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The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > Where It All Began - Let's Read the Twilight Series
«‹›41 »
 
chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

quote:

We were back in Forks in three and a half hours, taking the fastest route straight through the Salish Sea. We went directly to Charlie’s house, where Esme and Rosalie were on watch, Esme in the back of the house, and Rosalie in the tree in the front yard. Emmett went quickly to join her while Carlisle and I went to Esme.

Dripping wet the entire time.

quote:

Now that I was here to appreciate them, Rosalie was thinking bitter thoughts about how selfishly I was putting everyone’s lives in danger. I paid no attention to her.

It's all about you, right?

quote:

Bella’s house was ominously quiet, though there were several lights on downstairs. I realized what was missing—the sound of a game from the TV in the living room. I found Charlie’s mind in its usual spot, sitting on the sofa, facing the dark TV. His thoughts were totally silent, as though he had gone numb. I winced, glad Bella didn’t have to see this.

Just casually traumatizing your dad, no big deal.

quote:

It took only a few seconds of discussion, and then we scattered. Carlisle stayed with Esme, and I felt much better that he was there with her. Emmett and Rosalie did a sweep through the center of town and then searched the area around the airstrip, looking for an abandoned prop plane.

I ran east, following the redhead’s trail. I wouldn’t mind cornering her. But her scent only led into the Puget Sound. She wasn’t taking any chances.

I swept the familiar Olympic Park on my way back to Charlie’s, just to see if the redhead had gone anywhere interesting, but she seemed to have made a beeline for the Sound. She wasn’t the type to risk a confrontation.

Uh huh.

quote:

Back at Bella’s house, I took over watch while Esme and Carlisle scouted north to see if the redhead had emerged from the water near Port Angeles and was trying to come at Charlie from another angle. I doubted it, but we had nothing better to do. If the tracker wasn’t coming back to Forks —which seemed evident at this point—and the redhead had gone to meet him, then we would have to regroup and come up with a new plan. I hoped someone else had an idea, because my head was a blank.

That's normal.

quote:

It was nearly two-thirty in the morning when my phone buzzed quietly. I accepted the call without looking, expecting a report from Carlisle.

Alice’s voice erupted from the phone, trilling with speed.

“He’s coming here, he’s coming to Phoenix, if he’s not already here—I saw the second room again, and Bella recognized the sketch, it’s her mother’s house, Edward—he’s coming after Renée. He can’t know we’re here, but I don’t like Bella so close to him. He’s too slippery, and I can’t see him well enough. We’ve got to get her out of here, but somebody’s got to find Renée—he’s going to spread us too thin, Edward!”

But....Alice should be able to see intent, right? Does this mean James was always planning on going after Renee but decided to just do a fakeout ambush when he got there, or are her powers suddenly this easy to trick?

quote:

felt dizzy, dazed, though I knew it was an illusion. There was nothing wrong with my mind or my body. But the tracker had gone around me again, circling, always in my blind spot. Whether by design or by luck, he was about to be in the same place as Bella while I was fifteen hundred miles away from her.

“How long till he’s there?” I hissed. “Can you nail it down?”

“Not perfectly, but I know it’s soon. No more than a few hours.”

Was he flying straight there? Had he been leading us farther away from her on purpose?

“None of you have gone near Renée’s house?”

“No. We’ve not set foot anywhere outside this hotel. We’re nowhere close to the house.”

It was too far to make running an efficient option. We’d have to fly. And a big plane was the fastest way.

But you need to buy tickets! And have a flight available! And board and everything! You can run at over 200 miles per hour without stopping right now! Vampires always cross bodies of water by just swimming like speedboats!

quote:

“The first flight to Phoenix leaves Seattle at six-forty,” Alice told me, a step ahead. “You’ll need to cover up. It’s ludicrously sunny here.”

It's going to be 4 hours before the plane leaves. At the canon speeds you have, you can cross almost 1000 miles by the time the plane gets off the ground.

quote:

“We’ll leave Esme and Rosalie here again. The redhead won’t come near them. Get Bella ready. We’ll keep the same groups. Emmett, Carlisle, and I will take her somewhere far away, somewhere random, till we can figure out the next step. You find her mother.”

“We’ll be there when you land.”

Alice hung up.

I started running, dialing Carlisle as I sprinted for Seattle. They’d have to catch up to me.
* # ? Jul 22, 2021 05:52
  • Quote
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# ? Apr 26, 2024 11:02
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Lord Zedd-Repulsa
Jul 21, 2007

Devour a good book.


 But it's just over 1500 miles from Forks to Phoenix. Even at 200 mph, that's 7 hours. Airline cruising speed appears to be around 550 mph. This part makes sense if Edward wants to get there fastest above all else.

Ah, teens and the need to go fast.

* # ? Jul 22, 2021 06:37
  • Quote
chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014
Edward could have begun running and made it before the plane, but he needed to spend 4 hours brooding and flopping across the furniture to show his despair.

* # ? Jul 22, 2021 20:51
  • Quote
chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014
Chapter 25: Race

quote:

Even when the plane's wheels touched the tarmac, my impatience refused to ebb. I reminded myself that Bella was surely less than a mile distant now and it wouldn’t be many minutes more before I could see her face again, but that only made the urge stronger to rip the emergency door off its hinges and sprint to the building rather than wait through the interminable taxiing. Carlisle could feel my agitation in my absolute stillness, and he nudged my elbow lightly to remind me to move.

If only you had used your superpowers to find a faster way...

quote:

Though our row’s window shade was down, there was an excess of direct sunlight in the plane. My arms were folded so that my hands were hidden, and I’d let the hood of my airport-shop hoodie fall forward to keep my face in shadow. We probably looked ridiculous to the other passengers —especially Emmett, bulging out of a sweatshirt that was several sizes too small—or as though we thought we were some kind of celebrities hiding behind our hoods and dark glasses. More probably northern bumpkins who had no frame of reference for spring temperatures in the Southwest. I caught one man thinking that we’d all remove the sweatshirts before we made it down the length of the jetway.

Emmett you had 4 hours and an entire lifetime to build a wardrobe and you never even bought a hoodie?

quote:

The plane in the air had felt unbearably slow; this taxiing might kill me.

Just a little more restraint, I promised myself. She’d be there at the end of this. I’d take her away from here, and we’d hide together while we figured this out. The thought soothed me a tiny amount.

In reality, it took very little time for the plane to find its assigned gate, open and ready. There were a million possible delays that hadn’t gotten in our way. I should have been grateful.

Just the delay you caused.

quote:

We were even fortunate enough to end up at a gate on the north side of the airport, tucked into the late-morning shadow of the larger terminal. That would make it easier for us to move fast.

Carlisle’s fingers rested lightly on my elbow while the crew took its time going through checks. Outside the plane, I could hear the mechanical Jetway maneuvering into place, and the knock against the hull when that was achieved. The crew ignored the sound, the two forward-cabin stewards staring together at a passenger list.

Did you expect the crew to be shocked at it?

quote:

He nudged me again, and I pretended to breathe.

Finally, the steward approached the door and worked to heave it out of the way. I desperately wanted to help him, but Carlisle’s fingertips on my arm kept me focused.

With a hiss, the door opened, and warm outside air mixed with the stale cabin air. Stupidly, I searched for some trace of Bella’s scent, though I knew I was still too far. She’d be deep inside the air-conditioned terminal, past the security post, and her pathway there would follow a route from some distant parking garage. Patience.

The seat belt light turned off with a tinny ding, then all three of us were moving. We eased around the humans and were at the door so quickly that the steward took a surprised step back. It moved him out of our way, and we took advantage of that.

Very stealthy.

quote:

Carlisle tugged the back of my sweatshirt, and I reluctantly let him pass me. It would only make a few seconds’ difference if he set the pace, and certainly he would be more circumspect than I. No matter what the tracker did, we had to adhere to the rules.

I’d memorized the layout of this terminal in the onboard pamphlet, and we’d been loosed into the branch closest to the exit. More good luck. Of course I couldn’t hear Bella’s mind, but I should be able to find Alice and Jasper. They’d be with the other families waiting to greet passengers, just up ahead to the right.

I’d started to edge ahead of Carlisle again, anxious to finally see Bella. Alice’s and Jasper’s minds would stand out from the humans’ like spotlights surrounded by campfires. I’d be able to hear them any—

The chaos and agony of Alice’s mind hit me then, like a sudden vortex erupting out of a calm sea, sucking me under.

I staggered to a stop, paralyzed. I didn’t hear what Carlisle said, barely felt his attempts to pull me forward. I was vaguely aware of his awareness of the human security officer eyeing us suspiciously.

“No, I’ve got your phone right here,” Emmett was saying too loudly, providing an excuse.

He grabbed me under one elbow and started to move me forward. I scrambled to find my footing while he half carried me, but I couldn’t quite feel the floor under me. The bodies around me seemed translucent. All I could really see was Alice’s memories.

Finally, we'll learn how this happened! How Alice didn't see Bella fleeing, how nobody heard James' side of his phone call with Bella right next to them. All will be known!

quote:

Bella, pale and withdrawn, twitching with nerves. Bella, desperate-eyed, walking away with Jasper.

A memory of a vision: Jasper rushing back to Alice, agitated.

She didn’t wait for him to come to her. She followed his scent to where he waited outside a women’s restroom, face clouded with concern.

Alice following Bella’s scent now, finding the second exit, darting at a speed that was a little too conspicuous. The hallways full of people, the crowded elevator, the sliding doors to the outside. A curb teeming with taxis and shuttles.

The end of the trail.

Bella had vanished.

Emmett propelled me into the giant, atrium-like space where Alice and Jasper waited tensely in the shadow of a massive pillar. The sun slanted down at us through a glass ceiling, and Emmett’s hand on my neck forced me to bow my head, to keep my face in shadow.

Alice could see Bella a few seconds from now, in a taxi, speeding along a freeway through brilliant sunlight. Bella’s eyes were closed.

And in just a few minutes more: a mirrored room, fluorescent tubes bright overhead, long pine boards across the floor.

The tracker, waiting.

Then blood. So much blood.

So....Alice is having these visions of the future now. After Bella is already in the taxi.

quote:

“Why didn’t you go after her?” I hissed.

The two of us weren’t enough. She died.

She's in the taxi right now!

quote:

I had to force myself to keep moving through the pain that wanted to freeze me into place again.

“What’s happened, Alice?” I heard Carlisle ask.

The five of us were already moving in an intimidating formation toward the garage where they’d parked. Thankfully, the glass ceiling had given way to simpler architecture, and we were out of danger from the sun. We moved faster than any of the human groups, even the late ones running past us for their connections, but I chafed at the speed. We were too slow. Why pretend now? What did it matter?

Stay with us, Edward, Alice cautioned. You’re going to need us all.

In her mind: blood.

To answer Carlisle’s question, she shoved a piece of paper into his hand. It was folded into thirds. Carlisle glanced at it and recoiled.

I saw it all in his head.

Bella’s handwriting. An explanation. A hostage. An apology. A plea.

He passed the note to me—I crumpled it in my hand, shoved it into my pocket.

“Her mother?” I growled softly.

“I haven’t seen her. She won’t be in the room. He may have already…”

Alice didn’t finish.

She remembered Bella’s mother’s voice on the phone, the panic in it.

Bella had gone to the other room to calm her mother. And then the vision had overtaken Alice. She hadn’t put the timing together. She hadn’t seen.

The explanation is that there is no explanation. Jasper and Alice really just didn't hear something the book spent all its time telling us they can. Alice really did just gently caress up interpreting her vision and decided to wander around without keeping an eye on Bella for no reason.

There's nothing to fill in the plot hole. No new rules about how powers work, nothing distracting them, no plot device that appears out of nowhere. There's no explanation, gently caress you.

quote:

Alice was spiraling in guilt. I hissed, low and hard.

“There’s not time for that, Alice.”

I almost wanted to say Alice should be guilty, but she's a fictional character. She didn't do anything wrong. This isn't a character just behaving poorly or stupidly. This is a hack of an author who has no clue what she's doing finding that she's been confronted with a plot hole big enough to fly the plane Edward insisted on taking through and figuring "You know what? Nobody will give a poo poo what I write."

quote:

Carlisle was almost inaudibly muttering the pertinent information to Emmett, who had become impatient. I could hear his horror as he understood, his sense of failure. It was nothing compared to mine. I could not let myself feel this now. Alice saw the tightest of windows. It was maybe impossible. It was absolutely impossible that we could catch up to Bella before her blood started flowing. Part of me knew what this meant, that there would be a gap of time between the tracker’s finding her and her death. A wide gap. I couldn’t allow myself to understand.

I had to be fast enough.

“Do we know where we’re going?”

Alice showed me a map in her head. I felt her relief that she’d gotten the most vital information in time. After the first vision, but before the call from Bella’s mother, Bella had given her the crossroads near the place the tracker had chosen to wait. It was just under twenty miles, with freeway almost all the way. It would only take minutes.

Bella didn’t have that long.

This one time I will give the Cullens an allowance for not using their powers to get there faster. They're in a major metropolitan area in bright daylight.

That does not make their coming solution attract any less attention.

quote:

We were through the baggage claim area and into the elevator bay. Several groups with carts loaded with suitcases were waiting for the next set of doors to open. We moved in synchronization to the stairwell. It was empty. We flew upward and were in the garage in less than a second. Jasper started for where they’d left the car, but Alice caught his arm.

“Whatever car we take, the police are going to be searching for its owners.”

The brilliant freeway gleamed in her mind, blurring with speed. Blue and red lights spinning, a roadblock, some kind of accident—it wasn’t totally clear yet.

Y'all are gonna loving poo poo when you see what it means.

quote:

They all froze, not sure what this meant.

There was no time.

I moved too fast down the line of cars while the others recovered and followed at a more judicious pace. There weren’t many people in the garage, none who could see me plainly.

I heard Alice instructing Carlisle to retrieve his bag from the trunk of the Mercedes. Carlisle kept a medical kit in every car he drove in case of emergencies. I didn’t let myself think about that.

There wasn’t time to find the perfect option. Most of the cars here were bulky SUVs or practical sedans, but there were a few options a little faster than the others. I was hesitating between a new Ford Mustang and a Nissan 350Z, hoping Alice would see which would serve better, when the hint of an unexpected scent caught my attention.

As soon as I smelled the nitrous, Alice saw what I was looking for.

YES

quote:

I darted to the far end of the garage, right up to the edge of the intruding sunlight, where someone had parked their souped-up WRX STI far away from the elevators in hopes that no one would park next to it and ding the paint.

The paint job was hideous—violently orange bubbles the size of my head rising from what appeared to be deep purple lava. I’d never seen a car so conspicuous in a hundred years.

But it was obviously well maintained, somebody’s baby. Nothing was stock, everything designed for racing, from the splitter to the huge aftermarket spoiler. The windows were tinted so dark I doubted they were legal, even here in this land of sun.

Alice’s vision of the road ahead was much clearer now.



THIS IS HAPPENING MOTHERFUCKERS

quote:

She was already beside me, some other car’s broken-off antenna in hand. She’d flattened it between her fingers and shaped a small hook at the end. She popped the lock before Jasper, Emmett, and Carlisle, black leather satchel in hand, caught up to us.

Ducking into the driver’s seat, I wrenched off the casing on the steering column and twisted the ignition wires together. Next to the gearshift was a second stick, this one topped with two red buttons labeled “Go Go 1” and “Go Go 2”—I appreciated the owner’s commitment to upgrades, if not his sense of humor. I could only hope the nitrous canisters were full. The gas tank was at three quarters, plenty more than I needed. The others climbed into the car, Carlisle in the passenger seat and the rest in the back, and the engine was thrumming eagerly as we reversed into the aisle. No one blocked my way. We tore down the length of the enormous garage toward the exit. I clicked on the heating button on the dash. It would take a moment for the nitrous to heat from gas to liquid.

THIS IS HOW THEY DID IT

quote:

“Alice, give me thirty seconds ahead.”

Yes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27SslaVDWhE

Punch it.

* # ? Jul 24, 2021 03:34
  • Quote
Midjack
Dec 24, 2007



 Nos? Ahahahahahahahaha yes. I wonder whose real life car this is based on.

quote:

It would take a moment for the nitrous to heat from gas to liquid.
Heating a liquid generally turns it into a gas.

* # ? Jul 24, 2021 04:39
  • Quote
chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Midjack posted:

Nos? Ahahahahahahahaha yes. I wonder whose real life car this is based on.

If you Google the specific description of the car, it's a top result on image search. It looks like it originates from a 2008 thread of the North American Subaru Impreza Owners Club, where someone made it as a gag. The photo itself appears to be a stock image from Subaru.

* # ? Jul 24, 2021 04:51
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Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

chitoryu12 posted:

Emmett you had 4 hours and an entire lifetime to build a wardrobe and you never even bought a hoodie?

You seriously expect a Mormon to own a hoodie?

* # ? Jul 24, 2021 12:42
  • Quote
chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whrlUpT0uec

quote:

The descent was a tight corkscrew that spiraled down four floors. Midway, I ran up against the back of an Escalade on its way out, as Alice had seen I would. The way was so narrow I had no option but to ride its tail and try to startle the other driver with one long honk. Alice saw that wouldn’t work, but I couldn’t resist.

We spun out of the last curve into a wide, sunlit payment bay. Two of the six lanes were empty, and the Escalade headed for the closest. I was already to the last kiosk.

A thin red-and-white-striped arm stretched across the lane. Before I could even really consider ramming through it, Alice was shouting at me in her head.

If the police start chasing us now, we don’t make it!

"Now."

quote:

My hands clenched the neon orange steering wheel too hard. I forced my fingers to relax while I pulled up to the automated window. Carlisle grabbed the ticket, stuck behind the visor in an obvious way, and held it out to me.

Alice snagged it. She could see I was as likely to put my fist through the card reader as I was to wait patiently for the machine to work. I drove another two feet forward so Jasper could roll down his window and pay with one of the no-name cards we used to stay anonymous.

He’d pulled his dark sleeve to his fingertips. There was the barest glimmer as he reached out the window to shove the ticket into the slot.

I concentrated on the striped arm. It was the checkered flag. As soon as it lifted, the race was on.

The card reader made a whirring sound. Jasper punched a button.

The arm popped up and I hit the accelerator.

This is.....unbelievable.

It rocks.

quote:

I knew the road. Alice had seen the length of it and everything in our way. It was the middle of the day and the traffic wasn’t terrible. I could see the holes in the pattern.

It took me twelve seconds to shift through the gears until I was in sixth. I didn’t plan to shift down again.

The first section of the freeway was mostly empty, but a merge loomed ahead. Not enough time to make full use of a NOS canister. I veered to the far left to get around the influx.

I could say this for Arizona: The sun might be ridiculous, but the freeways were exceptional. Six wide, smooth lanes, with shoulders ample enough on either side that it was as good as eight. I used the left shoulder now to streak by two pickups who thought they belonged in the fast lane.

Everything was flat and sun-blasted around the highway, wide open with no place to hide from the light, the sky an enormous pale blue dome that seemed almost white in the glaring heat. The whole valley was bared to the sun like food in a broiler. A few twiglike trees scarcely clinging to life were the only features breaking up the dull expanses of gravel. I couldn’t see the beauty Bella saw here. I didn’t have time to try.

My speed was up to one twenty. I could probably get another thirty out of the STI, but I didn’t want to push her too hard yet. There was no way to know if the engine had been tuned to stage two or three; it would be touchy, unstable. I could only watch the oil pressure and temperature and listen carefully to how hard the engine was working.

They're speeding in a street racer's car at 120 MPH and this is the least crazy part of this sequence.

quote:

The huge, arcing overpass that would carry us to the northbound freeway was approaching, and it was only one lane. With a very wide right shoulder.

I skidded back across the six lanes to make the exit. A few cars swerved in surprise, but they were all a distance behind me by the time they reacted. Alice saw that the shoulder was not quite wide enough.

“Em, Jazz, I’m going to lose the side mirrors,” I growled. “Give me a view.”

They both twisted in their seats to stare at the road to the left, right, and behind. The view in their minds gave me a much better range than the mirrors anyway.

I flew alongside the slower traffic, unable to keep my speed over a hundred. I gritted my teeth and held tight to the wheel as I scraped by the wide van that was riding the right lane line. With a screech of metal, my left mirror ripped off against the van’s side, and my right mirror exploded against the concrete barrier.

Emmett and Jasper are now the rear-view mirrors.

quote:

Bella was running across a white-hot sidewalk, stumbling. Or she would be soon.

“Just the road, Alice,” I spit through my teeth.

Sorry. I’m trying.

Her panic bled through her thoughts. Bella was running into a parking lot. Or would be soon.

“Stop!”

She closed her eyes and tried to see nothing but the pavement ahead. I knew these images had the power to render me useless. I forced them out of my mind.

It wasn’t as hard to do as I expected.

Even in the heat of a car chase, Edward is such a drama queen that he may very well leap out of the car to wail on the side of the highway if he can't focus.

quote:

Everything was the road. I could see it in three hundred sixty degrees and thirty seconds into the future. As I merged onto the northbound freeway, drifting across the lanes to the left shoulder again, up to one thirty now, it felt like our minds were bound together into one perfectly focused organism, greater than the sum of its parts. I saw the patterns in the traffic ahead, shifting and congealing, and I could see the right way through every snarl.

The Cullens, previously so stupid as to be useless for most tasks, have now merged all of their minds into a single psychic gestalt to turn Edward into the best street racer in the world.

quote:

We flew through the shade of two separate overpasses so quickly that the flash of darkness felt like strobing.

One forty-five.

Fifteen seconds ahead of me, the perfect bubble of space opened. I swerved into the center lane and flipped the clear safety cover off the bright red “Go Go 1” button.

The timing was perfect. The exact instant I was clear, I punched the button, the NOS spray hit, and the car shot forward as if fired from a cannon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6pJ3Qs4QSE&t=900s

Dinitrogen monoxide, as it's formally called, is a superior oxidizer in an engine than normal air. It allows the engine to burn more fuel, increasing the strength of each cylinder stroke and thus increasing the power delivered by the engine. It's typically delivered in this way through an electric solenoid button, at which point it typically dumps the entire bottle in one go. This requires significant modification of the vehicle, as nitro boosts greatly increase the heat and stress on the engine until....this happens:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mKjNc5S9WI&t=177s

quote:

One fifty-five.

One seventy.

Bella was opening a glass door into a dark, empty room. Or would be soon.

Alice refocused, also surprised at the ease of doing so. Her thoughts flickered to Jasper, and I understood.

As a man of peace, Jasper struggled. But as a man of war, he was more than I’d ever imagined.

We were all sharing his battle focus now, something he’d used to keep his newborns on track back in his war years. It worked perfectly in this vastly different situation, blending us into one hyperfunctional machine. I embraced it, letting my mind spearpoint our charge.

Oh yeah, Jasper also has Jedi Battle Meditation.

quote:

The hit of nitrous was already waning.

One fifty.

I searched for the next opportunity.

They’re setting up the first roadblock, Alice noted. Neither of us was concerned. They were building it too close to intercept us. We’d be past it before they could pull it together.

And the second. She showed me the spot on the map in her head. Far enough ahead that it would be a problem, even with another window opening in just four seconds.

I considered my options while Alice showed me the consequences. The time was too short—we had no choice but to switch cars.

That's a very casual reaction to what you're about to do!

quote:

Abstracted, I flipped up the safety and depressed “Go Go 2.” The STI kicked forward obediently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCb_6mO6CmE

quote:

One seventy.

One eighty.

Alice showed me the specific vehicles available ahead and I sifted through our choices.

The Corvette would be cramped, and our combined weight would be more of a factor than it was with this street racer. I mentally drew a line through a few other vehicles. And then Alice saw it—a glossy black BMW S1000 RR. Top speed one ninety.

Edward, it’s impossible.

The image of myself astride the sleek black motorcycle was so appealing that for a second I ignored her.

Edward almost abandoned his entire family to hijack a motorcycle just because he would look cool.

quote:

Edward, you’re going to need every one of us.

Suddenly her thoughts were full of mayhem and blood, human and inhuman screaming, the sound of shredding metal. Carlisle was at the center, his hands dyed glistening red.

Jasper kept me from steering off the road. His grip on my emotions was so strong in that second that it felt like a fist clenched tight around my throat.

Together we forced my mind back to the lanes in front of me. It was the shortest part of the journey we’d have left; the car didn’t matter so much. Alice flipped through sedans, minivans, and SUVs.

If only Jasper could have done this at any other time!

God, this is trying to be cool but it makes Edward even more of a stupid child.

quote:

There it was. A brand-new Porsche Cayenne Turbo, too new for plates yet—top speed one eighty-six—already adorned with a stick-figure family on the back window. Two daughters and three dogs.

Were stick figure families already a thing in 2005?

Either way, the Cullens have apparently hijacked a very terrible street racer's car because an SUV is now a better option.

quote:

A family would slow us. Alice used my decision to take this car and looked ahead into what that meant. Luckily there was only the driver inside. A thirty-something female with a dark brown ponytail.

And they're hijacking a mom's brand new vehicle!

quote:

Alice couldn’t see Bella on the sidewalk anymore. That part was past now. As was the parking lot. Bella was inside with the tracker.

I let Jasper keep me focused.

“We’re changing cars under the next overpass,” I warned them.

Alice assigned our roles in a trilling voice, the words flowing faster than the speed of a hummingbird’s wings.

Carlisle dug through his bag.

Emmett flexed unconsciously.

I overtook the white SUV, hating the necessity of slowing down to pace it. Every second I lost, Bella would pay for in pain. Against all my instincts, I shifted down to fourth gear.

The BMW motorcycle sped out of reach. I repressed a sigh.

Shut up.

quote:

The overpass was half a mile ahead. The shadow that it threw was only fifty-three feet long; the sun was almost directly above us now.

I started to crowd the Cayenne toward the left. She changed lanes. I followed quickly, then straddled the lane lines so that I was halfway into hers. She started to slow and so did I.

Alice helped me time it. I pulled slightly ahead of the Cayenne and then steered left again, forcing my way into her lane while decelerating sharply. The driver slammed on the brakes.

Just behind us, the Corvette I’d considered before swerved into another lane, laying on the horn as he passed. The whole traffic amoeba lurched to the right as one to avoid us.

We came to a full stop in the last ten feet of shade.

All of us exited simultaneously. Curious faces flew by us at seventy miles per hour.

Okay, the Cullens have now caused a gigantic backup on the interstate.

quote:

The driver of the Cayenne was climbing out of her car, too, her face in a scowl and her ponytail swinging with rage. Carlisle darted forward to meet her. She had one second to react to the fact that the most handsome man she’d ever seen was responsible for running her off the road, and then she was collapsing into him. She probably hadn’t even had time to feel the prick of the needle.

And...now Carlisle has tranquilized the driver.

quote:

Carlisle carefully laid her unconscious body on the raised concrete shelf beside the shoulder. I took the driver’s seat. Jasper and Alice were already in the back. Alice had the door open for Emmett. He was crouched beside the STI, his eyes on Alice, waiting for her command. Alice watched the traffic racing toward us for the moment of least damage.

“Now,” she cried.

Emmett flipped the gaudy STI into the oncoming traffic.

HE DID WHAT

* # ? Jul 26, 2021 07:29
  • Quote
Midjack
Dec 24, 2007



 What the hell is even going on here.

* # ? Jul 26, 2021 07:41
  • Quote
SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL
Feb 21, 2006

Holy Moly! DARKSEID IS!

 Wow, I would have never pegged loving Midnight Sun to contain a ridiculous car sequence. Do you think Meyer is hoping for a film adaptation based on this alone? Also do you think her brother (in-law?) who wrote that rude email (forum post?) to some fans years ago is also the car person who helped her with this part?

The unexplained plot hole could have been partly covered by suggesting not only is Bella’s mind blank to Edward’s mind-reading but also she fucks with all mental-based powers in general and she’s manipulative enough to ditch Alice and Jasper because she so selflessly wants to protect everyone (when what she’s really gunning for is eternal unlife).

First do no harm (tranqs an innocent person and leaves them in a concrete overpass during a Phoenix, AZ summer).

* # ? Jul 26, 2021 15:03
  • Quote
HopperUK
Apr 29, 2007

Why would an ambulance be leaving the hospital?
 See it kinda feels like she could write a way better book if she wanted to! Just like how she can create interesting characters but will not focus on them.

* # ? Jul 26, 2021 17:13
  • Quote
RaspberrySea
Nov 29, 2004
 Should I write a novella in my universe about the Egyptian man who can control the elements, or the Native woman who is the only female werewolf in her pack, or the African women with illusion superpowers?

No, we need another view from a mousy white teenage girl with boy troubles.

* # ? Jul 26, 2021 18:27
  • Quote
chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:

The unexplained plot hole could have been partly covered by suggesting not only is Bella’s mind blank to Edward’s mind-reading but also she fucks with all mental-based powers in general and she’s manipulative enough to ditch Alice and Jasper because she so selflessly wants to protect everyone (when what she’s really gunning for is eternal unlife).

It really says something about her writing ability that random people can fill in her mistakes with a few seconds of thinking about it.

* # ? Jul 26, 2021 20:04
  • Quote
Dirt Road Junglist
Oct 8, 2010

We will be cruel
And through our cruelty
They will know who we are

quote:

It took me twelve seconds to shift through the gears until I was in sixth. I didn’t plan to shift down again.

It's a good thing she has car people to rely on, because she obviously doesn't know how to drive :psyduck:

The bit about them jacking a Cayenne is especially funny for me, because that happened to my MAGA CHUD aunt and her Escalade in Phoenix about 8 years ago :v:

* # ? Jul 26, 2021 20:18
  • Quote
MrNemo
Aug 26, 2010

"I just love beeting off"

 I like picturing Edward in such a hurry that he methodically shifts up from gear to gear but his super vampire speed means the car stalls out in 5th.

* # ? Jul 27, 2021 23:35
  • Quote
chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014
https://twitter.com/unhingedmilf/status/1417971040471355394?s=21

* # ? Aug 2, 2021 07:44
  • Quote
chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

quote:

It rolled into the second and third lanes from the right. A prolonged series of crunches began as car after car slammed on the brakes and then slammed into the car in front of them anyway. Airbags popped loudly from the dashboards. Alice saw injuries, but no fatalities. The police, already racing after us, were only seconds away.

You all saw it here, folks. The secret behind how the Cullens saved Bella Swan: Emmett just loving yeeted a stolen street racer's car into oncoming traffic like the Hulk.

quote:

The sounds faded. Carlisle and Emmett were in their seats and I was racing forward again, desperate to make up for the seconds we’d lost here.

The tracker loomed over Bella. His fingers stroked her cheek. It was only seconds away.

One sixty-five.

On the other side of the divided highway, four patrol cars screamed in the other direction, headed for our accident. They paid no attention to the soccer mom SUV speeding north.

Only two more exits.

One eighty.

I couldn’t feel any strain in the SUV, but I knew the danger now lay not in engine failure—it would take a lot to compromise this German-built tank —but in the integrity of the tires. They weren’t manufactured for this kind of speed. I couldn’t risk blowing any of them, but it was physically painful to ease my foot back from the gas pedal.

So why did you steal this instead

quote:

One sixty.

Our exit was racing toward us. I whipped around a semi and swerved to the right.

Alice showed me the setup. An intersection spanned the length of the overpass. At the top of this exit, a streetlight was just turning yellow. In one second, the west side of the intersection would get a green arrow and two lanes of vehicles would cross the middle of the road.

Silently urging the tires to hold themselves together, I mashed down the accelerator.

One seventy.

We shot up the exit on the narrow left shoulder, passing within inches of the cars stopped for the light.

I careened left under the now-red light, the back of the SUV drifting out to the right as I narrowly made the turn, almost touching the concrete barrier on the north side of the overpass.

This is just a GTA mission now.

quote:

The cars headed to the on-ramp were already halfway across the intersection. There was nothing to do but hold my course steady.

I bolted past the Lexus leading the charge with not an inch to spare.

Cactus Road wasn’t as helpful as the freeway—only two lanes with dozens of residential roads and even some driveways opening onto it. Four lights between us and the mirrored room. Alice saw we would hit two of them on red.

A speed limit sign—forty miles an hour—flew by.

One twenty.

The road gave me one small advantage: A suicide lane edged by bright yellow lines ran right down the middle of almost its entire length.

Bella was crawling across the pine floorboards. The tracker raised his foot.

Alice refocused but my mind veered. For a tenth of a second, I was back in my Volvo in Forks, thinking of ways to kill myself.

Emmett would never… but maybe Jasper. He alone could feel what I felt. Maybe he would want to end my life, just to escape that pain. But probably he would run away instead. He wouldn’t want to hurt Alice. So that left the longer trip to Italy.

Holy poo poo Edward.

quote:

Jasper reached forward to touch his fingertips to the back of my neck. It felt like novocaine washing over my anguish.

I tore down the center lane uninterrupted for a mile, veering back into the legal lanes to fly under the first green light. The next intersection rushed toward me. The suicide lane transitioned to a left turn lane, with three cars already lined up and waiting. The right turn lane was mostly empty. I was able to avoid the motorcycle in it by popping up onto the sidewalk for a second, fighting to keep the SUV from rolling.

I glanced at the speedometer: eighty. Unacceptable.

I darted through the light cross traffic—fortunately a few drivers had seen me coming and lurched to a stop halfway into the intersection—and reclaimed the suicide lane.

One hundred.

The coming intersection was bigger than the last, wider and twice as congested.

“Alice, give me every possibility!”

In her head, the vehicles on the road froze. She spun them counterclockwise and then back again. I saw them stretching first vertically and then horizontally. The pattern was tight, but there were tiny holes. I memorized them.

Alice is now giving Edward an entire three-dimensional view of the future with the exact path he needs to take to send an SUV at over 100 MPH through a congested intersection flawlessly.

Why were we afraid of them losing a fight again?

quote:

One twenty.

If we clipped another car at this speed, both cars would be destroyed. We’d have no choice but to race out into the blinding sunlight and bolt for Bella’s location. People would see… something. None of the others were as fast as I was. I didn’t know what the story would be—aliens or demons or secret government weapons—but I did know there would be a story. And then what? How would I save Bella when the immortal authorities came, asking questions? I could not involve the Volturi, not unless I was too late.

But Bella was screaming.

Jasper ramped up my novocaine dosage. Numbness soaked through my skin and into my brain.

If only he could do this to the entire cast for the rest of the series.

quote:

I jammed my foot against the gas pedal and swerved into the oncoming lanes of traffic.

There was just enough space to weave between the other cars. They were all moving so slowly compared to me that it felt like dodging around standing objects.

One thirty.

I snaked my way through the frozen intersection, crossing to the right side of the road as soon as it was clear.

“Nice,” Emmett hissed.

One forty.

The final light would be green.

But Alice had different ideas.

“Turn left here,” she said, showing me a narrow residential road behind the commercial area where the dance studio was located. The street was lined with towering eucalyptus trees, quivering leaves more silver than green. The spotty shade was almost enough for us to move through undetected. No one was outside. It was too hot.

“Slow down now.”

“There’s not enough—”

If he hears us, she dies!

Unwillingly, I moved my foot to the brake pedal and started slowing. The angle for the turn was sharp enough that I would have rolled the SUV if I hadn’t. I took the turn at only sixty.

Slower.

My jaw locked in place as I braked down to forty.

For all of the vampires' impossible genius, Edward is still constantly on the verge of loving things up.

quote:

“Jasper,” Alice hissed at top speed, her words nearly silent despite her fervor. “You cut around the building and come through the front. The rest of us go through the back. Carlisle, get ready.”

Nearly silent and at top speed? Is she hissing like a snake?

quote:

Blood all over the shattered mirrors, pooling on the wooden floors.

I pulled the Cayenne into the shade of one of the soaring trees and parked with only the slightest sound of tires against loose stones on the pavement. An eight-foot block wall demarcated the border between residential and commercial. The opposite side of the road was edged with close-packed, stuccoed houses, all with their shades down to keep the interiors cool.

Moving in perfect synchronicity thanks to Jasper, we darted from the car, leaving every door slightly open so there would be no unnecessary noise. Traffic churned both north and west of the commercial building; surely it would cover any sounds we might make.

As we all know, vampires can't identify any highly specific sounds even a mile away.

quote:

Maybe a quarter of a second had passed. We surged over the wall, leaping far enough to avoid the bed of gravel at its base and landing almost silently on pavement. There was a small alley behind the building. A dumpster, a stack of plastic crates, and the emergency exit.

I didn’t hesitate. I could already see what was behind that door. Or what would be behind the door one second from now. I angled my body so there would be no mistakes, no tiny window the tracker could slip through, and then launched myself at the door.
* # ? Aug 7, 2021 04:54
  • Quote
SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL
Feb 21, 2006

Holy Moly! DARKSEID IS!

 Injuries but no fatalities. You know, nevermind that any of said injuries could be permanently life-changing for the people involved as well as their families. What if someone ends up unable to do their job leading to financial ruin? What if the mental trauma is so great that person literally can’t drive anymore?

Years ago I used to joke about writing an old World of Darkness splat book/adventure hook about a group of players getting tasked with hunting down the Cullens (ie Prince of Seattle sending neonates to confront them for breaking the Masquerade) but this here makes me wonder what could happen if people impacted that day discovered a common thread to their “misfortune” and how far they’d go to get justice and/or revenge.

* # ? Aug 7, 2021 17:10
  • Quote
chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014
And this is all for the sake of saving the life of one teenage girl because otherwise the biggest rear end in a top hat child in the Cullen family will be depressed and kill himself. One eternal teenager so unstable that he can barely complete the rescue without jumping out of the car to cry in anguish.

* # ? Aug 7, 2021 17:19
  • Quote
SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL
Feb 21, 2006

Holy Moly! DARKSEID IS!

chitoryu12 posted:

And this is all for the sake of saving the life of one teenage girl because otherwise the biggest rear end in a top hat child in the Cullen family will be depressed and kill himself.

You spelled “find a boyfriend” wrong.

* # ? Aug 9, 2021 22:56
  • Quote
macabresca
Jan 26, 2019

I WANNA HUG
Late one day but we can still celebrate!

https://twitter.com/NetflixFilm/status/1426234638826188808

* # ? Aug 14, 2021 10:53
  • Quote
chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014
God this book is so loving long.

Chapter 26: Blood

quote:

Through the door.

It shattered around me, flying off the wall in pieces.

The roar that exploded from my core was entirely instinctual. The tracker’s head jerked up, and then he dove for the crimson shape on the floor below him. I saw one pale hand stretched out in futile self-defense.

The obstacle of the door had not slowed my momentum. I flew into the tracker mid-lunge, throwing him away from his target, smashing him into the floor with enough force to crater the wooden planks.

I rolled, pulling him over me, and then kicked him to the center of the room. Where Emmett was waiting.

If you thought all of the Cullens' hysterical worrying that James would be too much for any of them to handle would be revealed by new information from Edward's point of view that Bella missed, nope! Like always, James was always a complete pushover. Edward literally just punted him to Emmett and that was the end of it. At any point they could have chased down and fought this guy as a unified group.

quote:

For the entire quarter of a second that I was grappling with the tracker, I was barely aware of him as a living creature. He was just an object in my way. I knew that at some point in the near future, I would be jealous of Emmett and Jasper. I would wish for the chance to claw and slash and sever. But that was all meaningless now. I spun.

As I had known she would be, Bella was crumpled against the wall, framed by splintered mirrors. Everything was red.

All the terror and pain I’d been subduing since I’d first heard Alice’s dread in the airport crashed into me in an unstoppable tidal wave. Her eyes were closed. Her pale hand had fallen limp beside her. Her heartbeat was weak, faltering.

I didn’t decide to move, I was just there beside her, kneeling in her blood. Fire burned through my chest and my head, but I couldn’t separate out the different kinds of pain. I was afraid to touch her. She was broken in so many places. I could make it worse.

For once, Edward displays his multiple medical degrees.

quote:

I heard my own voice, rambling the same words over and over again. Her name. No. Please. Again and again like a record skipping. But I wasn’t in control of the sound.

I heard myself screaming Carlisle’s name, but he was already there, kneeling in the blood on her other side.

The words pouring from my mouth weren’t words anymore, just mangled, heaving sounds. Sobs.

Carlisle’s hands traced from her scalp to her ankle and then back again so quickly, they blurred. He pressed both hands to her head, seeking ruptures. He pushed two fingers tight against a spot three inches behind her right ear. I couldn’t see what he was doing; her hair was saturated with crimson.

A weak cry broke through her lips. Her face spasmed with pain.

“Bella!” I begged.

Carlisle’s calm voice was the antithesis to my raw screaming. “She’s lost some blood, but the head wound isn’t deep. Watch out for her leg, it’s broken.”

A howl of pure rage ripped through the room, and for a second I thought Emmett and Jasper were in trouble. I touched their minds—they were already gathering up the broken pieces—and realized that the sound had come from me.

I see Meyer is still doing the cliché "I heard a noise and realized it was me after the fact" thing that nobody actually does.

quote:

“Some ribs, too, I think,” Carlisle added, still preternaturally calm.

His thoughts were practical, impassive. He knew I would be listening. But he was also encouraged by his examination. We were in time. The damage was not critical.

I caught the ifs in his assessment, though. If he could get the bleeding under control. If a rib didn’t puncture her lung. If the internal damage was no more than it seemed. If, if, if. His years of trying to keep human bodies alive gave him a plethora of insights into things that could go wrong. Her blood had soaked through my jeans. It covered my arms. I was painted in it.

Bella moaned in pain.

“Bella, you’re going to be fine.” My words were pleading, begging. "Can you hear me, Bella? I love you.”

Another moan, but no—she was trying to speak.

“Edward,” she gasped.

“Yes, I’m here.”

She whispered, “It hurts.”

“I know, Bella, I know.”

The jealousy surfaced then, like a fist punching through the center of my chest. I wanted so badly to break the tracker, to rip him into long, slow strips. So much pain and so much blood and I’d never be able to make him answer for it. It wasn’t enough that he was dying, that he would burn. It would never be enough.

I don't think "jealousy" is the correct word for that emotion, Meyer.

quote:

“Can’t you do anything?” I snarled at Carlisle.

“My bag, please,” he called coolly to Alice.

Alice made a tiny choking sound.

I couldn’t force my eyes away from Bella’s bruised, blood-spattered face. Under the gore, her skin was paler than I’d ever seen it. Her eyelids didn’t so much as flutter.

But I reached out to Alice’s mind and saw the complication.

I’d yet to truly register the lake of blood I was kneeling in. I knew, somewhere inside, my body was probably reacting to it. But wherever that reaction was, it was so deep below the pain that it hadn’t surfaced yet.

Alice loved Bella, but she was not physically prepared for this. She hesitated, teeth clenched, trying to swallow back the venom.

Emmett and Jasper, too, were struggling. They’d pulled the shattered pieces of the tracker—and I could only vehemently hope that those pieces were still somehow able to process pain—out of the room. Emmett was watching Jasper closely for a break. Emmett himself was in admirable control. His concern for Bella was deeper than his usual carefree frame of mind allowed for.[/quote

Again, stepping away from the obvious, we have it confirmed that all of their worries were pointless because it takes seconds for James to get torn to shreds once the Cullens attack him all at once.

[quote]“Hold your breath, Alice,” Carlisle said. “It will help.”

She nodded and stopped breathing as she darted forward and then back, leaving Carlisle’s satchel next to his leg. She’d moved so carefully that she didn’t even get blood on her shoes. She retreated to the destroyed emergency exit, gasping for fresh air.

Through the open door drifted the faint sounds of sirens, looking for the car that had raced so recklessly through the city streets. I doubted they would find the stolen car parked in the shade on a quiet side street, but I didn’t really care if they did.

Don't worry, you'll see their plan for dealing with that later!

quote:

“Alice?” Bella gasped.

“She’s here.” I babbled the words. “She knew where to find you.”

Bella whimpered. “My hand hurts.”

I was surprised by her specificity. There was so much damage.

“I know, Bella. Carlisle will give you something. It will stop.”

Carlisle was suturing the tears in her scalp so quickly his movements were blurring again. No bleed could escape his eyes. He was able to repair the larger vessels with tiny stitches that another surgeon would not be able to duplicate under perfect conditions even with mechanical assistance. I wished he would take a break and get some painkillers into her system, but I could hear under his controlled calm that there was more damage to her head than he liked. She’d lost so much blood.…

With a sudden jolt, Bella twitched half upright. Carlisle caught her head with his left hand to steady it in his iron grip. Her eyes flew open—the whites bloodred with broken vessels—and she shrieked with more strength than I would have guessed she had left.

“My hand is burning!”

“Bella?” I cried. Idiotically, for an instant I could think only of the fire raging though my own body. Was I hurting her?

You're right, that is idiotic.

quote:

Her eyes fluttered, blinded by blood and blood-soaked hair.

“The fire!” she screamed, her back arching despite a groaning in her ribs. “Someone stop the fire!”

The sound of her agony stupefied me. I knew that I understood the truth of what she was saying, but panic scrambled all the meanings in my head. It felt like someone else was forcing my head to turn away from her face, forcing my eyes to focus on the crimson-stippled hand she was thrusting away from herself, the fingers seizing, twisting to the torture.

A short, shallow slice was torn through the skin across the heel of her hand. It was nothing to her other injuries. Already the blood was slowing.…

I knew what I was seeing, but I couldn’t form the right words.

All I could gasp out was, “Carlisle! Her hand!”

He glanced up unwillingly from his work, his fingers pausing for the first time. And then the shock hit him, too.

His voice was hollow. “He bit her.”

There were the words: He bit her. The tracker had bitten Bella. The fire was venom.

In slow motion, I saw it replay in my memory. I ripped through the door. The tracker lunged. Bella’s hand shot out in front of her. I slammed into him, forcing him away. But his teeth were exposed, his neck extended.… I’d been a millisecond too slow.

Carlisle’s hands were still motionless. Fix her, I wanted to scream at him, but I knew, as he did, that his efforts were worthless now. Everything broken inside her would knit together on its own. Every shattered bone, every gash, every tiny leaking tear beneath her skin, all would be whole soon.

Her heart would stop and never beat again.

Wouldn't that be a shame if it happened?

* # ? Aug 26, 2021 00:58
  • Quote
macabresca
Jan 26, 2019

I WANNA HUG

chitoryu12 posted:

Wouldn't that be a shame if it happened?

How Edward envisioned their relationship, probably

https://scragon.tumblr.com/post/659324632665653248/scragon-vampire-and-his-human-wife-after-years

* # ? Aug 26, 2021 09:41
  • Quote
chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

* # ? Aug 27, 2021 16:35
  • Quote
Mebh
May 10, 2010


 I mean I kinda love that snail...

* # ? Aug 28, 2021 17:53
  • Quote
Lord Zedd-Repulsa
Jul 21, 2007

Devour a good book.


 [Deleted because I forgot it'd been brought up already]

Lord Zedd-Repulsa fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Aug 28, 2021

* # ? Aug 28, 2021 22:47
  • Quote
Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind

No other road
No other way
No day but today

Mebh posted:

I mean I kinda love that snail...

:same: and I unironically want it now.

* # ? Aug 29, 2021 12:25
  • Quote
chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

* # ? Sep 4, 2021 00:28
  • Quote
chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

quote:

Bella screamed and writhed in misery.

Edward.

Alice had returned, finding some new resolve that let her crouch beside Carlisle now, red seeping into her shoes. Lightly, she brushed the hair from Bella’s blood-spotted eyes.

You can’t let it happen this way. She was thinking of Carlisle.

Carlisle was also remembering. The teeth marks on his own palm, and the long, protracted suffering of his change.

Then he thought of me.

A phantom burn raced along my hand, my arm. I remembered, too.

“Edward, you have to do it,” Alice insisted.

I could make this easier, faster for Bella. She didn’t have to suffer as long as I had.

She would still suffer. The pain would be unimaginable. The fire would torture her for days. Just… not as many days.

And at the end of it—

“No!” I howled, but I knew my protest was useless.

Alice’s vision was so strong now it seemed inevitable. Like history, not future. Bella, stone white, her eyes glowing a hundred times brighter than the slaughter scene surrounding us now.

My own memory intruded, shoving another image into juxtaposition with Alice’s vision: Rosalie. Resentful, regretful. Always mourning what she’d lost. Never resigned to what had been done to her. She’d had no choice, and she’d never forgiven us.

Could I bear to have Bella stare at me with the same regrets for the next thousand years?

You pick now to start being sympathetic to her?

quote:

Yes! the most selfish part of me insisted. Better that than to have her disappear now, to slip away from me.

But was it better? If she could grasp every ramification and every loss, would she choose this way?

Buddy, she ain't gonna get as far as that point before choosing it!

quote:

Did I even fully understand the cost? Was I aware of everything I’d traded in exchange for my immortality? Had the tracker just met the same black wall of nothingness that I was destined for someday? Or would there be eternal flames for the both of us?

“Alice,” Bella groaned, her eyes sliding closed. Was she recognizing Alice’s return, or was she just giving up on my help? I was doing nothing but falling apart.

Bella started screaming again, a long unbroken wail of agony.

Edward! Alice shouted at me. Her impatience with my hesitation was reaching a frenzy, but she didn’t trust herself enough to act.

Alice saw that I was drowning. She saw my futures spinning out into a thousand different kinds of despair. On the outer edges, she even saw me doing the one unimaginable thing I hadn’t yet consciously considered. The thing I was sure I was too weak for. Until I saw it in her mind, I didn’t realize that version even existed inside my head.

Now I could see it.

Killing Bella.

Was it the right thing? To stop her pain? To give her, in her total and perfect innocence, a chance at a different destiny than the inevitable one I knew I was facing? A different kind of afterlife than the cold, bloodthirsty one she was burning toward now?

Surprise new information: Edward briefly thought about just killing Bella right here!

quote:

The pain was too much, and I couldn’t trust my thoughts, spinning out of control because Bella was screaming.

I turned my eyes and mind to Carlisle, hoping for some assurance, some absolution, but I met something entirely different.

In his mind, a coiled desert viper, sand-colored scales sliding across each other with a dry, rasping sound.

The image was so unexpected that I froze again with shock.

“There may be a chance,” Carlisle said.

So, for those who aren't aware, do not suck out snake venom. You probably won't get to the wound in time to actually stop it from spreading, and you're just putting all of that nasty blood and venom in your mouth while also sucking on an open wound (that you probably cut open farther) with your nasty mouth.

quote:

There was just a glimmer of hope in his head. He saw what Bella’s suffering was doing to me now; he, too, feared what forcing her into this life would do to both her and me in the future. And yet, the sliver of hope…

“What?” I begged him. What was the chance?

Carlisle started stitching her scalp again. He had enough faith in this idea that he thought it might be necessary to finish repairing her wounds.

“See if you can suck the venom back out,” he said, calm again. “The wound is fairly clean.”

Every muscle in my body locked down.

“Will that work?” Alice demanded. She looked ahead to answer her own question. Nothing was clear. No decision had been made. My decision was not made.

Only if Edward's mouth has better suction than an industrial vacuum cleaner.

quote:

Carlisle didn’t look up from his work. “I don’t know. But we have to hurry.”

I knew how the venom would spread. She’d felt the first burn just a moment ago. It would climb slowly up her wrist, into her arm. Then faster and faster.

There was no time for this.

But! I wanted to scream. But I’m a vampire!

Wow. Prose.

quote:

I would taste the blood and I would frenzy. Especially her blood. Only the burning she was feeling now was stronger than the flames in my throat, my chest. If I gave in even a tiny bit to that need…

“Carlisle, I…” My voice faltered in shame. Did he even realize what he was suggesting? “I don’t know if I can do that.”

Carlisle’s fingers moved the suture needle so quickly it was all but invisible. He’d moved to the back of her head, on the left now. There were so many wounds.

His voice was even but heavy. “It’s your decision, Edward, either way.”

Life or death or half life, my decision. But was life even in my power? I’d never been that strong.

Wait, have you tried this before?

quote:

“I can’t help you,” he apologized. “I have to get this bleeding stopped here if you’re going to be taking blood from her hand.”

Bella thrashed as a new wave of pain rocked her, jerking her twisted leg. “Edward!” she screamed.

Her blood-filled eyes snapped open, and this time they focused sharply, boring into my own. Imploring, beseeching.

Bella was burning.

“Alice!” Carlisle snapped. “Get me something to brace her leg!”

Alice darted out of my peripheral vision, and I could hear her ripping boards up from the floor and snapping them into usable sizes.

This poor studio.

quote:

“Edward!” Carlisle’s voice had lost its control. Pain bled through. Pain for me, pain for Bella. “You must do it now, or it will be too late.”

Bella’s eyes begged, desperate for relief.

Bella was burning, and I was exactly the wrong person to save her. Absolutely and literally the worst person in the entire universe for this task.

Lots of things, really.

quote:

But I was the only one here to do it.

You have to do this, I ordered myself. There is no other way. You cannot fail.

I grasped her twisting hand, smoothing her clenched fingers and holding them still. I stopped breathing and bent to press my mouth to her hand. The skin on the edges of the wound was already cooler than the rest of her hand. Changing. Hardening.

I sealed my lips around the small gash, closed my eyes, and then began. It was only a trickle of blood—the venom had already begun healing the wound. Just a few drops to start with. Barely enough to wet my tongue.

It hit me like an explosion. A bomb detonating inside my body and mind. The first time I’d caught Bella’s scent, I thought I’d be undone. That was a paper cut. This was a decapitation. My brain was severed from my body.

But it wasn’t pain. Bella’s blood was the opposite of pain. It erased every burn I’d ever suffered. And it was so much more than just the absence of pain. It was satisfaction, it was bliss. I felt suffused with a strange kind of joy—a joy of the body alone. I was healed and alive, every nerve ending thrumming with contentment.

Is he...hitting third base?

quote:

As I pulled from the wound, it reversed the effects of the venom. The blood started to flow steadily, coating my tongue, my throat. The sharp, icy taste of the venom was a weak counterpoint. It did nothing to interfere with the power of her blood.

Rapture. Elation.

My body knew well that there was more to be had, close at hand. More, my body hummed, more.

But my body couldn’t move. I’d forced it motionless and I kept it so. I could hardly think to know why, but I refused to release my hold.

I had to think. I had to stop feeling and think.

There was something outside the bliss.

Pain, there was pain that the pleasure couldn’t reach. Pain that was both outside and inside my mind.

The pain was high-pitched and dissonant. It swelled into a crescendo.

Bella was screaming.

I reached out mentally for something to hold on to, and found a life ring waiting.

Yes, Edward. You can do this. See? You are going to save her.

Alice showed me a thousand glimpses of the future. Bella smiling, Bella laughing, Bella reaching for my hand, Bella holding her arms open for me, Bella staring into my eyes with fascination, Bella walking next to me at school, Bella sitting beside me in her truck, Bella sleeping in my arms, Bella pressing her hand against my cheek, Bella holding my face and pressing her lips carefully against mine. A thousand different scenes with Bella, healthy and whole, alive and happy, and with me.

As a human, right?

quote:

The bliss, the physical joy, dimmed.

The taste of venom was strong. It was still too soon.

I will show you when, Alice promised.

But I felt myself careening past the place where I could stop. I was losing myself. I was going to kill her, my body thrilling with joy the entire time.

Bella’s screaming quieted, loosening my connection to the pain I needed to feel. She whimpered a few times, and then sighed.

I was going to kill her.

“Edward?” she whispered.

“He’s right here, Bella,” Alice soothed.

Right here killing you.

I was barely aware of anything else. Sound faded, the light seemed dim behind my lids, there was nothing else really, just the blood. Even Alice’s thoughts, nearly screaming at me, felt muted and far away.

It’s time, Alice told me. Now, Edward.

Through my near-total absorption, I could taste that. The icy sting was gone. A new chemical flavor took its place, however, and some piece of me realized that Carlisle had been working fast.

Stop, Edward! Now!

But Alice could see I was lost. I could hear her wondering frantically if she could pull me off Bella, or if that fight would just injure Bella more.

I'm sure they wouldn't, say, fling her across the room into a wall in a few months.

quote:

“Stay, Edward,” Bella sighed, peaceful now. “Stay with me.…”

Her quiet voice slid into my head, somehow stronger than Alice’s panic, louder than all the chaos inside and around me. The sound of her confidence was a key turning; it seemed to reconnect my brain to my body. It made me whole again.

And I simply let her hand fall away from my lips. I raised my head and looked at her face. Still spattered with blood, still ashy, eyes closed, but calm now. Her pain was eased.

“I will,” I promised her through bloodstained lips.

Her mouth twitched into a frail smile.

“Is it all out?” Carlisle asked. He worried he’d been too quick with the painkiller, that it might be covering the venom burn.

But Alice had seen it would be fine.

“Her blood tastes clean.” The sound of my voice was rough, grating. “I can taste the morphine.”

How did he drink enough blood with morphine in it to identify it?

quote:

“Bella?” Carlisle asked in a low, clear voice.

“Mmmmm?” was her response.

“Is the fire gone?”

“Yes,” she breathed, a little clearer now. “Thank you, Edward.”

“I love you.”

She sighed, eyes still closed. “I know.”

The chuckle that bubbled up from my chest surprised me. I had her blood on my tongue. It was probably tinting the edges of my irises red even now. It was drying into my clothes and dyeing my skin. But she could still make me laugh.

“Bella?” Carlisle asked again.

“What?” Her tone was testy now. She looked half-asleep and impatient to find the other half.

“Where is your mother?”

Her eyes flickered for a second, and then she exhaled. “In Florida. He tricked me, Edward. He watched our videos.”

Though she was nearly unconscious from trauma and morphine, it was clear she was deeply offended by this invasion of privacy. I smiled.

"I'm into that!"

quote:

“Alice?” Bella struggled to open her eyes, and then quit, but her words were as urgent as she could make them in her condition. “Alice, the video— he knew you, Alice, he knew where you came from.… I smell gasoline?”

Emmett and Jasper were back from siphoning the accelerant we needed. The sirens still wailed in the distance, but from another direction now. They weren’t going to find us.

Emmett and Jasper doing superhuman gas tank sucking in the background while this is all going on.

quote:

With a somber expression, Alice flitted across the ravaged floor to the media center by the door. She picked up the small handheld video recorder that was still running. She switched it off.

In the instant she decided to retrieve the camera, hundreds of future fragments flashed through her mind—images of this room, of Bella, of the tracker, of the blood. It was everything she would see when she played back the recording, too fast and disordered for either of us to absorb much. Her eyes flashed to mine.

We’ll deal with this later. We have a hundred things to do now to make sense of this nightmare.

Don't do my review for me!

quote:

I could tell she was purposely directing her thoughts away from the camera as she ran through the rather involved chores we now must accomplish, but I didn’t push. Later.

“It’s time to move her,” Carlisle said. The smell of the gasoline Emmett and Jasper were applying to the walls was becoming overwhelming.

“No,” Bella murmured. “I want to sleep.”

“You can sleep, sweetheart,” I crooned in her ear. “I’ll carry you.”

Her leg was wrapped tightly inside Alice’s floorboard splint, and Carlisle had found time to tape her ribs. Moving more carefully than I ever had before, I lifted her from the blood-soaked floor, trying to support every part of her.

“Sleep now, Bella,” I whispered.
* # ? Sep 6, 2021 18:27
  • Quote
Midjack
Dec 24, 2007



 https://youtu.be/yTkQhScKQUg

* # ? Sep 7, 2021 02:29
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chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

* # ? Sep 16, 2021 13:59
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chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014


This fandom is psychotic.

* # ? Oct 14, 2021 01:46
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chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014
Chapter 27: Chores

quote:

“Do we have time to—” Alice began.

“No,” Carlisle interrupted. “Bella needs blood immediately.”

Alice sighed. If we went to the hospital first, things got more complicated.

Believe me, this chapter's gonna get real complicated!

quote:

Carlisle sat beside me in the backseat of the Cayenne, fingers pressed lightly against Bella’s carotid artery, one hand supporting her head. Her splinted leg stretched out across Emmett’s thighs on the other side of me. He wasn’t breathing. He stared out the window, trying not to think about the blood drying all over Bella, Carlisle, and me. Trying not to think about what I had just done. The impossibility of it. The strength he knew he didn’t have.

Instead he mulled over his dissatisfaction with the fight. Because, honestly. He’d had the tracker. Totally contained, though the tracker fought and squirmed and thrashed to avoid Emmett’s crushing arms.

There was no chance any of this struggle could have helped him, and Emmett was already breaking him when Jasper lunged into the blood-drenched room.

Jasper, mangled and ferocious, eyes sharp and empty at the same time, looking like some forgotten god or incarnation of war, projecting an aura of pure violence. And the tracker had stopped trying. In that fraction of a second when he saw Jasper (for the first time, but Emmett didn’t know that), he’d surrendered to his fate. No matter that his fate was sealed once Emmett had gotten his hands on him, this was what demoralized him.

It was driving Emmett crazy.

Someday soon I would have to describe to Emmett what he’d looked like in the clearing and why. I doubted anything else would soothe the sting.

I keep harping on about how much drama on these books is based on characters predicting horrific bloodbaths with no survivors, only to have the actual conflict be resolved really quickly with no issues. Emmett alone was enough to kill James. He was right the entire time! None of this was necessary!

quote:

Jasper was in the driver’s seat, his window cracked to the hot, dry outside air, though like Emmett, he wasn’t breathing. Alice sat beside him, directing everything—the turns, the lanes to travel in, the highest speed he could go without attracting unwanted attention. She had him at sixty-seven miles per hour now. I would have pushed that, but Alice was confident that she would get us to the hospital faster than I could. Dodging patrol cars would only slow us down and complicate everything.

And as usual, Edward needs to be kept out of everything to avoid ruining it.

quote:

Although Alice was monitoring every facet of this drive, her mind was in a dozen different places, finding ways through the necessary errands in front of her, working through the consequences of every choice available.

A few things she was sure of.

Now she pulled out her phone and called the airline—one she already knew would have the right flight—and booked one ticket for the two-forty to Seattle. It would be tight, but she could see Emmett on the plane.

She saw the day ahead as clearly as if it were happening, and I saw it all, too.

Who's ready for Alice to be dedicated to covering every single possible plot contrivance?

quote:

First, Jasper would drop Carlisle, Bella, and me at St. Joseph’s. There were closer hospitals, but Carlisle insisted. He knew a surgeon there who would vouch for him, and it was a nationally recognized level-one trauma center. His urgency, and Bella’s ashen complexion—though her heart continued steady and strong—made it difficult for me to do much besides silently panic and curse our circumspect speed.

“She’ll be fine,” Alice growled quietly at me when she saw I was about to complain again. She shoved a picture into my head of Bella sitting up in a hospital bed, smiling, though she was all over bruises.

I caught her slight deception, though. “And when exactly is this?”

A day or two, okay? Three tops. It’s fine. Relax.

My panic skyrocketed as I processed that. Three days?

Carlisle didn’t have to read thoughts to understand my expression.

“She just needs time, Edward,” Carlisle assured me. “Her body needs rest to recover, and so does her mind. She’s going to be okay.”

What are you panicking about? Three days is nothing to an immortal! Did you just....forget that it takes humans time to recover from injury?

quote:

I tried to accept that, but felt myself spiraling again. I focused on Alice. Her methodical planning was better than my useless agitation.

And boy is it useless.

quote:

The hospital, she saw, would be tricky. We were in a stolen car that was linked to another stolen car and a twenty-seven-car pileup on the 101. There were multiple cameras around the emergency entrance. If we could just stop to switch to a better vehicle, something close enough to the rental Alice would acquire later… It was only a matter of fifteen minutes or so, just a short detour and she knew exactly where to look—

I growled, and she sniffed once without looking at me.

It never gets less annoying, Emmett grumbled internally.

Stop growling! You freaks!

quote:

So no car exchange. Alice accepted this and moved on. We’d have to park out of range of the cameras, which would make us more conspicuous. Why not pull right under the metal overhang with our unconscious patient? Why carry her farther than necessary? At least there would be shade for Carlisle and me to run in, otherwise we would have to brave the cameras and Alice would have to find her way into whatever security stronghold was used to store the recordings. And she simply didn’t have time for that. She had to check into a hotel and create a scene of violent injury stat. Because it was supposed to have happened before we arrived at the hospital.

So that was obviously urgent. But first she needed blood.

The blood should be quick. When I burst through the emergency room doors looking like someone had thrown a bucket of crimson paint at me, and with a motionless body in my arms, it was going to cause something of a stir. Every able-bodied staff member within a hundred yards of the emergency entrance would be running to meet us within seconds. It would be simple enough for Alice to slide in behind Carlisle and walk purposefully past the front desk. No one would question her, she could see that. A pair of blue booties available in a box attached to the wall would cover the stains on her shoes, and then it was simply a matter of darting into the emergency wing’s blood storage room through a closing door.

At this point, the chapter is just Alice predicting a completely explanation of all future events to a degree that should absolutely break the story.

quote:

"Em, give me your hoodie."

Careful not to jostle Bella’s leg, Emmett yanked the sweatshirt over his head and tossed it to Alice. It was remarkably clean, especially compared to Carlisle’s and my clothes.

Emmett wanted to ask what she needed it for, but he didn’t dare to open his mouth and possibly taste or smell his surroundings.

Alice shrugged into the enormous sweatshirt. It pooled around her tiny body, and yet, somehow, there was an air of the avant-garde about it. Alice could pull off anything.



Very shortly after Midnight Sun was published, fan art was already out.

quote:

Alice saw herself in the blood bank again, filling the sweatshirt’s ample pockets.

“What’s Bella’s blood type?” she asked Carlisle.

“O positive,” Carlisle responded.

So some good had come from Bella’s accident with Tyler’s van. At least we knew this.

"Thank God we learned she has the most common blood type of all."

quote:

Alice was probably being overthorough. Would anyone bother to type the blood she would leave at the scene of the “accident”? Perhaps, if it looked too much like a crime scene.… No harm in her being meticulous, I supposed.

“Leave enough for Bella,” I cautioned.

She twisted in her seat so that I could see her roll her eyes, then turned back and kept planning.

You almost flung yourself onto the highway at the crucial moment just to scream about how emo this is. Don't criticize anyone.

quote:

Jasper and Emmett would be in the stolen car, engine running. It would only take her two and a half minutes to get in and out.

She would choose a hotel near the hospital to make the timing less conspicuous. As she decided this, she saw the hotel she wanted just a few blocks south. It wasn’t someplace she would ever actually stay, of course, but it would do for a grisly tableau.

"Ugh, the loving poors of Arizona."

quote:

It felt like watching in real time as she ran through the check-in.

Alice strides into the modest lobby of the hotel. On her, the maroon-dyed shoes and the long hoodie tied around her waist look like a fashion statement. The woman at the desk is alone. She looks up, not very interested at first, but then she processes Alice’s stunning face. She stares with awe, barely noticing that Alice’s hands are free.

But Alice is dissatisfied.

The vision rewinds. Alice is back in the hospital, exiting the blood bank with her pockets full of four cold, quietly sloshing bags. She makes the shortest detour, ducking into a curtained-off treatment area. A woman sleeps, her vitals beeping on the monitors behind her. There is a sack with the women’s belongings, and beside it a blue duffel bag. Alice takes the bag and returns to the hallway. The detour adds only two seconds to her trip.

Okay, we're stealing more poo poo. Keep going.

quote:

Alice is back in the hotel lobby. She wears no sweatshirt, and the duffel bag is slung over her shoulder. The woman behind the counter does her double take. There is nothing wrong with the picture now.

Alice asks for two rooms, double occupancy for one, single for the other. She puts her driver’s license—not a fake—on the counter with a credit card in her own name. She chatters about her companions, her father and her brother, who have gone to find covered parking for the car. The woman starts typing on her computer. Alice glances at her wrist; it’s bare.

The vision pauses.

“Jasper, I need your watch.”

He held out his arm, and she took the bespoke Breguet—a gift from her—off his wrist. He didn’t bother to wonder why; he was too used to this. The watch hung loose against her hand. She wore it like a bangle bracelet, and it looked perfect. She could start a trend.

I'm sure she would.

quote:

The vision resumes.

Alice looks at the watch dangling in such a chic way from her wrist.

“It’s only ten-fifty,” she says to the woman. “Your clock there is fast.”

The woman nods absently, typing the time Alice has just fed her into the reservation.

You're probably wondering why the hell this is going on.

quote:

Alice grows a little too still, waiting for the woman to finish. It takes much longer than it should, but there’s nothing to do but wait.

Finally the woman hands her two sets of key cards, and writes down the numbers. They both start with a one: 106 and 108.

The vision rewinds.

Alice walks into the lobby. The woman behind the counter does her double take. Alice asks for two rooms, double occupancy for one, single for the other. Second floor, please, if that’s not too much trouble. She puts her cards on the counter. She chatters about her companions. The woman starts typing in her computer. Alice corrects the time. Alice waits.

The woman hands her two sets of key cards. She writes down the numbers 209 and 211. Alice smiles at her and takes the keys. Alice moves at human speed until she is in the stairwell.

So, we already know from the original book that Alice and Jasper quickly framed an accident scene to explain Bella's injuries. Alice is now envisioning an elaborate plot involving checking into two new rooms after the fact. Why?

quote:

Alice ducks into both rooms, dropping the duffel bag in the first, and turns lights on, closes curtains, puts out the “do not disturb” signs. Blood bags in hand, she flits down the empty hallway to another stairwell. No one sees her. She pauses at the landing in the middle of the flight. At the base of the stairs is an exit to the outside. The door is flanked by a floor-to-ceiling pane of glass. There is no one near the exit on the outside.

Alice dials her phone.

“Sound the horn for three seconds.”

An obnoxiously loud klaxon rises from the parking lot, covering the sound of the heavy traffic on the freeway (a different freeway, one we did not all but shut down).

Alice hurls herself down the stairs, curling like a bowling ball. She smashes through the dead center of the tall window. The glass lands on the sidewalk and gravel, some of it flying all the way to the pavement of the parking lot. It creates a pattern like a sunburst, glittering in the white shine from above. Alice retreats to the shadow of the door, and—one by one—rips the blood bags open using the broken glass fragments in the window frame, leaving blood on the edges. She flings the contents of one bag so it sprays out in a fan like the glass. The next two she pours onto the edge of the sidewalk, letting it pool up and soak into the concrete and run onto the pavement.

The horn goes silent.

Alice dials again. “Pick me up.”

.....what the gently caress did we just do that for?

quote:

The Cayenne appears almost immediately. Alice dashes through the sunlight to duck into the back, the last bag of blood clutched in her hand.

And then I was back in the present with her. Alice was satisfied with how that section would play out. She turned her attention to the next parts. None of it as much fun, but all still vital.

Was it? Was it vital, Alice?

* # ? Oct 14, 2021 03:18
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Up Circle
Apr 3, 2008
 she cant stand being near bella bleeding but she can dump 3 bags of human blood all over the sidewalk?

* # ? Oct 14, 2021 04:43
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Midjack
Dec 24, 2007

Up Circle posted:

she cant stand being near bella bleeding but she can dump 3 bags of human blood all over the sidewalk?

Because it's not Bella's irresistible magic blood, I guess.

* # ? Oct 14, 2021 05:29
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RaspberrySea
Nov 29, 2004
 Just like how Jasper is cool with Bella bleeding out in the backseat behind him, but she gets a literal paper cut in the next book and he tries to kill his whole family in order to get a taste of that sweet blood.

* # ? Oct 14, 2021 09:57
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chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014
Would you believe this isn’t even the end of Alice coming up with a 100% speedrun of the future?

* # ? Oct 14, 2021 23:01
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chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

* # ? Oct 15, 2021 03:38
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Shwoo
Jul 21, 2011

chitoryu12 posted:

Would you believe this isn’t even the end of Alice coming up with a 100% speedrun of the future?
She'd better give the rerecord count when she submits it to tasvideos.org.

* # ? Oct 15, 2021 03:44
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# ? Apr 26, 2024 11:02
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Apr 24, 2014

* # ? Oct 19, 2021 01:59
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