Flag Tag
When the gong went off the next morning, there was a mixed mood among the students. Some of them greeted their master as they had done every single morning. Others did it absent-mindedly with nervous pits in their stomachs. Shifu noticed the mixed atmosphere, but said absolutely nothing. He simply greeted his students and followed them to the kitchen to eat. Mei-Ling was already up making breakfast which would allow Po more time to be anxious over the morning's activities. The masters did their best to assure Po that he would be perfectly fine and that the second time would be much better. They soon got closer to the kitchens and caught whiff of the food that Mei-Ling was making. The scent drew almost everyone to the kitchen, allowing opportunity for some to have more private conversations.
"Hey, can I talk to you for a second?" Viper asked. She quickly pulled Tigress aside while the boys went into the kitchen, not even noticing that they had fallen behind.
"Is something wrong?" Tigress asked, raising an eyebrow.
"No, of course not. I just wanted to ask you something strictly out of curious confirmation."
"Which would be...?"
"You and Crane dated?!"
Tigress rolled her eyes ever-so-slightly. "That was over ten years ago," she reminded her. "Trust me; I haven't thought much about it."
"Well I wasn't really worried about it if that's what you were thinking. I mean, you're obviously not dating now," Viper replied with a smile. "I'm just...very surprised. I didn't think you two would have dated. And no one's ever really mentioned it."
"That's because I didn't feel like being a public spectacle," Tigress told her. "We both agreed to just stay friends and not talk about it." The master eyed her friend. "I'm surprised Crane mentioned it," she added.
"We were talking yesterday about old dates we went on, so that's how it came up."
"Oh, I see."
The girls began to walk towards the kitchen again to avoid the boys coming back to check on them. When they arrived, everyone was just sitting down to eat, with Po nervously chatting away clearly not in the mood for a second of teaching. They took their places at the table and slowly began to join the conversation when an appropriate place opened up. The masters discussed the exciting arrival of Crane's mom that afternoon and reassured their friend that everything would go perfectly fine. Crane was still worried about invaders, but tried to come to terms with the fact that perhaps not everything would go according to plan. (And if indeed there were invaders, the masters could quickly dispatch them while Shifu and Mei-Ling watched Mrs. Fan carefully). Everyone soon finished breakfast though and it was time for the inevitable.
"I hope you all enjoy a wonderful morning of training," Shifu said. "I'll be meditating by the Moon Pool for the morning."
Po tried to smile, but he still looked nervous.
"I'll be right behind you," Mei-Ling told the masters as they started to file out of the kitchen. "I'm just going to grab my paper really quick."
She grabbed her items from the counter and followed Po and the Furious Five out the door. Everyone then began to head over in the direction of the training hall, only to be stopped half-way there.
"Shifu wants you to train by the Dragon Grotto today," she announced to the surprised group.
"Wait, WHAT?!" Po exclaimed. "But...but what if I accidentally knock one of the five off of the waterfall."
"Po, you better not...." Mantis warned.
"Shifu's orders," Mei-Ling said. "Your instructions are the same as last time."
Po groaned, but changed directions and led the Furious Five down the path going to the Dragon Grotto. No one said a word as they slowly walked up the steep slope and eventually started to traverse the large rocks in their way. Po was too busy thinking and wheezing over each climb to really have much of a conversation anyway. When they finally arrived, the Five stood on some nearby rocks to avoid being swept over the falls, Mei-Ling stood towards the back of the cave, and Po stood on a lone rock in the middle of the water.
The Dragon Warrior cleared his throat and said, "So...Shifu said do the same thing as last time, so I'm assuming he means time...just not as bad as my last attempt."
He glanced over at Mei-Ling, hoping she'd say something, but she was busy scrolling in her scroll and didn't seem like she would interact with him whatsoever. He turned back to the Five and continued. "Sooooooo...um...uh......I.....I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing up here!" he admitted in frustration. "There's literally nothing but water! And I had a whole thing planned too! Well, actually, I was debating on it, but that's not the point! I can't teach on the fly like Shif-oooooooooooh!!!"
Po immediately paused, thought, and then walked through the water to peer over the edge. The Five looked a little nervous.
"What are you planning, Master Po?" Tigress called over.
"A little game," Po answered with a wide grin on his face. He turned back to his friends. "Have you guys every played 'Capture the Flag'?"
"Ooh! I used to play that with my sisters all the time in our gardens!" Viper exclaimed gleefully. "I'd put up different colored dancing ribbons and then we'd split up into teams of two and try to steal the other flag!"
"How many sisters do you have?" Monkey asked.
"Five."
Monkey whistled incredulously. "Lucky you," he said. "I always had to play the game with other kids if I wanted to have fun. Capture the Flag isn't as much fun when you just have an older brother who loves to cheat."
"I'm scared to ask how."
"It wasn't too bad; he just loved trying to trick me into thinking he already won and then he'd steal my flag."
"How do you even play with just two people?" Mantis asked. "That sounds boring."
Tigress cleared her throat to interrupt everyone and gave them a look that meant, Talk later.
"Thanks, Tigress," Po said. "Anyway, in case any one is not familiar with the game, it's a simple but fun tag game where you need to grab the other opponents' flag. Except today we'll be playing it with a twist. I'm going to time you on how quick you can knock out your opponents by means of their flag. Everybody except Crane will have a certain colored flag stationed on one of those hills out there." Po gestured to the small mountains in the far distance. "The goal is to get to your opponents' flag as quickly as possible. When you have all four flags, come back to the Dragon Grotto and stand on the Dragon here in the center."
"And we're allowed to fight for the flags?" Tigress asked.
"No," came the answer. "If you get touched, you have to freeze for thirty seconds while everyone else goes ahead. When someone is frozen, you can grab a flag if they happen to have it."
"Is that why I'm eliminated?" Crane asked.
"Well, I need someone to quickly grab flags and put them on each hilltop, and I also figured maybe you can give me a bird's eye view of the action. So if you can grab and place four different colored flags within fifteen minutes, your training will be done for the day."
"Oh, okay. Well, I'll be off then." And the master quickly flew off to do what was asked of him. The remaining four stood silently in the cave, probably plotting how they were going to grab the flags and avoid getting hit by the other. Within six minutes, Crane returned with four different colored cloths: Po's green blanket, Viper's pink dancing ribbon, a beautiful brown embroidered tapestry from Monkey's room, and the golden cloth from Shifu's staff.
"I know these aren't flags," Crane said as he watched everyone get ready to make comments about what he had. "But we don't really have any so I improvised."
"So you took stuff out of our room," Monkey remarked, eyeing what was his.
"If we had multiple colored lanterns I'd use them, but we don't. So just deal with it."
"That's fine, Crane," Po assured him. "Just put one on each little mountain or hilltop that's closer. Like that one over there. And that one just off to the right. You have eight minutes left."
Crane bowed and flew off to place the lanterns within his time limit. Tigress frowned as she watched him fly away. "I hope he asked permission before taking that from Shifu's staff," she said. "Otherwise there'll be some trouble."
"I'm sure he asked. You can't really sneak anything past Shifu," Po told her. "Trust me, I've tried."
"We know."
At fifteen minutes on the dot, Crane flew back with a huge huff and landed on the rocks next to his friends.
"Excellent job, Crane," Po complimented. "Right on time."
"Phew!" the master panted. "I wish you guys...luck. That's going to be a lot of running and climbing."
"Crane's mother arrives at noon," Po told the remaining Five. "Each hill and mountain are only about a half hour away, so I expect all four flags to be collected shortly before noon, otherwise...." Po thought long and hard. "You'll all be banished from the training hall for two days and instead be at Mr. Ping's beck and call."
"You can't do that for two days," Tigress told him firmly as her friends looked absolutely horrified by the idea. "You're only master for the morning."
"Oh yeah? What's the matter, Master Tigress? Feeling a little slow this morning?"
"Slow?" Tigress repeated with a little smirk on her face. "The new teacher believes his students are slow?"
"Well, his new students seem to think there's no control over inability to perform a task. And you're slowly running out of time."
"Then why don't you start our training and I'll show you who's slow."
"Very well," Po said, folding his arms behind his back with his best serious expression. "Alright Furious Five. You have less than five hours to bring back all four flags. Starting............NOW!"
Tigress immediately leaped onto the ceiling while Crane flew out of the way of the chaos and Mantis tagged Viper and ran for his life. Tigress jumped down into a somersault and tagged Monkey's shoulder, causing him to freeze as well. Seeing the imminent danger, Mantis did his best to hide among the rocks and run for his life, but he too was spotted. Tigress pinned Mantis to the rock and immediately ran towards the edge of the waterfall with a wide grin on her face. "Try to catch up!" she called over her shoulder. She then leaped over the falls, using the rocks to quickly and safely guide her down to the bottom. Po asked Crane to start flying him in the air so that he could observe the action, and thirty seconds after Tigress started her descent down the falls, the remaining Furious Five dove after her.
The tiger master quickly made her way to the bottom of the falls, taking care to not slip, and soon sped towards the farthest mountain. She figured she'd grab the furthest one away and then tag her friends on the way back and take their flags. She couldn't help but grin to herself as she sped forward across the landscape. Po was adorable, what with his enthusiasm for these little training games. Fun indeed, perhaps, but oh how easy this was going to be!
The remaining masters made their way to the bottom and decided to take the closer mountains. Mantis figured that, since he couldn't run as fast as his friends, he'd have a couple of traps set up for them. Using some sturdy sticks, the master propelled himself into the air and used some bunched together leaves to create a makeshift set of wings. He then proceeded to bounce and fly through the air for a few moments, spying a few useful objects for stopping his fellow masters in their tracks. A good swift kick to an unstable tree branch soon knocked it to the ground in front of Monkey, startling him into jumping backwards. Mantis took the opportunity to dive at him and knock him to the ground with a loud, "TAG!"
"Thirty seconds Monkey!" Po called from above.
"Aw, come on!" Monkey cried.
Mantis laughed and quickly started to move forward, flying past Viper who had taken the lead.
"See you at the top!" Viper called behind her.
Monkey frowned irritably and waited a few seconds before leaping into the treetops and swinging as fast as he could to catch up with his friends. He accidentally slipped a few times since Mantis had cleverly loosened some extra branches and even put up a false canopy for Monkey to fall through. However, as the mountain came closer and closer into view, so did Mantis who was busy free-floating ahead.
"I'm coming for you, Mantis!!!" Monkey called out, swinging as fast as his arms would let him.
Hearing the voice close behind him, Mantis quickly used his leaves to fly out of the way, grabbing a new set to avoid the old randomly crumbling away mid-flight. Monkey tried several times to grab his floating friend and Mantis tried several techniques to try and block Monkey in order to get in a tag. The two friends did a lot of maneuvering before Monkey managed to finally grab Mantis and pin him to the ground.
"Gotcha!" Monkey exclaimed gleefully and he immediately ran off, leaving Mantis sulking on the ground.
"30 seconds!" Po shouted from above.
"Thank you, Po!" Mantis yelled sarcastically.
The first "flag" that everyone was even running to was on a large hill with some rather steep cliffs running on the side. It proved to be the perfect climbing spot for Monkey since it also had plenty of trees for him to grab onto. However, when Mantis reached it, he found his own unique way to get up there: a little hot springs geyser nudged in the side corner. If one maneuvered a particularly large leaf at the right angle into the steam, they could find themselves shooting high into the air, bypassing the need to climb up several kilometers of steep cliffs. Monkey of course was unaware of any of this since Mantis was well-hidden by the shrubbery that was present. He was extremely focused on getting up the side of the hill as fast as he possibly could. As he drew closer to the top, he could see that the first flag was the tapestry from his room. From a distance, the untrained eye might have wondered if it could have been the golden cloth from Shifu's staff, but the tapestry was finely detailed and wasn't shiny in anyway possible. Not to mention it was much flatter than the golden cloth and looked more like an actual flag if you angled it right. Monkey was more than enthusiastic to get his own personal belonging back as the first flag. But just as he reached the top of the hill, he felt a tight pinch on his back which was accompanied by an obnoxious, "TAG!!!"
"Oh come on!" Monkey yelled. "How did you even get up here that fast?!"
"My secret," Mantis said, quickly grabbing the tapestry. He then quickly leaped over the edge of the cliff and sailed safely down to the ground, quickly making his way to the next hill, which was a bit farther away but easier to climb.
Monkey frowned and waited thirty seconds as Po loudly announced that one flag was taken. Crane flew him around the large area to look over where everyone was, leaving Monkey out of Po's sight. When time was up, Monkey quickly swung down the other side and tried his best to catch up with Mantis. He kept an eye out for his friends, especially Tigress and Mantis since they had already shown to have no problem tagging them. The master wondered where Tigress even was since he hadn't seen her since she leaped over the waterfall, but he quickly focused on the task at hand.
The second hill took some time to get to, but Monkey soon found that Mantis had gone in the completely opposite direction as just as he reached his hill, Po called out, "Two flags do-AAAAHHHHHWWWNNN!"
Monkey snickered at Po's apparent clumsiness and glanced up where a large green cloth was flowing in the wind. He quickly started to climb the rocky hillside as he mentally calculated how far away his friends were.
Okay, if Mantis actually went to the Eastern Cliff, then that would mean that he'd get here in about fifteen minutes. So I'd better make this quick, he thought to himself.
With the second flag grabbed and Monkey climbing up the hillside, that meant that Tigress was still heading in the direction of Viper's dancing ribbon. So he had some time before Mantis, and possibly Viper, got to the mountain and tried to track him down.
Actually, I have no idea where Viper is. She's probably close by Mantis, so let's just say that they'll get here at the same time, Monkey thought to himself. I might just have time to grab the flag and run for it. I'll have to think of somewhere to hide.
Cliffs were not really Monkey's forte, but he still managed to get up there in about twelve minutes. (Which was pretty impressive considering the fact that it was extremely tall). Heaving himself onto the top of the cliff, Monkey finally got to Po's blanket, untied it, and started down the mountain.
"THIRD FLAG GONE!!" came Po's bellowing voice from some distance behind him.
Monkey groaned. He had forgotten about that. He took a few deep breaths to get his air back, and then leaped as far as he could off the mountain onto the nearby rocks below. The blanket didn't act like a parachute, but it did slow the master down a little bit where he could grab lone tree branches coming up fast. He then propelled himself into the forest below him and quickly made his way into the treetops. He wasn't getting startled again. Po's blanket would provide perfect coverage among the green foliage while the others would be a dead give away. Monkey sat in the branches trying to catch his breath and keep quiet while waiting for his friends. He listened, waited, listened, and wondered where everyone would possibly show up.
"Hey, where'd you guys go?" Po called from above. "You guys are real good at this game."
Monkey didn't know how long he had been circling the area, but he was sure Crane was probably getting tired. At least three hours had gone by and the two of them had to have been sore. Perhaps they rested on one of the mountaintops waiting for someone to grab any of the flags.
Monkey waited for another moment before deciding to carefully make his way through the treetops, hoping to catch a glimpse of some unnatural color. Mantis had to have been coming on his way to this mountain since this hill was closer. He waited patiently and quietly for the masters to come to the area. He even scanned the trees, keeping an eye out for Viper. He wondered if she or Mantis had grabbed the golden wrap. His answer soon came when he spotted a hint of glistening gold through the trees. As he made his way towards the sight, he saw Mantis holding onto both the brown tapestry and the golden wrap. He had long discarded the leaves, making the only items he could carry into a makeshift rope and parachute. Monkey waited patiently in the tree as Mantis looked around and hid behind a few trees, trying to stay out of sight. After few minutes of looking and quietly maneuvering around in tree canopies, Monkey leaped down and finally tagged Mantis again.
"Thanks, buddy!" he said, running off with the tapestry and the golden wrap.
"Aw come on!!! I was so close!!!" Mantis yelled as he watched his friend vanish through the woods.
Monkey ran as fast as he could, doing his best to keep an eye out for Viper. He hadn't seen her or Tigress since they started the game and he had no idea where she had gone. She had to be pretty close by. Unless of course she was going after her dancing ribbon.
No, she wouldn't cross Tigress, he thought. Not on that mountain.
As he kept an eye out for his friends and making sure that Mantis didn't come back and sneak attack him to grab all three flags, he suddenly heard Po let out a surprised, "Wait-what the-?! Um...FOURTH FLAG DOWN!"
Crane was saying something, but he was too soft-spoken to really be heard. Which was too bad for Monkey as he found out within the next two minutes. He had spotted Mantis trying to sneak up on him and managed to out-maneuver him and tag him once again. Unfortunately, right before he climbed back into the trees to hide, he felt someone with a very strong grip grab his shoulder.
"Thank you for grabbing the other three, Master Monkey," Tigress told him triumphantly. She quickly grabbed all three "flags" and darted out of the area, leaving the stunned Monkey and Mantis behind her.
"HOW?!?!?!" the two exclaimed.
Tigress didn't answer them. She simply smirked and ran as fast as she could back to the waterfall where they had first started. She tied all four "flags" to her body and began to climb up the side of the falls, taking care to not get any of the items soaking wet. (Especially the golden wrap). She soon reached the top, a little out of breath, and darted towards the Dragon Statue in the middle of the pond. The master was then tripped when an unforeseen shadow popped out of nowhere and entwined herself around the masters legs. Tigress tried to fall so as not to get the "flags" wet, but she was so startled by the sudden arrival she didn't get much time to correct her fall.
"I think I'll take my ribbon back, thank you," Viper said as she quickly untied all four flags and slithered to the top of the Dragon Statue just before Tigress' time to freeze ran up.
"And TIME!" Po called as Crane landed him in the cave. Crane dived back down the falls to pull Monkey and Mantis all the way back up, though this took a few minutes since he was already pretty tired from hauling Po around in the air. When everyone was back on the ground, he allowed Viper to climb down and return the items to Crane so he could later return them.
"How long were you sitting there for?" Tigress asked as she stood back on one of the rocks out of the way of the water's current.
"A while," Viper admitted. "I did some stretching for whenever you guys came up so I didn't get a spine cramp."
"But I saw you go to the Eastern Cliff!" Monkey exclaimed. "When did you go back?!"
"Isn't that cheating?" Mantis asked Po.
"No, that's perfectly legal," Po said. "And a totally cool strategy. Though I'm sure that probably won't work a second time, knowing you guys."
"Probably not," Viper agreed. "I could see everyone running around in a frenzy, and half way I realized that by the time you guys got back to the Dragon Statue, you'd be pretty worn out. So I figured I'd snag whoever came up here at their weakest."
"I wouldn't say that climb made me weak," Tigress corrected immediately. "But you definitely surprised me. By a lot."
"You're welcome!"
"Well, students," Po said to the Five. "You guys did pretty good today. You got back here before noon and you guys implemented some seriously awesome battle strategies. Like Mantis using leaf parachutes and Monkey sneaking around in the treetops all incognito! Crane...thanks for flying me all over the place."
"You're welcome," Crane said, trying to smile through the pain in his muscles.
"And Tigress...you totally camouflaged an ivy branch! I didn't realize you snatched the ribbon until, like, just a couple of minutes ago!"
"Oh, that's what happened!" Mantis and Monkey exclaimed.
"I want to see what Po and Crane would do," Viper admitted. "I say we do this again sometime."
"Please, Crane would just steal all the flags and fly high enough to avoid us," Mantis said.
"Not on my watch," Tigress remarked.
Po cleared his throat. "Well, that's for another time," he said quickly. "You guys did good training, so...you're dismissed."
"I'll go put everything back," Crane said as he started to walk down the slope with his friends.
"You do that," came Mei-Ling from the back of the cave. "I have to finalize this report for Shifu."
Everyone jumped a little at the sound of her voice.
"I completely forgot you were there!" Po admitted in surprise.
"You've been outside all morning fighting each other over pieces of fabric on hilltops. I'm not that surprised."
She grinned a little and walked after the Furious Five. Tigress let her go on ahead before pausing on top of one of the rocks. Po had started to follow, but Tigress put out one arm to stop him. When everyone had gone down far enough on the slope, she turned to look at Po and slid down to lower ground to talk to him. Po looked at her and twiddled his thumbs.
"Soooo....how did I do?" he asked nervously.
"Better than last time," Tigress assured him. "You'll get the hang of it eventually." She gave him a smile and added, "I wanted to say thanks for an invigorating training day. I don't think I've ever climbed a mountain so fast in my life."
Po chuckled. "You're welcome," he said. "I just hope it's in line with what Shifu expects me to be doing."
"Po, I'm going to say this now as a forewarning; you and Shifu will never have the same training style. And not because you won't make a good teacher, because you will."
"Then why not?"
"Because you and Shifu have different personalities. You were raised different. You have different styles of teaching. And you understand things better than all of us. Like the Dragon Scroll. You were the only one besides Oogway who understood what that meant."
"Well, I mean, I had a little help from dad."
"The point is you still understood the meaning and you continue to understand things that may go over our head. You develop your techniques faster because of that. So when you actually take over, I think we're going to have to expect methods of teaching that are polar opposite of Shifu's."
Po laughed. "I guess that would make sense," he admitted. "Though watch me become a teacher and then I start waking you all up earlier than Shifu does."
Tigress smirked. "Please tell me you'll do that once just as a joke," she suggested coyly.
"I think I might. If I can actually get myself up that early anyway."
The two began to walk down the slope of the Dragon Grotto, taking them safely away from the rushing falls and onto more stable ground. The Five were long gone at this point, though some of their chattering could be vaguely heard if one listened hard enough.
"I can't wait for Crane's mom to come over," Po admitted as they rounded a bend. "It'll be so exciting!"
"I just hope Viper's dad will be okay with it soon. He didn't sound very enthusiastic about it."
"I'm sure he'll come around. Viper's dad is a pretty cool dude. From what I hear anyway. I mean, he let her adapt ribbon-dancing into snake-style since she doesn't have any venom."
"That's true. But I hope it happens sooner rather than later."
"Definitely. Knowing the kind of guy Viper's dad is, it's probably pretty scary to start dating one of his kids at first. Like, I could totally see that kind of reaction from Shifu if we started dating."
Tigress said absolutely nothing in reply, and the look on her face indicated to Po that he had hit a nerve.
"Oh, right, sorry!" Po apologized with an embarrassed flush. "I just...sorry. Forgot about the no-dating thing."
Tigress stopped walking and turned to him with a long sigh. "Po, it's nothing personal against you or the idea of dating you," she said. "I just...."
"Have a lot of stuff on your plate?" Po guessed.
"When we came back, I figured things would be different, but they became different in ways I wasn't expecting. I wasn't expecting to meet Dai. I wasn't expecting Shifu to get married. I wasn't expecting Viper and Crane to publicly announce their dating and for everyone and their mother to stop by and say congrats. And then that's the other thing. All anyone talks about is Viper and Crane dating. Every two seconds people stop them in the streets. Every two seconds people ask them questions about their relationship. I personally don't feel like being broadcasted, poked, gossiped about, or talked two whenever I step foot in the village."
"I totally get that." A quizzical look was given. "What, you think I like dad telling embarrassing stories about me? About every villain I face somehow knowing more about me than I've ever given out? About people trying to butt into my personal life and ask me too many questions and talking about some slip-up I did for the next gazillion years because I'm the Dragon Warrior and, oh look everybody! The Dragon Warrior doomed all in China because he thought he was Mister Big Muscles over there!"
Tigress smiled and tried to hide the small laugh bubbling in her throat. "I see," she said. "I suppose that's fair enough to say."
"I know that you're not much of a talker," Po told her. "And I can tell that this stuff is stressing you out, so I don't want to push or accidentally make it worse, that's all."
"I'm not stressed," Tigress answered firmly, folding her arms across her chest. "It's more......"
"It takes you a while to adjust to new circumstances?"
"Yes. Exactly that. It takes a while to work out a simple schedule with Dai, and that takes a good part of my day. Shifu getting married is going to be unusual since no one's ever been married here so that will be weird. And I personally would rather not deal with everyone in the valley on our backs all day."
"I understand."
The two started to walk back down the slope again, only for Po to grab Tigress from behind and squeeze her in a tight hug.
"Po...." Tigress warned, jumping a little in surprise.
"Don't give me that stoic nonsense, you big softie. Give me a hug."
"Didn't I punch you last time for calling me that?"
"Yep, but I'm your teacher for the morning, Master Tigress, and since it isn't quite noon, you can't punch me."
Tigress rolled her eyes, but soon smiled and returned the hug. They were quick to return to walking though in order to avoid people getting suspicious about why they were taking so long to come down.
"Thanks for knocking me out of the tree by the way," Po joked. "Crane had to dive-bomb in order to catch me."
"Well I couldn't have your loud mouth giving away the absence of another flag," Tigress replied, playfully cuffing the bottom of the panda's chin.
Po grinned and was about to make a counter reply when he heard a very loud and angry Shifu scream: "WHO TOOK THE WRAP FROM OOGWAY'S STAFF????!!!!!!!"
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