Dark Crisis: Nexus Being
For the Dick Grayson Big Bng 2023 hosted by @dickgraysonbigbang. Paired with the lovely @kiwilart check out their beautiful art done for this! (Thanks for being my partner <33)
The grey zones are spheres of shadow that appear on earth with no rhyme nor reason to their occurrence. They block out what is kept in; no signal, no tech, no arcane or supernatural means are able to penetrate through it.
And those who go in never come out.
Until Dick Grayson came stumbling out of one with a grave look and a lead. And maybe a truth about himself that could be the answer to stop it.
It was another routine evacuation mission. Star City, 3:32pm.
Nightwing swung from building to building for a better vantage point to spot any citizens.
Speedsters and movement-favoured heroes scouted inside buildings to rush them out.
A simple system formed over months of this, especially for him as an adaptable member for any role.
Zone approaching t-minus 5 minutes, his communicator announced before going back to regular levels of activity.
Comms going off one after another. Requests for backup at Zone C for 20 citizens. Land vehicles requesting clearance and navigation en route to rendezvous point.
Many things. But with grappling hook and his humanly physical attributes, he had to stick to his role.
Then— crying, he hears. Young, just a turn away.
Nightwing let go of the grapple and landed at the corner of a junction.
And right next to a parking metre, a child no older than nine from Nightwing's estimates laid curled up on the ground bawling his eyes out in fear. Black hair, small body it was like looking at a picture of himself. weird.
With how packed the junction was with empty cars haphazardly parked in the middle of the road, it was no wonder that the kid was left forgotten. a bad misight on their part.
Where were his parents?
“Hey,” Nightwing kept his voice calm and inviting. a blend of calming a citizen and child rearing, with a bit of levity that could encourage the kid to look at him.
The boy looked up and immediately latched onto him. Still sniffling but less afraid. no speaking, must be overwhelmed by everything poor kid, he thought sympathetically as he stroked his hair and wrapped another arm around his body.
“It’s gonna be scary for a bit but I’ll get you to safety as soon as we can and get you to your parents ok?” he said. “You can close your eyes for this part but I promise I won't let go.”
He felt a small nod. Good enough.
Nightwing adjusted his grip to grapple onto the nearest building out and let gravity guide him.
-
Nightwing was created from a story. A history passed down to him from his own hero. Superman had always been a stable figure in his life, a lighthouse when he felt lost.
Nightwing was the great rebuilder. Born of redemption and rebirth and he wanted it so badly. The idea that there was something after a name and purpose is gone.
Nightwing was something else to Dick Grayson. An entirely new understanding of what skills he had and how he could use it.
But lately, with the Grey Zones and its uncomfortable feeling of impending doom left him restless. Every week he went on the field to evacuate thousands and migrate them to the nearest refuge. It was stressful. To hear the cries of those that have lost their lives to the black hole of an enemy, to hear begging and pleading of turning back, or the solemn silence of developed apathy.
It always felt as though Dick could do more as a vigilante. Despite all he had done; his relentless training to keep his skills sharp, his connections within the hero community, the actual good he has put into the world. He chalked it up to perfectionism most of the time, but this was different.
As if his identity held another weight. a meaning being formed right in front of him. As if the universe had started calling, humming a crooning tune that beckoned him closer, to an answer or a demise he wasn’t sure.
He felt it the moment they went into this mess.
-
It was a routine day for the heroes on the west coast of the US. They heard reports of an abnormal darkness spreading and investigated.
Emergency services were already present on the field when they arrived, yet where the road continued to lead off to shadows instead. It was a spherical wall of opaque black, yet swirling like smoke at moments in non-euclidean similarity. They sent off one of their vehicles to go in and report if it was safe to move forward.
Communications malfunctioned as soon as the last glimpse of the ambulance passed through.
They thought they would be better able to pass through and evacuate the citizens left inside.
News broke out that an entire team of heroes were lost to the zone the situation took on a dire light. So the Justice League swiftly acted.
Superman, the face of the League took charge of the first emergency meeting with
The first report of the Grey Zone outside of the United States was the UK.
Then followed by China, Mexico, South Africa. Soon enough, every nation had been plagued with the darkness, entire cities of people left homeless, setting forth hastily formed refugee bases in stadiums, school gyms and convention centres. Because no one knew if they would be hit next. If there was any point in fully stocking these areas if there was a chance that it would be gone the next day.
Six months into this pandemic, Singapore became completely lost to the Grey Zone. A dark spot on the world
The best thinkers in the world working with the brains of the Justice League were coming up empty, every occultist they knew had consulted the supernatural to no avail, the world had long become antsy for some sort of solution but they had nothing.
They were powerless.
-
The Grey Zone at Star City stopped expanding.
The heroes waited with baited breath. Nightwing on the comms said it would be a tight squeeze to get out in time but he sounded confident. But the likelihood that he did was decreasing every second.
It’s not that there ever has been a case for people to escape the Grey Zone, so really expecting Nightwing to come out of it was a foolish dream.
It’s just that no one could quite believe that something could defeat him. Nightwing has always been an adversary for the notion of impossibility, a human that could bend reality to what he could do, his feats seeming to contradict the laws of the universe. So for him to not make it out was wrong on so many levels.
They waited way longer than they should have.
And he was still gone.
-
It couldn’t end like this.
Did everyone feel it in the end? The overwhelming feeling of terror down to the bone, washed in cold guilt like ice down his back.
He kept swinging still, muscle memory from a lifetime of vigilante work taking over as he took greater focus on beating the encroaching darkness. He could feel it nip at his back, a constant push and pull of wrapping them in its arms.
But he started slowing. It started speeding up.
His eyes behind his mask widened as the darkness finally swallowed him and the boy in his arms.
No.
-
He woke up on a cot in the Watchtower’s medbay. Alone except for Batman in the room. No dire injuries, no bandages, nothing physically felt off. The boy.
“W-where is he?” Dick croaked, voice hoarse from disuse.
Batman, seeming to understand, stepped forward and spoke. “When you went back on our radar, you were alone. Team Alpha two days ago reported that you were carrying a child westward to the rendezvous. We couldn’t find him.”
It hurt to hear how he failed in saving a kid’s life. How they both went in but he was the only one that made it.
“Oh.”
There really wasn’t much to say after that. Wait— two days?
Batman subtly straightened up, a miniscule action only caught by years of knowing him; the shift of his cape, his jaw shifting slightly, the narrowing of the whites in his eyes.
“How did you get out?”
“I- I don’t know. Just… It’s— they’re?— stealing the colours, the memories, the lives. Everything.”
He couldn’t remember what happened to him before and after.
But the memories rushed through him. Colours to grey, alive to emptiness, a slow death. And most importantly, how he escaped it all.
“That’s not an answer Nightwing and you know that,” Batman squinted in his cowl even further, “You’re hiding something.”
Nightwing pinched his eyebrows, huffing out an approximate to a laugh. God, Batman would never believe what really happened. He was hoping for some more time to formulate something better. Something that made more sense in words than just feelings and inexplicable experiences.
“I- I saw God?” he tried, incredibly bashful in his delivery.
A hum. Continue on then.
“Not really God either. It was like the universe but larger, so much more than what we know but also smaller?”
The words have never failed him before now. He pushed through, “We were in the darkness and I was the only one awake or maybe I was alone?”
He wavered at Bruce’s increasingly wrinkled cowl. “So, it did and now I’m here,” he summarised, raising jazz hands as he uncomfortably looked away.
It was silent. The sterile white of the medbay grew brighter, piercing his eyes, and there was a faint ringing in his ears that only grew louder. Batman just stood there, emotionless as always, then left the room.
As the doors closed, Dick put his head in his hands and groaned as he stewed over what he did wrong.
-
The Justice League (and the wider hero community in general) could be such mother hens. It's been a week and Nightwing still hasn't been cleared for the field. For the most part, stuck in the Watchtower or the Manor.
Suffice to say that he was going more than stir crazy.
He used to do ground patrol during evacs. An adaptable member on various teams due to his ability to clear out buildings inside out from the top down or bottom up.
Now they were just trying to put him on PR duty till they felt safe to let him out (read: never). They’ve given him first hand accounts, the latest classified world leaders’ meeting, and even evacuation team reports— which just gave him a massive case of FOMO instead. Not that they were having a good time; he’s a workaholic and he misses his work. He just finished reading the evacuation report in Italy, one of his assigned areas too.
Normally, Dick wasn’t opposed to this side of the vigilante lifestyle, he has just as much experience with the public as Superman. But it didn’t feel as fulfilling making notes for Black Canary to address in the next press conference or chairing the next international meeting, than what he really wanted to do.
He knows what he saw. But he had reason to believe that some of them doubted his testimony, and might even assume that he lost a few screws while in there. Hence, Dick being grounded. If he just had more time to process it. Think it all straight and lay it out for Batman just one more time.
At the very least, there are some in the research team who would “look into it”. Not much to go off of, but it could be a start at unravelling the mystery. Although, with the rapid onslaught of new Grey Zones recently, there’s no telling as to when they’ll get to it.
It also brought him to think about the topic he dreaded most, the one he neglected to tell the others just because of how irrational it was: the nature of himself. When Batman found him out, he didn’t know where to start, what to even say. So he made a diversion to steer away from it, let the others focus on the weird trip he went on to hide what he learnt. It was something that shouldn’t be said yet, something he couldn’t verbalise because of how reality will sink in when he does.
Whatever it meant to be a Nexus Being, what it entails, what is so different about him now that he knew about it.
So, he was stuck with his thoughts and the weight of solving this on his own.
-
He’s running. His breath fogs in the cold, every inhale burning his lungs. But it physically hurts too. A million tiny pieces of debris crawling down his throat, clogging his airways. Every other breath is him hacking his lungs out.
He doesn’t know why he’s still running. He’s stuck isn’t he? He doesn’t know what happened. When the world went dark, it was as if he walked through a doorway and forgot what he was going to get. All he knows is to try and escape. He keeps running on the empty street.
He was carrying something. He forgot what it was.
Every piece of him longs to see the sun again. But with every bound and leap, there’s a growing feeling that he should slow down, to stop.
And it’s incredibly convincing.
If Dick were to recount this tale, if he were to live and get through this, he wouldn’t be able to say that he tried as hard as he could to brush it off. He was tired and weary and call it uncharacteristic, but he stopped.
A wave of tiredness immediately washes over him. Head spinning, he leans on the nearest wall and tries to catch his breath. He coughs every other time, and attempts to stifle them into every third at least. He finally has the time to observe his surroundings thought, and then it hits him.
It wasn’t really dark.
He knows the night. He grew up in the shadows of the Bat, learned to live and blend in with it. Make it home when everything else was still so unfamiliar back then. Don’t get him wrong, the world blurred to grey as he ran and every part of him felt enveloped by blackness but he knows every shade of the sky when it’s dark out and this isn’t it.
The sky above him looked erased, a blank canvas where there should have been substance. It was disorientating, especially when he questioned where the light was emitting from. Because if the sky was… nothingness— best descriptor he had, and there weren’t any lamps lit on the street, nor any light coming from the windows, then where was it coming from?
He double checks his investigation of the place. All the weirdness pointing to supernatural means.
Then he registers figures coming into frame. Appearing out of the fog that limits his vision.
His eyes widen with what he sees.
People. But entirely grayscale as they walk unseeingly and zombielike. They pass by Dick without a second glance. And they’re all heading in one direction, towards the centre where the Grey Zone first started expanding.
He has nothing to do but follow.
-
Every vigilante worth their salt knew how to create evidence boards, vigilante as in the Bats presenting their discoveries. If only to aid in some finer flaunting.
And as such, it was what he was currently doing to figure out the whole Nexus Being and saving the world problem. Simple.
As of now, he’s dug out an old cork board and a few discarded theories from Research: a tie to the nth metals from that one crisis involving the Dark Multiverse, thus connecting it to the electrum metal flowing through his blood, a possible Court of Owls involvement? Then more about the darkness, the Great Darkness, the Great Evil, the Shadow Creature, etc— Dick had to applaud the list of aliases, but the ambiguous branding could use some work. Digressing, the only two barely connected ideas were the Carter Hall notebook and something about a Sandman?
He was nowhere close to understanding. And it was also a bit of pride stopping him from calling any of Justice League Dark, who he justified as being very preoccupied. It’s an uncomfortable space to be in, being short of an answer you thought you could find out yourself.
He debated on whether he should involve someone else in this. If it was something he should even share. But in reality, those questions covered for the other part of him that was scared he wouldn’t like the answer, mainly that a Nexus Being meant he was a danger to others. If things would change with how others view him.
And a tinier part of him was angry if this was all fate. That he didn’t work as hard as he actually should because of the world intending it so. It’s not as if he couldn’t handle sudden change, but maybe he didn’t want change right now, he was happy with how he was living life, why should something he apparently has always been change that?
It’s those tiny thoughts that spiral and take over what was important. That cloud his mind sometimes from duty. As a hero, he knows what it takes and he knows what he should prioritise.
He buried the Batman in him and dialled Zatanna.
-
Dick can only describe the trip as a weird cross of dystopian hellscape paired with the uncanny familiarity of Star City. To sum up the rest of his experience though… he is surrounded by people, but they walk as if forced into rigid lines and columns. However, there’s a wide circular berth around Nightwing—he doesn’t feel a compulsion to fit into the status quo, nor does he need to walk in the same as them, so he’s just barrelling through the people out onto the street.
He continued a little ways behind them all as they walked and walked and walked.
He had a sinking feeling in his chest as more people appeared in droves heading the same direction. Junctions allowing a growing crowd to emerge and spill onto the road. As they entered the park gates by Midtown, it finally hits him.
They’re at the epicentre of the Grey Zone, a water fountain frozen in time stood at ground zero. He knew that his team branched off from the park but with the way the people lined themselves in wait around the fountain, it was a detail he couldn’t shake.
Everyone stands stock-still, and as he’s already incredibly unnerved by all of this, he goes to touch someone. He knows him— it takes a while to get his name, Peter, a fan of Nightwing that he once saved who came up to him after the battle to talk about acrobatics. Just a pleasant conversation with a fellow acrobat that makes what he does all worth it.
But he doesn’t get the answer he thought he’d get. Peter doesn’t recognise him. He’s a stranger. And there’s a growing indication that everyone around him is also in this state.
He staggers back and finds himself alone drifting through the cosmos. Alone. At least it’s easier to breathe.
The black canvas and its painted stars. There is a peace in being alone with such beauty, and he takes painless breaths as he watches the glinting galaxies. It’s a nice change but
The peace doesn’t last.
The hair on his neck quivers as he feels a presence behind him. He turns around.
-
What Dick has on the topic of… whatever is going on, is actually pretty in depth. It’s amazing what someone can do when they have nothing else going on.
He dug up as much as he could but what Zatanna could offer helped more than he could say.
He first had to tell her the whole story from start to finish. The problem was that he never did improve how he told it after the first time. Fortunately, Zatanna was more than capable of understanding of course she was. Dick loves her so much for that.
Who could forget the magician and her reverse words? Her power in knowing the twisting nature of language and the natural state of a confusing world was well suited for Dick’s experiences. His stuttered speech finally comprehensible for the first time?
While she didn’t have time to explain fully, she guided him in the right direction. Zatanna had big duties. A point of contact for the supernatural that the League could rely on (sorry Constantine). She still took the time though, which was much more than what he expected.
She first added onto the Sandman point: “There was this thing he once said, something about a black sun? But he did say it would be his fight if that were to happen.”
“Thankfully, we’re not at that part.” yet he added silently.
“He knows this isn’t it. Always good to take out what isn’t relevant.” And easily as that, Zatanna removed his pin on Dream. It was a loose guess anyway.
“Moving on, what exactly is this?” she tapped an idea he tacked on last minute.
The theory of the reverse universe. So, William Sidis was one of those people Bruce added to his reading list in vigilantism. A moral story of genius pushed into obscurity, and this and that about expanding ideas. But also, how some things can be truer than what meets the eye.
And for this theory, he couldn’t get it out of his head. The laws of the reverse universe work in opposition to theirs. Focused not only on energy, but time as well. Sidis proposed that the organisms in that universe would conceive the past as the future and the future as the past. The past then, becomes something unknown.
And energy instead of dispersing, gathers.
Dick simplified this as much as he could when he relayed it to Zatanna. A rough yet solid idea. But one she couldn’t add any weight to.
“For something like this… I don’t know, Dick. I guess in the same way the Phantom Zone exists, it might be possible. But why here? Why now?”
He couldn’t answer with that statement. “It’s outlandish but almost everything in that book was uncanny. We just need to know how the Grey Zones come into this. I just need to dig further.”
“You mean we?” Zatanna said that with no-nonsense.
Dick pointedly did not answer. She sighed heavily and gave him a long look but didn’t press on it. Has he mentioned that he loves her?
It’s not that he doesn’t trust her. The depth of which he can trust his life in her hands feels infinite. But he can’t bring her into this more than he already has.
They continued on bullet point after bullet point and they would have done so till they exhausted every possibility, extrapolated every piece of information, if not for Zatanna’s comms to go off.
“Oh, duty calls—” she checked her alert—“I gotta get going—something’s going down in Malta? All the best though, Dick.”
After a quick peck on his cheek, she leaned in close and whispered. “You’re not in this alone.”
“Thank you for the help, Zatanna,” he ignored that last statement, definitely a dick move but what else could he say?
She had no idea what a Nexus Being is, coming to the same conclusion he did about focal points and connections. Zatanna did say though, right before she left, that she’d look into it.
He hasn’t decided if that’s a good thing or not.
He takes a step back to take in the whole board. Turn his head to the side, then the other. His eyes widen and he turns on his heel and leaves.
-
Dick can’t describe what he’s looking at.
The background is simple. The stars and galaxies are still there, twinkling. The purples and blues in a marbling display in his sight, they swirl in his eyes that expand infinitely across his surroundings.
But the entity in front of him is literally beyond comprehension. Any depiction he conjures in his head is wiped. He knows he catches faces appearing, his brain scrambling to find life in there like a jacket over a chair in the middle of the night. Inexplicable images flashing faster than the blink of an eye.
He can work with referring to… them as the anthropomorphic night. More than a lifetime of experience for that honestly.
Contrary to popular belief, he is not given the heavenly task of spreading the word of God. Instead he is greeted with warnings.
He is projected with flashing red errors and every hazard symbol that spells out bad news. He’s a deadly virus, a relentless parasite. He embodies the world in chaos, raging fires, and the apocalypse. He’s at the centre of it all— every finger pointed at his existence.
Dick voicelessly screams into the void. He feels every inch of pain rack his body. He dies over and over again, it’s not the pummelling blows he’s used to, it’s the very breath being taken from his lungs in a constant loop.
He feels himself slip into unconsciousness under the currents of the stars. And he dreams of something called a Nexus Being.
-
Zatanna doesn’t often find herself listless in her line of work. She has a grocery list of things to attend to in this crisis.
But her thoughts stray to Dick’s situation. The League had been hesitant to say anything about his disappearance and return. For valid reasons too, the questions, the accusations that could pop up— she does not want to be in the PR team’s shoes if that were to happen.
Luckily, or unluckily depending on how you view it, those two days were only stressful for the League who just lost one of their strongest members in both skill and bond.
They push against impossible odds so often that those two days were spent trying to find him, hoping for the business of revival to come to him. It did, but at what cost?
Dick was slightly off-kilter when he came back. Pulling away and retreating into himself despite the League’s attempts at protecting him. Zatanna gets it but Dick is not meant to be cooped up on the ground for so long. She jumped at the opportunity to help.
A fat load of good that did. Now he’s gone again and all that’s left is his mystery board that no one can begin to decode.
But Zatanna knows. She just needs help from a couple others.
End of Part One
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Fic Auction for Charity!
Alright y’all! The time has come! Now through Sunday, August 28th 11:59PM (Central Daylight Time) YOU have the power to guide my hand and decide which of my many, many, (many) kaishin WIPs will take priority and ascend to the top of my list!
This is part of a charity event run by @ficwritersforreproductiverights !
How??
Well, I’m an accountant. So we’re gonna use money. Every dollar donated to any reputable charity anywhere in the world that is fighting to support and protect reproductive rights will be 1 vote. (More details below the cut.)
Show me the options!
Vampire!Shinichi
Gay drama! Kaito’s deeply closeted and dealing with some internalized homophobia and it’s ruining his and Shinichi’s relationship. Can love conquer all?
Porn! Starts out with a sexy dream and a bit of voyeurism, ends with actual sexy times~
Other porn! Involving blindfolds and a bit of roleplay
I’d be happy with any one-shot fluffy get-together fic if it means you’ll have something new to post faster~❤
Detective Conan Movie Cut Scenes: Private Eyes' Requiem
Look, DS, I just want you to focus on the the next installment of the Fall into Flying universe!
(More details on each of these below the cut.)
Remember, our goal here is to raise as much as we can to support and protect reproductive healthcare for all!
The world’s gone mad. Let’s write our way out. ✍
Tell me more about how voting works?
There is a $1 minimum as $1 = 1 vote (If donation is in a different currency I'll go with the closest reasonable equivalent.)
First, pick a charity. If you already have some that you like, that’s great! If not, try this helpful list!
Next, make a donation and take a screenshot of your confirmation that shows which charity you donated to and the amount donated.
Send that screenshot to me either on tumblr, on discord (DragonSorceress22#9937), or by dropping it in this google doc here – whatever you find easiest. (Please be sure to black out or exclude any sensitive personal info in your screenshot! Safety first!)
Along with your screenshot, tell me which option number(s) you want to support:
For example, if you really really really, want vampire!Shinichi to win, and you made a $10 donation to Charity A, you can send me your screenshot and say “all 10 of my votes are for Option 1!”
Or what if you can’t decide which is better: porn 3 or porn 4? You could split your donation total and say, “5 votes for Option 3 and 5 votes for Option 4!”
Or any variation thereupon
There is a $1 minimum but there is no maximum! If you want to come in absolutely wreck the system by making it rain because you’ve just GOT to have that Gay Drama™ in your life, you can do that! If you want to give a little to a lot of different charities, or go all in on one charity you really love, it’s all good!
Say more words about these fic options… 👀
Vampire!Shinichi. Working title: Different Means. This fic would also feature magicalblood!Kaito (he’s basically vampire catnip in this scenario, let’s be real) and would be rated E for sexy times as well as for violence. (Whump? You better believe it.) The idea belongs to @kiwilart and their friend, but I got real obsessed with it and they said it would be okay if I wrote my take on it : ) This would be a little bit of a longer fic. Probably with chapters instead of a one-shot.
Gay drama! Working title: runner. Kaito’s deeply closeted and dealing with some internalized homophobia and it’s ruining his and Shinichi’s relationship. Can love conquer all? Well this one’s got a happy ending, so yeah, I guess it can lol It will be rated either E or M for sexy times – not sure yet. I’m guessing this will be a one-shot.
Porn! Working title: It Was Only Just a Dream. Starts out with Shinichi having a sexy dream and Kaito having a bit of voyeurism. Ends with actual sexy times~ Rated E. No plot. One-shot.
Other porn! Working title: Rival Fantasy. Involving blindfolded Shinichi, a bit of bondage, and a bit of roleplay as sort of pre-relationship thief and detective (instead of the practically married couple they already are in this fic). Rated E. No plot. One-shot.
Any one-shot fluffy get-together fic. I’ve got a fluffy get-together G-rated one-shot that I could probably crank out pretty quickly if it’s what the good people want :) Working title: In My Dreams from the song of the same title by Ruth B.
Detective Conan Movie Cut Scenes: The Private Eyes' Requiem. Has it been two and a half years since I posted one of these? Yes. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still working on it. But now you have the power to say, “No more waiting! Give us Kaito’s perspective on the hostages in a theme park and detectives wearing bombs movie!”
Look, DS, I just want you to focus on the the next installment of the Fall into Flying universe! I’ve been working on Blackout for probably three years now, and I’m still only halfway through the eighth chapter. The pandemic messed me up for a while, but if the people decree, I will get my butt back on track and focus in on this mighty beast of a story! This one comes with the bonus factor of tumblr teaser posts every time I complete a chapter! The first seven are already posted ;)
Some general notes:
You are only voting for which of these WIPs I bump up to priority status. If your favorite doesn’t win, that does not mean I’ll never write it, but it could mean you’ll be waiting a much longer time to see it finished.
You may well see me posting items that are not the winner of this auction before the winning fic from this auction. That could be due to the fact that I owe specific people specific fics from other charity auctions, or as part of a commission exchange, or because I tripped and fell on my keyboard and oops I finished this other fic and what am I gonna do, not feed you guys? Please be patient with me.
And that’s it! If you have any questions at all, please feel free to reach out to me with an ask or an at here on tumblr, or a DM or an at over on discord (DragonSorceress22#9937) – whatever you prefer.
LET’S GOOOOOO!!! :D
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