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Post by clarissa amber giroux. on Jan 10, 2011 18:07:19 GMT -5
 when the devil wants to dance with you ,YOU BETTER SAY NEVER[/color][/font] because a dance with the devil might last you forever[/color][/font] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -[/color][/center][/color][/font]
The digital clock on Clarissa Giroux's bedside table ticked to 12:07 am, but curled up in her bed, her black bedsheets and blankets strewn all around her in disarray, Clarissa was in a world completely her own. Her breathing rose and fell at not-quite a steady pace, her eyes were closed, and she was, for all intends and purposes, dead to the world. She'd been this way for nearly three hours already. She was always the early to bed, late to wake up girl. That was fortunate for her, since she didn't have a roommate to wake her. Currently the teenage girl was completely oblivious to the world she physically filled, because the world in her mind and her dreams were the only thing she was focused on.
She was out on the streets in the city she'd grown up in. To be more specific, she was sitting in the dead-end alley she'd called her home for two years. The familiar crates lined the walls around her, the dumpster near the entrance of the alley stank as much as ever, and everything was as she'd known it for years before. She stood at the end of the alley, looking around. She was so tired of this place. She was so tired of feeling so cold. She was so tired of feeling like her stomach was about to digest her from the inside out. She was so tired of the coughs and flus and visits to the hospital... but things she was sick of didn't matter. This was life. She just needed to survive it.
If Clarissa had been paying a bit more attention to her surroundings, she might have noticed that the proportions of the streets around her were a bit off. She might notice, as she left the alley and walked down the street, head down, hands in her pockets, that the coloring of the buildings was off and that the streets seemed to be an endless maze of ever shifting widths and lengths that she couldn't escape from. But Clarissa didn't pay any attention to that. She focused on the shifting sidewalk in front of her, occasionally looking up at the men and women passing by, searching for a vulnerable wealthy looking soul that might have a bit of money to keep her going hidden in their purse or wallet. Then she'd just walk by, 'bump' into them, and get away with the loot. Immoral? Yes. Illegal? Yes. Surviving? Yes.
A small smirk crossed over her lips as she saw a good potential victim; a young man a few years older than her wearing a loose black coat. She clearly recognized the bulge in his pocket as a wallet. All she needed to do was get it. She walked by, bumped into him, and muttered a quiet 'sorry' as she walked on with his thick brown leather wallet clutched in her hand. She hurried back to her 'home' and perched herself at the top of the crates that were stacked in a half-pyramid pattern in the corner of the alley. She could practically taste the meals this money would bring already. But when she opened the wallet and looked inside her heart fell. Empty. Like always. Why should she expect anything different? All night the wallets and purses that had looked so promising were empty. She would probably end up starving to death. "Goddammit..."
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Post by abraham kip winters. on Jan 10, 2011 18:24:02 GMT -5
In his humble opinion, Abraham was in no part to blame for the situation he was in.
How was he to know that the door that led to Clarissa's dreamspace would be positioned several miles up in the sky? How was he to know it would open horizontally, sending him into a freefall the moment he walked through it?
And now the teenager had been falling like this for some time, longer than would have been possible in the 'real' world. The wind continued to rush past his head, ruffling through his already messy brown hair and flapping at the black suit that he always wore in dreams. His now electric-blue eyes drooped in an exasperated expression. He checked his wristwatch, which, of course, displayed a deformed shape that provided him with no new information. Then he glanced over his shoulder and saw ground.
THUD.
"Ow." Was all he said, lying perfectly still on the graveled ground of the alleyway. He clearly wasn't hurt too badly though, as he immediately scrabbled to his feet and patted his suit down. He was as scruffy as ever, even if he had gained a fashion sense in the space between falling asleep and entering a dream.
He looked around at the buildings, unaware of Clarissa perched on a stack of crates behind him.
"This is it, isn't it? Surely..."
He dragged a finger along the wall of the nearest structure and stuck it in his mouth. He smacked his lips, tasting it, and cringed, and then turned around in a circle, stopping abruptly when he finally saw Clarissa.
"Ah! I was right! I had to go through about twenty, but I managed it! I knew I would!" He wagged his building-tasting finger at her.
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Post by clarissa amber giroux. on Jan 10, 2011 18:44:15 GMT -5
when the devil wants to dance with you ,YOU BETTER SAY NEVER [/color][/font] because a dance with the devil might last you forever[/color][/font] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -[/color][/center][/color][/font] This made no sense. That was Clarissa's first thought. She knew this guy. Somehow she knew him. But he'd just fallen out of the sky. And was unharmed. Then he ate, or tasted one of the buildings that sheltered her. He had to be insane. The thought rang a bell in the corners of her memory. She knew she'd met him before, but where exactly and how she couldn't remember. She could remember meeting him in this city, and something was really different about him... her brain was going to start hurting from the oddity of this.
"Twenty... twenty what? Who the..." She was stunned; couldn't find any words. This didn't make sense, and yet something in the back of her mind told her that there was a perfectly logical explanation to it. What was logical about guys falling out of the sky and tasting buildings, though?
"Okay, who the fuck are you and how did you just do...well, that?" she gestured up at her sky, pretty sure that her point was being made by her language alone. How many other things could she really be referring to right now?
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Post by abraham kip winters. on Jan 10, 2011 18:57:40 GMT -5
"Yes, quite." Abe replied, in a rather dismissive manner. Then he ignored her question completely and turned his attention back to their surroundings. "Let's see, urban surrounding, detail isn't bad... feels like a memory. You spent quite some time here, didn't you? Sorry!" He clasped a hand to his eyes. "I shouldn't look!"
No matter how many times he did it, it always seemed to Abe that entering someone's dream was just like slipping them a truth pill. Unless you stopped them, they would spill their heart to you. Even without trying to, you could walk into their secrets, their innermost thoughts, or a memory from a long-lost past. Until they knew they were dreaming, they were helpless to lock these things away. Abe was someone who valued privacy, so he always tried to avoid picking up on anything before he could deliver the good news. Even so, it was always so hard not to sneak a peak.
"Clarissa." He said, still covering his eyes and talking in the direction that he thought she was in. "You don't remember me yet, that's normal, that's fine. Everything..." He felt around with his spare hand for the side of the building. "Everything will make sense... when I tell you... that... hold on..." He quickly removed his hand to re-orientate himself and lean against the wall. "This isn't real." He said simply. "You're dreaming right now. If you don't believe me, just think back and ask yourself how you got here." That should clear everything up. The up-to-date memories of her 'real' life should flood her head. Abe waited to see... or rather hear the results.
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Post by clarissa amber giroux. on Jan 11, 2011 1:36:38 GMT -5
when the devil wants to dance with you ,YOU BETTER SAY NEVER [/color][/font] because a dance with the devil might last you forever[/color][/font] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -[/color][/center][/color][/font]
A... dream? Clarissa looked around her, blinking slowly. Of course it was. She'd had this one many times before, or variations of it at least (she could never remember the specifics when she woke up). It was basically reliving the days of her life on the streets, with the details flawed and twisted, sometimes to a terrifying nightmare scenario. She should have realized that this was a dream. It had been months since she'd been out on the street like this. Just four months shy of a year. She didn't have to worry about starving or catching some illness and dying of it as long as she was under Power's Academy's roof. That was basically the only reason that she put up with the school, its teachers, and its students. It was all about survival.
Okay, now that she realized she was dreaming, there was only one more question she had to answer for herself, and it seemed to become more and more urgent with each passing second as Clarissa became increasingly aware of her company in this make-believe alley.
"Okay. This is all a dream," she stated flatly to reassure herself. She turned to the boy, Abraham if she was remembering correctly, her green eyes narrowing. "Answer me this then, forest boy; what the hell are you doing in my dream? I just met you today for a half hour. There's no reason whatsoever for you to be in this," she gestured her hand around at the cold buildings, crates, and traffic outside of the alley, "dream world. I don't get attached to people that fucking quick." Actually she generally didn't get attached to people at all, but that was beside the point right now. Her dreams, or the bits of them that she could remember in consciousness, involved her and her duplicates. Not even her biological family made and appearance anymore. What possible reason was there for her mind to drag a guy she barely met into her sleep?
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Post by abraham kip winters. on Jan 11, 2011 3:02:30 GMT -5
"Who knows?" Abe said, peering between the gaps in his fingers. "Maybe I made a better first impression than I thought."
He felt safe to remove his hand. Judging by her speech, Clarissa had gathered her thoughts together and when that happens private thoughts and secret memories tend to be automatically locked away by the subconscious of the dreamer.
"Or maybe," Abe went on, hoisting himself onto a crate so he could sit on the edge next to Clarissa, "I'm doing what I said I would."
He always found this process interesting. Forcing lucidity, forcing awareness onto a person could have varying effects. For the most part, the subject would be just like his friend here; they would suddenly realize what they knew all along. However someone with a more tense mental state might have had it differently. Once when he informed a person that they were dreaming, their mind rejected the idea and things had started melting. Before they knew it they were up to their necks in liquid dreamstuff.
He was glad to see that wasn't to be the case with Clarissa. More than anything, it was a bother to have to deal with.
"I did say, didn't I, that I'd show you my power later? Well you can't get much later than this." His eye caught be something, he peered over her shoulder at the wallet she was holding.
"Wow." He said, and now it contained a sizable wad of cash. "I hope you didn't dream-steal that." He was as easily as distracted as ever, apparently.
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Post by clarissa amber giroux. on Jan 11, 2011 17:48:41 GMT -5
when the devil wants to dance with you ,YOU BETTER SAY NEVER [/color][/font] because a dance with the devil might last you forever[/color][/font] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -[/color][/center][/color][/font] No, Clarissa was pretty much positive that Abe hadn't made that good of an impression. Sure, he was an interesting guy, but... she assumed that you had to be more than just interesting to make enough of an impression on her to work your way into her dreams, or nightmare as it were.
Maybe he should be making more sense to her, but she was tired and stressed and really couldn't process whatever he meant for a good few seconds. "Wait, so this is your power? You can send yourself into people's consciousness or something? You can spy on people in their thoughts?"
When he glanced at her wallet Clarissa suddenly remember it's existence and tried to hide it behind her, a scowl on her lips. "It's none of your business," she snapped, perhaps a bit too quickly. She was just pretty protective about her past and her little criminal activities. They weren't exactly the type of thing that she would be eager to have spread around Power's Academy because of one curious individual with a knack for getting into people's brains, literally. She wasn't completely oblivious to morals. She knew that what she did in the past was wrong, she also knew that if she hadn't she easily could have died. Either way, it wasn't Abe's concern in her opinion.
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Post by abraham kip winters. on Jan 11, 2011 18:14:27 GMT -5
"Spying is such a harsh word..." Abe replied vaguely, as though it was an accusation more than a question. "That's not all it's good for. In fact I barely consider that one of my night-time past times. I covered my eyes until I told you it was a dream, remember? It was about twenty seconds ago. I gave you time to hide anything you didn't want me to see before looking."
It was like his power was to walk into bathrooms, and out of decency he covered his eyes to let people that were getting out of the shower cover up before they had a conversation. He didn't know why you'd have a conversation in the bathroom though. It wasn't a very good metaphor at all really, it just sprang into his head. He reflected that it was probably a good idea that he didn't say it out loud.
Abe then hopped down off the crates, as unable to sit still in a world of half-truths and uncertainties as he was in the real one.
"No, I'm not a spy. I'm more like... well, I can be anything. That's the point. And so can you."
When she snatched the wallet out of his view, Abe just shrugged. He supposed it wasn't anything to do with him. Still, he thought he could afford to indulge in just a little bit of nosiness.
"Whatever. I bet millions of people waste their nights stealing wallets that are actually figments of their imaginations from themselves. My power lets me snap them out of it. And that's what I'm doing for you now."
He turned around, facing away, and rested his arms behind his head, perfectly mimicking his actions from the forest, earlier that very same day.
"There's a whole world out there, Clarissa. More than a world; there can be a universe, if you want there to be. And while the night lasts, I'm your ticket to explore it."
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Post by clarissa amber giroux. on Jan 12, 2011 0:50:10 GMT -5
when the devil wants to dance with you ,YOU BETTER SAY NEVER [/color][/font] because a dance with the devil might last you forever[/color][/font] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -[/color][/center][/color][/font] Of course she remembered him telling her this was all a dream. She didn't have short term memory loss or anything of the sort. But it was kind of a big thing to take in so quickly. Her mind had always been the one place that she knew was safe. And now apparently it wasn't. Wasn't that just a joy to discover.
"Oh really?" She failed in resisting the urge to roll her eyes. "So I could be a princess in a faraway castle if I wanted to?"
Maybe Clarissa was just a bit too testy on the wallet subject. Okay, maybe she was a lot too testy. As soon as Abe brought it up again her eyes narrowed even more, her experienced scowl curling her lip in anger. Probably the most frustrating thing was the fact that she couldn't even seem to be able to tell whether he was serious or mocking her. "I don't care about what other people do with wallets. I don't concern myself with them." Yeah, she was probably very over defensive. You'd think that she'd know better, being as guarded around people as she usually was, but this entire scenario and the invasion of her privacy had her too flustered to think straight.
She kind of felt bad when she realized how rude she must seem to be, but she couldn't help it. A lifetime of foster home after foster home and being stuck on the streets had made her incredibly defensive, and her initial defensive reaction was to use sarcasm and forget any slight urge to actually use manners. Besides, couldn't Abe share some of the blame for springing up on her like this?
"A guided tour through dreamland with forest-dream boy." She was more talking to herself than to him, and the idea sounded even more ridiculous aloud than it did in her head. "Well... it's not like I have anywhere else to be."
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Post by abraham kip winters. on Jan 12, 2011 3:36:31 GMT -5
Sensing the more than irritable tone in her voice, Abe stopped talking for once, and gave her the silence to calm down in. He was so used to walking into other people's dreams that he didn't think there was anything wrong with it. He'd been doing it almost his whole life, and so when people reacted like this, he couldn't fully understand it. All he could do was be patient and wait to see if they came around to the idea. That's what this was all about, wasn't it? Or... was she really concerned about his thoughts on the wallet thing.
He turned around to face her, his unnatural eyes softening a little.
"I'm sorry." He muttered sincerely, "The wallet thing was just a metaphor anyway. I was making a point."
He gave her a few seconds longer to gather her thoughts, and when she seemed to come around to the idea, at least a little, he broke into his usual carefree smile.
"Good!" He said, hoping that maybe the mood would lift when she realized what his power allowed; that it wasn't just an invading force to be wary of. "I'll take the first one then, so you can see how it's done."
He moved over to the far wall, the side of the adjacent building, and a plain rectangular doorway materialized in front of him. He grabbed into the handle and, without hesitation, tugged it open. Visible on the other side of the door, contrary to being the inside of an office block, was grass. Green grass on the ground, and not much else at this point. The place on the other side of this door was one he had built just for this kind of purpose - when a guest needed to cool down and relax.
He also used the 'door method' to travel between dreams, but for now it was just an easy and plausible way to change the scenery of the dream. Subtle enough so that it wouldn't overwhelm Clarissa's mind, but magical enough to be impressive.
Abe held the door open and smiled up at Clarissa, waiting for her to take the first steps into her own dream as she didn't know it yet.
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Post by clarissa amber giroux. on Jan 16, 2011 13:20:50 GMT -5
when the devil wants to dance with you ,YOU BETTER SAY NEVER [/color][/font] because a dance with the devil might last you forever[/color][/font] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -[/color][/center][/color][/font] Seeing as this encounter was most definitely a first for Clarissa, her hesitation and uneasiness was probably natural. SHe couldn't help but wonder how many random people's dreams Abe jumped himself into each night, or what kinds of things he saw. Personally she thought that he'd caught her in one of her worst dreams ever. Her past was not exactly something she liked to share, even to people she didn't mind the company of. What girl wanted people to know that she was an orphan, and had been a 'street rat' for many years of her young life? It wasn't at all glamorous, it wasn't flattering, and it just wasn't cool. But of course this had to be the one dream that Abe caught her in. Why couldn't he have popped by another night?
She decided to ignore his comment about the wallet, letting the subject drop as suddenly has he had appeared. Abe didn't seem to be a very nosy person, which was good, and she didn't want to make him nosy by perking up his interest.
"Uh... okay?" She left the wallet on the boxes that she was sitting on and jumped down from the crate, four crates up from the ground, to the ground below. She flinched slightly at the movement, remembering the jarring jolt that would shoot through her knees when she would do this when she'd actually lived here, but seeing as this was a dream no pain came. After a moment she straightened up and looked through the door that Abe had made materialize out of nothing in the wall. What should lead into a high-end jewellery store instead lead into what, as far as Clarissa could tell, was a meadow. She reached a hand forward through the door when she realized that Abe was letting her go through first, half expecting her hand to hit some sort of television screen, but it went right through. Before she could lose her nerve or look like a fool for hesitating too long the rest of her body followed the hand through the door. She took a few steps out into the strange new landscape and stopped to look around. "Okay, this is uh... interesting."
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Post by abraham kip winters. on Jan 16, 2011 14:33:40 GMT -5
 Abe didn't spare a final glance to the homemade dream he had landed in when he first found Clarissa, and instead followed her through the doorway into the new image. There were no buildings in this place, but the doorway on this side seemed to be cut into the air itself. When the dream diver clicked the door shut, it disappeared and there was no sign that it ever existed. Of course, it never did. Not really.
That done, Abe stuck his hands in his pockets and admired both the scenery and Clarissa's reaction to it.
"This is a place I designed. One of my first, actually. I modeled it on a painting that my mom had back home." In the original painting there had also been a man fishing in the lake, but he creeped Abe out, so he had omitted him ever since.
The green fields stretched out around them in all directions, ending in forested areas at the far sides through which a warm summer's breeze blew and bent the long blades of grass. In the center of the scene was a lake, which was crystal clear and a cool blue. In the water, bright orange and yellow fish, each of them at least a foot long, could be seen darting about, glimmering in the light of the sun, which was high in the cloudless blue sky.
When Abe took people on a tour into their own unconscious mind, he often started with this place. It was pleasant, and completely devoid of any hostile life. A stark contrast to the place they had just left. He gave Clarissa some time to take the whole thing in before speaking again.
"We're still in your dream." He explained, "I've just manipulated the space into a preset environment that I have stored in my imagination. You can do the same with practice. Only in your dreams though, not other people's."
He looked around, admiring a small blackbird that flitted overhead while the breeze blew at his open suit. He was smiling contentedly now, his illuminated blue eyes sparkling with a pure energy.
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Post by clarissa amber giroux. on Jan 19, 2011 20:52:56 GMT -5
when the devil wants to dance with you ,YOU BETTER SAY NEVER [/color][/font] because a dance with the devil might last you forever[/color][/font] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -[/color][/center][/color][/font] "It's uh... nice." 'Beautiful' wasn't really a word that Clarissa liked to use much. Okay, she never used it. Ever. The few times that she did she was drunk or hyper or just looking to impress someone by looking more 'girly-girl' than she actually was. However, if Clarissa wanted to be completely out of her comfort and personality zone, she might describe this scenery as beautiful. She'd definitely never seen anything like it in her life. She'd always lived in the crowded, dirty cities, and didn't pay much attention to artwork whenever she saw it to appreciate the beauty of a scene. This looked like a near perfect place, though, completely untainted by greedy cooperations who'd cut down trees and destroy a beautiful landscape just for the sake of making money in the next greatest location.
"Right," she commented, nice and blunt. "Because the freaky 'invading minds when people are most vulnerable' ability only belongs to you." Okay, so calling him 'freaky' was unfair. She was much more freaky than him. He seemed normal when you were awake. She seemed normal when she was awake, too. So did her tens of duplicates. When they were all together, none of 'her' were normal.
"So. You got to grill me on duplication today. It's my turn." Clarissa, however, didn't like to go for the vague fact information. She liked questions that were a bit more personal, as long as they weren't directed at her. "How long have you been able to do your... invading thing?"
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Post by abraham kip winters. on Jan 20, 2011 3:11:09 GMT -5
Clarissa's first comment was a bit blunt, but Abe only shrugged to it in response, since it was true. In base terms, he couldn't deny that invading people's minds was what he did, and he hadn't given much thought to the matter, but he supposed one was most vulnerable when they were asleep. Awake and aware, a person could decide what not to say, what to do, and so on. When they were asleep, their thoughts, memories, everything was sprawled out to see like a bucket of paint that had been tipped over. By taking Clarissa to a place that she'd never been before, he had hoped to dispel some of the uneasiness that accompanied that fact, but apparently to no success yet. Still. They hadn't seen the best part of this place yet.
When she asked her question, Abe had to think for a moment before giving an answer.
"I was eight." He said, "So nine years now. Although there was a sizeable chunk of time in my life where I wasn't allowed to use my power, but I kept working on my own dream world, so I kept in practice."
Abe didn't mind sharing details about his past, generally speaking. He had a happy childhood with two caring parents, and although his mother was no longer with them, her death hadn't been too sad an occasion for either of them. His waking past was perfectly fine to share with others.
But what he had been doing in the seven years in which he was confined to his own dreams, and what he had been keeping secret ever since... that was something he wasn't so willing to share.
He meandered over to the edge of the lake. Sunlight bounced off the surface of the calm blue waters, and for a few moments Abe stood watching the huge fish. They often swam right up to the surface so he could see the glittering of their scales.
He half-turned back to Clarissa.
"Can you swim?" He asked suddenly, a playful smirk crossing his lips. It didn't matter if she couldn't, of course, but he did love to toy with mystery.
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Post by clarissa amber giroux. on Jan 22, 2011 19:43:48 GMT -5
when the devil wants to dance with you ,YOU BETTER SAY NEVER [/color][/font] because a dance with the devil might last you forever[/color][/font] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -[/color][/center][/color][/font]
"Eight," echoed Clarissa, without much emotion in her voice at all. She was one of the rarer kids whose power showed up when they were six, but even a few years difference from any other student could make her envious of them. If she'd had a few more years before she magically had a very real imaginary friend, maybe she would have never been evicted from her first home because they would have been willing to put up with her oddity. If she hadn't been evicted from her first home she would have never reached the others and would never have ultimately ended upon the streets. Yeah, Clarissa might love her power. It was one of the most amazing ones out there, in her opinion, but it was also the cause of every undesirable thing in her life. Overall she'd prefer to be normal, but if she had a few years to bond with her initial foster parents before they realized what a freak she was she would have been happier, too.
"You weren't allowed to use it? You were able to control it enough to stop yourself?" Mind you, Abe's power was already proven to be different than many other people's powers. Maybe he could control it better than others, or at least was able to himself in other's dreams so that they didn't know he was there. Most powers were too obvious to hide, therefore why kids ended up at Power's to learn to control them. She was curious of how Abe managed to not use his power if he was supposed to avoid it so young.
"Swim?" Clarissa shook her head a bit nervously, glancing at the water. "I didn't have much of a chance to learn at any of the houses I lived at." Once she had fallen into a small but swift flowing river in the city when she was homeless. It had scared the hell out of her. The water had swept her away before she could scream, and it was all she could do to keep her head above water until she'd managed to grab on to a large rock just off shore and pull herself to land. She wasn't exactly a fan of water.
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