, I suppose he did have his off days."

"He took that test in ninth grade."

Celestia was stunned. "Am I really this bad at finding ponies to protect my country?"

"I suppose it's not entirely your fault," Luna assured, "maybe we need to up the training at the academy. Fifteen hours a day! They can sleep in the caves where they'll shiver enough to make sleeping a workout! They'll fight manticores to the death and drink the blood-"

"Will you settle for a basic intelligence test and mandatory three weeks of field training?"

"Deal!"

The two sisters walked off to discuss their plans for a useful set of guards. Twilight rolled her eyes and started her journey home. "I can't wait for the day the castle gets attacked by a pony," she thought.

Author's Note:

Hope you all enjoyed it! I know there's many unanswered questions from the original, but that was an intentional decision. The third installment will happen eventually, until then, have a nice day!

Comments ( 51 )

That... makes a surprising amount of sense.

What security? I always thought there was none, aside from stuff hidden behind secret walls, given that most ponies usually don't even lock their doors.

Wait... are you telling me... that the royal guard were supposed to be security? Let me die of laughter as I walk into the treasury like a walk in closet and walk out with a sack of money without anyone questioning me about it.

If a guard does question me, I'll just say I'm the royal money launderer and I clean the money so it doesn't get dusty. There's an eighty percent chance that that would work.

Wind Rider got by the royal guard with a Chocolate Cherry Cake. It took a single cake and a very minimal amount of planning for someone to get past them, he would have even gotten away with his plan to frame Rainbow Dash if he had just bothered to change scarves. Heck, Wind could have just flipped his scarf around so the stain wasn't showing.

Even Shining Armor never actually really does much as a royal guard either. If your going to argue that Shining Armor created all those odd security measures that stopped Twilight Sparkle and her friends, said security measures were made with them specifically in mind. Also said devices only temporarily hindered Tirek, Cozy and Chrysalis, not enough to do so more than once and afterwards said security measures stopped working entirely.

So really the security measures that cost thousands of bits, plus the cost of constantly feeding the alarm animals, get circumnavigated by a foal, a changeling and a centaur with relative ease.

In fact those security measures Shining adds made security a lot more worse. The fans on the roof prevent royal Pegasus guards from doing their jobs. He hired a bunch of ponies that have no experience or training to be guards like Zephyr. There's also the animals, how many bits do you think it costs for them to feed all those alarm animals in the throne room? He's not only making the security worse, his security measures are costing a fortune due to the overall inefficiency of it.

When you have one royal guard that's one hundred percent more competent than the entirety of the royal guard combined, who fails to stop an invasion with prior warning and even makes it worse, then you should really hire a foal to poke holes in all the security measures.

Eh amusing idea. but I tend to put the failings of the Royal Guard down to their having to fight op enemies, and bad choices by the leadership, and I'm not talking about a entrance exam.

10161904

It's not just OP enemies.

Remember Wind Rider? A chocolate cherry cake.

10161918
Yeah, forgot about that one.

Not sure if the structure was even qualified to house regal horses.

Rubble should've crushed at least a hoof.

The thing 'bout a house of cards, is that it always falls apart.

Unlike this story.

Which is built on a strong foundation.

10161897
Evil Overlord Rule No.12 - One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

The shiver idea wouldn’t work. A body can only shiver for so long before fatigue just causes the reaction to stop. For a human average is two hours before the threshold is hit.

10161897

It took a single cake and a very minimal amount of planning for someone to get past them, he would have even gotten away with his plan to frame Rainbow Dash if he had just bothered to change scarves. Heck, Wind could have just flipped his scarf around so the stain wasn't showing.

I mean he did conceal the stain behind his knot, Rarity simply exposed it. While his changing scarves may have had some merit, it's possible depending on how efficient the cleaning crews were, that someone could've have spotted it and made the connection.

Also said devices only temporarily hindered Tirek, Cozy and Chrysalis, not enough to do so more than once and afterwards said security measures stopped working entirely.

Technically they did nearly prevent them from sneaking into the castle, just not from blasting their way in.

The real issue is the fact that the items that should have prevented them from blasting in were not in play, which seems odd considering the defense measures were made for precisely that reason, in response to Sombra's assault.

It's possible they had taken down, and where redoing most of the defenses, after their failure in Twilight's Seven, but it does seem suspiciously convenient that they were taken down just in time for a large scale villain attack, although it's possible Discord planned it that way.

He hired a bunch of ponies that have no experience or training to be guards like Zephyr.

That was actually Luna trying to sabotage her sister.

There's also the animals, how many bits do you think it costs for them to feed all those alarm animals in the throne room?

In fairness they nearly caught the Team Three sneaking into the castle the first time and helped to defeat Cozy when she comes to the castle on her own, so they were actually a pretty good investment all things considered.

10161897
I'm sorry. I agree with you, but... Just...

a lot more worse.

Aaah! I can't! NOOOOO- *dead*

10161904
Let's not forget that apparently they never actually check up on the prisoners in Tartarus in the slightest just to make sure they're there or at least alive, as nobody ever thought to maybe have wanted posters at all for Tirek and Cozy once they noticed they were gone. Is there no way for Cerberus to have a signal for an escape or something?

It's a miracle the guards are even still around considering they can all be distracted by a country music performance.

10162248

Even if Luna hired Zephyr, someone in the guard had to vet him to even at least let him wear that armor. It's either that or Luna was providing a security risk or flaw on purpose to spite her sister. This means that the leaders of the nation are actually causing their own problems by not making sure their military is up to snuff.

Even then it would be still up to Shining to vet the ponies added to the guard even if the princesses were involved in hiring them, he technically came back to his job as Captain of the Guard for that episode. If he wasn't acting as Captain of the guard, then he should have at least someone checking all the new hires for plants in the guard from his sister.

As for the alarm animals they had about fifty or a hundred in a single room, instead of spread out throughout the castle to look for anything suspicious which is still highly inefficient and the cost of feeding them as attack dogs is still going to make taxes go up. They only needed about five in the throne room at the least considering how loud they all are.

10162418

I'm horrible.

10162437

Cake, country music performances, the princesses being missing in a crisis and tickling, what are they not distracted by at any given moment?

The only time they somewhat successful at doing their jobs is when Celestia visits Ponyville with Philomena, as nothing happened aside from them being tickled by the phoenix and Celestia being on the receiving end of an overabundance of kindness from the Cakes.

They are definitely not the stoic British Royal Guards.

10162503

10162503

As for the alarm animals they had about fifty or a hundred in a single room, instead of spread out throughout the castle to look for anything suspicious which is still highly inefficient

They only needed about five in the throne room at the least considering how loud they all are.

Considering how few we actually see atacking Cozy in the final they proberbly wised up at some point.

and the cost of feeding them as attack dogs is still going to make taxes go up.

Considering they put on a festival to celebrate Swans, I think paying to feed attack birds are proberbly the least of the taxpayer's worries.

This means that the leaders of the nation are actually causing their own problems

I mean this is nothing new for the sisters. Twilight's Kingdom shows Celestia sends Discord out to deal with Tirek without another plan of attack, any backup, or as far as we know, any real plan of monitoring, shortly after his biological weapon kidnapped both sisters and held the sun and the moon hostage. (Princess Twilight Sparkle)

Maybe she saw exactly what it would led to, (although we don't know that she can see the future,) or maybe it was because she figured that Discord's anti-social behavior would mean he would never accept a team up, even if Tirek was inventive to offer it, but that's still a big gamble (which didn't pay off).

Their are many more cases of the sisters shooting themselves in the hoof. Discord's reformation alone has produced a bunch of issues to deal with, but their are many other cases of them screwing up. Not investigating Cadence during A Canterlot Wedding, at a time when the kingdom was on high alert, when she knew how fallible ponies are (she was betrayed on two separate occasions by both her own sister and her former student) lead to the changelings nearly overrunning Equestria. Her sending magical artifacts to Twilight (neither the safest nor the most observant caretaker) allowed Cozy to arraign the draining of all the magic in Equestria.

I could go on but I think it's safe to say between Twilight's terrible custodianship, Celestia's bad judgment, Cadence's poor delegation and Luna's Nightmare Moon period, all of the princess have at least one in cannon blunder on their record.

10162437

It's a miracle the guards are even still around considering they can all be distracted by a country music performance.

Forgot that too.

Is there no way for Cerberus to have a signal for an escape or something?

Probably not.

Let's not forget that apparently they never actually check up on the prisoners in Tartarus in the slightest just to make sure they're there or at least alive, as nobody ever thought to maybe have wanted posters at all for Tirek and Cozy once they noticed they were gone.

Seeing as Tartures seems able to preserve them without them needing food and water or you know waste reduction, unless the guards are just making daily trips all the way out there to provide those things for them (which I consider highly unlikely), Celestia proberbly has a policy of just letting them rot, which to be fair, outside of random events (Cerberus leaving his post in It's About Time, and 'Grogar' busting them out in The Beginning Of The End) has worked quite well. A thousand years of imprisonment is nothing to sneeze at after all. I do think it's telling that Celestia uses a dog to guard Tartures as opposed to a platoon of ponies, although there may be any number of reasons (not just incompetence), as to why that is the case.

I'm like think Shining Armor competence actually made the guards lazier. If one pony can protect the whole castle by himself then the other guards are going to slack "Let Shining Armor do it." Likely became a go to excuse for not doing their jobs. I mean the castle security wasn't even effective till Shining was allowed to set up all the counter defenses and security check points. Just too bad Shining didn't fix security till AFTER multiple villains breached the castle over and over. Also it kind of sucks if they rebuilt the throne room before the movie, it managed to be destroyed twice follow this time, once by the Storm King, then blown up along with most of the building by Teirk, Chryissi and Cozy!

"Will you settle for a basic intelligence test and mandatory three weeks of field training?"

"Deal!"

Brains and Brawn. Heh... works for me.

Also, who else pictures this song playing during the field training?

Don't be too hard on Shining Armor, he might not be bright, but, like Twilight said, he's strong. He kept that shield over Canterlot going despite Chrysalis draining him of emotional energy and worming her way into his mind. (I don't care what anyone says, even if he wasn't 100% brainwashed when he told off Twilight, I refuse to believe he was thinking clearly, cause that would mean the "headache relief" spell Chryssie cast did nothing)

The real reasons those Royal Guard never do anything: if they did, we'll have one less thing to make fun of, and funny stories like these wouldn't exist!

Nightmare Moon, Starlight Glimmer, Cozy Glow are not ponies?

10163639
This story took place before season 8, so there was no Cozy Glow.

Starlight Glimmer never directly attacked Equestria, only Twilight.

Nightmare moon, ehh...

Okay, you got me there. Fixing it now.

Eden #22 · Apr 4th, 2020 · · ·

Remember Featherweight, guys.

A little colt went full paparazzi, broke in the Castle's rooms, did a photoshoot about Celestia and her cake, come back home and published the photos in the school paper with not a single problem.

All canon.

So, this story is REALLY plausible.

You could make an actual episode with this idea.

10161904
I say that people would have to be really stupid to invade Equestria as Luna and Celestia control the sun and moon. If they are injured it killed the people invading are effectively killing the rest of the world.

10164412 Unless you're going to steal their powers, which as canon shows, is only slightly harder than something very easy.

10164619
But then you have to have the people be smart. Which is not that common in the show.

10164412
The problem with that of course, is that you have so many villains who have magic to bypass their control of the sun and the moon, that it's fairly alarming. Now granted they couldn't have anticipated all of the stuff that comes for them, but by the end they've seen a lot off crazy stuff, and yet they still haven't really bothered to prepare for most of it.

"It was in Bird Latin, your majesty."

:rainbowlaugh: W-what?! Bird Latin!:rainbowlaugh::rainbowlaugh::rainbowlaugh:

This was just absolutely amazing! Between the adorable and humorous bickering from the sisters and the great writing in general, ah this was a masterpiece! I hope ya didn't mind, but I made a little reading on it! Sorry about it being so late!

Audio Linky!: https://youtu.be/vEIg5CeMv6E

(I don't mean to offend anyone with this comment!)

If this happened before the movie, then twilight will get her wish sooner than she thinks. Though now I kinda want there to be a sequel where tempest takes charge of the guard and makes them half decent. Excellent work :twilightsmile:

'Goumen ak Boom Boom Gwo'

that is the most ridiculous name for a war i have ever heard,

I mean think about it,

Soldier 1: hi i just came home from the Vietnam war,

Soldier 2: well i just did the Korean war,

Soldier 3: I JUST FINISHED THE GOUMEN AK BOOM BOOM GWO WAR!

Soldier 1 and 2: oooooookey..... @.@

10167482
It's actually in a different language. Try putting it into Google translate. :rainbowlaugh:

10167508

Fight with Big Boom Boom!

christ, XD

10166619
Geez this is flipping amazing thank you so much!

Okay, even Celestia from TDR's "Twilight gets a Puppy" isn't that incompetent with her security.

casully walks up kicks celestia and luna out puts up a sign saying under new management and fires all the nobility before taking a nap in thr throne room

(you gotta admit with how bad the security is that seems plausible)

10194502
well yer have you met the sparkle siblings im suprised they dont run the army and have them do the work so they can relax

I can't believe that nobody has pointed out the Mean Girls reference

10202883
Well now I am going to! I never figured Shining would be a Karen but I suppose it's accurate XD

...I'm weird, I get really excited when I see references to Mean Girls.

10202861
There's a number of fics up already... I mean, they typically involve Anon, but hey - they exist. ;D

"Well, we sort of lost touch once he became captain. He's incredibly strong, and his shields are almost unbreakable, but as much as I love my brother, he wasn't exactly the brightest crayon in the box. I saw one of his spelling tests once, he put a 'd' in the word 'orange'."

How did so many people miss this incredible Mean Girls reference?

This story is absolutely hilarious! Fantastic work, Miss Author.

"They asked me if I liked friendship, and I said yeah, then they just let me through."

Everybody, I present to you: Equestrian logic

"Well, we sort of lost touch once he became captain. He's incredibly strong, and his shields are almost unbreakable, but as much as I love my brother, he wasn't exactly the brightest crayon in the box. I saw one of his spelling tests once, he put a 'd' in the word 'orange'."

OMG I GET THAT MEAN GIRLS REFERENCE. I have found my people, the musical theatre people

Stories like this just serve to prove that Humanity and his sock puppet BG8 are delusional or something. I mean, Equestria doesn't even seem to have a military. They just have guards!

Very funny and accurate. Remonds me of the bannana guards. Only at least that princess loved them inspite of being idiots. Here... Well silly talking horses be silly talkimg horses.

Canterlot Castle was in ruins. Nopony really knew why the castle was in ruins, but there it was. A beautiful piece of architecture reduced to a pile of rubble. The castle’s inhabitants slowly got out of the rubble, surprisingly unharmed.

Don't worry: Ponies are too cute as they could be harmed by things like that.

“Did you guys try doing anything yourselves before you called me?!”
“We got ourselves out of the rubble!” Celestia said. Twilight gave her a deadpan stare.

Still an improvement, I guess...

“My sister and I couldn’t recall any construction spells, we hoped you would be able to.”
"Well, I suppose I can try.” Massive amounts of energy began running through Twilights horn. Luna and Celestia watched in awe as an exact replica of Canterlot Castle began to appear. When Twilight finished casting the spell, she stumbled a little to catch her balance. The castle stood tall at a whopping 3 feet in height.

I had to think of this scene:


Good story!
I enjoyed reading it.

This story was really funny! I liked that a mere goal could infiltrate the most secure parts of the royal residence, let alone secret areas and the guards actually assist her! And Twilight, poor dear, finally asked the question we’ve all been asking: why can’t you two, the most powerful beings in Equestria, figure out your own problems? I think she’s starting to get her fill, if you catch my point.

I have to wonder if this was one of the reasons that Luna wanted to take over a millennia ago…

Very good story, Twilight. A little edge snd lots of ironic humor. I really enjoyed it!

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