#blinding neon

[outpost51]

ROY G BIV tag

tagged by @void-botanist over here, ty ilysm bb <3

Rules: Search your your writing for the colours of the rainbow and post the excerpt.

low/no pressure tagging: @sparatus @thetrashbagswasteland @teamdilf @omniblades-and-stars @lag-train @commander-krios @vacantgodling

shoving the rest below a cut for dash courtesy, also violence

RED

from Stellar Parallax, Chapter 2: Red Fish, Blue Fish

You could die, you fool! “Better dead than whatever the fuck you want me to be,” Jane rasped. It screamed with a thousand voices. Her ears felt wet. Metallic salt seeped into her mouth. She was on the ground. Pieces of the beacon rained down around her. Rain poured into her mouth and nose, washing blood into her sinuses and making her choke until she retched. Faces blurred in and out of view, vaguely familiar ones and one she remembered for sure, stark white against the blood red sky. It looked wrong, though, and it took until ship engines howled overhead and unconsciousness had nearly taken her away to figure out why. Fear didn’t look right on the bogeyman.

ORANGE

from Stellar Parallax, Chapter 9: Unshackled

Jane had been hospitalized for two weeks following the Skyllian Shitshow — less for the gunshot wound and more for ‘being a danger to herself and others’. The food had been unremarkable at best; allegedly, psych ward ate better than regular hospital patients for morale reasons, and all she could think at the time was how much it would suck to be bedridden and eat worse food than the shit they shoved at her through the door hatch. The worst had been tomato bisque, viscous and orange and somehow tasting of nothing but black pepper and whatever pills they’d ground up and mixed in.

YELLOW

from Stellar Parallax, Chapter 7: H(a)unt

Nihlus stepped between Jane and the stairs, but before she could chew him out for blocking her shot, his body rippled, organic flesh burning to ash and floating away. The thing that looked back at her had too many eyes and too-sharp teeth and the tree beneath the endless glass ocean shattered the surface with spires. The spires stretched up, up, up to the ceiling, like children begging for a parent’s love. But the great black ships were just things made of metal and wires and hate. They weren’t capable of love. Some monstrous creature painted up with white and blue kissed her brow with the muzzle of a Vindicator. Its fingers looked like the spires still growing towards the stars, and its mouth was peeled back in a permanent grin. Jane’s lip curled up to match. She would show these things she had teeth, too. That hers weren’t an empty threat. That she had used them before and would use them again. Behind the shadowy figures presiding over her trial for crimes against the Old Machines, a yellow-striped geth uncloaked. Its big yellow eye stayed trained on her Firestorm like it was the biggest threat in the room. She’d just killed a man with a plastic fork. She didn’t need a gun to be dangerous.

GREEN

from Stellar Parallax, Chapter 4: Unfortunate Things

Jane didn’t have clothes of her own since they had to evacuate so quickly, so he’d gladly given up one of his PT shirts and a pair of sleep shorts once Williams and Dr. Chakwas got her cracked out of her armor. She practically drowned in them, but they did the job, even if they made her look so incredibly small. She’d always been on the shorter end, and all the muscle she put on over the years still didn’t bulk out her scrawny frame much more, but she was so… larger than life, it was easy to forget how physically unimposing she looked out of armor and not armed to the teeth. And with teeth, too. Unfortunate things happen in battle, John. Ruthless. That’s what they’d called her after Torfan. If he believed nothing else, he knew that descriptor was true, especially after their final test in N-school. Especially after she’d gunned down a retreating man. Her eyes had looked so hollow afterwards; he’d expected anger, something hot and hissing, coiled up like a viper ready to strike, but there was no life in that deep green lake. That looked personal, Commander. It was. He couldn’t reconcile that person with the small, fragile thing lying so concerningly still under so many blankets – they’d had a hard time getting her body temperature stable, Dr. Chakwas said. They had to sedate her, too, and it had taken Nihlus to restrain her long enough to get the IV catheter in. What had that thing done to her?

BLUE

from Stellar Parallax, Chapter 12: Dig (unpublished)

The seagrass had been lost to the river for a long time, but the river couldn’t take that memory from her, of a scrawny boy with minnow-grey plates and eyes like tidepools. “Really?” Garrus drawled. “I give you the last of my lunch, and this is the thanks I— ack!” Jane shook the tingle from her knuckles and pushed off his keel, then offered him the same hand. “Stabbed a salarian with your fork, too,” she snorted. “So that’s two I owe you. You look good.” Her mouth curled up. “Even without the tinfoil hat.” Garrus rubbed the sore spot from his throat as he stood. “Think I liked you in the hospital gown better,” he groused. A blue flush had already darkened his throat. “You’re still a bad liar, Garrus Vakarian.” Jane socked his bicep and turned back to their shore party.

INDIGO

from Blinding Neon, Shades of Grey, Chapter 1: Hello World

It’s dark when she enters, save for a floor lamp in the corner. One of the show droids, the rabbit, lurks beside the chair that’s turned away from her, a hulking indigo mass that looks far fucking bigger than it does on stage. Someone has traded its stage look for a far more muted suit, finely tailored pinstripes emphasizing every inhuman bend and curve and making it appear taller, endless, looming.

VIOLET

i know i used pink shhhshhh from The Unlikely Adventures of Bitchface and Go F*ck Yourself, Chapter 6: Playing With Fire

Taking another breath, Dillon pushed all thoughts of Zadimus being an asshole out of her mind. He was right, not that she’d admit it out loud. The line of energy glowed a dull violet as it stretched on and on, deep underground, as far as she could sense. She flexed her fingers towards her feet, then closed them, trying to feel the hum solidifying in her hands as she guided it upward. The less she strained, the easier it got to pull, and the higher it rose, the stronger the buzz became until finally she felt it right beneath her feet, tingling her arches where she balanced on it like a tightrope.

[outpost51]

Find The Word Tag

tagged over here by @writernopal (tysm!!!!!)

my words: falter, leap, faith, leaf, sky

tagging: @uraniumwriting, @sam-glade, @sparatus, @fenrir-kin, @comeoniwantacoolname

your words: pitch, aid, brother, relief, ceiling

falter

from Blinding Neon, Shades of Grey, Chapter 6: Catch

Bonnie’s grin does falter at that; his ears droop with a quiet whirr. “What made you look into your dad?”

leap

from Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Chapter 17: How to Mistakenly Assume You Have Everything Under Control

Yeah, not likely. I narrowly dodged an undulating blue wave that caught an unsuspecting vorcha in Stasis. “I’ll go home when I’m ready!” I shouted, rolling behind a trash bin Citrio Lifted like it was fucking nothing. I swung myself around the corner into the alley and quickly climbed up the closest building’s maintenance ladder. It had been a while since I hopped my way around rooftops, but after stumbling twice, I fell back into the rhythm: vault the artigrav generator, slide to the other end, grab the edge, hang down, kick off the wall, grab the next ladder, climb, vault over the edge, roll to the other side — step by step, leap by leap, I carefully calculated my jumps, dodging the flashes of blue cast up at me from the ground. I knew he wouldn’t follow me up there, former street kid or not. His talons were too nice. Torch probably would have followed me, though, and suddenly I was even more grateful she’d given up when she did.

faith

from Stellar Parallax, Chapter 5: A Matter of Pride

Valern and Tevos shared a look, then she spoke up. “If humans are to join with Council space, regardless of where we draw the border, their territory will be touching the Terminus, and the wholesale slaughter of a colony is… a rather slippery slope. What’s to stop them from escalating if we don’t show these attackers that the humans are under our protection? What faith would the volus, the elcor, and the hanar have in us then? We can spare an agent or two to help them in the wake of this tragedy.” She nodded to herself. “At the very least, the presence of Spectres will be a sufficient deterrent.”

leaf

from Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Chapter 19: This is Everything I Never Wanted

Pudge came thundering into the clearing with more gusto than I thought such a round beast was capable of — his claws gouged deep furrows in the soft earth beneath the leaf litter as he also realized he was going far too fast and tried to throw on the brakes. He, too, hit a tree trunk with a harsh crack, but shook it off just as quickly. Leaves were still raining down from the canopy as another creature emerged from the shadows. It was then I remembered there was a second shatha, as if one notorious killer in the household wasn’t enough. This one was far slinkier than Pudge, sleek and skinny and crawling low to the ground.

sky

from Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Chapter 20: Dissent/Descent

“Dumbass,” she chuffed and finally looked away, watching the clouds roll across the sky. “Snuck out of the barracks every night just in case you showed up.” “Why?” “Because I like you, dipshit, why else?”

[outpost51]

wip thing blinding neon :shyblushy:

Make Me Write

um hey so the rules say three sentences but I got carried away mwah under a cut for length and mild spice, mind the pov switch

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

Catching up to Frankie is the easy part; catching her is harder now that they’re within surveillance range of the club’s patrons and she’s adopted her undercover persona for the evening — feisty and effervescent, she’d told Roxanne, somebody who’s only there to have fun. As he ushers his giggling date towards the entrance, he can’t help the twinge of something he doesn’t want to name that washes over him when she glances back, all toothy smiles and crescent eyes he knows aren’t real. Aren’t for him.

Foxy’s hand trails down her bare arm and jumps tracks to travel back up her side, catching the short edge of her dress on the way up. It’s not enough to outright flash anyone, but it’s enough to keep up the appearance that they’re just another couple of freaks out for a night of high-class debauchery. “Just stick close to me, dollface,” he murmurs into her hair. Really, he could have shouted and she doesn’t think anyone would have heard; the music is so loud even outside the club she can almost make out the individual notes. Yelling, however, isn’t conducive to keeping their cover. Orville and Hippo know they’re coming, of course, but none of the patrons do, and they’re allowed to do their poking and sniffing so long as said poking and sniffing doesn’t affect the more debauched poking and sniffing that keeps them in business.

Frankie isn’t sure anymore how much of their act is really an act at all. When they finally make their way inside, the music transforms from the cacophonous, rattly bass it was outside to a heavy, pulsing vibration that licks and strokes her from head to toe, sensually caressing between her legs and melting her back against Foxy’s chest. She opens her mouth to make an attempt at preserving her dignity, but all that comes out is a raspy groan.

“Probably shoulda warned you about the music, huh?” That, at least, is enough to jar her out of her trance, but not enough to remind her to be embarrassed about the display. Not that she has anything to be embarrassed about, apparently; a cursory glance around reveals a series of tables in semi-private alcoves occupied by humans and droids alike, and everything in-between, drinking brightly-colored cocktails, poisoning their systems in just about every method one can think up with drugs she didn’t even know existed before now, and visually feasting on dancers in various states of undress. Before them, sunken a bit into the ground, is a central dance floor undulating with what she can only describe as a fully-clothed pseudo-orgy.

Maybe it’s the music affecting her system, or the cloying smell of chemical smoke nearby, but as they make their way further inside, the frenzied writhing starts to look more like maggots feasting on the rotting remains of something that used to be beautiful, the four floors of tables above them filled with carrion birds looming, waiting, lusting for the succulent rot to ripen, and she plants her feet firmly, refusing to get any closer. Something cold seizes her heart and lungs and squeezes, squeezes, squeezes until the tissue oozes through its bony fingers, soft and sticky as river mud—

“Frankie? Frankie, baby, stay with me,” a familiar voice slithers in her ear, around her brain, wrapping tight and keeping it safe within its coils. Slowly the fog retreats from the threatening rattle, the warning hiss, and she can breathe again.

[outpost51]

💎 GEMSTONES

korb my darling (platonic) im begging to be kicked in the teeth by your prose!

Random WIP Asks

nopal my beloved, here, for you:

14. 💎 GEMSTONES: Share a line in your writing that you really love!

i really kind of popped off in blinding neon chapter 9 actually

There is no god to a machine, only man, but the gods of men still like to make themselves known, prove their point that man is not the god of this world by far by kicking man’s silly little creations around.

[outpost51]

Find The Word Tag

tagged over here by @elshells (tysm!!!!!)

my words: BLEED, PRICE, PASSAGE, and SHIFT

tagging: @thetrashbagswasteland @ceph-the-ghost-writer @princess-prawn @thesorcerersapprentice @heymacareyna

your words: iron, hit, breakdown, limit, mine

bleed

from Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Chapter 20: Dissent/Descent

I held my tongue. I couldn’t think of a reply that wouldn’t cut him deeper than the world already had. He was bleeding enough.

price

from Blinding Neon, Shades of Grey, Chapter 5: Hunger

“One comped meal per shift rotation, half price otherwise.” After successfully locating a parking spot that isn’t too much of a hike from the back entrance, the only way to access the secret upper floor apartments from outside the Plex, Foxy leans back to grab his jacket from the backseat and pretends not to notice her eyes raking up the long line of his abdomen, then freezing on the pistol shoved in his waistband. That’s right, detective, he purrs internally. I don’t trust you either. “But if you were so inclined, I’ve been told I make a damn fine grilled cheese.”

passage

from Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Chapter 13: Family, or Something Like It

‘Our?’ I searched the shadowy passage for her backup and spotted two other teens slowly creeping up to join the fray. One, a short brown girl with glasses two sizes too big and hip-length dreads hiding most of her face, summoned a small purple drone. She looked even smaller than me, which was saying something, or maybe it was the oversized hoodie she was also drowning in. See? Just another shaft rat in my brother’s hand-me-downs. The other — tall, blonde, and scowling — stuck to the shadows, not that it did her any good; she was pale enough even the low light of the mine shaft made her glow like a vengeful ghost.

shift

from The Unlikely Adventures of Bitchface and Go F*ck Yourself, Chapter 9: Mother of Mercy, Daughter Divine

And there was a big fucking demon filling what space she couldn’t, preventing her from shifting away from the literal thorn in her side lest she shift into the proverbial one — him.

[outpost51]

🧠 and 😭 for the snippet asks hit me with your car

Snippet Asks

[revs engine]

🧠 share a snippet where the character realizes something important

highkey popped off with this sequence but also foxy figuring out Something's Fishy About Victor's Death before frankie is [chef's kiss]

“Dammit,” he hisses. “Damn her. Damn whatever rogue process decided to give me feelings.” The static-touched poof of his tail swings into his peripheral vision as it twitches with his growing discontent, and he glances up. The clouds are so dark they’ve turned day into night, and that’s just what he needs, isn’t it? A nightmarish storm roiling above him to match his mood.

He doesn’t have follicles, he knows he’s just fabric over plastic and silicone and metal, so it gives him pause when he can feel more of his fur standing up; it tingles across his synthetic flesh like the first sip of a fresh soft drink, all carbonated fizz dancing up and down his body. If he was in a better mood, maybe he’d even enjoy it, pop open his chest plate and see if he could guide the pleasurable sting to his wires. But he’s not, and he takes the frustration of it out on a nearby trash can with a rough kick. “And damn the stupid.” He kicks it again. “Fuckin’.” And again. “Rain!” And again.

Light and static render him blind, and it’s like the sky cracks open another can of soda, but much louder, like a gunshot in the night, like a skyscraper humbled, collapsing to its knees in surrender to the small, insignificant thing that creates all other things far more significant than itself.

There is no god to a machine, only man, but the gods of men still like to make themselves known, prove their point that man is not the god of this world by far by kicking man’s silly little creations around.

Foxy chokes like only a machine can as his fans seize all of a sudden — one hell of a lightning strike, he thinks for a moment, and then he can no longer think at all. Burning, tarry smoke seeps through his filter and sits there, festering, searing, and he’s unable to blow it back out, to move his arms to open his chest, and like the skyscraper humbled, he too collapses to his knees in surrender to a force even man can’t control. For all his great significance, there are still things far greater.

There is no god to a machine, but there is to this one, specifically, and if he can just get his phone out of his pocket, he can test his faith that she won’t leave him for dead.

NO SERVICE.

Well played, Mother Nature.

A few of his sensors manage to reboot and he can finally toss the cigarette away; it skitters across the ground like a rock skimming the surface of a lake, sparking instead of splashing and finally comes to rest in the pool of coolant kit left behind.

And ignites.

He has no choice but to gaze into the flames as the rest of his body tries to come back online.

CAUSE DETERMINATION: ACCIDENTAL

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF CAUSE: Suspected heat emissions or sparks from welding equipment igniting open container of coolant placed too close to workbench. All other potential fire causes have been eliminated.

Foxy can’t help but to think of the tiny case file he shouldn’t have pried into, but did anyway. Was this really how Victor went? he wonders as he watches the fire creep closer. Another thought slips through behind the first before he can shut the door on it. This was the last memory Frankie had of her childhood. He flinches when it reaches the edge — and stops. It doesn’t explode. It doesn’t spread.

A strong gust of wind blows an old rug off the metal fence blocking the end of the alley. The fire dies beneath it.

Victor wasn’t a drunk. He wasn’t careless. He loved his kid more than anything, and he would have known how to put the fire out, if he somehow fucked up enough to have something flammable near him while working with anything that could create sparks. A cheerful ding precedes the release of his body from the safety paralysis and he yanks his phone from his pocket to tell her she’s right, something is going on—

NO SERVICE.

“Fuck!” he snarls, and it comes out halfway as a sob, and he hates that tiny sliver of vulnerability even more than the lack of service and the impending rain that decides, in that moment, to no longer settle for ‘impending’.

😭 share a snippet that will break our hearts

[cracks knuckles]

She wants to push, but she holds her tongue. If he can extend her the courtesy of leaving a few of her stones unturned, she can leave a few of his where they are, even if they’re in the way. She covers the stone with a blanket and changes the subject, like it was never there. “Your turn to ask me one.”

Monty raises a brow. “That how we’re doin’ it?” Frankie shrugs. “Arright, then. Why’s it called an… illegal decommissionin’, or whatever? Ain’t it still murder?”

Frankie desperately wants to knock the stone from his hands and demand he pick a different one, and when she meets his eyes to silently plead him to put it down, what she finds there isn’t antagonistic, or accusatory, or even judgmental. It’s just a question, a discussion, nothing more. “I–” Her voice catches. It would be easier if it was a fight. She doesn’t know what to do with the diatribe she’s been spoonfed her entire life in any other context but a passionate screaming match, because that’s what it’s always been.

He caps the lacquer and releases her foot. “Do you think we’re alive, Frankie?”

She desperately wants to hide under the covers until the big monster with his big questions far scarier than any teeth or claws goes away. “I don’t… I don’t know anymore.” She averts her eyes, but he cups his hands under her chin and moves closer. “I thought. I thought I knew, I thought I had everything figured out, droids were just droids, AI was AI until it comes untethered, and then it’s dangerous, because it’s–”

“‘Cause you can’t control us,” he finishes for her. “Is Perry dangerous?”

“No, but–”

“Is Chica?”

“I guess not–”

“Foxy?”

“That’s not fair, he–”

“Me?”

Frankie’s heart stops. “Monty–”

The heartbreak clearly etched on his face hurts worse than if he would have just punched her for not having a direct answer. She knows what to do with that. She can punch back, but she can’t break her own heart back at him.

She doesn’t have any right to.

Frankie tries to pull back, but he doesn’t let her go. Monty slides his legs under hers and lifts his knees to slide her into his lap, and it’s that undeserved softness that finally shatters her. “I’m sorry,” she croaks. “I’m so, so fucking sorry.”

“What are you sorry for, peaches?”

The kid gloves with which he’s handling her aren’t soothing at all, not with the roiling storm of self-loathing and disgust raining acid on her already frayed nerves, and it only serves to make her more incoherent until she finally finds her breath again. “I’m just… you and Foxy and Perry and Bonnie and all the rest, you all feel so… human,” she hiccups. “And my whole life I’ve had myself convinced I treated Perry better than everyone else treats droids, but that’s just fucking it, isn’t it? I’m not. I’m still not treating her like I would Sawyer or Russo and she’s been there for me since the beginning, but—”

“But we’re not human, Frankie.”

Her confusion goes up like a brick wall and inertia carries her right into it. “I don’t understand. Bonnie said Dad treated you like humans.”

“He treated us like people, sugarplum. Not humans, ‘cause we aren’t, an’ maybe sometimes I get a lil—”

“Jealous?”

“—sad.” The soft, warm sigh in her damp hair makes her feel like a dick. “I get sad, Frankie, ‘cause one day—” His voice cracks, and he doesn’t have anything to sniffle, but he sniffles regardless. Monty takes another deep breath. “You’re gonna get older, you’re gonna find somebody that can grow old with you, and then you’re gonna die. Or there could be an accident, or somebody’s gonna target you for bein’ a detective, an’ you’re gonna die, an’ I’m still gonna be here, an’ I don’t know what to do with that, ‘cause I’m not human, Frankie.”

She lets him lift her chin, though not without a fight, and the light breeze from the fan above them chills the tears on her cheeks. Her skin feels tight where they’ve dried into salt trails.

It’s okay, you know.

“But it don’t mean I’m not a person.”

That you don’t think of us as people yet.

Before, she questioned the confidence Foxy poured into that ‘yet’.

Now she understands it.

[outpost51]

Happy STS! What is your writer's calling card? Your marker's mark? The thing that would make someone look at one of your pieces and go, "Oh yeah, I know EXACTLY who wrote this!"

nopaaaaaaaal happy sts!!

man... the way i write dialogue has been pointed out to me, and like. idk there's just something about the imagery i use that's very me. for example:

No one noticed her slipping through the emergency room doors either. Maybe she wasn’t real. The acerbic scent of life and death and every state in-between rushed forward to greet her, tossing about the hem of her gown with all the boldness of a bar brawl and settled over her exposed flesh like an ex’s cologne, sickly and pungent and overpowering all rational thought.

and

I should have been afraid, still reeling from the adrenaline pumping through my system, but all I could focus on in that moment was Quinn: how the flashing lights made her dark eyes sparkle, how her victorious grin dimpled her cheeks, how the lighter patches on her skin reflected the rainbow of neon lights and made her look like divinity incarnate, how she remembered the stupid story about my stupid nickname that I’d told her once late at night when we both couldn’t sleep.

and

“That’s it,” a soft rumble tiptoes around her tinnitus in favor of a sensual trepanation, slithering into her skull through the hole it bored. “Louder.”

and

As if the silent shock bulging his eyes wasn’t enough to give Dillon the vindication she deserved after her unjust humiliation, the wayward pancake chose that moment to unstick itself from the ceiling and crown Gus as the king of fools.

four different wips! all different povs and tenses and settings, still very much korble-brand prose.

[outpost51]

Find The Word Tag

tagged back in april by @blind-the-winds (tysm!!!!!)

my words: apple, anyway, always, arrow, and angel

tagging: @vacantgodling @sparatus @thetrashbagswasteland @writinglittlebeasts @starlit-hopes-and-dreams and as always leaving it open

your words: jaw, pass, direct, slump, shock

apple

from Unlikely Adventures, chapter 3: Death Doesn't Give Third Chances

Gus’s snicker abruptly ended in a choke as Dillon managed to land a solid kick to his Adam’s apple. He released her to the wild. “If this is what she’s like at twelve, she’ll be the first human to run with a pack by the time she hits twenty.”

anyway

from Between a Rock and a Hard Place, chapter 13: Family, or Something Like It

Tessa bowed her head and tapped two knuckles against her breastbone — a Terminus sign that was one part salute to those who passed and one part superstitious ward against being the one to go next. Her friends followed her lead, and out of habit, so did I. She scrunched up her whole face to sniff in my direction, then screwed it up even more like she’d just licked a lemon. “What’s your name, anyway?”

always

from Blinding Neon, chapter 15: Kerberos

“You were always my favorite, you piece of shit!” Her voice cracks around her words, turning them into the staticky, distorted mess Roxy’s voicebox makes when she loses a race. “I only got five fucking credits a week for helping Dad clean up the house, and I spent one on a single slice of pizza and the rest on tokens at the old pizzeria so I could get enough tickets to get one! You wanna know how much effort I put into this?”

arrow

from Unlikely Adventures, chapter 8: Bullet on the Tracks

Her lip split again when he crushed his mouth against hers. Blood and moss. She tasted like blood and moss and something ancient, something wild. Energy sparked against his teeth, a volley of arrows meant to take out his fortress defenses, and the energy within him answered in kind, pouring over her tongue and down her throat.

angel

from Blinding Neon, chapter 6: Catch

Maybe in another life long ago, she did. He’s seen paintings, read stories of a fire-haired girl who stabbed a servant and ran away with pirates and shot her own men for cowering belowdecks, and he’s sure this regal nightmare perched atop his ship is Anne Bonny reborn. Her curls undulate in the harsh, artificial chill of the vent above her, and it’s not the halo of an angel, but a crown of vipers ready to strike, covered in the bloody victory of another merchant vessel conquered. The darkness in her eyes swirls with oily black cannon smoke, choking, searing, sparking and sparkling with the glint of clanging swords cutting down everyone who dares stand in her path.