Editing Heretical Love (section)

=== Thread 8: "IT'S TIME" "TIME FOR WHAT?" "HERESY" ===

“Ladies, I don’t mean to interrupt, but I really need to pee.”
Two weary-eyed Succubi rise from your chest, wiping at their faces tiredly.

You groan, your body is so sore it makes breathing a pain. Rising in the bed is difficult, everything is stiff and protesting any kind of movement.
“Go easy on yourself, Maximus, you did almost die you know.”

“Yeah yeah, also Max is fine.”

The twins look at each other.

“Maxi.”

“Maxwell.”

“Maxtent.”

“Maximum!”

Okay now they are just playing around.
You don’t care as you finally reach what you assume is a Dark Eldar toilet.

“Hey, that’s not a… ah… too late.” The twins protest.
At this point, you don’t care, you REALLY had to pee.

“We should have shown the bathroom to him earlier, Senna.”

“Shut up Senda, I know that.”

You finally finish, feeling at least relieved. It’s a small thing, but it seems to take away half of your ache.
“So that’s you two then is it? Senna and Senda? Fuck me, that won’t get confusing or anything.”

The two girls look at you, clearly missing your point. Must be pretty average names for Dark Eldar or something.
“I’m Senna.” Says the one with the twintails.

“Senna.” Says the one with the straight long mare.

“Awful.”

“Fine, I’m Senda.” The one with the twintails held up by green baubles finally admits.

You lay back down on the cot and slide the rest of yourself back onto it with a painful series of grunts and wheezes, until finally you are comfortable again. As much as you can be, anyways.
With a sigh, you close your eyes.
“Also, why am I wearing this?”

The twins look at each other and giggle, as though it were some kind of inside joke.
“No, seriously. I’m the patient, why am I dressed as a sexy Apothecary?”

The girls look at each other, than at you, but don’t say anything.
“…Whatever, is there anything to eat? I’m starving!”

They quickly zip around the room and before you realize it, they are sitting on either side of you spooning soup into your mouth.
You let them feed you for a while. It might not be glamorous and the food doesn’t hold a candle to standard Eldar cuisine (if Esh’s cooking is anything to go off of), but after narrowly avoiding death, you don’t care at this point. You want to relax and let someone else take care of you for a bit.

After a half hour or so you finally shake your head and pat your stomach.
“Ahh, it’s nice having some food in the morning again.”

The twins eyes meet, and then they nod before looking back to you.
“Max, how are you feeling? Think you can walk normally?” Senna asks, setting the bowl aside.

“Yeah, I think I could probably manage. Why?”
Senda bites her bottom lip, eyeing the door nervously.

“Well, you see… The Archon had a lot of friends here. We are pretty well known and liked, but even our influence extends only so far… We do have a plan, but before we can act on it, this probably isn't the safest place for you to be” Senda finally admits, revealing that she’s been armed this whole time.

It does make some sense. You did help poff their leader after all. Though it was the twins that helped you do it…
“Wait. If I’m not safe, what about you two? You were fighting him as well.”

The twins giggle, and fawn over your hair a little.

“Don’t worry about us, honey. We can handle our own, and besides…” Senda looks over to a portrait of a dark and sadistic looking Dark Eldar on the wall. From his fancy gear and whatnot, you can tell this dude is probably somebody big.

“No one is brave enough to mess with us, not with daddy on his way here and all.”
You shrug.

“So what’s the problem then?”

“Just because no one wants to mess with us doesn’t mean someone is above figuring out a way to poison you while you sleep.” Senna sets your equipment down on a nearby table. 
You notice hat-chan sits there and looks polished and clean.

“Well, that would not be too much fun…” Getting away from crazy evil ninja space elves is probably not a bad plan.

“Decidedly not. Here, we’ll give you our own personal communicator numbers.”
They program them into your own device and put it back into its belt pouch.

Despite not really needing it, you let them help you get dressed. 
They insisting and seem to enjoy it, and admittedly you do as well.

“We’ve arranged a transport to take you wherever you need to go. You should be safe out there, we will be keeping the late Archon’s friends… Occupied…” The twins say mischievously, and you can tell by the look in their eyes that it’s a bad day to be one of those friends.

The girls escort you to the transport, flanked the whole time by a dozen of their hard-eyed loyal soldiers. Despite a few nasty stares, most of the Dark Eldar quickly and politely get out of the twins way.

“Don’t hesitate to give us a call, Max. We should have this whole thing sorted out quickly.” Senna says as you stand in the open door of the small transport skiff.

“Next time, we’ll make sure it’s more fun and maybe even less life threatening.” Senda follows with a smile.

The two of them kiss you on the cheek, and with a final farewell, the doors close.

“Where are we headed?” The pilot asks with a node.
You check your phone. The twins have changed your background photo to a picture of them blowing a kiss together. Cute. You notice you have one new message from that as well.

"Daddy says he very much wants to meet you next time."
Not sure if want...

“Here, punch in these coordinates.”
You give the pilot the imperial designation, which he thankfully converts in his head to whatever system the Dark Eldar used. You can’t read any of the gauges or feeds.

The skiff ride is pretty smooth, and you almost drift off into a nap before the pilot kicks you in the shin.
“OW! Dude what the fuck?”

“We’ve arrived. Get out of my skiff, I’ve got a hot date tonight.”
Well, you can’t hate on a fellow player. So you climb out and toss him a sloppy salute as he speeds off.

The building in front of you is quite large, and in typical imperial fashion, looks a lot like all the buildings around it.
It also looks deserted.

Still, you aren’t going to give up. Someone has got to still be alive in there, and you are going to find them.
It takes several minutes of walking to finally get to an entrance. After dying and all of your almost-dying, you are kind of on edge. You finger the laspistol nervously, wishing that you still had even that junky power armor, which unfortunately was rendered useless but saved your life.
Though having your hate again is a massive confidence boost by itself.

When you finally enter, the whole factory is dead silent. Massive gears and belt systems, normally whirring and loud, are deathly silent.
You don’t know the layout of the building, so you are just exploring the off shooting hallways and whatnot randomly. Much of the place is too dark for you to even see, the rest is softly illuminated by emergency lighting.

After digging through several lockers, you finally find a nonstandard illumination unit.
In the shape of a standard guardsman lasgun. Dohoho.

A bit more confident with some way to see where you are going, you press yet deeper into the passageways which seem to grow more and more narrow.
You freeze suddenly, as your dim beam catches a flicker of movement.

Quickly drawing your laspistol you try to find whatever is out there moving in the dark, but it eludes your light.
You can still hear it, tapping quietly through the hallway right in front of you now!
Heart thundering in your chest, knowing whatever it is, it’s just beyond the range of your flashlight.
Throwing caution to the wind, your sprint to catch up.

Only with the sound of your own heart beating and your heavy boots on the cold metal floor, when you slow down, you find that the noise has ceased.
And you are in a dead end which splits off into four rooms.
Whatever it is, it’s probably watching you right now.

“…umm…”

“HOLY SHIT FUCK!” You jump and whirl around, laspistol shaking in your hand.
The light finally illuminates what has been avoiding you this whole time, and you almost start spamming the trigger of your pistol, but manage to stop yourself just in time.

“D-don’t shoot me!” She cries, shying away from you and covering her face.

With a sigh of relief as your heart resumes beating, you holster your gun and take a few seconds to calm yourself down.
The girl doesn’t show herself, still cowering in her red hooded robe.
“Hey now, I’m not going to shoot you.” You tell her, pointing to your now holstered pistol.

She looks through her fingers at you, but doesn’t say anything.
“I uhh… I like your robot arms.” You finally say after a minute of silence passes.

“T-thanks I like yours too.” She responds in a very meek voice.

“Uhm…”

The girl has her hand over her mouth now, as though she can’t really believe what she just said. You notice a few yellow wires fall out of the pockets of her robe.
“I…Ummm… I~… No….” She seems to be struggling, more and more wires falling from her pockets.

“Why am I so bad at this!” She finally yells, before leaping up and dashing past you back into the dark hallway wires streaming out of her pockets and littering the ground.

You don’t move for a few seconds, still a bit stunned. You can hear the tech priestess sobbing as she storms down the narrow passage.
Finally you snap back to and realize she’s getting away from you.

“WAIT!” You shout down the hallway as you chase after her.

Her footsteps are still ahead of you, she’s still running as fast as she can.
“Hold up, I just want to talk!” You yell again.

She doesn’t respond, but you can tell that you are gaining on her now. She was a bit shorter than you and you are probably in better shape, though your body is cursing you for being so rough on it after it nearly gave out two days ago.
Now within feet, you can see her looking back, tears in her eyes.

“Gotcha!” You yell triumphantly when you finally grab her by the hand and slow to a stop.
She struggles, but you don’t let her go. The tech priestess is still sobbing and won’t turn to face you, hiding in her hood.
“Easy there, we both startled each other. No need to get so worked up.”
Despite your soothing, she doesn’t stop crying quietly.

“Hey now, no need for that.” You pat her on the head like you used to do for Helena when she was sad or frustrated.
The tech priestess finally turns to you and looks up enough that you can just barely see her eyes.
“Y-you aren’t mad at me?” She stammers, her voice hoarse.

“No, of course not. Why would I be?” You assure his
“I…I’m not very good with people.” She finally says quietly, lowering her head so her face is again hidden.

Despite the fact that she is still trembling like a scared animal, she’s stopped crying at least.
“I don’t buy that, you seem very nice.” You assure her, as you start to pull back on her hood to reveal her face.

“No!” She yelps, grabbing her hood and holding it in place.
“Hey, what’s wrong now? I just want to make sure you aren’t injured.”

She stays silent for several moments.
“I… I don’t like showing people my face.”
You smirk.
“Too bad.”

You quickly whip off her hood and she jumps in shock before crouching down and burying her face in her arms.
“Come on, you can show me. Did you get hit in the face or something?”

She shakes her head.
“N-No… No, it’s not that.”

“Than what could it possibly be?” You ask kindly, pulling her lightly up so she's standing again.
“The other tech priests… They… They say I’m… I’m Ugly.” She stammers, trying even harder to hide herself.

“Yeah well, admech dudes often have pretty bad taste.”
With that, you pull her arms apart gently and meet her face to face.

**********
Her face is hideous, a mess of tubes and wires with soulless black eye-implants.
"Nope, I'm out."
You put a las round though your own temple.
*********
Her eyes are a bit red and staring hard at his feet, but they are a pretty almond and go well with his black hime cut. Despite what she says, and whatever those gearheads say, she is in fact quite beautiful.

“Yeah, they are officially confirmed for shit taste.” You tell her.
She finally looks back at you, still trembling but with maybe a faint hint of appreciation.
“R…Really?” She asks quietly.

“Yeah, really. You are damn fine. Is this an Immolator factory? Because you look hot.”
Despite your terrible lines, she awards you with a faint smile.

“Do you mean it?” She asks, a little louder and less shy now.
“I would take you home and eat cherries off of your ass while I let you fix my cycle.”

She giggles before looking you fully in the eyes and smiling genuinely.
“You are pretty weird.” She finally says, though no longer gloomy.

“So I’ve been told… Anyways, what is this place?”
She raises an eyebrow, as if a bit surprised.

“Well, there’s really only one thing Yagis V produces in any kind of quantity.”
“Which is?” You press, as much as you think you already know the answer.

“Well… Lingerie…”

“Fuck... I was REALLY hoping for baneblades.”

Before you can continue giving her the moves, a skull probe pokes its head out of her robes at her feet.
“Mika-chan, chaos terminators detected inside the structure.” It chimes in a cheery robot voice.

“H-huh? Where?” The tech priestess stammers back to it.

“Right here.” The skull responds back with a now VERY out of place cheerfulness.
A powerfist busts through the wall not four feet to your left.

“OH YEAHHHHH!!!!!!!!”

The dust clears, and four chaos terminators are staring you right in the face.
“Have at you!” You yell, drawing your sword.

Before you can react, a chain fist buries itself in Mika’s side.
“Hah!?” She yells in surprise before blood oozes out of her mouth and her eyes go blank.
The terminator laughs as he tosses her limp form aside, before turning to you.
Their guns level, and in this narrow hallway, you don’t have anywhere to escape to.

“Quick, in here!” Mika grabs your hand and both of you sprint into one of the nearby rooms.
She slams the door shut and a heavy bolt engages the lock.
“That will hold them for a second or two, but we don’t have much time!” She yells at you.
But you are already on it.

“Don’t worry babe, I’ve got this shit. Wait, how the fuck are you still ALIVE?"
"Good armor shave." She replies as his hands fly over a control panel.

The terminator armor is quite a bit harder to put on than the standard power armor was, but you are pretty quick with your lives on the line and all that.
Three weaprawns adorn a rack on the wall, but the left hand of the armor is already taken up by a shield.


“Alright, this should do it.” You grab the power axe and ready yourself for the fight.
“Hey, what are you doing? Use your other arms to grab those other weapons!” Mika yells at you as the door starts to cave from power fist belows.
 
She pulls off your hat and stuffs the helmet onto your head. You don’t complain, hat-chan is cool but he can’t stop bolter rounds.
“Huh?”
But you quickly realize that somehow you are controlling two additional servitor arms attached to the armor.

Without questioning it, you grab the sword and storm bolter with the claws, and again turn to face the wall.
The door finally is blown back off of its heavy hinges, but the chaos terminator stops when he sees you.

“None shall stand in the path of the rape train!”
With that, you swing the axe down and it easily cuts into his head. The heavy armor slams hard into the ground, and the other two terminators look startled. Clearly, things were not going as planned.

Before they can raise their guns, you let them have it with the storm bolter. They are knocked backwards from the impact of the heavy shells, and you press your attack until you are within range.

The one on your left pulls back his power fist for a strike, but you quickly lash out with the shield and knock him onto his back. At the same time, your servitor arm lashes out with the sword and pierces the other terminator through his middle.
The last chaos terminator struggles to rise, but you put a heavy boot on his chest, and the storm bolter clatters away. Chaos head jelly, order yours today.

“Nice work!” Mika yells with adoration, jumping over the corpses until she’s behind you. She has a laspistol clutched in both hands and both mechanical arms.
“Thank me when we’re out of this mess.” You tell her.
You sincerely doubt this is over yet.

“Back into the factory floor, I have a feeling some bad shit is about to come pouring out of that hole.”
Mika doesn’t argue with you, and both of you sprint down the hallway.
Well, more like she walks along behind your lumbering ass.

“Can't this thing go any faster? Why didn’t you at least paint it red?”
Mika looks startled at the question.

“It-It’s a work in progress, I haven’t had time to finish it yet!”
Finally the two of you get through the winding hallways and into the open factory. You notice the lights are now on, casting a bright light over the paradise before you.

“Quit oogling them and lets go!” Mika shouts, pushing you in the back as though you can even feel that.

“Err… Yeah…” You toss the power sword aside and snatch up a bag of factory fresh goodies, labeled “Assorted”, you like the sounds of that.

“Wah? What are you doing?” Mika stammers, looking at the power sword than back at you.
“Uhh… It was malfunctioning.”

“B-but…”

“No time, let’s move!” You shout, and it sounds pretty bad-ass through the helmet.

You lumber over to the massive hanger door. Why a lingerie factory has a hanger door a baneblade could fit through, you don’t know, but you don’t know if the armor can fit through the door you first entered into the factory.

The metal door creaks in protest, but then starts to lift up with a faint grinding noise.
As soon as it lifts up enough, you duck underneath and step out into the light.
“Commissar, how good to see you again.” Abbadon laughs mercilessly.

“Cockfag.”

Abbadon’s smile fades slightly, and he pats the leg of the Defiler standing next to him.
Which lifts up its two front arms, and is going to try to flatten you.

*************
Too busy dreaming of the bag of goodies in your servitor arm, you don't have time to react to the attack.
The Defiler flattens you, and, under Abbadon's order, keeps wailing away until little remains of you but shards of metal and a gooey mess.
*************

You don’t give the Defiler time, and step within its reach.
“Stay inside!” You shout back to Mika, who doesn’t reply.

The construction of chaos slams its arms down furiously, but they miss.
You swing the power axe with all of your might, and it pierces into the Defiler, but only slightly. The thing doesn’t seem fazed, or amused. It’s lascannons rotate down to fry you.

Abandoning the axe, you roll out of the way and the shots scorch the concrete where you had stood a second ago,
Abbadon has retreated back and is laughing, clearly expecting you won’t make it out of this. He claps his hands together in amusement. Wait, he didn’t have arms the last time you saw him, but you don’t have time to point out that glaring plot hole.

You recover from the roll just in time to raise your shield in a vain attempt to block an incoming arm, which impacts hard. The blow sends you rolling back, and the shield is cracked in half. You notice it also disabled your left servitor arm.

Dropping the storm bolter down into your hands, you unleash it on the Defiler, which doesn’t seem to notice it much.
“Emprah damn it!” You shout as the gun runs dry.

The Defiler swings down again, and again you dodge. Only this time, you seize the opportunity and run up its arm as fast as the suit allows.
“Hit from underneath!” You hear Mika cry out.

A pitiful leap barely carries you back to the axe, which you wrench out from the raging machine as you fall back to the pavement.
Now you have its soft underbelly exposed, and you hack at one of the legs.

The axe cleaves through the metal, leaving the leg hanging by just a strand of melted slag, and completely unusable.
The Defiler screeches in protest, but you aren’t about to relent.

Again and again you cut, severing legs until the monstrous machine falls hard onto its side. Leaping up on top of it, you deliver one last massive strike to its exposed side. It’s power goes dead.

“Where are my arms, how was I clapping?” Abbadon howls, confused.

“Master, we must retreat!” A cultist yells and tugs on Abbadon’s armor.

Reluctantly he climbs into the back of a rhino, but even as it speeds off he screams back at you.
“I’LL HAVE YOUR HEAD ONE DAY COMISSAR! AND YOUR MEDDLING FRIENDS TOO!!!" 

You collapse as the armor powers down, and you read the message in your helmet.
“Game Over… Continue?”

But you don’t have any thrones, and you can’t move the suit.

Mika struggles for a moment, but finally gets the helmet off of you, before putting your hat back on.
After a few minutes, she’s got you out of the armor entirely.

Mika is panting and sits down, exhausted.
“Those pieces are heavy…” She says between deep breaths. Her robe is open, and you can’t help but watch her perky unmodified boobs rising up and down with her chest.

Come to think of it, the only modifications you can see are her additional mechanical arms.
“So you don’t have a lot of metal bits, eh?”
She blushes at your comment, and closes her robe.

“I know, I know. How unsightly right?”
You shake your head.

“Nah, metal parts are cool and all, but I prefer you without anything more than what you’ve got. I think you look great as is.”
She looks away and laughs, still blushing.
“You are very different from the tech-priests.”

You smile at her, and she smiles back. No guns going off, lived another day, talking with a pretty girl. Yeah, this is nice, you should defiantly do this more often. Preferably with less things trying their damnedest to kill you.
“While, I did manage to save this at least.” You hold up the bag of assorted lingerie triumphantly.

Mika giggles at you, than pauses.
“Come to think of it, I don’t know your name.”

Shit, you haven’t introduced yourself yet.

“Right, sorry. I’m Max. Max Decarus, with the guard. Sort of…”
You trail off. Who ARE you with anymore?
“Anyways, I don’t think it’s a good idea to stick around here. We need to find someplace safer.”
Mika's face lights up at your words.

“I know just the place, I was planning on trying to go there myself. It’s an Admech shelter in case of an event like this. The whole place is rigged with turrets and whatnot, it’s probably the safest place on the entire planet.”

“Shit, why didn’t you mention this earlier? Let’s go!”

“The place is a bit of a distance from here, we’re going to need some kind of transport.”

You haven’t seen anything around...
After a bit of walking you manage to locate four vehicles. To be honest, you don't really know how to drive any of them.

"Hey Mika, do you have any idea how to drive any of these?"
She tilts her head and looks at you.

"N-no? I thought you did?"

"None of them?"

"No, I can drive some tanks so the rhino would be close to that...Maybe? But it would take forever to get there..."

Alright then, its settled.
“We’re taking the thunderbolt.”

Mika looks a bit terrified, clutching at her robe nervously.
“Umm… I thought you didn’t know how to fly one of those?”

“How hard can it be?” You shrug.

Your sentiment changes somewhat, however, when you are both strapped into the cockpit as the craft sits poised on the launch ramp.

“You… You’re sure about this?” She’s visibly shaking.

“…No, let’s go try something else.”
You hit the button that you think opens the cockpit back up.

''"Launch sequence initiated, may the Emperor guide your flight"''

“That… Was not the button I was looking for.”

“Max, if you don’t know how to fly this, chances are we are probably going to die.”

You turn around to make a witty comment.

“Yeah well never tell me the obHOLY FUUUUUUCCKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

The Thunderbolt is thrown forward by the catapult, the air speed gauge is rapidly increasing.
Too late to bail now, you grab the control stick and hang on for dear life.

The fighter shakes and bucks as its rocketed down the ramp, it’s engines screaming to life.
You don’t even have time to think before you are in the air, looking at the orange sky above, the sun beginning to set.
Still, you haven’t died yet. Everything seems ok.

Taking hold of the stick, you try to put the craft into a soft left turn.
The fighter lurches into a hard roll, and begins spinning rapidly, increasing in speed.

“Max, level us out!” Mika screams, “Pedals, there should be pedals!”
You try to stop the roll, pushing hard on each of the pedals trying to figure out which one is going to keep you in the sky longer.
After several agonizing seconds, you manage to level the craft out.

Just in time to see the burst of autocannon fire miss your left wing by inches.
“Hell Talons!” Mika yells, “Two of them!”

Skilled pilots or not, they are actual pilots and you are some idiot sitting in a craft that takes years of training to learn.
There’s no way you are going to break and get into a turning fight, you would get slaughtered.

“Hold on!” You shout back to Mika, before shoving the stick forward and jamming down the right pedal.
The Thunderbolt rolls over into a dive and quickly starts losing altitude. The Talons blow past you, having been at max speed in their attempt to get into range.

The G-forces are intense, and it’s a struggle to keep from blacking out. Mika isn’t faring as well as you, she’s already out.
As close to the deck as you dare, you reverse the move. Or you try to.

The craft groans against the stress, and is only easing out of the dive slowly. Too slowly.
You pull with all your might, until finally the nose inches up and levels off. You look down just in time to see a building blink by, mere feet below you.

Mika must have come to, because you hear her scream.
“Chill out, I think we’re all right.” You call back to Mika.

“Then why were you screaming?”

A flash of lascannon fire misses the front of your fighter, but just barely.
Heading straight at you, guns blazing, another Talon.

“Shoot at them!” Mika yells up to you.
You don’t know how, so you just start pressing triggers.

The Thunderbolt shudders as it’s autocannons and lascannons open up, sending tracers and flashes of pinkish light out at the enemy fighter. You are missing, by a substantial margin, but the Talon stops shooting and skids slightly to its right.
Right, the pedals!

You jam on the left pedal and it kicks your nose to the left. You haven’t let up on your guns, despite a few warning lights flipping on and a klaxon sounding.

The Talon erupts into flames as the high explosive autocannon shells rake his fuel supply. He pitches up, climbs a few hundred meters, than explodes into shrapnel.

You barely manage to skid the craft with the pedal again, just in time to avoid a hunk of wing that would have sheared off your own.
“There it is!” Mika grabs your shoulder and points to a large bunker laid into the side of a mountain.
“Hold on, we’re going in hot.”

You don’t know why you said that, maybe you thought it sounded cool. What you should have said is “Pray to the EMPRAH, because I don’t know how to land.”

You pull back on the thrusters until the engine cuts out, trying desperately to lose air speed.
The belly of the ship touches down, hard, and you are jolted around the cockpit. Your head and neck ache from snapping around.

Thankfully the Thunderbolt is a sturdy craft, because you are only knocked unconscious when it impacts a solid concrete wall.

----

Helena laughs as she terrorizes Sarah unrelentingly.
Frederick presses as close to the tank’s open turret as he dares, forgetting about his repair job on the targeting system.

“Hey! Stop…ahh! Get off! Fucking hell, you are as perverted as your brother!”

“Ohohoho? You mean you don’t like me grabbing these big ol’ round earthshakers?” Helena teases.

“No! NO! Emprah damn it Helena, leave my twins alone!”

Frederick’s servitor arms are moving on their own and leaking oil slightly.

“Hah! Were you as shy when you let my pervy bro stick his basilisk between these?”

“Helena you bitch, I’ve told you a million times that was a HUGE mistake!”

But Helena isn’t about to give in.

“I remember you calling me, so worked up and distressed.” Helena puts her hands to her face mockingly.

“Oh Helena it was terrible, he shot that sticky stuff all over my face!” Helena’s voice is nasally, impersonating Sarah, badly.

Sarah, finally at her limit, tackles Helena to the bottom of the tank.
“I told you, it was a stupid mistake that I wholly regret. I was curious, that’s ALL.”