Teen Titans: Incarnate - Chapter Sixteen

[Reaper of Despair]

Chapter Sixteen: Prison

A swarm of vehicles poured onto Jump City’s commercial block with blazing lights and screaming sirens that pierced the smoky haze they plunged headlong into. Fire engines, ambulances, patrol cars, and SWAT vans all answered the call. The sound of their approach parted crowds and cars into a narrow channel that ultimately led to the charred, hollow remains of A Nook for a Book.

Once parked, the vehicles opened and poured forth an army of heroes ready to bring order to the chaotic scene. Kevlar-vested police began pushing the gawkers and rubbernecks back behind some unseen perimeter, which they then made visible with a barrier of impregnable yellow tape. The firefighters filled the vacuum left by the onlookers with yellow, fire-proofed suits and spray packs filled with flame ******ant foam, which they used to annihilate the lingering flames that had spread outside the store. Everyday miracle workers all marched and scrambled to the tune of a single voice, which barked orders that resonated all through the disastrous situation, despite the fact that its owner still remained behind a rolled-up car window.

“Let’s move it, people!” bellowed a silver-haired man in a rumpled suit as he threw open the door of his squad car. “Clear these rubbernecks out. Johnson,” he shot to one of a pair of younger officers exiting the car alongside him. “Tell SWAT to stand by and stay out of our way. This is an SCU operation as of five minutes ago.”

Johnson, a smooth-faced rookie that the silver-crowned man would have sworn had lied about his age to enter the Academy, jogged over to talk briefly with the Sergeant swinging out of the SWAT van with rifle already in hand. Johnson’s partner, a seasoned veteran with more experience and subsequent wrinkles, hung back a moment. “Iverson’s not going to like it, Lieutenant Smith,” he told the old man. “He’ll deploy at the first sign of trouble.”

Smith scowled in tandem with Sergeant Iverson as Johnson relayed the bad news. Across the field of parked cars, Smith didn’t miss the dirty look the armored SWAT sergeant sent his way as he ordered his people to hold off. “Then let’s not give him any trouble to shoot at, O’Callaghan. The last thing we need tonight is gunfire near a crowd.” Turning back, he surveyed the wreck of a store, feeling his own wrinkles crease and deepen even before he knew the full story. “Take a team in and sweep the store. Number one priority is finding survivors, second is finding the freak show that did this. You see anything, for God’s sake, don’t touch it. I want CSI in here stat to look everything over, understand?”

“What am I, green?” said O’Callaghan with a brief laugh. One look of pure venom cowed his humor, and he tugged the bill of his hat lower over his brow to escape the reproach. “I mean, yes sir. Johnson! We’re going in.”

The grizzled lieutenant watched his two men gather a small contingent of police before heading toward Nook with weapons drawn and heads up and alert. He ran a hand across his deep wrinkles, and frowned at the day’s worth of snowy stubble beneath his palm. Before forming and heading up Jump City’s Special Crimes Unit, Smith would have been home on a night like this one, having dinner with his family, or helping his daughter with homework. His department was a new necessity, and the position had come with a promotion. In fact, Smith had no real regrets about taking the job. He just wished the skyrocketing rate in metatalented crime would take a break once in a while. Then maybe he could as well.

Granulated pebbles trickled from the sky and bounced off of Smith’s weathered fedora, drawing his attention up. A sharp pang of pain accompanied the clenching of his stomach while he watched an immense boulder float twenty yards above his head in a controlled descent. “Oh, wonderful,” he mumbled under his breath, and strode over to intercept the flying rock at its intended landing site. “Just what I need.”

The boulder rumbled to a halt in the center of the road, heralded by a wave of cheers from the roped-off crowd when they recognized the passengers balanced on its back. Pavement cracked and bowed as one by one, the Teen Titans stepped off of their ride and gave a small wave to the adoring public and the grateful public servants.

Terra staggered off last, sweating and leaning against her knees. A fast breath infected her lungs, as though she had just run the mile at a personal best. She formed a glare out of her sweat-blurred eyes and shot it Cyborg’s way, saying, “Can you please build us another car? That thing isn’t feather light,” she groused, and chucked a thumb back at their chariot. “And you guys aren’t, either.”

“I wouldn’t have to if someone hadn’t tried parking his motorcycle in my front seat,” Cyborg countered, and reflected Terra’s glare in Robin’s direction. “Besides, you think I can just whip up another car? I put my heart and soul into the T-Car. I can’t just Henry Ford another up whenever you guys wreck one.”

Terra’s glare next shifted to Raven. “I still don’t see why we couldn’t have just poofed here.”

“I am not a bus,” Raven replied coolly.

Robin ignored the banter, and scanned the crime scene with a detective’s eye. He noticed first that whatever had transpired had been almost entirely from within the store. Glass shattered out into the street from the windows, and there were no signs of real exterior damage. But the crater in the middle of the street baffled him. The mystery of it pulled him forward, until a gruff voice snapped him out of his curiosity.

“You’re just going to park that in the middle of my crime scene?” Lieutenant Smith growled as he stalked up to the Titans. Sour-faced already, the aging cop deepened his scowl for his rendezvous with the teens. “What the hell is this? Don’t you drop-outs have an SUV, or a submarine, or something?”

“Don’t remind me,” growled Cyborg as he gave Robin another unnoticed glare.

“You like it?” Beast Boy glanced back at their ride, giving the red boulder a pat. “It’s an older model. Doesn’t turn very well, and it’s hard to park. But it’s roomy.”

“Shut up.” Smith grimaced, and brushed a hand over his stomach.

“Yes sir.”

Smith swiveled his glower at Robin. “I may be under orders from the Mayor’s Office to not interfere with you people, but that order goes both ways. Any one of you walking liabilities screws with my crime scene, I promise you,” he rumbled, and jabbed a finger in Robin’s face. “You’ll all wish you had stuck to chess club.”

The threat bounced off of Robin’s impassive expression, but the creak of his clenched glove belied his stifled anger. “Raven, Cyborg, Beast Boy,” he said, never taking his eyes off of Smith. “Check out the store. See what you can find.” For Smith’s benefit, he added, “Do your best to leave everything where it is.”

“If there’s anything there, we’ll sniff it out,” Beast Boy assured him before morphing into a green bloodhound and trotting after his two friends, tail wagging and tongue lolling.

Terra followed a few steps behind. The ground beneath her feet trembled as thin ribbons of dust and dirt poured up out of the cracks in the street and collected around her into a swirling stream of living earth. “I’ll go help with the fires,” she said, and tossed a teasing look of defiance at Smith before departing.

Defeat rattled from Smith’s craggy face in a sigh. He tugged his tie loose and undid the top button on his collar. “You know, I’m thinking of naming my ulcer after you kids,” he said. A pack of cigarettes appeared from behind his jacket’s lapel, which he rapped smartly against his palm.

“What have we got?” Robin pulled his cape over and around his shoulders as he and Smith made their way over toward the mysterious crater.

Smith lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. Ponderous, poisonous smoke ribboned behind him as he led Robin to a halt in front of the oversized pothole. He thought of what it would cost taxpayers to fix the hole, and took a second puff from his coffin nail before answering. “Dispatch said the calls all came in at about the same time. Three metahumans busted in and started tearing up the place.”

On first inspection, it didn’t look like much of interest, not when compared with most meta-crime scenes’ collateral damage. Roughly three feet deep, the crater could have been anything: a giant’s footprint, a stray shot from an impressive arsenal… But Robin’s sharp eye caught sight of a charcoal-covered piece of white, and immediately dismissed his earlier ruminations.

He squatted down and surreptitiously plucked the fabric from the hole, turning it over in his hands beneath Smith’s notice. Spots of red stained the silken material. “Did the witnesses ID them?” he asked sidelong to Smith.

The cop snorted twin jets of secondhand death from his nostrils. “Freaks and monsters aren’t exactly on baseball cards. Sometimes it feels like I need a scorecard to keep all of your kind straight.”

Before Robin could snap back in defense of 'his kind', a redheaded officer called out from in front of the store. “Lieutenant, you might want to see this.”

“Duty calls,” said Smith, and shot Robin a dangerous look of warning before leaving him in the lurch.

Robin paid his cynicism no mind, and instead brushed the fabric in his palm with a gloved finger. On a hunch, he liberated his R-Scanner from his utility belt and ran the device’s sensitive sensor across his find’s red stains. The red and gold palmtop computer blatted an error message at him; though the substance displayed characteristics of hemoglobin and plasma, it didn’t quite match up for human, or even metahuman, blood. Traces of some resonant energy clung to the fabric as well, polluting the collected data with general interference.

“What are you?” he muttered to the clue, holstering his R-Scanner in the meantime.

“Robin!”

Cyborg’s voice took hold of Robin’s focus in the form of an insistent shout from the store. Robin followed it into the bookstore, where Cyborg, Raven, and a bloodhound Beast Boy gathered in the center of the wreckage. Med techs and firefighters teemed around them, turning twisted metal bookshelves over in the search for survivors. Not much had survived the conflagration.

The panel on Cyborg’s arm cast blue light onto the towering Titan’s scowl in the darkened space as he watched Robin approach from the corner of his eye. “We’ve got something,” he said.

His tone told Robin that the news would not be happy. “What is it?”

“I’m picking up some serious residual protonics in here.” Robin wasn’t as familiar with the technology as Cyborg was. That Cyborg had put some protonic devices in the late T-Car was largely the extent of his knowledge on the subject. Cyborg continued, grim-faced. “There’s a lot of background interference, but it’s here.” An angry look crossed the techno-teen’s features. “There’s a pretty short list of people in the City with access to protonic technology. Even fewer people with the know-how to turn it into a weapon.”

“There’s only one person in this city who uses chaos magic.” A glowing glare burned from the back of Raven’s hood as she spoke up. The air around them chilled in her presence. “This place reeks with it.”

Beast Boy’s shape blurred and snapped back into that of a lanky teen. A brief sneeze cleared his sinuses of the ash and smoke still choking the air. Robin’s expectant look prompted his report. “Besides the smell of barbecued books? It was definitely them.” The unspoken consensus took life with his nod as he folded his arms. “They’d been drinking, too. Cheap beer and cigarette smoke all over the place. Yuck.”

“Titans,” Smith’s voice barked through the empty storefront windows. “Get over here.”

The four teens reconvened outside, joined by a soot-covered Terra, and gathered around a stretcher and two med techs alongside Smith and his redheaded officer. A battered boy with fabulous hair lay atop the bloodied sheets of the stretcher, blinking numbly at the crowding faces above his head as one of the techs pulled an emptied syringe from his arm. The injured survivor groaned and grimaced, managing to form a single word into a question. “Titans?”

“Magnum?” Terra tilted her head at the sight of the Streetbeat as she and the Titans encircled his gurney. It certainly looked like him, but better dressed and more battered since her last encounter with him.
Smith glanced around the group. “You know this kid?”

The other cop, whose uniform bore a nametag with 'O’Callaghan', leaned over and squinted. “I think this kid tried to steal my hubcaps a few years back,” he decided, rubbing his jaw and glaring down at Magnum.

A mangled groan worked past Magnum’s lips. His eyes fluttered, rapidly gaining weight thanks to the painkillers just given to him. “Starfire?” he muttered. Magnum tried to sit up, but a med tech’s hand on his chest eased him back onto the gurney. “Feels like I’ve been hit by a train. Where’s Starfire?”

“She’s not here,” Cyborg grunted. “But you’ve got plenty of other Titans to talk to. What happened?”

“He’s been babbling about Starfire since we found him,” explained O’Callaghan with a shrug. “Something about an army of giant metahumans he took on single-handedly, and your very own Sherbet Queen swooning in his arms.”

At the mention of his teammate’s name, Cyborg’s face took on a contemplative look. He stepped back and began to fiddle with his panel on his arm once more. Heedless of his friend’s withdrawal, Robin leaned in, now dominating Magnum’s vision. “What happened, Magnum? Was the Streetbeat in some kind of fight here?” The mere mention of Starfire’s name sent Robin’s jaw into a tooth-grinding rage. His dark Gotham growl sent chills through everyone gathered, excluding Raven.

Whatever medication working through Magnum’s system began blending his thoughts together into an unintelligible malt. “They came…got the drop on us. Sucker punched me.”

Super strong green gloves gripped Magnum’s shoulders and shook the stupor out of him. “What were they there for?” he insisted. Robin couldn’t even feel the med techs’ efforts to take him off of their patient. “What did they want?”
“Her.”

Robin dropped Magnum and backed away, struck at once with a fury that wiped his thoughts clean. The frigid anger worked at his innards, focusing his willpower into a deadly lance of intent aimed squarely at a familiar trio. He barely heard Cyborg speak up behind him. “I went over my scans. That background interference I mentioned? It’s a starbolt energy wave.”

There was no delay. “Terra, get the rock,” Robin growled. He whirled around, cape flowing, and stalked off. The geokinetic rushed ahead of him to prep their flying boulder. “We’re done here.”

Smith tossed his spent cigarette butt aside as the med techs wheeled away his witness. “Hold up,” he barked as the rest of the Titans followed suit and filed out. “Where do you think you’re going? What’s going on?”

“We’re staying out of your way,” Raven muttered to him as she walked past. Though she couldn’t see it, she took a small sliver of guilty delight in knowing that the aging cop’s face just sprouted a new wrinkle in the middle of his furious scowl.

Up ahead, Cyborg fell into step next to Robin. “Don’t you think we should come clean with the SCU?” he asked. “I mean, they should know -”

“After we’ve found Starfire,” rumbled Robin without looking Cyborg’s way. But then he stopped a moment, scowling in concentration. “And that starts with finding the Troika.”

“Won’t be hard,” Beast Boy quipped, catching up to them. At their incredulous looks, he cracked a smile. “Dude. I just trashed a bookstore, beat up a Titan, thrashed a Streetbeat, and it’s not even nine o’clock.” With a wiseacre thumbs-up, he said, “It’s Miller time.”

*****

Magnificent.

The young Centurion Skrag stared, spellbound, at the spectacle behind the force field just two kelikams in front of him. Down in the lair of the General’s top scientists, a place reminiscent to most of a freakish side show, Skrag rarely found his interest piqued. Endless tables of bubbling, beakered broths and clicking computer consoles that vomited meaningless numbers bored the eager warrior. But the breathtaking sight in the containment unit before him made Skrag reconsider his assessment of his first assignment in a new light.

A gaggle of scientists stood to Skrag’s left, flanking the General himself. The old, wrinkled, scarred lizard glared through the reddened force field with his good eye, snorting at what he saw and what Skrag all but swooned over. The iris of the General’s prosthetic eye whirred softly as it shifted to focus on the action offered to him by his scientists as justification for resources that could have built a battleship. “This is it?” grunted the General.

One scientist stepped up to the plate with datapad in hand. “Um, understand, sir, we…Well, we’re still in the early stages of the experiment. A-a-and, the subjects already show an incredible affinity f-for -”

“All I see are two of my Alpha Attack Drones being wasted on a troq,” said the General, keeping his mismatched eyes on the show. His split brow rose at an incredulous angle. “Is this supposed to impress me?”

‘No,’ thought Skrag. ‘It should amaze you.’

Within the confines of the red barriers, two fearsome combat robots squared off against a lithe, limber creature with gleaming golden skin and hair the color of blood. It floated, lighter than air, with emerald eyes much older than the young creature should have possessed. Its naked skin undulated with hidden strength. Skrag had never fought them himself, but he heard that Tamaranians were deceptively strong once you finally got them riled up. And from the looks of the scrawny example in the containment field pitted against the Armada’s deadliest machines, Skrag guessed that it was getting plenty riled.

One of the Alpha units raised its thick arm and leapt forward. Yellowish light gathered around its arm, consolidating into a wicked hard-light scythe. The soulless automaton cleaved with its lethal hologram, slashing a patch of death through the golden blur where the Tamaranian hatchling had been. Then it rocked back as the hatchling’s fist caved in its monoptic visual scanner.

The nervous scientist jabbed a finger at the Tamaranian as it tore the Alpha’s arm off and beat it into scrap with the sparking appendage. “You see…ah, sir?” he added as the General’s good eye swiveled its glare in his direction. “This hatchling’s strength is already well beyond even Tamaranian adult standards. We’ve also conditioned her and her nest-sibling to survive in deep space, and -”

Skrag’s aural fins ceased hearing the brass’ conversation. Instead, he found his spirit drawn into the containment field. Already, the Tamaranian had beaten through three milikams of duranium armor with its alien strength. The Alpha’s power core tore free from its casing in the hatchling’s grasp, and crumpled between the young creature’s fingers. But its attention lingered too long on its first kill, and so the hatchling did not see the second Alpha unit positioned behind her open fire.

‘No, little one,’ winced Skrag inwardly as he watched the hatchling Tamaranian scream in anguish. Thankfully, the scientists’ boasts were true, and her skin withstood the deadly lasers with only minor scorching and blistering, instead of the instant death they would give a normal Tamaranian, or even a Gordanian. Its naked skin puckered as the hatchling whirled about, raising its palms as if to ward off any further shots.‘Counterattack,’urged Skrag. ‘Fight, little one! Fight!’

And then the hatchling did something amazing. Flickering points of light came to life within its palms, growing into orbs the size of Skrag’s head. With a mighty cry, the hatchling hurled the orbs into the second Alpha’s chest. Fire and debris expanded from the robot, obscuring the entire containment unit in a smoky haze and sending all present for the test but Skrag back with a start.

When the choking smog cleared from the inside of the containment unit, only the Alpha’s wobbling legs remained, capped off by glowing red slag and sparking wires. The hatchling coughed and heaved on its knees, clutching at its ribs and shaking fiercely, but alive nonetheless.

“As you can see,” continued the scientist, now more confidently, “both creatures are also learning to project the energy that Tamaranians naturally metabolize from solar radiation, thanks to our, ah, humble efforts.”
The General merely grunted, no longer scowling. It was possibly the highest praise he had given anyone under his command. “I want both creatures removed to the brig when not undergoing your treatments,” he informed the scientists. “It’s no longer safe to keep them here all the time. And I want them under constant guard.”

Gazing at the creature in awed speechlessness, Skrag knew he would stop at nothing to obtain that assignment. Watching the hatchling, trembling in the confines of the scientists’ containment fields, he knew that they had been drawn together. Fate demanded that he watch over this creature, that it would come to love him as much as he loved it.

His little one.

*****

The smell of Raktajino wafted into Starfire’s dreams, pulling them apart piece by piece until all that remained was reality. Cold metal gripped her wrists and ankles and pressed into her back. Every muscle in her body ached with reckless abandon, and she couldn’t quite remember why. She didn’t really want to. She just wanted to go back to sleep until the world became a nicer place.

A slurping sound prompted her tired eyes open, something she came to regret an instant later. A dreadful world of minimalist design greeted her in insufficient light, composed of harsh angles and dull gunmetal grays. A bunk hunched in the corner of the tiny room, flanked on either side by a chemical toilet and a small metal shelf with nothing on it. A table and chair lurked at the foot of the bed.

Seated at the table, Starfire’s worst nightmare clutched a mug of the fragrant alien coffee, brought back to life and staring at her over the rim of his mug. Starfire felt her innards drain away, leaving her hollow and cold as she faced the worst thing to ever happen to her. The tabled creature gazed in reverent silence as she stirred, sipping at his drink.

His broad, needle-toothed mouth spread into a wide grin while Starfire struggled against her bonds. The gleam in his eye sickened her with its familiarity. She longed to tear the gleam from his sockets with her bare hands, but her shackles held fast, and a pounding dizziness kept her concentration fragmented. The only reward for her efforts was the low chuckle resonating from the back of his throat. “Look at you,” Skrag said with undeserving paternal pride. “You’re…beautiful.”

Starfire then became aware of her undressed state, and tossed her head to one side with a humiliated blush. Modesty didn’t concern her, but she felt dirty as Skrag’s eyes roamed freely over the curves of her body. The void within her filled with rage, which she channeled into her eyes. If her bonds would not break, then she would burn the fat flesh from his bones with the powers those Gordanian monsters had sewn into her body.

…Except, she could not summon the fire from her eyes. With effort, she found her hands likewise extinguished. What had he done to her?

Skrag’s chuckle grew louder as her eyes flickered with faltering light. “Valiant, but futile, little one. That sedative I gave you contained a potent…” He paused, plumbing the depths of his memory. “You know, I’m not really sure what it is or how it works. Our scientists were fairly certain it would nullify the powers they worked so hard to give you.” The mug of Raktajino ascended in a toast to the promethium chains circling her limbs and chest. “I do hope you’re not too uncomfortable.”

The fuzzy clouds packed around her brain dulled her thoughts and numbed her tongue. “Let me go,” she said with as much rage as she could muster. Each thrust she rallied against her bonds drained more and more from her boundless confidence and bogged her efforts. It gave her enough frustration to gather her voice for a shout. “Let me go!”

“You’ve grown so much,” cooed Skrag. He set his drink aside and rose from his seat with a belabored grunt. “You’re more powerful than those glag-brained scientists ever dreamed. Seeing you battle those hairless apes in that bookery… You have become something more. Something unique,” he told her, approaching with slow, exacting steps. His movement stuttered through his overwhelming awe, like each step in her presence was something to treasure. “Something magnificent,” Skrag said onto her with fetid air that curled her nose. She could feel every word roll from his forked tongue onto her cheek.

Starfire squirmed at the feather-light touch that traveled the contours of her body, all to the tune of Skrag’s appreciative hiss. His fat fingers possessed the gentility of a blind Rot Beast, and exercised none of it as they kneaded her bruised, supple flesh. “How did you find me here,” she uttered, curbing her disgust only for the moment. “I thought I made my escape untraceable.”

His hands disappeared, returning as a slap that jarred her world into fleeting chaos. “You ungrateful little girl,” Skrag snarled with a tone opposite of its former tenderness. “Shame on you for running away like that. Your antics may have cost me my career.” But Skrag’s anger was brief as it was grand. The fury in his face went quickly, and his touch returned with tenderness to the site of his slap. “But none of that matters now,” he murmured. “Everything is all right again. I’ll take you back home and be rewarded for my loyalty and diligence. Then, things will finally be back to normal. Won’t it be wonderful?”

Just the thought of it sent Starfire into a renewed fit of frenzy. She thrashed fruitlessly against the unbreakable chains binding her to the bulkhead. Skrag’s hands abandoned her skin, the only real success her struggles brought her. “I will not go back!” Starfire shrieked. “I will not! You cannot -”

Another hard slap silenced her with the taste of her own blood. “Contemptible troq,” bellowed Skrag. He hit her again, and a third time. Meat and blood dripped from his claws as he drew them back for a fourth strike. “Do you know what I’ve been through to find you?”

Blood seeped from the cuts in her cheek and forehead into her eyes as she sobbed, “I did not want to be found!”

Deaf to her incredulous scream, Skrag began pacing back and forth in front of her place on his wall. “I’ve been to every known armpit in this miserable galaxy trying to find you. I consorted with…with the psychotic, hairless monkeys running amok on this cesspool of a world.” A strange gleam eroded his gaze, glazing it until the rest of his expression followed in its descent. “I’ve had to endure the laughing stars for a stellar cycle, little one. So, don’t you dare disrespect me.”

Starfire could see it in his eyes. She sucked in a breath as his face loomed in hers, betraying the symptoms she had heard and read about, but never seen for herself. “X’Hal,” she whispered. “You are space crazy.”

Skrag’s backhand slammed her head up against the bulkhead, and drew from her lips a yelp that sprayed droplets of red into his face. “Never call me crazy,” growled Skrag. “Don’t you dare. I watched over you. I cared for you when no one else would.”

Blood dribbled from her lips onto her heaving chest as she whipped her head back around to glare at him in baleful defiance. Waves of red cascaded behind her and into her glowing eyes. “You used me,” Starfire rumbled. “They all used me, but you were the worst of them all.” She cursed the tremble in her voice drawn from a thousand different memories she could never leave behind. “You even justified your own sick pleasures in your warped little mind. You disgust me,” she choked.

Skrag could hear the stars laughing. They laughed at the troq making sport of him in his own ship. They chortled at his cycle-long impotence, trapped at their mercy in the cold depths of space. Even through the bulkhead, he could hear their laughter, ceaseless and overwhelming. The damnable stars, they laughed in tune to the troq’s shrill insolence.

“You are a monster,” she screeched into his face, and tossed her head until he could no longer keep hold of her. Starfire’s fingers quivered and shook, flexing as her entire body strained to reach Skrag’s thick neck and choke the life from his ugly body. “And I will never be your slave again. I will be free, or -”

A trio of claws tore into her stomach, shredding her confidence into a tortured scream. Skrag howled along with her as he laid into her, beating her golden flesh black and blue. “No more!” he bellowed. “No more laughter! You will learn your place, little one.” Blood smeared from the tip of his claw onto his lips, which he then licked clean with lavished, mad delight. His other hand drifted to his belt, working free the clasp and loosening his armor. “I will teach you your place.”

********************