Of Those Chosen: The Twins - Chapter 02
Kennedy’s last name is taken from the actress who played her, Iyari Limon. All other character names, I just made them up. And “Junior Miss Slayers” is taken from Television Without Pity recaps of the last season of Buffy.
Previous chapter is here.
Chapter Two
May Is Not a Good Month
Willow sat in a chair across the desk from the IT director. She wore a nice business suit she bought a week before with help from Buffy, who vetoed the suit Willow originally picked out (“No, Will, you want ‘respectable,’ not ‘Liberace.’") and instead selected a charcoal, knee-length skirt and jacket ensemble which brought out her eyes and looked great with her red hair. She tried to remain calm and confident; although she possessed the skills for the programming job (she might even be over-qualified for the job skills-wise), she still had no college diploma and no real job experience.
The IT director, a balding man in his mid-thirties named Frank Joseph, looked up from Willow’s resume. “Well, Miss Rosenberg, you certainly have an impressive skills set, and your references are -- uh, diverse,” he said. “But we prefer to hire professionals who are formally trained in data security and database structure, rather than self-educated individuals.”
“Well, I am formally educated, sir,” Willow said. “I was in college for three years and I was only twenty credit hours from my degree. I could’ve graduated much sooner, but I was double-majoring.”
“I see. What caused you to leave college?” Joseph asked after a slight pause.
“I took a year off to travel to England,” Willow said. Not entirely how it happened, but she did take a year off and she did travel to England. “I planned to return to school, but that’s impossible now.”
“Really? And why is that?”
Willow could tell Joseph expected some sort of typical sob story about failing finances or a family member in crisis. She tried to hide a smirk. “UC Sunnydale doesn’t exist anymore. The entire city collapsed into a sinkhole.”
Joseph’s eyes bulged for a second, and Willow smiled. She relaxed -- somehow, she knew she was going to get the job.
:#:
Faith sauntered into the club around three in the afternoon. “I heard you were looking for a bartender,” she said to the three guys cleaning up inside.
Twenty minutes later, she walked out with a four-nights-a-week bartending job.
:#:
...Things went well for the Scoobies in the nine months after Sunnydale was destroyed. From the edge of the crater, Andrew drove the bus to the closest town, where they stayed in a hotel for several days while they tried to decide where to go. Only seven of the Potentials brought to Sunnydale survived the battle with the First Evil.
Eventually, they decided to travel to Cleveland because, as Xander Harris said, “Not only is there a Hellmouth there, but according to prominent eighties musician Huey Lewis, so is the Heart of Rock and Roll, so we can get the best of both worlds.”
Rupert Giles, the last of the Watcher’s Council, discovered he was now the de facto owner of all the assets of the Council. Buffy Summers received insurance money for her house, destroyed along with the rest of Sunnydale; not nearly the full value, but still a sum large enough to support her comfortably for a year or two.
Kennedy Limon’s father, Philipe Limon, bought her a house and assisted Rupert Giles in organizing the Watcher’s Council’s assets into a not-for-profit organization with a public face of a feminist scholarship and research fund. Willow Rosenberg, Kennedy Limon’s girlfriend, moved in with her, along with Alexander Harris, Andrew Wells, and Slayers-in-Training Janet Unger and Kimberly Mullin. Buffy Summers bought a house whose back yard bordered Kennedy Limon’s house’s back yard, and her sister Dawn Summers moved in with her, along with Slayers-in-Training Violet Brodengard, Rona Davies, Kim Chao-Ahn, and Helen St. Claire. Rupert Giles bought a house a block away from the Summers and the Limon houses, which he shared with Robin Wood and Faith Covington.
Robin Wood’s wounds from the battle with The First Evil healed fully, and he took a position teaching Advanced Placement European History at a local high school. Kennedy Limon enrolled at Case Western Reserve University. Willow Rosenberg worked net security and data processing for a credit union. Buffy Summers enrolled at a community college to get her grades back in shape for college, and took a part-time job as a lunchtime receptionist for a law firm. Xander Harris took a job as a painter, where the contractor he worked for quickly recognized his intelligence and dependability and promoted him to project manager. Dawn Summers enrolled in the high school where Robin Wood taught.
The six Potentials -- now Slayers-in-Training, as they had the powers of Buffy Summers, Faith Covington, and Kennedy Limon but not the experience and training -- worked with Rupert Giles to organize the new joint Watchers’ and Slayers’ Council. They agreed to be home-schooled for that year, where they would get caught up to speed academically as well as in their education as Slayers, and decisions as to public schooling would be made that spring...
:#:
In March, Xander, Willow, and Dawn presented Buffy with a plane ticket to Europe.
“Guys, you didn’t have to do this,” Buffy said. She smiled and hugged each of them. “Thank you.”
“Well, it’s going to be May soon,” Xander said, “and we want you away from all Hellmouths when that happens.”
Buffy’s smile faded. “What do you mean? What -- are you hiding something from me?”
“We’re not hiding anything, Buffy, really,” Willow said. Buffy glared. “We’re not!”
“No need to hide anything, it’s pretty obvious May is not your month,” Dawn said.
Buffy glared at each of them in turn. She raised her eyebrows and demanded an explanation.
“Okay, Buffy, I’ve known you through seven Mays so far,” Xander said. “And honestly, your track record isn’t so hot.”
Buffy shook her head. “Okay, you three have lost me. What are you talking about?”
Xander and Willow exchanged a glance. Dawn sighed.
Xander counted on his fingers as he said, “Okay, let’s see, shall we? In Mays, so far, you’ve died, killed your vampiric lover to stop the world from being sucked into Hell, blew up your entire high school, almost gotten all of us killed by the first Slayer, died again, almost got killed by a magic lesbian--“
“Hey!” Willow said.
“--and deposited your adopted hometown into a big hole in the ground,” Xander finished. “May is a bad Buffy month. We say you go on vacation.”
Buffy blinked and took the ticket. “You guys have to admit, though, the blowing up the school thing was kinda cool.”
:#:
May came again, as it does when no one destroys the world. The Cleveland Hellmouth remained quiet, vampire attacks and raisings were kept to a minimum. Buffy’s departure to Europe became something of a joke amongst the Scoobies -- that if she left, nothing bad would happen.
The biggest problem remained finding the Slayers awakened by Willow’s spell. No one knew how it would affect Potentials, for no one truly understood the previous process of Potentials and Callings. As much as Willow and Giles tried to adjust their magic, any locator spell they cast to find any Slayer -- even Buffy or Faith -- simply returned “world” as the answer.
:#:
Katharine entered her parents’ house without any effort to be quiet, even though it had been about three days since the last time she was there. Her parents certainly didn’t care that she was gone; in fact, they probably preferred it.
The past year had changed Katharine greatly. Audrey survived without the life support, and woke up only two months after they pulled the plug, but she awoke a very changed girl. She had partial amnesia from the damage to her brain, and even a year later none of her lost memories had returned. Dreams of other places and strange monsters had seeped into her memories of her life before the accident, and she had trouble distinguishing memories that never happened from those that did. Her speech was different and often changed mid-sentence, and she suffered sporadic aphasia -- a condition where she would occasionally lose the ability to understand spoken or written language, sometimes for as short as a word and sometimes as long as a day.
The main problem in Katharine's life stemmed from Audrey’s memories -- specifically, the memories of Katharine she still possessed, and the memories of their parents she lost. In July, when Audrey first woke, she recognized Katharine immediately but knew her parents not at all.
Her parents never forgave Katharine for being remembered where they were forgotten.
Katharine loved her sister, and was so happy that she was alive and awake, but home life became unbearable. Her parents ignored her, refusing to buy her new clothes or make food for her or any normal parental function. Her grades slipped, they didn’t care. She stayed out late, they didn’t care. She dyed her hair purple and quit the soccer team, and they still didn’t care. Eventually, Katharine quit trying to make them care.
“Katharine?” Audrey called from her room. She came out into the hallway and saw her sister. “Katharine!” she said, delighted, and ran across the hallway to throw herself into her sister’s arms. Katharine was knocked back a step, but managed to keep her balance. “I missed!” Audrey said.
Katharine grinned. Audrey’s aphasia usually became a bit more pronounced when she was excited -- sometimes, she simply used the wrong word, sometimes she omitted words accidentally. “I missed you, too,” Katharine said.
Audrey beamed and hugged her sister again. “Stay some,” she said. “No one here is...” She held her mouth open for a moment, confused.
“Fun?” Katharine offered.
“Yes, fun!” Audrey said. “No one here is fun like you. Stay?”
“Well, I’m tired,” Katharine said. “Any chance you could be up for a nap?”
Audrey nodded. “I have a new bed, it’s big, and no bars on it!” she said. She grabbed Katharine’s hand and yanked her down the hall toward her bedroom. Katharine staggered -- her sister was strong.
When Audrey first came home from the hospital, her nightmares were vivid and intense. She often rolled around in bed, and her parents decided to put up a barricade around the bed so she wouldn’t accidentally roll off. Gradually, Audrey learned how to put the nightmares under control.
Katharine smiled when she got to Audrey's room. She had a brand-new king-sized bed, complete with a huge, fluffy comforter and at least six pillows. “A bed fit for a princess,” Katharine said. She managed to keep her bitterness out of her voice.
Audrey tossed Katharine onto the bed. They both laughed, and Audrey jumped and tackled Katharine as she sat up. They wrestled on the bed, even in strength and size -- although they looked almost nothing alike except in the face, they appeared as the twins they were when wrestling. They each moved the same way.
:#:
Faith called them all together for lunch that afternoon to unveil her plans. Robin (her on-again, off-again boyfriend), Willow, Kennedy, Xander, and Andrew all sat at the table with her.
“Okay, you guys ready?” Faith asked.
“We’ve been ready since last night when you told us you had this little announcement,” Xander said. “What is it, trouble with one of the Junior Miss Slayers?”
Faith grinned. “No. We’re going out tonight.”
“What did you dig up?” Kennedy asked. She leaned forward over her meal and grinned. “Vampire nest? Demon haunt?”
“Cool new club,” Faith said.
“What, something like Willy’s Bar back in Sunnydale?” Xander said.
“Nah, dance club,” Faith said. She still grinned, and wondered who would be the first to figure it out.
Xander groaned and buried his face in his hands. Faith raised her eyebrows, surprised he was the first to figure out she wasn’t talking shop at all.
Willow looked at Xander, concerned -- then her eyes widened and she turned to Faith. “You’re not talking about fighting evil at all!”
Faith laughed out loud. The rest of the bunch, excepting Andrew, who bounced up and down in his seat, stared at her. “Okay, yeah, I’m not talking about evil,” Faith said. Robin leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms, and Kennedy looked disappointed. “Look, it’s been a year since we set out with just a beat-up school bus, and we’ve done good. I think we deserve a celebration.”
“A celebration of what? Doing our job?” Robin said.
Xander, Willow, Kennedy, and Andrew all backed away from the table. This sounded like the start of another Faith-Robin fight, and no one wanted to be caught up in that.
“No, a celebration of us,” Faith said. “Look, we’ve all got something to celebrate here. We beat the First, but we never celebrated. Willow and Kennedy, they’ve been together a year, but they didn’t get a chance to celebrate that. Robin, it’s been a year since you were blessed with the hotness that is Slayer lovin’, you should celebrate.”
“What about me?” Xander said. “What am I supposed to celebrate? The one-year anniversary of the death of my former fiancé?” Andrew looked down and fidgeted at Xander’s words, but said nothing.
Faith kept her smile, though. “No, you have the most reason to celebrate, because your one-year self-imposed celibate period of mourning is now over even if I have to spend fifty dollars buying the lucky woman shots until she tosses you on the bar and rides you until the cops come and haul your sorry ass off to jail.”
Xander stared at Faith for a moment before his serious face cracked. “Fine, fine!” he laughed. “Although -- now that I think of it -- I’ve never actually been with a woman who wasn’t a Slayer or an ex-demon--“
“Or a praying-mantis monster,“ Willow interjected.
“--or some other sort of supernatural thing,” Xander said. He grinned. “Should be interesting.”
“Slayer?” Kennedy said softly. “You mean Buffy--“
“What about me, Faith?” Andrew said. Faith looked to him with relief; Andrew didn't mean to interrupt to save her an explanation of her night with Xander, but sometimes his clueless enthusiasm was a welcome thing. Sometimes. “What do I have to celebrate?”
“Uh...” Faith said. She blinked a few times, then grinned. “No evil! You’ve been evil-free for a year. That’s a good reason to celebrate.”
“All right!” Andrew said. He bounced in his seat again. “Evil free Andrew rules!”
“Also,” Faith said, “you’re the designated driver.”
-:-
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Previous chapter is here.
Chapter Two
May Is Not a Good Month
Willow sat in a chair across the desk from the IT director. She wore a nice business suit she bought a week before with help from Buffy, who vetoed the suit Willow originally picked out (“No, Will, you want ‘respectable,’ not ‘Liberace.’") and instead selected a charcoal, knee-length skirt and jacket ensemble which brought out her eyes and looked great with her red hair. She tried to remain calm and confident; although she possessed the skills for the programming job (she might even be over-qualified for the job skills-wise), she still had no college diploma and no real job experience.
The IT director, a balding man in his mid-thirties named Frank Joseph, looked up from Willow’s resume. “Well, Miss Rosenberg, you certainly have an impressive skills set, and your references are -- uh, diverse,” he said. “But we prefer to hire professionals who are formally trained in data security and database structure, rather than self-educated individuals.”
“Well, I am formally educated, sir,” Willow said. “I was in college for three years and I was only twenty credit hours from my degree. I could’ve graduated much sooner, but I was double-majoring.”
“I see. What caused you to leave college?” Joseph asked after a slight pause.
“I took a year off to travel to England,” Willow said. Not entirely how it happened, but she did take a year off and she did travel to England. “I planned to return to school, but that’s impossible now.”
“Really? And why is that?”
Willow could tell Joseph expected some sort of typical sob story about failing finances or a family member in crisis. She tried to hide a smirk. “UC Sunnydale doesn’t exist anymore. The entire city collapsed into a sinkhole.”
Joseph’s eyes bulged for a second, and Willow smiled. She relaxed -- somehow, she knew she was going to get the job.
:#:
Faith sauntered into the club around three in the afternoon. “I heard you were looking for a bartender,” she said to the three guys cleaning up inside.
Twenty minutes later, she walked out with a four-nights-a-week bartending job.
:#:
...Things went well for the Scoobies in the nine months after Sunnydale was destroyed. From the edge of the crater, Andrew drove the bus to the closest town, where they stayed in a hotel for several days while they tried to decide where to go. Only seven of the Potentials brought to Sunnydale survived the battle with the First Evil.
Eventually, they decided to travel to Cleveland because, as Xander Harris said, “Not only is there a Hellmouth there, but according to prominent eighties musician Huey Lewis, so is the Heart of Rock and Roll, so we can get the best of both worlds.”
Rupert Giles, the last of the Watcher’s Council, discovered he was now the de facto owner of all the assets of the Council. Buffy Summers received insurance money for her house, destroyed along with the rest of Sunnydale; not nearly the full value, but still a sum large enough to support her comfortably for a year or two.
Kennedy Limon’s father, Philipe Limon, bought her a house and assisted Rupert Giles in organizing the Watcher’s Council’s assets into a not-for-profit organization with a public face of a feminist scholarship and research fund. Willow Rosenberg, Kennedy Limon’s girlfriend, moved in with her, along with Alexander Harris, Andrew Wells, and Slayers-in-Training Janet Unger and Kimberly Mullin. Buffy Summers bought a house whose back yard bordered Kennedy Limon’s house’s back yard, and her sister Dawn Summers moved in with her, along with Slayers-in-Training Violet Brodengard, Rona Davies, Kim Chao-Ahn, and Helen St. Claire. Rupert Giles bought a house a block away from the Summers and the Limon houses, which he shared with Robin Wood and Faith Covington.
Robin Wood’s wounds from the battle with The First Evil healed fully, and he took a position teaching Advanced Placement European History at a local high school. Kennedy Limon enrolled at Case Western Reserve University. Willow Rosenberg worked net security and data processing for a credit union. Buffy Summers enrolled at a community college to get her grades back in shape for college, and took a part-time job as a lunchtime receptionist for a law firm. Xander Harris took a job as a painter, where the contractor he worked for quickly recognized his intelligence and dependability and promoted him to project manager. Dawn Summers enrolled in the high school where Robin Wood taught.
The six Potentials -- now Slayers-in-Training, as they had the powers of Buffy Summers, Faith Covington, and Kennedy Limon but not the experience and training -- worked with Rupert Giles to organize the new joint Watchers’ and Slayers’ Council. They agreed to be home-schooled for that year, where they would get caught up to speed academically as well as in their education as Slayers, and decisions as to public schooling would be made that spring...
:#:
In March, Xander, Willow, and Dawn presented Buffy with a plane ticket to Europe.
“Guys, you didn’t have to do this,” Buffy said. She smiled and hugged each of them. “Thank you.”
“Well, it’s going to be May soon,” Xander said, “and we want you away from all Hellmouths when that happens.”
Buffy’s smile faded. “What do you mean? What -- are you hiding something from me?”
“We’re not hiding anything, Buffy, really,” Willow said. Buffy glared. “We’re not!”
“No need to hide anything, it’s pretty obvious May is not your month,” Dawn said.
Buffy glared at each of them in turn. She raised her eyebrows and demanded an explanation.
“Okay, Buffy, I’ve known you through seven Mays so far,” Xander said. “And honestly, your track record isn’t so hot.”
Buffy shook her head. “Okay, you three have lost me. What are you talking about?”
Xander and Willow exchanged a glance. Dawn sighed.
Xander counted on his fingers as he said, “Okay, let’s see, shall we? In Mays, so far, you’ve died, killed your vampiric lover to stop the world from being sucked into Hell, blew up your entire high school, almost gotten all of us killed by the first Slayer, died again, almost got killed by a magic lesbian--“
“Hey!” Willow said.
“--and deposited your adopted hometown into a big hole in the ground,” Xander finished. “May is a bad Buffy month. We say you go on vacation.”
Buffy blinked and took the ticket. “You guys have to admit, though, the blowing up the school thing was kinda cool.”
:#:
May came again, as it does when no one destroys the world. The Cleveland Hellmouth remained quiet, vampire attacks and raisings were kept to a minimum. Buffy’s departure to Europe became something of a joke amongst the Scoobies -- that if she left, nothing bad would happen.
The biggest problem remained finding the Slayers awakened by Willow’s spell. No one knew how it would affect Potentials, for no one truly understood the previous process of Potentials and Callings. As much as Willow and Giles tried to adjust their magic, any locator spell they cast to find any Slayer -- even Buffy or Faith -- simply returned “world” as the answer.
:#:
Katharine entered her parents’ house without any effort to be quiet, even though it had been about three days since the last time she was there. Her parents certainly didn’t care that she was gone; in fact, they probably preferred it.
The past year had changed Katharine greatly. Audrey survived without the life support, and woke up only two months after they pulled the plug, but she awoke a very changed girl. She had partial amnesia from the damage to her brain, and even a year later none of her lost memories had returned. Dreams of other places and strange monsters had seeped into her memories of her life before the accident, and she had trouble distinguishing memories that never happened from those that did. Her speech was different and often changed mid-sentence, and she suffered sporadic aphasia -- a condition where she would occasionally lose the ability to understand spoken or written language, sometimes for as short as a word and sometimes as long as a day.
The main problem in Katharine's life stemmed from Audrey’s memories -- specifically, the memories of Katharine she still possessed, and the memories of their parents she lost. In July, when Audrey first woke, she recognized Katharine immediately but knew her parents not at all.
Her parents never forgave Katharine for being remembered where they were forgotten.
Katharine loved her sister, and was so happy that she was alive and awake, but home life became unbearable. Her parents ignored her, refusing to buy her new clothes or make food for her or any normal parental function. Her grades slipped, they didn’t care. She stayed out late, they didn’t care. She dyed her hair purple and quit the soccer team, and they still didn’t care. Eventually, Katharine quit trying to make them care.
“Katharine?” Audrey called from her room. She came out into the hallway and saw her sister. “Katharine!” she said, delighted, and ran across the hallway to throw herself into her sister’s arms. Katharine was knocked back a step, but managed to keep her balance. “I missed!” Audrey said.
Katharine grinned. Audrey’s aphasia usually became a bit more pronounced when she was excited -- sometimes, she simply used the wrong word, sometimes she omitted words accidentally. “I missed you, too,” Katharine said.
Audrey beamed and hugged her sister again. “Stay some,” she said. “No one here is...” She held her mouth open for a moment, confused.
“Fun?” Katharine offered.
“Yes, fun!” Audrey said. “No one here is fun like you. Stay?”
“Well, I’m tired,” Katharine said. “Any chance you could be up for a nap?”
Audrey nodded. “I have a new bed, it’s big, and no bars on it!” she said. She grabbed Katharine’s hand and yanked her down the hall toward her bedroom. Katharine staggered -- her sister was strong.
When Audrey first came home from the hospital, her nightmares were vivid and intense. She often rolled around in bed, and her parents decided to put up a barricade around the bed so she wouldn’t accidentally roll off. Gradually, Audrey learned how to put the nightmares under control.
Katharine smiled when she got to Audrey's room. She had a brand-new king-sized bed, complete with a huge, fluffy comforter and at least six pillows. “A bed fit for a princess,” Katharine said. She managed to keep her bitterness out of her voice.
Audrey tossed Katharine onto the bed. They both laughed, and Audrey jumped and tackled Katharine as she sat up. They wrestled on the bed, even in strength and size -- although they looked almost nothing alike except in the face, they appeared as the twins they were when wrestling. They each moved the same way.
:#:
Faith called them all together for lunch that afternoon to unveil her plans. Robin (her on-again, off-again boyfriend), Willow, Kennedy, Xander, and Andrew all sat at the table with her.
“Okay, you guys ready?” Faith asked.
“We’ve been ready since last night when you told us you had this little announcement,” Xander said. “What is it, trouble with one of the Junior Miss Slayers?”
Faith grinned. “No. We’re going out tonight.”
“What did you dig up?” Kennedy asked. She leaned forward over her meal and grinned. “Vampire nest? Demon haunt?”
“Cool new club,” Faith said.
“What, something like Willy’s Bar back in Sunnydale?” Xander said.
“Nah, dance club,” Faith said. She still grinned, and wondered who would be the first to figure it out.
Xander groaned and buried his face in his hands. Faith raised her eyebrows, surprised he was the first to figure out she wasn’t talking shop at all.
Willow looked at Xander, concerned -- then her eyes widened and she turned to Faith. “You’re not talking about fighting evil at all!”
Faith laughed out loud. The rest of the bunch, excepting Andrew, who bounced up and down in his seat, stared at her. “Okay, yeah, I’m not talking about evil,” Faith said. Robin leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms, and Kennedy looked disappointed. “Look, it’s been a year since we set out with just a beat-up school bus, and we’ve done good. I think we deserve a celebration.”
“A celebration of what? Doing our job?” Robin said.
Xander, Willow, Kennedy, and Andrew all backed away from the table. This sounded like the start of another Faith-Robin fight, and no one wanted to be caught up in that.
“No, a celebration of us,” Faith said. “Look, we’ve all got something to celebrate here. We beat the First, but we never celebrated. Willow and Kennedy, they’ve been together a year, but they didn’t get a chance to celebrate that. Robin, it’s been a year since you were blessed with the hotness that is Slayer lovin’, you should celebrate.”
“What about me?” Xander said. “What am I supposed to celebrate? The one-year anniversary of the death of my former fiancé?” Andrew looked down and fidgeted at Xander’s words, but said nothing.
Faith kept her smile, though. “No, you have the most reason to celebrate, because your one-year self-imposed celibate period of mourning is now over even if I have to spend fifty dollars buying the lucky woman shots until she tosses you on the bar and rides you until the cops come and haul your sorry ass off to jail.”
Xander stared at Faith for a moment before his serious face cracked. “Fine, fine!” he laughed. “Although -- now that I think of it -- I’ve never actually been with a woman who wasn’t a Slayer or an ex-demon--“
“Or a praying-mantis monster,“ Willow interjected.
“--or some other sort of supernatural thing,” Xander said. He grinned. “Should be interesting.”
“Slayer?” Kennedy said softly. “You mean Buffy--“
“What about me, Faith?” Andrew said. Faith looked to him with relief; Andrew didn't mean to interrupt to save her an explanation of her night with Xander, but sometimes his clueless enthusiasm was a welcome thing. Sometimes. “What do I have to celebrate?”
“Uh...” Faith said. She blinked a few times, then grinned. “No evil! You’ve been evil-free for a year. That’s a good reason to celebrate.”
“All right!” Andrew said. He bounced in his seat again. “Evil free Andrew rules!”
“Also,” Faith said, “you’re the designated driver.”
-:-
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