L5R Chronicle: Alchemy of Danger

I woke the morning after the meeting with the Governor in a rather irritable mood. Freakajin had arisen surprisingly early, but was simply slumped against a pillar, somehow managing to make the entire lovely garden look like a back alley that a corpse would sprawl in. I managed to be polite long enough to ask after his health, but lest I take out my ill humor on the annoying, but inoffensive this morning, man, I quickly headed for the kitchen.

Benkai joined me for breakfast, and we mutually and wordlessly agreed to ignore Freakajin (we were both still smarting from the Governor's admonishments, which were largely due, we knew, to Freakajin's insulting behavior), and head to the Civil Hall to study for the day. Arriving at the Hall, we were pleased to see that the rotund little courtier had not been the receiver of the blade of Jocho, and he came bustling cheerily to ask how he could serve the Emerald Magistrates. I pointed to the long line of people filing in and out of the Hall and inquired as to who they were. It was the Governor's public audience day, he informed us, and I winced imperceptibly.

As Benkai patiently waited, I inwardly hemmed and hawed and eventually decided to brave the hall and hope that the Governor wouldn't see me. I snuck in, slinking through the shadows in the hallway until I reached a quiet study room near the back without anyone noticing me. Benkai followed much more overtly, but then again, it hadn't been him that the Governor had been so directly displeased with the night before.

We settled down to read, but within an hour or so, we were disturbed by the sound of an explosion to the south. Benkai strode out to see what was going on, but since the noise seemed to be coming from the direction of the Residence, he assumed that it was simply Builder working. He returned, reassured me, and both of us resumed studying.

Not half an hour later, however, a commotion in the hall roused us again. Before Benkai could leave the room to investigate, however, the commotion came to us. A wildly tousled and drunkenly furious Freakajin burst into the room, shouting and shaking guards off with surprising strength. He managed to throw them off and even bar the door behind him, then advanced on Benkai and me murderously. I leapt to my feet with hand on hilt; the light in his eyes, I'd decided, was not a healthy one. I started to mentally flash through options on how to immobilize him without hurting him... too badly. Next to me and slightly behind, I saw out of the corner of my eye that Benkai had taken up a subtle defensive fighting posture. Thankfully Freakajin stopped short of us, but neither of us relaxed.

He drew himself up to his unimpressive full height, and obviously concentrating hard, angrily whispered, "YOU TRIED TO KILL ME!!"

We stared at him. We looked at each other. We looked back at him.

"What ARE you talking about?" I demanded. He haughtily sniffed and told us that "in case we'd forgotten", we'd intentionally left him to get blown up in his room. It took a space of time to get the story from him, but it seemed that Builder had started work on demolishing the Residence (we were to move out of it in a few days), and Freakajin had assumed that the explosions were a conspiracy, directed at him. We patiently disabused him of that notion, and though it took a while, he slowly calmed down. He wanted to know what it was that we were doing, but when we informed him, and rather irritatedly invited him to join us (he was supposed to be a Magistrate along with us, after all), he turned up his nose and snootily told us the he was far too important to waste his time studying, and sauntered out of the room.

Infuriated but honestly helpless, we watched him go, and almost immediately, his lackey fluttered in. As we amazedly watched, he pulled a text off of a shelf and sat down to read. When we asked him what on earth he was doing, the efficient servant told us that "the young master" had instructed him to study in his place.

This was too much.

We indignantly sent him home to explain to Freakajin that he was to do his own studying, and resumed our own. I, at least, had a headache. To top off my bad humor, Benkai discovered in his reading that even though we hadn't officially commenced our duties, we were still due our 200 koku a week salary - a sum that the Governor had neglected to make available, or even mention.

Benkai joined the line of commoners seeking audience with the Governor, while I stayed behind, ostensibly to study (in reality, I had an irrational fear that if the Governor saw me, she'd call a guard to execute me on the spot). He returned some time later, and told me that despite a distinctly frosty attitude, the Governor had arranged for our first week's salaries to be forwarded to our Residence. Cheered on both counts of having escaped having to meet with the Governor and the prospect of getting paid, I decided to go home to get some food, as well as prod Freakajin to set in on his duty. Benkai set off with me, but my hunger and the fact that I was on horseback spurred me slightly ahead, and I arrived home a space before him.

**

I acquired some rice and soup from the cook, who didn't appreciate my teasing about meat, and I retreated from the kitchen hiding a smile. Juggling my load so that I could sip from my soup as I walked, I headed for the garden, where I could see the shapes of Freakajin and his lackey sitting leaning against each other. The moment I stepped in, however, something was wrong. The pair looked as if they were asleep slumped on each other, but they were pale, far too pale. Chopsticks were gripped loosely in their hands and a bowl of rice lay overturned in the lackey's lap.

With a tremor, I set my food on the ground. I absentmindedly shook Freakajin, thinking it was a good thing that I had not yet eaten any of my rice. He fell over and the lackey slumped over backwards. Neither were breathing. I stared at them for an instant, then heard Benkai arriving. I whirled and managed to calmly summon him to the garden.

He took a moment to absorb the scene, then stormed into the hallway. With a stern order to the chamberlain to close off the garden and let no one in until we returned, he dashed to his room and then strode out into the street, me vaulting to my horse to follow silently at his heels, feeling rather out of the loop.

Once we were a ways into the street and no one from our household could hear, he spoke, telling me that first we were going to acquire some bodyguards from Kitsuki-sensei, and then we were going to find an alchemist to analyze what poisons could be in the rice that Freakajin and his poor lackey had consumed. He'd gone into his room and found his salary lying on his bed, so he'd grabbed it to use to pay for the services he was going to request. Thankful that he had a plan of action, I was content to follow his lead; I was in some amount of shock, wondering had my rice been in my right hand instead of my left as I'd walked to the garden, would I have joined the unfortunate pair?

We arrived at Kitsuki-sensei's dojo in the middle of a class, and Benkai settled down respectfully to wait. I jittered for an hour and a half while she finished her class and Benkai waited patiently and calmly. Monks can be frustrating that way.

Just as I had decided to go find an alchemist and return for Benkai afterwards, Kitsuki-sensei finished her class and greeted her politely. Benkai told her of our need for four guards, perhaps selected from her students. She studied us closely but did not pry, and arranged for a weekly salary, her only restriction being that the guards had to be available for four hours of practice in the afternoons. We agreed, and asked for her recommendation on an objective, non-Scorpion alchemist, preferably nearby. She laughed a bit at our naivete, but suggested a Crane down the street a bit, and we set off at speed.

We were displeased to discover that the Crane alchemist had been warned not to help a Dragon-Unicorn pair, on threat of "punishment." We offered him protection by virtue of our status as Emerald Magistrates, but he fearfully refused. After some time, he declared that he would serve us for 70 koku, an exorbitant sum I'm sure he only named because he thought we'd never pay it.

"Done," Benkai said, and slapped the money down on the man's counter.

The alchemist's eyes widened as fear and greed warred openly on his face. Greed apparently just barely won, as he swept the money off the counter and woefully went to fetch a concealing cloak. Benkai ran ahead to clear anyone who might identify the man out of the house, and I pulled the thoroughly swaddled alchemist up on my horse.

When we arrived at home, however, an obviously livid Benkai told me that the alchemist's services were no longer needed. Instructed to return him and hurry back, I raced through the streets, deposited the frightened man at his shop, and blazed back home.

I returned to find Benkai slightly more composed, the chamberlain groveling on the floor practically sobbing apologies, and a perfectly undisturbed garden. As in, there were no bodies, bowls of food, a scuff in the dirt, or a misplaced stone.

The chamberlain swore to us that no one had entered the garden, tears streaming down his face, and Benkai and I examined the whole area in vain. The bodies and all other evidence had been removed. Discouraged and not a little worried for our own safety, we were at a loss as to what to do. Not even discovering my 200 koku salary on my bed lifted my mood, and the personal invitation for just myself to a gathering at the Palace that lay beside it made it all worse. Although reasonably sure that it had been Freakajin's overweening rudeness to the Governor that had resulted in his poisoning, I could not completely escape my fears of the morning that were I to see the Governor, I'd end up less than alive. And I was not looking forward to seeing Jocho.

It was about that time that our four guards arrived. A slightly pudgy Lion, a pair of identical twin Cranes, and a shifty-eyed Scorpion looked at us expectantly. Without any sort of hesitation or emotion to betray his opinions, Benkai calmly told them that, as it turned out, we only needed three guards. Fortunately the Scorpion was at the end of the line, so it wasn't too strange for Benkai to "randomly" choose him as the one that we didn't need. We paid him a week's wages and sent him on his way. He glared unpleasantly at us as he left.

**

Benkai and I distracted ourselves with kata that afternoon in the garden, me using the barely foot-wide span of the wall as a footing. As night approached, I cleaned up and plaintively requested that Benkai accompany me at least to the Palace gates. He immediately agreed and even offered to wait there until I was ready to return home. I felt much better. As I left my no-dachi and katana with him at the Palace guardhouse and forlornly entered, I noted with dread that Jocho was at the doors, eagerly scanning the incoming guests. His eyes lit on me and he smiled widely. I had a fleeting impression of a dangerous animal, and took a deep breath to compose myself as he started towards me. A miracle occurred however, and a knot of giggling noblewomen surrounded him; I was able to enter the Palace unscathed.

The Governor was just entering the room from an interior door as I made my way in, and I mustered up the courage to approach her. I bowed more than respectfully, and thanked her for the signal courtesy of inviting me to the Palace for the evening. I hoped she wouldn't notice the slight quaver in my voice and prayed to every god I could think of that she was in a good mood.

My fears were allayed when she fluttered a hand and blessed me with a smile. This, she informed me sweetly, was just a minor gathering of her closest friends. How was I doing this evening? We chatted politely for a few minutes, and she asked me if I was planning on accepting her invitation to the baths tomorrow. I was surprised and told her I'd received no such invitation. She showed some irritation and claimed that she'd sent the invitations to Benkai and me the night before. I smiled placatingly at her and told her that it was most likely a simple courier error. Benkai and I would be pleased to join her on the morrow. She moved towards her son's group of admirers with a dismissive smile, and I was in the midst of a deep relieved sigh when she turned.

"I've arranged for a replacement for your late partner. A new Phoenix shugenja should be arriving as an Emerald Magistrate in four days or so," she simpered at me. Smiling tightly back, I thanked her for her effort. I didn't bother to ask how she knew of Freakajin's departure of this world, and made an escape to the side of the large room to pretend that I was examining the tapestries.

As I wandered the outer edge of the large room, I noticed that I was the subject of much covert attention, and some not very covert laughter. Flushing slightly, I kept my head up and pretended to myself that I was Empress of the World. Nothing the little people said would bother the Empress.

I'd stopped in a dim corner to look at one particularly interesting tapestry when a voice over my shoulder asked me if I liked it. I kept myself from flinching and turned (regally, I reminded myself, an Empress would turn regally) to see a short, balding Crane man smiling amiably up at me. We spoke idly for a pass of time, but I've never been one for social niceties, and even an Empress can soon run out of things to say. Flustered, I moved over and asked his opinion on the next tapestry over, but he stayed where he was and eyed me keenly.

"You're uncomfortable. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you so," he said. I rushed to assure him that it wasn't him that was causing my indisposition, but the crowd of unfamiliar nobles. He smiled, winked, and began to regale me cheerfully with the virtues of the several merchants that he held under his patronage. It was so incongruous listening to a samurai peddle wares that I had to smile back and relax. Time passed pleasantly as he chattered on to me in our dim corner, and eventually the other nobles even apparently tired of snickering at me.

When I left and saw Benkai, unmoved and flanked by my katana and no-dachi, I suffered a pang of guilt for having left him alone for so long. He told me, however, that he'd passed the time meditating. I didn't feel quite so bad, though perhaps a little envious. Monks' patience was not something I could see myself having.

**

The next morning we ate breakfast at a randomly chosen inn, and visited the Palace chamberlain to inquire as to what time we were supposed to show at the baths. He was as upset as the Governor had been that we'd not received the invitations. We didn't share with him our private opinion that someone wishing us out of favor with the Governor had diverted them, and pleasantly reassured him that yes, it probably WAS just a courier error, and no, we weren't offended.

Making our way to the baths, I was dismayed to see that there was no division between male and female sections. Jocho had already arrived, and it was obvious that he did not echo my dismay as he eyed me from a cool pool. I spotted Doji Sukemara, my Crane acquaintance of the night before, in a warm pool far from Jocho, and nonchalantly led Benkai over to meet him. I slid down into the hot water with my back to the Governor's son and tried to relax. The Crane was deep into explaining to a politely uncaring Benkai the virtues of his merchants' silks when I saw both their eyebrows raise.

Benkai spread his powerful arms along the edges of the pool, with his tattoos prominently displayed, as I turned my head to see a naked Jocho walking grinning towards us. Just as I was racking my brains as to how to drive him off, Sukemara coldly but politely told him that we were discussing business, and if Jocho would care to come back later, it might be a better time to be sociable. Jocho stopped midstride and glared at both Sukemara and Benkai, who was subtly flexing his muscles, but turned on his heel and left with no more than a nod. I thanked the Crane for his adroit diversion, but he looked at me somewhat owlishly and seriously told me that he'd said nothing but the truth. He then continued his one-sided discussion of silks with Benkai, who, to his credit, was able to avoid letting his eyes glaze over.

A few hours later we bade good-bye to the Crane and took our respectful leave of the Governor. We escaped past Jocho, who was flushed with sake. Benkai told me later that Jocho had been leering at my retreating, unclothed, back. I was glad that I hadn't noticed.

**

We spent the rest of the day engrossed in kata to keep from having to think too much about our precarious position there in the city. Late in the evening, I passed the front gate on my way to the stable, and the Lion bodyguard hailed me. An incredibly tiny, fragile woman stood outside the gate, and Akodo Totoro explained to me that she was asking to see the Magistrates. We brought her inside and I examined her papers; they were genuine, but Isawa Atsuko was several days early. Explaining the delicate situation that she was coming into took some time, but when Benkai and I told her about her predecessor's murder and the disappearance of the bodies, she shyly raised her hand to stop us.

Asking to be taken to the garden, she produced a scroll and started chanting quietly. Soon she looked back at us with slightly unfocused eyes, and asked us to remind her if we'd already examined the trapdoor. We looked at her, puzzled. Trapdoor? Atsuko strode to a bush near where the bodies had lain, and brushed aside some dirt. A trapdoor about three feet square laughed in our faces. I grabbed some rope from my room and we lowered a lamp down into the darkness. Ten feet down, the passage tilted out of view towards the garden wall. I pulled the lamp up, and as I coiled the rope, Benkai smiled boyishly; a rare occurrence.

"Only one way to see where it goes," echoed up as he slipped himself into the hole. Atsuko started to exclaim something, when suddenly we heard his voice calling my name. It was coming... from the other side of the wall? I ran over to the stone, Atsuko trotting alongside and taking three steps to every one of mine. Leaning over the four foot (on our side) high wall, I saw Benkai twenty feet below, dusting himself off on the hillside leading down to the street. Since the lower opening to the chute had sealed itself after he'd tumbled through, and we didn't feel like having the guards question how he'd gotten out of the gates, I anchored the rope and helped him climb up the wall back to the garden.

At least we knew, now, how the bodies had been removed; the passage was a simple chute to the hillside below. Every shred of evidence had simply been shoved down there and collected. It was frustrating knowing that our own staff had likely participated in the cover-up, including the chamberlain who must have let people in, and there wasn't much that we could do about it. By that time it was late. Frustrated and temporarily powerless, we went to bed, reasonably sure that our guards, at least, were not going to murder us in our beds.

In the morning we took Atsuko to the Palace to introduce her to the Governor. I tried to pretend that I didn't notice the strange looks we got on the way... An Ise zumi monk writhing with tattoos, a tiny shugenja with wide eyes and a dropped jaw gawking around, and a freakishly tall woman with blue eyes and a no-dachi walking down the street together was a perfectly normal thing, I tried to convince myself. I wasn't succeeding.

Jocho's four guards were outside the gate again this morning, as surly as they'd been the first day that we'd dealt with them. They refused us passage to the Palace when I requested it; the only thing that they'd say to us was that the Governor was busy. Benkai finally tired of it all, and in a rare show of anger, roared that all we wanted to do was to talk to a scheduler of appointments and if they damn well didn't let the Emerald Magistrates through to complete such a trivial errand, there'd be serious trouble.

Gratifyingly, they flinched, and after a moment's conference among themselves, somewhat sullenly opened the doors. As we passed between their ranks, one of them broke into a broad smile at Atsuko, whose diminutive form had been hidden behind Benkai and me during the confrontation. She was oblivious, gazing with open delight into the Palace proper, but I frowned sternly at him and made a mental note to myself.

We learned from the Palace chamberlain that an appointment had already been set for us, three days hence, when Atsuko was supposed to arrive. He wanted to see her papers, but Benkai firmly asserted that we'd already verified them. We'd decided beforehand that any of our traveling papers were not things that we wanted to fall into the Governor's hands. Taking our leave, we grimly marked the guards that prevented passage to all other parts of the Palace from the main hall where we'd met with the chamberlain.

As we were wandering down the streets back towards the Residence, Builder came barreling towards us, missing knocking over fragile Atsuko only because I stepped in front of her and caught him. Gasping happily, he produced his tile selection and asked Atsuko which one she wanted, then queried us all as to the size of our planned households. As quickly as he'd arrived, he blasted off away down the street, leaving Benkai and me with small smiles and Atsuko with a delighted grin (an expression, I've since learned, that is common to Atsuko and new experiences).

**

Atsuko was studying in her room, Benkai was meditating in the garden, and I was again atop the wall practicing a kata, when I made a slight misstep and tumbled down to the hillside below. Mercifully, despite a twenty foot drop and less than comfortable ground cover (rocks are never friendly when you fall on them), I rolled and recovered without more than a few bruises. Brushing myself off nonchalantly, I walked around to the other side of the house, ignoring the astonished stares of the passerby. As I came around the corner, however, my embarrassment was forgotten in the face of the spectacle of Totoro, the fiercely protective Lion bodyguard, hassling a Scorpion guardsman; Totoro was having to forcibly keep the guardsman from passing the gates. The Scorpion, in return, was angrily berating the guard.

I wiped at the grime still left on my face from my fall, and strode up proudly. When I got a bit closer, I saw that the Scorpion was the guard who had beamed so at little Atsuko earlier in the day. Restraining an urge to roll my eyes, I exerted my authority as one of the masters of the house and sent him away. Isawa-san was studying, I told him, and absolutely could not be disturbed.

He wasn't pleased, but respectfully made his way off after leaving his name with me to convey to Atsuko. I went in to tell her that Bayushi Yoshikuro had a crush. She was surprised and a little frightened; I think that perhaps my news reminded her that she was no longer secluded in a secure Phoenix library. Apparently she began to feel slightly unsafe, for no sooner had I resumed my kata (Benkai politely did not mention my brief experiment in flight) before she came running out into the garden, calling for us.

Pulling us into her room, she showed us a tiny hole, barely a finger-width across, drilled into her ceiling. She'd cast her spell to find hidden objects and the hole had glowed into sight for her. Wordlessly, we trooped up to the second floor, where Benkai and I had never set foot. Directly above Atsuko's room was an entertaining room, and directly above the hole was a cabinet.

There was no visible lock, so I was justified in my surprise when my casual yank jarred my arm and the door didn't budge. I tried to jostle it, but I only ended up moving my arm. No matter how much Benkai and I tried to move the door, and then the entire cabinet, there was no result. When we asked the chamberlain what was in it, he made vague references to the previous Magistrate's personal possessions, and a key that only the previous Magistrate had had.

Benkai examined the seam between the floors and walls and the cabinet. There wasn't really any. We had just decided to try to break it open (the previous owner was dead; hopefully he wouldn't mind), when Atsuko's quiet chanting turned us around, but it was when she gasped that we started to worry. She came up between the two of us and tentatively touched the cabinet. Her eyes were unfocused again and she gasped a second time when her fingers met the dusty wood.

"It's not... it's not THERE!" she exclaimed wonderingly. We watched her fingers play over the surface for a moment before either of us thought to ask what it was that she was seeing. A hole, she told us; a black hole of nothing where the cabinet appeared to be. I pounded on the not-there cabinet with my fist. It certainly felt like it was there. Suddenly all my frustration at being in that horrible city flooded through me and I started kicking blindly at the cabinet. It took only a few minutes for my tantrum to run its course, and I stopped. My toes hurt anyway.

Atsuko was watching me interestedly from a safe distance and Benkai had disappeared, along with my knife. Atsuko timidly shrugged when I asked her where he'd gone, and I regretted my infantile display of temper. Embarrassed, I was rubbing my foot and looking out the window when Benkai called us down into Atsuko's room.

He was standing in the doorway to her room, my knife tucked in his belt and a long bamboo shoot in one hand. He pointed at a spot on her floor that was smoking gently. He had, he explained, cut the bamboo shoot and poked it up the hole in Atsuko's ceiling. Apparently he'd knocked over and broken something, because a crystalline tinkle had preceded a multitude of jewel-colored liquids coursing down the shoot towards his hand. He'd jumped back and twitched them off the shoot, but the spot on the floor where the drops had landed was smoking and looking rather soft. I headed out the door, flinging the word "alchemist" over my shoulder when Benkai asked where I was going.

I returned to the Crane whom we'd paid so handsomely, but never used the services of. Turning with a smile for the customer when he heard me walk in, he flinched when he saw who had arrived. I could almost visibly see his heart sinking. I had some liquids I needed identified, I told him. He backed up a bit and shook his head violently. I tried asking, cajoling, even threat of my authority as Emerald Magistrate. No use. So I swallowed my pride.

Dropping to one knee, I bowed my head, and begged the commoner for his assistance.

I kept my head bowed for a while, and eventually I heard him sigh. When I looked up, he was getting his cloak. Silently thanking whomever was looking out for me, I led my horse around to the back of his shop; doubled up, we raced back to the Noble's Quarter. Totoro stopped at the gate: strangers were not to be allowed in, he told us, glaring at the cloak-hidden alchemist. Surprised, I reminded him that I WAS one of the Magistrates in residence, whom he was supposed to obey. He still refused. Angrily, I told him that Togashi-san desperately needed the services of this man. At that, Totoro reluctantly allowed us passage. His refusal to follow my orders distressed me, but I put it down to the fact that it was Benkai paying him and not myself, and hurriedly propelled the poor alchemist into the building.

Atsuko was rubbing at her ear in the doorway to her room and Benkai was idly poking at the still-smoking varicolored puddle on the floor. Presented with his trade, the alchemist forgot some of his nervousness and set down to practice his craft. We watched while he swirled the bamboo through red parts of the puddle, tasted a bit from a blue streamlet, and we sliced the bamboo into several sections so that he could do some arcane mixing.

He finally looked up, a distractedly worried expression on his face. The red liquid, he told us, was an acid. The blue was a potent knockout drug, and the green was a catalyst for the purple. Demonstrating, he dipped bits of bamboo in both colors, and then struck them together. Sparks flew and he coughed as an acrid odor wafted from both the bamboo and the puddle on the floor. Atsuko brought him a basin to wash his hands in while Benkai and I went back upstairs to contemplate the cabinet.

After a bit, Benkai went to borrow some tools from Builder, and we began to cut away at the floor around the cabinet. The alchemist and Atsuko leapt into the doorway of her room as suddenly the bottom dropped out of the cabinet, and with a great crash of broken glass, fell on her floor. The cabinet remained fixed to the wall, while a great cloud of horrible-smelling smoke started billowing up from the mess on Atsuko's floor.

The two below plaintively called up through the hole in the floor that the air below was getting rapidly unbreathable. The alchemist dashed across the room long enough to open the window, then pulled Atsuko and her belongings out into the hall. Already the rice paper walls could be seen to be yellowing and wrinkling. Coughing, the pair came upstairs, which fortunately wasn't too toxic, as most of the smoke was going out the window in her room. By the time they'd made their way upstairs, I was stretched out on the floor with a length of sturdy cloth wrapped around my left arm and hand. I put my hand down through the hole in the floor and started feeling around for the underside of the cabinet.

No sooner had my fingers contacted with a surface did the door spring open, banging into my shoulder painfully. I withdrew my arm and we all looked in. The walls were were of a strange texture, and Atsuko was still saying that the cabinet just wasn't there. There were no shelves inside, so evidently the total contents were sitting downstairs eating a hole in Atsuko's floor and creating a cloud of noxious smoke.

We sighed. It was late in the day, and there was nothing that we could do. It didn't take long for me to return the alchemist to his shop, and once I returned, I merely laid on my back in the garden for some time. Freakajin's corner room was a mass of rubble, and Atsuko's room was going to be uninhabitable for several days. Benkai had offered her his room, and was planning on sleeping one of the entertaining rooms upstairs. I just wanted to go home.

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