Irontoe
05-09-2007, 06:34 PM
In a cramped apartment overlooking Ironforge's Hall of Explorers, an aged dwarf runs his fingers along a neat row of newly-bound tomes arranged on a stone shelf. Selecting one, he pulls it out, turns, and shows the title to a group of seven or eight younglings crowded into the room.
"Tha' one! Tha' one!" they cry excitedly.
"Ye li'l tykes wan' to hear abou'... lessee... 'Fantas'ic Tales O' Strange 'n Wunnerful Thinges Occuring Many Years Ago 'n Spannin' th'Ntire Worl' from Khaz Modan t' Teldrassil 'n Back, No' t' Be Confused With Elven Tales, etc., etc., Also Claimin' t' Do th' Same Thinge Bu' Don' Be Any Good'?" He curses his publicist -- a Draenei, of course -- under his breath.
"Yes!"
"Very well. Hmmm. Le's skip t' th' good bit, shall we?"
And with that, he settles deeper into his chair, flips to the middle of the book, and starts reading. "Chap'er Ten: Boo'y Bay! Nigh'time, jus' off th' southern tip o' th' Cape o' Stranglethorn..."
– – – – –
CHAPTER X: BOOTY BAY
Nighttime, just off the southern tip of the Cape of Stranglethorn -- a hide-armored longboat drifts silently toward the mouth of Blackwater Cove. The water is still in the moonlight, the harbor of the renowned Steamwheedle port protected to the seaward by Janeiro's Point. Hardly a ripple stirs from the prow of the low wooden craft, the oars and single sail having been drawn in long since. A dwarf stands silhouetted in the bow, reveling inwardly at his imminent, nay, inevitable success. Revilgaz would never know what happened, not even at the very moment of his death. And the plunder would be wondrous: all the riches of the grandest outpost of the wealthiest goblin trade empire within easy reach. It would all belong to him, HIM, greatest dwarf pirate ever to sail the seas, the handsomest, cleverest, most cunni-- click.
BOOM.
"Har! Fer a wee mo' there ah really though' th' li'l bastard'd make it past th' second mine!" exclaimed Mr. P.T. Irontoe, Dwarf, as he peered through his rifle's scope at the rapidly diminishing fireball in the cove. Splinters of wood and chunks of flaming hide splashed into the water in a widening circle of flotsam. He took a swig of rum from a hip flask, turned away from the cove, and strode off of the Salty Sailor's keel-shaped balcony and inside.
Fleet Master Seahorn glanced up from a pile of nautical charts on a table and asked him, "How goes the fight?"
"Eh? What figh'?" he said, thumping the butt of his gun on the ground smugly. When the Tauren glared at him: "Ooooh, ye mean th' li'l dustup in th'harbor. Tha' tweren't nothin'. Why, it couldnae 'ardly be easier. Them Dark Iron nivver think abou' th' streng' o' a ship's sides. Speaking o' which..."
"No, small one, I told you already, the Cartel is content not to have iron siding drag its ships to the bottom of the sea, thank you." This had come up before. The greedy Dwarf tried to sell him the most ill-conceived devices, such as this so-called "ships' armor," on a regular basis to outfit his fleet. He was hardly better than one of the army of Undermine street urchins!
"Bah!" Irontoe shot back, irritated at Seahorn's use of the epithet. "Th' greenskins 'ave gone an' fecktiltrated yer mind. Yeh're thinkin' like a damned cow."
"Out," the tauren said, calmly returning to his maps.
The dwarf shouldered his rifle and retreated to his quarters, which, albeit rather cheap and gaudily decorated, were downright opulent for a former mountaineer. He paused to examine himself in a floor-to-ceiling mirror on his way to bed. Irontoe was quite portly, even for one of his race, largely a result of an near-insatiable craving -- he would call it a "wee penchant" -- for a certain gnome's cherry pies drowned in Thunderbrew Lager. His protruding stomach was masked by a massive tangle of graying and grimy hair that hung from his chin to below his navel. The thing had won Thelsamar's beard pageant three years in a row in its younger years (a fact Irontoe never failed to bring up upon introducing himself to a lady), and his girth seemed only to compliment it.
He leaned closer to the mirror to check for any unsightly warts on his face, and found only sightly ones. His eyes were still as clear and sharp as Stormwind bells, having remained young while the rest of his body aged. His nose had a pronounced hook to it, giving him a perpetually severe expression from a distance belied occasionally by a slight, amused twitch at the corners of his mouth. Roughly pointed mustaches the size of cucumbers sprouted from his full lips and pointed nearly horizontally to either side of his cheeks. And patches of stone, a scarring mechanism peculiar to a few Ironforge families, marred his face in several places. His entire right shoulder and knee joint were solid rock, evidence of hard battles in his past; it tended to discourage tavern brawls. He flexed his mossy shoulder proudly for a moment, then clambered into bed.
– – – – –
CHAPTER XI: AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
Irontoe awoke feeling refreshed, and vaguely recalled a dream about a remarkably short blood elf woman. As he strapped on his leathers and guns, he tried to remember details. This always happened. He never remembered the good ones.
He went downstairs to the bottom floor of the Salty Sailor, a cramped room whose walls were crammed with ungainly modern and antiquated fishing paraphernalia, and gigantic sea creatures, at least half of which he was sure were fake. The bartender looked at him on the landing and grimaced, showing rows of sharp teeth. Obviously he was not the first customer she wanted to see this early in the morning. She reached under the counter for a mug, and had his usual rum ready by the time he reached her. Not a word was spoken, he just drained the mug, and, smacking his lips behind the frothy beard, set the mug on the counter with a single silver coin. The goblin eyed the coin suspiciously for a second before snatching it in her claws and grinning.
Stepping out into the sunlight, Irontoe marveled, as he did nearly every day, at the balmy southern weather. Over the bluffs surrounding Blackwater Cover, he spied the lush jungle canopy abounding in life. Birds of all sizes and colors skimmed the treetops, and great apes roared in the distance, their cries echoing across the cove. Booty Bay itself was just as chaotic as the wilderness beyond.
The sheer cliffs around the port town dropped straight into the sea, forcing its architects to build it almost entirely on stilts. The wooden structures that comprised it had obviously been built in layers, with one layer near the bottom arranged fairly neatly in a rough "U" around the harbor. From there, more layers extended successively above and below, growing ever more haphazard farther from the origin. The highest structures were little more than rickety shacks appended to the uneven peaked roofs of the ones below, and these were connected by rope bridges and unsecured planks. The strangest by far was the one Irontoe had just left; the Salty Sailor Tavern's highest floors served as the headquarters of Baron Revilgaz, ruler of Booty Bay, who spent much of his time during the day on the ship's-keel balcony protruding from the wall of the building almost a hundred feet above the water.
Irontoe loved it there, and knew every nook and cranny of the Steamwheedle colony like the underside of his beard. Yet something gnawed at him: a vague yearning for the security of solid rock beneath his feet and mountains above his head... the roar of the furnace and the rugged texture of bearskin gloves warding off the heat of the forge... the savory aroma of long rows of crag boars roasting on mithril spits over a lake of magma... the hiss of boiling water as a newly-forged blade touches its surface. These were things from... from a long time past, he thought, and not worth thinking about now! He was doing very well for himself here, and this sort of nostalgic reminiscing did no good for anyone!
Strolling past a darkened doorway facing away from the water, the dwarf was startled to hear a rustling, then the unmistakable metallic whine of a blade being drawn from its scabbard. A moment later, cold steel pressed against his throat. He froze. A male voice whispered hoarsely, "Don't bother looking for help. There is no one who could save you if I but flicked my wrist."
"I 'ave no debts outstandin'," Irontoe said carefully, "and no quarrel with any man in this town."
"You are mistaken, evidently. Dreadfully so." And after a short pause, "I am afraid there is a contract out on your life."
Irontoe gently turned his head, wary of pricking his own neck with what was sure to be a poisoned knife. His assailant's face was masked, ghostly pale hair hidden, but the wispy veil covering the blood elf's eyes could not entirely conceal their characteristic ethereal green glow.
"So why 'avnae ye killed me ye'?"
The rogue was taken aback at the ankle-basher's apparent calmness. That was a good question. Of course a simple assassination would have been preferable, if one followed the textbook. But that approach lacked flair, lacked style. Perhaps he would escort his victim to the ship preparing to set sail in the harbor below, then gut him and tip him over the side as soon as they rounded the cape. Better still might be a flourishing swipe across the throat, doubly appropriate now that the question had been posed. Also very suave. It was just that sort of suavitude (suaveness?) that the ladies loved.
"Must I justify myself to a rat for not having exterminated it sooner?" The elf said, thinking himself quite clever. Then the gorilla looming behind him smashed his head against the door-frame. It made a squishing sound, like a pumpkin dropped from a second-storey window. The elf's body went suddenly limp, and slid down the wall trailing brains and blood.
Irontoe took a step toward the body, then looked up and down the narrow wooden walkway. At first he spied nothing out of the ordinary, then the shadows seemed to deepen, morph, and disgorge figures striding toward him with daggers already in hand, eyes glowing bright in the half-darkness. Both ends of the alley were blocked off. He ducked into the doorway, stepping lightly over the still-warm corpse. Two knives thudded into the wood where his head had been.
The room was devoid of any doors or windows. Blast the greenskins, they had an ocean view and couldn't even build in a nice panoramic escape route. Suddenly, Irontoe had an idea. He whistled to the gorilla and pointed at the ceiling. The monstrous ape responded with astounding alacrity, pushing itself onto its legs and lashing out at the rafters with both arms. The first blow from its mighty fists left a gaping hole in the boards. It put out its hand for him to step on and be hoisted through. Footsteps echoed in the alley outside as the vicious elves, sensing their quarry escaping, raced for the door. The gorilla trundled off to face them as Irontoe scrambled across the roof, keeping low to avoid presenting a target to the would-be assassins.
He reached the edge and looked across the alley to another multi-storeyed house's balcony. It was a good two yard leap, quite a feat for even the tallest dwarf, which Irontoe wasn't. Still, it was his only hope as his long-time companion bellowed and fell to many elven blades. Swallowing nervously, he attempted to steel himself. A crossbow poked through the aperture behind him, and he leaped with the strength of desperation, landing squarely on the opposite balcony. A barbed bolt whistled past his ear, and another. He ran inside, slammed the door to the balcony and bolted it behind him. He sprinted across the room to a window on the far wall, crashing through it as an elf kicked the door in. He landed on a peaked tile roof, and rolled off to the side, snatching at the stone gutter just in time to save himself from a forty-foot drop to the dock below.
With the nimble elves gaining ground, he knew he had only seconds to find a way down before they spotted his fingers clinging to the lip of the gutter. He saw a window ten feet below him and to the left, still too high to jump to the dock from, but the ledge jutting out several inches from the sill could... maybe... support his weight. A cry from above him said he had no choice. A great heave put him on the sill, then tumbling through the window and down some crates piled haphazardly against the wall. He hit the floor on his back, whipping a pair of triple-barreled flintlock pistols from his belt and aiming at the window even as he slid across the hardwood.
He stared at the aperture intently. It seemed to him that everything around the square opening faded to black. A bead of sweat meandered across his brow, tried to cling to an eyelash, only to be blinked away and fall to the floor with a deafening splash. His heartbeat boomed loud in his ears.
No assassin appeared.
Irontoe leaped up and, pushing past the startled hawkers, rushed outside with his rifle cocked. He dodged behind a construction pylon opposite the market entrance and quickly surveyed the roof. It was empty-- no, wait. There a tile clattered down, bounced off the gutter. A scrabbling noise, and a head of platinum hair barely visible over the peak of the roof scurried toward the far end. The dwarf slowed his breathing, sighting down the barrel of the gun. Two hundred yards... two hundred-ten... two hundred-twenty. The rogue sprinted for the gap that marked the alley, leaped, and jerked sideways when a mithril slug slammed into his torso. A second tore off the left side of his head as he plummeted, turning morbid cartwheels in the air.
The crowd on the dock seemed to dissolve as the goblin merchants hurried indoors. The bruisers, who knew Irontoe to be a friend of the Fleet Master, followed him to the dead Sin'Dorei. The elf lay sprawled in a puddle of blood and gore, most of his head completely blown off and the right side of his ribcage obliterated, exposing a mangled lung. Unfazed, the dwarf bent down and tore open the elf's shirt to reveal a thin golden medallion on a fine chain around his neck. A dark red stone, rough and uncut, was set in it's center, and below it was a familiar seal.
Irontoe whistled low under his breath. "I'll be damned," he breathed.
That night, he stole north out of Booty Bay and disappeared into the Stranglethorn jungle.
– – – – –
"T'BE CONTINUED!"
((Comments are welcome and appreciated.))
"Tha' one! Tha' one!" they cry excitedly.
"Ye li'l tykes wan' to hear abou'... lessee... 'Fantas'ic Tales O' Strange 'n Wunnerful Thinges Occuring Many Years Ago 'n Spannin' th'Ntire Worl' from Khaz Modan t' Teldrassil 'n Back, No' t' Be Confused With Elven Tales, etc., etc., Also Claimin' t' Do th' Same Thinge Bu' Don' Be Any Good'?" He curses his publicist -- a Draenei, of course -- under his breath.
"Yes!"
"Very well. Hmmm. Le's skip t' th' good bit, shall we?"
And with that, he settles deeper into his chair, flips to the middle of the book, and starts reading. "Chap'er Ten: Boo'y Bay! Nigh'time, jus' off th' southern tip o' th' Cape o' Stranglethorn..."
– – – – –
CHAPTER X: BOOTY BAY
Nighttime, just off the southern tip of the Cape of Stranglethorn -- a hide-armored longboat drifts silently toward the mouth of Blackwater Cove. The water is still in the moonlight, the harbor of the renowned Steamwheedle port protected to the seaward by Janeiro's Point. Hardly a ripple stirs from the prow of the low wooden craft, the oars and single sail having been drawn in long since. A dwarf stands silhouetted in the bow, reveling inwardly at his imminent, nay, inevitable success. Revilgaz would never know what happened, not even at the very moment of his death. And the plunder would be wondrous: all the riches of the grandest outpost of the wealthiest goblin trade empire within easy reach. It would all belong to him, HIM, greatest dwarf pirate ever to sail the seas, the handsomest, cleverest, most cunni-- click.
BOOM.
"Har! Fer a wee mo' there ah really though' th' li'l bastard'd make it past th' second mine!" exclaimed Mr. P.T. Irontoe, Dwarf, as he peered through his rifle's scope at the rapidly diminishing fireball in the cove. Splinters of wood and chunks of flaming hide splashed into the water in a widening circle of flotsam. He took a swig of rum from a hip flask, turned away from the cove, and strode off of the Salty Sailor's keel-shaped balcony and inside.
Fleet Master Seahorn glanced up from a pile of nautical charts on a table and asked him, "How goes the fight?"
"Eh? What figh'?" he said, thumping the butt of his gun on the ground smugly. When the Tauren glared at him: "Ooooh, ye mean th' li'l dustup in th'harbor. Tha' tweren't nothin'. Why, it couldnae 'ardly be easier. Them Dark Iron nivver think abou' th' streng' o' a ship's sides. Speaking o' which..."
"No, small one, I told you already, the Cartel is content not to have iron siding drag its ships to the bottom of the sea, thank you." This had come up before. The greedy Dwarf tried to sell him the most ill-conceived devices, such as this so-called "ships' armor," on a regular basis to outfit his fleet. He was hardly better than one of the army of Undermine street urchins!
"Bah!" Irontoe shot back, irritated at Seahorn's use of the epithet. "Th' greenskins 'ave gone an' fecktiltrated yer mind. Yeh're thinkin' like a damned cow."
"Out," the tauren said, calmly returning to his maps.
The dwarf shouldered his rifle and retreated to his quarters, which, albeit rather cheap and gaudily decorated, were downright opulent for a former mountaineer. He paused to examine himself in a floor-to-ceiling mirror on his way to bed. Irontoe was quite portly, even for one of his race, largely a result of an near-insatiable craving -- he would call it a "wee penchant" -- for a certain gnome's cherry pies drowned in Thunderbrew Lager. His protruding stomach was masked by a massive tangle of graying and grimy hair that hung from his chin to below his navel. The thing had won Thelsamar's beard pageant three years in a row in its younger years (a fact Irontoe never failed to bring up upon introducing himself to a lady), and his girth seemed only to compliment it.
He leaned closer to the mirror to check for any unsightly warts on his face, and found only sightly ones. His eyes were still as clear and sharp as Stormwind bells, having remained young while the rest of his body aged. His nose had a pronounced hook to it, giving him a perpetually severe expression from a distance belied occasionally by a slight, amused twitch at the corners of his mouth. Roughly pointed mustaches the size of cucumbers sprouted from his full lips and pointed nearly horizontally to either side of his cheeks. And patches of stone, a scarring mechanism peculiar to a few Ironforge families, marred his face in several places. His entire right shoulder and knee joint were solid rock, evidence of hard battles in his past; it tended to discourage tavern brawls. He flexed his mossy shoulder proudly for a moment, then clambered into bed.
– – – – –
CHAPTER XI: AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
Irontoe awoke feeling refreshed, and vaguely recalled a dream about a remarkably short blood elf woman. As he strapped on his leathers and guns, he tried to remember details. This always happened. He never remembered the good ones.
He went downstairs to the bottom floor of the Salty Sailor, a cramped room whose walls were crammed with ungainly modern and antiquated fishing paraphernalia, and gigantic sea creatures, at least half of which he was sure were fake. The bartender looked at him on the landing and grimaced, showing rows of sharp teeth. Obviously he was not the first customer she wanted to see this early in the morning. She reached under the counter for a mug, and had his usual rum ready by the time he reached her. Not a word was spoken, he just drained the mug, and, smacking his lips behind the frothy beard, set the mug on the counter with a single silver coin. The goblin eyed the coin suspiciously for a second before snatching it in her claws and grinning.
Stepping out into the sunlight, Irontoe marveled, as he did nearly every day, at the balmy southern weather. Over the bluffs surrounding Blackwater Cover, he spied the lush jungle canopy abounding in life. Birds of all sizes and colors skimmed the treetops, and great apes roared in the distance, their cries echoing across the cove. Booty Bay itself was just as chaotic as the wilderness beyond.
The sheer cliffs around the port town dropped straight into the sea, forcing its architects to build it almost entirely on stilts. The wooden structures that comprised it had obviously been built in layers, with one layer near the bottom arranged fairly neatly in a rough "U" around the harbor. From there, more layers extended successively above and below, growing ever more haphazard farther from the origin. The highest structures were little more than rickety shacks appended to the uneven peaked roofs of the ones below, and these were connected by rope bridges and unsecured planks. The strangest by far was the one Irontoe had just left; the Salty Sailor Tavern's highest floors served as the headquarters of Baron Revilgaz, ruler of Booty Bay, who spent much of his time during the day on the ship's-keel balcony protruding from the wall of the building almost a hundred feet above the water.
Irontoe loved it there, and knew every nook and cranny of the Steamwheedle colony like the underside of his beard. Yet something gnawed at him: a vague yearning for the security of solid rock beneath his feet and mountains above his head... the roar of the furnace and the rugged texture of bearskin gloves warding off the heat of the forge... the savory aroma of long rows of crag boars roasting on mithril spits over a lake of magma... the hiss of boiling water as a newly-forged blade touches its surface. These were things from... from a long time past, he thought, and not worth thinking about now! He was doing very well for himself here, and this sort of nostalgic reminiscing did no good for anyone!
Strolling past a darkened doorway facing away from the water, the dwarf was startled to hear a rustling, then the unmistakable metallic whine of a blade being drawn from its scabbard. A moment later, cold steel pressed against his throat. He froze. A male voice whispered hoarsely, "Don't bother looking for help. There is no one who could save you if I but flicked my wrist."
"I 'ave no debts outstandin'," Irontoe said carefully, "and no quarrel with any man in this town."
"You are mistaken, evidently. Dreadfully so." And after a short pause, "I am afraid there is a contract out on your life."
Irontoe gently turned his head, wary of pricking his own neck with what was sure to be a poisoned knife. His assailant's face was masked, ghostly pale hair hidden, but the wispy veil covering the blood elf's eyes could not entirely conceal their characteristic ethereal green glow.
"So why 'avnae ye killed me ye'?"
The rogue was taken aback at the ankle-basher's apparent calmness. That was a good question. Of course a simple assassination would have been preferable, if one followed the textbook. But that approach lacked flair, lacked style. Perhaps he would escort his victim to the ship preparing to set sail in the harbor below, then gut him and tip him over the side as soon as they rounded the cape. Better still might be a flourishing swipe across the throat, doubly appropriate now that the question had been posed. Also very suave. It was just that sort of suavitude (suaveness?) that the ladies loved.
"Must I justify myself to a rat for not having exterminated it sooner?" The elf said, thinking himself quite clever. Then the gorilla looming behind him smashed his head against the door-frame. It made a squishing sound, like a pumpkin dropped from a second-storey window. The elf's body went suddenly limp, and slid down the wall trailing brains and blood.
Irontoe took a step toward the body, then looked up and down the narrow wooden walkway. At first he spied nothing out of the ordinary, then the shadows seemed to deepen, morph, and disgorge figures striding toward him with daggers already in hand, eyes glowing bright in the half-darkness. Both ends of the alley were blocked off. He ducked into the doorway, stepping lightly over the still-warm corpse. Two knives thudded into the wood where his head had been.
The room was devoid of any doors or windows. Blast the greenskins, they had an ocean view and couldn't even build in a nice panoramic escape route. Suddenly, Irontoe had an idea. He whistled to the gorilla and pointed at the ceiling. The monstrous ape responded with astounding alacrity, pushing itself onto its legs and lashing out at the rafters with both arms. The first blow from its mighty fists left a gaping hole in the boards. It put out its hand for him to step on and be hoisted through. Footsteps echoed in the alley outside as the vicious elves, sensing their quarry escaping, raced for the door. The gorilla trundled off to face them as Irontoe scrambled across the roof, keeping low to avoid presenting a target to the would-be assassins.
He reached the edge and looked across the alley to another multi-storeyed house's balcony. It was a good two yard leap, quite a feat for even the tallest dwarf, which Irontoe wasn't. Still, it was his only hope as his long-time companion bellowed and fell to many elven blades. Swallowing nervously, he attempted to steel himself. A crossbow poked through the aperture behind him, and he leaped with the strength of desperation, landing squarely on the opposite balcony. A barbed bolt whistled past his ear, and another. He ran inside, slammed the door to the balcony and bolted it behind him. He sprinted across the room to a window on the far wall, crashing through it as an elf kicked the door in. He landed on a peaked tile roof, and rolled off to the side, snatching at the stone gutter just in time to save himself from a forty-foot drop to the dock below.
With the nimble elves gaining ground, he knew he had only seconds to find a way down before they spotted his fingers clinging to the lip of the gutter. He saw a window ten feet below him and to the left, still too high to jump to the dock from, but the ledge jutting out several inches from the sill could... maybe... support his weight. A cry from above him said he had no choice. A great heave put him on the sill, then tumbling through the window and down some crates piled haphazardly against the wall. He hit the floor on his back, whipping a pair of triple-barreled flintlock pistols from his belt and aiming at the window even as he slid across the hardwood.
He stared at the aperture intently. It seemed to him that everything around the square opening faded to black. A bead of sweat meandered across his brow, tried to cling to an eyelash, only to be blinked away and fall to the floor with a deafening splash. His heartbeat boomed loud in his ears.
No assassin appeared.
Irontoe leaped up and, pushing past the startled hawkers, rushed outside with his rifle cocked. He dodged behind a construction pylon opposite the market entrance and quickly surveyed the roof. It was empty-- no, wait. There a tile clattered down, bounced off the gutter. A scrabbling noise, and a head of platinum hair barely visible over the peak of the roof scurried toward the far end. The dwarf slowed his breathing, sighting down the barrel of the gun. Two hundred yards... two hundred-ten... two hundred-twenty. The rogue sprinted for the gap that marked the alley, leaped, and jerked sideways when a mithril slug slammed into his torso. A second tore off the left side of his head as he plummeted, turning morbid cartwheels in the air.
The crowd on the dock seemed to dissolve as the goblin merchants hurried indoors. The bruisers, who knew Irontoe to be a friend of the Fleet Master, followed him to the dead Sin'Dorei. The elf lay sprawled in a puddle of blood and gore, most of his head completely blown off and the right side of his ribcage obliterated, exposing a mangled lung. Unfazed, the dwarf bent down and tore open the elf's shirt to reveal a thin golden medallion on a fine chain around his neck. A dark red stone, rough and uncut, was set in it's center, and below it was a familiar seal.
Irontoe whistled low under his breath. "I'll be damned," he breathed.
That night, he stole north out of Booty Bay and disappeared into the Stranglethorn jungle.
– – – – –
"T'BE CONTINUED!"
((Comments are welcome and appreciated.))