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Mr. Beeto
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Long Live the Movieverse

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Location: Warren, Michigan, USA
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Family Reunion - 18/?
Sep 22nd, 2008 at 5:04pm
 
Title: Family Reunion
Author: Mr. Beeto
Rating: PG-13
Beta: htbthomas and Shado Librarian
Summary: AU Twist on Donner/Singer Movieverse: Tie the three films together into a cohesive whole, and provide a more credible and interesting reason for Superman to have returned to Krypton.

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Author’s Notes:
Things are getting complicated for our favorite pair of reporters, and Clark’s nowhere near being out of the woods with Lois yet.

As always, thanks to the remarkable beta team of htbthomas and Shado Librarian.

Chapter 18 – Revealed

Thursday, September 28, 2006 5:40PM EDT
Lois stared in amazement at the little girl floating in front of her as the clues to the enigma known as Clark Kent assembled themselves in her mind, completing a puzzle that she hadn’t realized was there.  Kara Kent, Lois thought.  Superman’s orphaned cousin… the one he’s taking care of… the one Clark introduced as his daughter…  Oh. My. God.  Clark is SupermanThat lying son of a…   If he thought he had some explaining to do before…

Lois’ head cleared enough for her to finally notice Kara’s agonized expression and the sheen of unshed tears in her eyes.  Uh-oh.  Someone’s not happy…   She chanced a glance over at Superman, who had an irritated expression on his face, with his head cocked to the side and his eyes squeezed shut.  Oh, and Daddy’s not happy either.  Well, deal with it, you lunkhead.  Aloud, she icily said, “Clark.”

“Hold on,” he replied firmly.

Hold on, like hell! Lois thought.  However, she silently fumed for a moment.  By the time she finally opened her mouth to speak, Superman had opened his eyes and focused on Kara, sternly telling her, “Well, it doesn’t sound like anyone saw you fly up here, thank goodness."  He shifted Lois to his right side and floated over to his daughter, descending slightly so that he was at eye level with her.  “Kara–”

“It’s my fault you left them,” she declared sadly.

Okay, Lois thought, I’ll let you take care of your Daddy duty before ripping you a new one.

“Sweetheart, you’re not responsible for every complication in my life,” Superman explained patiently.  “And Lois isn’t mad at me because of anything to do with you.  She’s mad at me because I didn’t explain the situation before I left – like I should have done.  I have nobody but myself to blame for that.”

“You’ve got that right,” Lois hissed under her breath.

“But if you hadn’t had to come back to Krypton to get me–” Kara protested unhappily and her lower lip began to tremble.

So I was right – she is his orphaned cousin, Lois thought as her heart broke for the little girl.  The poor kid, losing everyone like that...  No wonder she looks like she’s about to cry.

“That was my choice, Kara, and one that I’ll never regret,” Superman told her insistently.  “And I’m pretty sure that if I had explained the situation to Lois, she would have supported that decision.”

“I would have insisted on it,” Lois confirmed emphatically.  I’m mad at him, not you.

“But you had to leave your son,” Kara pointed out.  “You shouldn’t have come back for me.”  Then the tears came and her whole body began to shake from the sobs.

Lois tightened her grip around Superman as he closed the remaining distance to Kara, wrapped his free arm around her and pulled her close.  Once Kara was securely in his arms, Lois noticed the city blur beneath them, giving her a feeling of vertigo and prompting her to tightly close her eyes.  When she felt Superman release his grip on her a moment later, she opened her eyes and was surprised to find herself back on the roof of the Daily Planet building.  She stepped back shakily from Superman and Kara, and leaned against the perimeter wall.  A little warning would have been nice, Lois complained to herself.

“Kara, listen to me.  As much as I would have liked to have been here with Lois and Jason, I could never have left you stranded out there,” Superman said sincerely.  “Do you remember what we talked about the other night?  It doesn’t matter that you weren’t born my daughter, you are my daughter now.  Honey, I love you, and you’re just as important to me as Lois and Jason are.  How could I ever choose one of you over the other?”  Kara threw her arms around his neck, and buried her head in his chest.   He gently swayed back and forth to sooth her as she continued to cry.

Not bad for a newbie dad, Lois thought.  Can’t assume the he knows what he’s doing, though.  This is Clark, after all… Geez, she looks even more like Jason when she’s upset.  She walked over to the pair and gently brushed Kara’s hair back with her fingers.  “It’s okay, Kara,” Lois assured her compassionately as she stroked her hair.  “I’m glad he brought you home.”

Superman turned to Lois and quietly told her, “This usually takes a while.  And Richard and Jimmy are freaking out over her disappearance.”

“Oh, right… I’ll call Richard and let him know she’s here,” Lois decided as she grabbed her purse from the edge of the roof and fished out her cell phone.

  “He’s already replaced his cell phone?” Superman asked.  “I thought everyone was on a waiting list.”

“He picked his new one up in Gotham on Tuesday,” Lois explained.  “So did Perry, George and Sam.”

“What are you going to–?”

“Shhh.”

Richard answered the third ring.  “Lois?  Um, we got a bit of a problem here.  You see–”

“Kara’s here,” Lois interrupted.  “Superman heard her crying after she got lost, and brought her to the Planet, once he realized who her dad was.”

“Oh, Thank God,” Richard replied, the relief heavy in his voice.  He muffled the mouthpiece of his phone and shouted, “Jimmy!  Superman found Kara.  She’s at the Planet...”  After a moment’s pause, Richard asked, “Lois, I don’t know how we lost her like that–”

“Don’t worry about it.  Look, I’ve got to go,” Lois insisted.  “Bye.”

“Bye.  Love you.”

Lois ended the call and looked over at Superman.  “We’ve still got that interview to do,” she reminded him.

“That’s really not a good idea,” he replied decisively.

Lois rolled her eyes, and complained, “Jesus… ClarkYou heard what Perry said.”

“Language!  Little pitchers with really big ears,” Superman admonished her.  He sighed heavily and after a momentary pause, he quietly explained, “Lois, we can’t leave a trail of breadcrumbs from Superman back to you and Jason.  If any of those tabloid writers should be clever enough to do the math and question his paternity–”

“What is this preoccupation of yours with the tabloids?” Lois demanded to know.  “Everyone knows they’re pure bull– um, nonsense.”

“Not everyone,” Superman told her sadly.  “I left a little bit out of my earlier explanation–”

“You left a lot out,” Lois corrected him.

Superman sighed heavily and then quietly continued, “In the original timeline, Lex Luthor had escaped from prison about the same time as Zod and his cohorts.  He bargained with them for rule of Australia in exchange for delivering me to them, and his means of delivering me was to kidnap you.  There was too strong a public association between Lois Lane and Superman and I almost lost you because of it.  I don’t want to re-establish that problem.”

“I can take care of myself,” Lois hissed.

“But can Jason?” Superman pressed.  “I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to either of you.”

Lois opened her mouth to object, and then snapped it shut, dropping her gaze to the roof.  A moment later, she looked back up at him and quietly commented, “So… he’s really yours.”

“It certainly looks that way,” Superman confirmed quietly.  “But I had no idea until you pointed out the resemblance earlier tonight.  Now that I think about it, they both look like my paternal grandfather, Jor-El, Senior…  Anyway, while we were in the conference room earlier, I peeked through the walls at Jason’s cellular structure and there are some uniquely Kryptonian attributes there. “

“But he doesn’t have any of your abilities,” Lois pointed out.  “If anything, he’s a bit fragile.”

“I can’t explain that, Lois.  Not without a detailed examination, which we’ll probably want to do.  I have no idea what to expect developmentally with a half-human, half-Kryptonian child.”

“Let’s talk about that later,” Lois muttered pensively.  “In the meantime, maybe you can explain why you wouldn’t come clean in the conference room.  Would I ever have learned the truth if your hand hadn’t been forced?”

“Lois, I – I was going to tell you,” he said sincerely.  “I just hadn’t got to that part yet.”

“You had a perfect opportunity to ‘get to that part’ before you bolted out of there earlier!”

“I’m sorry, Lois, but I - I couldn’t,” he explained weakly.  “Not there.  Not like that…”  He flicked his eyes down to the crying child in his arms.  “Um, can we talk about this later?  I’ve kind of got my hands full right now.”

“Oh,” Lois said quickly and her face betrayed a guilty expression.  “Is she going to be okay?” she asked softly.

“In time, hopefully.”

Shit, how could I have been so callous, Lois scolded herself.  The last thing that child needs right now is a shouting match between her dad and me.  Aloud, she quietly muttered, “Well, you’ve got yourself a temporary reprieve.”  She turned away from the pair, and stared out over the city as she considered the situation.  After a brief pause, she said, “I can still hardly believe that Jason’s actually a Kent…  I guess that makes Kara his big sister.”

The little girl looked up at Lois from her father’s chest and asked hopefully through her tears, “Really?”

Lois turned back to them and kindly answered, “Yeah, really.”  She walked over to the pair and hugged Kara, telling her, “Jason’s going to love having you for a sister.”  Kara smiled widely and that expression was quickly reflected on Lois’ face.  She turned to Superman and told him curtly, “I can take her.”  Lois wrapped her arms around Kara and lifted her from her dad’s embrace.

“Kara, honey, float up a bit so you’re not so heavy for her,” Superman suggested as he surrendered his burden.  He then turned to Lois and sincerely said, “Thank you, Lois.”

“I’m doing this for her!” Lois snapped, and she turned away from him, focusing her attention on Kara and softly telling her, “Things are a bit complicated, so you’re going to need to give me a little time to explain everything to your brother, okay?  Let’s not say anything about this just yet.”  My God, ‘complicated’ is such an understatement. 

“Okay,” Kara agreed and smiling widely as her tears quickly subsided.

“How do you do that?” Superman asked quietly.  “I’ve never been able to get her calmed down so quickly.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice while raising your son,” Lois replied icily.  She turned slightly and did a double take when she saw her companion dressed in his civilian clothing.   “Jesus–”

“Language!”

“–Clark, where the h–, um, heck were you hiding the change of clothes?”

“Um, I have a pocket in my cape.”

“A pocket?” Lois asked incredulously.  “Clark, how can you possibly hide anything that bulky in your cape?” Lois asked incredulously.  “Your shoes alone would be impossibly obvious.  Everyone would have noticed that.”

“It’s a special application of some inter-dimensional Kryptonian physics called a ‘pocket dimension’1,” Clark explained.  “In lay terms, it’s bigger on the inside –an interior volume equivalent to a medium-sized airport locker is contained in a pocket only a couple of millimeters thick in normal space.  But on the inside, it’s about  a foot and half deep, and has plenty of room for my suits, overcoat and shoes, with enough space left over to stow my briefcase and laptop, and all hermetically sealed off from normal space.”

“It’s kind of like Mary Poppins’ magic bag,” Kara explained.  “He put my backpack in it when we flew here from Smallville.”

“You don’t say,” Lois replied pleasantly as she returned her attention in Kara.  She glanced back at Clark for a moment and then just shook her head looking away.  “Don’t you have a magic pocket like that, too?” she asked Kara.

“Uh-uh.”

“No?  Well, that hardly seems fair,” Lois commented pleasantly, leaning forward and planting a kiss on Kara’s forehead.  “You’re at least as special as Mary Poppins – practically perfect in every way.”

Lois silently smiled down at Kara and tightened her embrace as the little girl giggled.   After a moment of silent peace, she turned back to Clark and quietly asked, “Clark, what happened in Niagara Falls the first time around – besides the obvious?”

Clark flicked his eyes over to Kara and back, before quietly answering, “I don’t think it’s a good idea to discuss that in range of her hearing.”

Lois rolled her eyes and told him irritably, “Awfully convenient excuse there, Kent…”  She was momentarily silent again before setting Kara down on her feet and taking her hand, as she told her, “It’s getting cold up here.  Let’s go back inside.”  She glared over her shoulder at Clark and added, “And you… there’s plenty you can tell me about all this without violating a ‘G’ rating, and you’re going to start those explanations.”

-o-o-o-


Once the trio stepped out of the elevators onto the editorial floor, the adults wasted no time collecting their laptops and sequestering themselves in the conference room.  After a quick call to Polly regarding the Superman interview, Lois hooked both laptops to the video equipment and displayed her map of the EMP wave.  Clark, meanwhile, got Kara started on her homework.  Once he began narrating a short version of his life story, Lois quickly forgot her map.  She surprised Clark by remaining silent for the several minutes it took for his story to unfold, and for him to finally describe his current domestic arrangement.

Lois gave him a hard look as she silently considered his story.  Finally, she coldly said, “All these years… lying to me like that…”

“Lois, everything I’ve ever said to you was technically true,” Clark protested.

“’I forgot to feed my goldfish’, ‘I forgot my wallet’, ‘I have to get my dry-cleaning’”, Lois quoted sarcastically.

“I intentionally left those things undone so I’d have an excuse without lying.”

“You’re parsing hairs,” Lois said curtly.  “The fact is that you weren’t honest with me, which is the same as lying.”

“Keepin’ secrets is stupid,” Kara said quietly.

“Ohhh, I’m really going to like her,” Lois said dramatically.

Clark stared at Lois for a moment, and then turned to Kara and said seriously, “Honey, we can’t risk having Superman’s enemies find out about our friends and family.  We’ve talked about this.”

“Did you really think I’d tell Superman’s enemies?” Lois asked accusingly.

“What?  No, of course not,” Clark answered defensively as he returned his attention to Lois.  “And I was planning on telling you.  It’s just… we can’t get careless with the secret.  It’s got to be a strictly ‘need-to-know’ thing.”

Lois nodded and looked away briefly.  When she turned back to Clark, she asked “So tell me something.  Who’s been watching Kara while you’ve been doing your Superman thing overnight?”

“Oh, um, my mom.  We’re living with her in Smallville,” Clark admitted.   He quickly added, “But I still check on her frequently.  After every rescue I–”

“You’re living with your mom and commuting from Smallville?” Lois interrupted.  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“What’s so surprising?” Clark objected.  “It’s a great place for a super kid to grow up, and there’s plenty of room to stretch her wings without worrying about what the neighbors might see.  Besides, Smallville has a sense of community that you just can’t find in the city.  Everyone knows everybody else, and we all look out for each other.  Not like here, where everyone has a stockade fence around their yards and hardly even know their neighbor’s names.”

“Geez, that’s got be, what? Fifteen hundred miles away?”

“Oh, no, it’s not that far,” Clark clarified with a smirk.  “Actually, it’s, um, just under twelve hundred miles.”

Lois glared at him and said irritably, “Like that really makes a difference.  You’re not even in the same time zone.”

“It only takes a few minutes to get here,” Clark protested.  “I get Kara on her bus at seven thirty – if she’s on-time.  That’s eight thirty Eastern Time and I’m usually walking off the elevator into the bullpen by a quarter to nine...  You wouldn’t believe how slow a child with superspeed can be in the morning…”

Lois suppressed a smile at the familiar expression of parental frustration reflected from Clark’s face.  Don’t you dare try to make me smile when I’m angry with you, she thoughtShe took a moment to school her expression and then asked, “Doesn’t the school think it strange that your contact number is a Metropolis exchange?  Or are you making your mom handle that, too?”

“Actually, my Metropolis number is an Internet phone number that forwards to my cell phone, and that has a Kansas area code,” Clark explained.   “The school has the local number.”  Lois rolled her eyes and stared off into space away from him, her eyes unfocused as she absorbed the evening’s revelations.  “Lois?” he called softly.

Lois held up her hand in a stop gesture and shook her head.  She was quiet for a moment.  She sighed, and quietly said, “I really thought I knew you.”

“You do know me.”

“Do I?  And which you would that be?  The dork who’s tripping over his own feet in the bullpen, or the hero who bench presses jumbo jets?” she asked icily.

“Both, kind of…” he began weakly.

“Who’s the real you?” Lois demanded.

“Um, this is the real me,” Clark insisted.  “I really am a shy farm boy from Smallville, Kansas…  I’m not clumsy or meek, though.  I, um, kind of exaggerate the hayseed stereotype to stay under the radar here.”

“I can’t believe I was fooled by a pair of glasses…”

“I don’t even bother with the glasses in Smallville and nobody there’s ever figured it out,” Clark commented.

“Are they that stupid?”

“It’s not stupidity, Lois,” Clark explained.  “People see what they want to see and first impressions are hard to shake.  Back home, everyone has a long standing impression of Clark Kent as Jonathan and Martha Kent’s awkward son – which wasn’t an act, by the way.  Around here, everyone has an ingrained impression of Clark Kent as a clumsy dork.  In both cases, that’s what they continue to see and it never occurs to them that I could be anything other than that.  The same thing can be applied in reverse to my Superman persona.”

Lois huffed and again looked away.  “That doesn’t exactly make me feel better.  I’m supposed to be this great journalist – I’m supposed to notice things like that.”

“You are a great journalist, Lois,” Clark informed her happily.

“Stop,” Lois insisted.  “Just stop.  I’m getting information overload here.  I need a couple minutes to absorb it all.”  Lois set her elbows on the table and dropped her head into her open palms, covering her face.

“S-Sorry,” Clark offered.

“Hush.”

The room was silent for a moment before Clark turned his attention to his daughter.  “How’s your homework coming, sweetheart?”

“Okay.”

“Are you still having trouble with your English assignments?” he asked.

“Mrs. Thomas didn’t assign any English homework today,” Kara protested.

“Well, then show me what you did in class,” Clark prodded.  Kara proceeded to pull out her notebook from her backpack and show it to her dad.

Lois splayed her fingers and spied on the pair through the opening.  This is so surreal, Lois concluded.  Superman going over his daughter’s homework with her… She’s really going to need him, after all she’s been through.  He better not screw it up.  She continued to watch while Clark reviewed Kara’s schoolwork.

Several minutes later, Clark glanced over at Lois, briefly locking eyes with her before she turned away.  “They’re back,” he informed her.  “I hear them in the parking garage.”

Lois raised her head and nodded, shifting her head to rest her chin in her right hand as she continued to watch them.

“Kara, honey, before the others get up here, there’s something that I want to talk to you about, okay?” Clark said patiently.  “I need you to promise me that you won’t use your powers in the city unless I say it’s okay first, okay?”

“But I can control it now,” Kara whined.

“You’re certainly doing better than I was at your age, but you still have a long way to go,” Clark told her insistently.  “But that’s not the point.  We can’t take a chance on anyone finding out about us and we don’t want to worry our friends like Richard and Jimmy.”

“But, Dad–”

“Kara,” Clark said sternly.  “This is important.”

“All right, I promise,” Kara complied grumpily and her shoulders slumped in resignation.

“That’s my girl,” Clark said happily, reaching his arm around her to pull her into a hug, which she shrugged off.  “Now let’s see how you’re doing with the rest of your homework…”

-o-o-o-


A couple minutes after Clark and Kara resumed work on her homework, Lois interrupted them.  “Clark, we’d better get to work on our homework, too.  We haven’t done anything on the EMP story since the others left and they’ll be back any minute.”

“Okay,” Clark replied tentatively.  “But since we’ve agreed that Polly’s getting the Superman interview, am I still doing the EMP story?  I mean, you can take the story.  I can find something else.”

“I know that look,” Lois replied impatiently.  “You’ve got something.  What is it?”

“Nothing yet – I haven’t had time to look into it,” Clark explained.  “But I have a big problem with Lex Luthor being free after what he did, and getting out the way he did.  Something corrupt had to be going on there.  For one thing, to overturn a conviction because a witness wasn’t available to be called at the appeal?  That’s a very dangerous precedent – all a felon would have to do to get out of prison would be to kill the witnesses and file an appeal…

“Second, Luthor is incapable of going straight.  I’m sure he’s up to something and it’s not good, whatever it is.  He thought nothing of attempting to murder millions in a maniacal scheme for wealth and power nine years ago, and I saw that same obsession during the original timeline.”

“We’ll both work both stories,” Lois decided. She shook her mouse to wake up her laptop and redisplay her map of Metropolis, which had colored circular bands radiating out from the ocean.  Lois then turned to him and said seriously, “Let me show you what I was able to dig up today.  This is a map of the EMP wave moving across the city.  It’s color coded according to the timestamps from when the power went out in that section,” Lois informed him triumphantly.  “The red zone is where power went out first.  Unfortunately, there’s not enough there to be definitive, yet, but I should have more from my source tomorrow.”

“Lois, I hate to rain on your parade, but I don’t think this is going to help us,” Clark said apologetically.

“And why not?” Lois huffed.

“Well, that EMP wave was moving at the speed of light and would have crossed the city in about one ten-thousandth of a second,” he explained.  “I seriously doubt that there are any clocks in the city accurate enough to have measured its propagation over such a small area, even if they were synced to an atomic clock.”

“But… this came from a source at the power plant,” Lois protested.  “He swore that it was accurate and even broke the rules to give it to me.  And you went to the power plant for this stuff, too!”

“I was looking at it in terms of the severity of damage to their equipment,” Clark explained.  “That’s the same angle that Star Labs is working on, by the way.  In fact, I had a discussion with Doctor Faulkner on the matter late this afternoon, but they still have some work to do before we have anything to act on.”

Lois sighed irritably, and lowered her gaze to the table top.  She was quiet for a moment, and then added angrily, “Well, we’ve got no joy from the Washington idiots, either.  They still think it was some kind of nuclear device and are chasing their tails looking for radiation.  They’ve diverted half of the teams to Boston and Philadelphia because of the high background radiation they found there…”  She softened her tone and asked quietly, “Those were two of the nuked cities you were talking about earlier, weren’t they?”

“Yes,” Clark confirmed grimly.  He paused a moment, and then said thoughtfully, “Star Labs is our best bet, but we’re going to have to wait for Faulkner’s team to reprogram their equip–”

“We’re back!” Jimmy interrupted as he swung the conference room door open.  He walked through with Richard and Jason right behind him, all of them laden with takeout bags.  “Who’s hungry?”

“Me!” Jason chimed in.

“Me, too!” Kara echoed.

“There’s our girl,” Richard commented cheerfully.  He turned to Clark, and apologetically told him, “Clark, I really don’t know what happened.  One second she was right there with Jason–”

“I’m sorry,” Kara said meekly.

“It’s okay, she’s okay.  Please, don’t worry about it,” Clark assured Richard.  He looked over at Kara and pointedly added, “I’m sure it won’t happen again.”

“Next time I’ll have to tie myself to her,” Richard joked.  He set the takeout bags on the table and started pulling the items out.

“So didya’ get to go flyin’ with Superman?” Jason asked Kara excitedly.

“Uh-huh,” Kara replied quietly.

“What was it like?” Jason asked eagerly.

“What was what like?”

“Flyin’ with Superman!”  Jason clarified impatiently as he lifted his arms above his head in an imitation simple imitation of the hero’s flying pose.  “I wanna’ go flyin’ with him, too.  What was it like?”

You’ll probably find out soon enough, Lois thought.  “Jason!” she yelled.  “Don’t pester Kara about Superman.  Find something else to talk about.”

“But, Mommy–” Jason complained.

“I mean it!”

Richard smiled at Jason’s overacted disappointment, as he pouted and spun back and forth in his chair.  “It’s not the end of the world, kiddo,” he told him firmly.  “Besides… we’ve got burritos!”  Jason looked up with a smile, and as Richard turned to get him some food, he finally noticed the display at the end of the room and pointed at it.  “What have we got here?”

“A useless map from an unreliable source,” Lois informed him.  “Let’s get the munchkins fed, and we’ll fill everyone in later.”  Richard nodded, and he continued emptying the takeout bags and the rest of the group anxiously waited for the meal to begin.  Lois covertly watched Richard as he split up the food.  He’s a good man, Lois thought somberly. And still blissfully ignorant of how complicated our lives just got.  How do I tell the only father that Jason’s ever known that his son has another father?  And who will I tell him it is?

-o-o-o-


(1) My inspiration for the “pocket dimension” comes from the Phantom Zone in the Superman movies, from the Star Trek television series, Enterprise, in the “Future Tense” episode (“bigger on the inside”), and from Shado Librarian’s Superman Movieverse Fan Fiction work, Setup.  This differs from the old comic canon, where everything is super-compressed in a normal pocket.  Some things simply don’t compress well.

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« Last Edit: Nov 21st, 2008 at 12:34pm by Mr. Beeto »  
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