Title: Mindfrag

Authors: Shibara, Bibliotecaria_D

Warnings: Coercion, violent and graphic consensual interfacing with very nonconsensual overtones, manipulation, stalking. And Ratchet. Read at your own risk, because you have been warned.

Rating: NC-17

Continuity: IDW

Characters: Prowl, Constructicons

Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

Motivation (Prompt): "There needs to be more Prowl/Constructicon porn in the world" + realism.


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Part Two

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Prowl's optics switched on with a sudden unhealthy brightness, the instant online of a mech who'd been in standby instead of recharge. He tried to focus his gaze on the ceiling and away from the images in his head, but it wasn't easy. The faint outline of doors sprawled across the ceiling, the shadows playing tricks, and he saw his own face relaxed in post-overload bliss. Which was impossible, of course, because there was no mirror above the berth he laid on, but the hazy pleasure buzzing in the back of his mind summoned vivid images from the...memory flux he'd woken from.

Yes, a memory flux. The byproduct of recharge defragmenting, nothing more.

Prowl could only lie to himself so much. The vague sensation of a rust-eating grin radiated from the room next door, and he wanted to shovel his furious exhaustion on top of it until it smothered to death. Instead, he forced an ice-cold wall of disapproval between his tattered emotions and the opportunist glitches gloating over him, right before stomping on the gestalt bond. Let the Constructicons chew on that for the day. They had a tougher time handling being frozen out by a professional mien than him outright loathing them.

Primus smelt the fragging lot of them.

Prowl pressed his helm into the berth, inhaling until his ventilation system hurt. Grounding himself back in reality shouldn't be so difficult. Exhaling in a long, hot breath, he curled his hands into fists and tried to prepare for yet another day under-charged, fragmented, and just plain tired. His file trees were a disorganized mess after weeks of spotty defragmenting. His systems were badly maintained and pinging warnings at him, complaining that he'd been depriving them of downtime through his increasingly poor recharge habits.

He realized he was watching the shadows on the ceiling again, except no shadows were black and white, much less shocking green and purple. Even as he thought it, the humming charge at the tips of his fingers flooded up his hands, down his forearms, and exploded in the forefront of his mind in a mental image that didn't belong to him, he didn't want it, it wasn't his.

For all that he starred in it. And it felt so, so real.

He was pressed between two of them, optics switched off. He didn't know which ones they were, and it hardly mattered. All that mattered was the thick length pounding into him, and the tight, hot port gliding up and down him in a sucking, rippling pressure. They were switching between a slow, deliberate rhythm and a fast, urgent pace. Their perfect synchronization delighted Prowl, at least as much as he retained the ability to think about it outside of 'yes,' 'do that again,' and 'more, harder, right there.' The part of his mind that never gave up control, the battle computer, tracked the creaking sounds of joints flexing in time, the rattle of fans and the barely-sensed electric pulses surging across cables. The two Constructicons matched, systems in sync, and when they tipped over the edge, the charge tripped through his interfacing array in a shared jolt.

He felt like he couldn't tell which part of him was them, nor when they'd become him. As he overloaded hard between them, he decided it didn't matter.

He tore himself out of the waking dream with an effort that hurt. It had no more strength than a thought, but it was a thought floated through the teensy hole in the blockade Prowl had on the gestalt bond. It didn't need to be strong. The thoughts lodged under the surface of his mind, camouflaged and waiting, and the subtle infiltration worked. As tired as he was, it didn't take much for him to mistake the Constructicons' little fantasies for actual, relevant thoughts.

His tactical matrix gave data equal consideration until the information was assessed for use. That did Prowl absolutely no good in this situation. Mistaking the Constructicons' sick perversions for his own ideas was becoming disturbingly commonplace. There was nothing quite so wretchedly humiliating as being pinged by his battle computer to open a file only to find a detailed snippet of filthy, often vigorous interfacing.

The latest fantasy felt like it belonged to Long Haul. Prowl was getting depressingly good at telling what bit of sensation belonged to whom, and just the thought made his innermost energon curdle. He'd rather compile a Top Ten List of Megatron's favorite berth positions than be able to identify whose lustful scenarios were unfolding inside his helm.

He had heard a human saying once: "Memory is like a muscle."

Prowl had zero interest in how organic information storage worked, but he felt it applied to...this. The gestalt bond, or link, or whatever it was called. Not only because it had literal alien overtones, the gestalt stringing through his spark like grossly foreign organic muscle fiber through the metal of his body, but also because of the meaning: the more it was exercised, the stronger it got - and the better he got at using it. Months of dealing with the gentle but persistent tap-tapping of five minds at the edge of his perception had given Prowl a crash course on gestalt handling. His ability to bear the Constructicons' nonstop presence had increased as a result. It was a never-ending stream of silence flavored by voices not really there.

Yes, hello? We are here. Can you hear us? Hello? Talk to us, Prowl. We want to talk to you. Can you look this way? Can you feel this?

You're there. We can feel you. We're not leaving.

You are one of us.

The gestalt felt like suddenly discovering a sensitive piece of kibble quivering where five minutes ago there had been smooth plating. It pulled at his attention, a constant draw requiring he notice it. Notice them. Eventually, however, he learned by experimentation how to tune it out. He ignored the whispers over his sensor grid and blocked out the ghost whispers talking in the back of his mind. He learned which 'muscles' - foreign, intrusive, and a squeamish sense of wrong twisted him up inside every time he used them - he had to flex. It was slightly painful and tiresome, but it worked. He'd endure worse to be alone in his helm again.

Silence rang empty when he figured out the trick at last, new 'kibble' squeezed down until it was still and quiet. He had never been so relieved.

The Constructicons had not been as happy. They hadn't been happy at all. They had wailed and thrashed on the other end of the connection, sparks reaching out and minds redoubled their efforts to draw him in. The pressure on him had increased, mental and physical.

Their persistent invasion of his personal space had become more blatant, less amiable. They hadn't exactly been subtle before, but after he blocked them out, they were all over him as if to make up for the lack. The other Autobots had laughed behind his back at first, but soon enough the laughter turned somewhat uneasy. Hands reached for him, ran over him, memorized the curves and angles of his frame with greedy palms and sudden, poking fingers. They knew the taste of his chevron, took in the feel of his neck cabling in their mouths, stole a kiss while he shouted protest. They tried to cage him in, larger frames surrounding him, but their methods only worked briefly and relied on the element of surprise. Ambushes around corners and sneaking up behind him could only go so far before he started seeing them coming.

He could discourage unwanted physical attention much easier than mental pestering. Fighting was second nature after so long in war, and the Constructicons were reluctant to hurt him. He did not return that sentiment. They learned to be wary of him, wincing out his personal space when he tensed. Training them to respect his space boundaries required a few well-placed punches, an ever-expanding list of extremely painful pressure points that made even ridiculously amorous mechs yelp and flinch away, and a sense of timing in order to jab his elbow just right. That, and keeping a ship-load of mechs between him and them. That definitely helped.

Also Arcee. Arcee was the one person the Constructicons were woefully unprepared to deal with. To be fair, that was the state of most mechs, vehicles, buildings, and the majority of reality in relation to Arcee. The Constructicons picked fights with her - both sides called it 'sparring' whenever somebody broke up the brawl - but kept losing. Her ability to kick their afts five ways from Praxus was a wonderfully refreshing break, because she took it as a personal offense if they stopped mid-fight to wave in Prowl's direction. He made a point of strolling by just to provoke such offenses. Vindictive or not, it got the Constructicons off his back for half a day while they repaired their wounds.

Better yet, Arcee took seeking her out for matches as implicit permission to attack them whenever she got restless. She got restless a lot, perhaps because Prowl kept her on a short leash. Which was, perhaps, why he did it. If the Constructicons dared approach him while she was there, she lit up like a pyromaniac spotting a gasoline-soaked cotton ball roll toward an open flame. She couldn't wait for the explosion. Most of the time, she couldn't resist starting the fire herself.

Best of all, she knew exactly how Prowl used her, and she thought it was hilarious. She insisted her new code name was Buffer Zone. Demilitarized Zone might have been more appropriate. To help keep the peace, he approved her request to use her swords in her 'sparring' if the Constructicons came within arm's reach of him. That might have been overkill, but he didn't think there was such a thing when dealing with his 'fanclub issues,' as Arcee the DMZ liked to call it.

The problem being that this gestalt bond thing truly was like a muscle. He couldn't just assign a guard and forget about it. It was inside him, part of him, where Arcee couldn't stand sentry. And, like a muscle, it relaxed if left alone. Its default state was fully open. Prowl had to remember to will his end closed, even if by the lightest of efforts. By now that effort barely required active thought, but there wasn't a subroutine he could program to run while he recharged. At least, he hadn't figured out a way to flex the thing shut on automatic yet, not that he didn't try.

The point was, he couldn't keep the connection closed if he wasn't conscious to make the choice.

This was a gaping hole in his defenses, so of course the Constructicons dug into it with five pairs of hands and a grappling hook. Any weakness in the bristling cactus of personal space issues that was Prowl geared up against them had to be exploited. It might be the only opening they ever got.

They forced everything they could through.

Heat saturated plating first, metal warming until armor baked. Then came the prickle of static over paint, green and purple and stinging as charge welled up in vast waves rising from deep within their chassis, near their sparks. He used his palm to measure the rising temperature as if it had to meet a certain standard before he'd let them move on. They waited on his decision. He'd decided to supervise this time, blue optics shaded dark as he watched. The heavy weight of his gaze had aroused them more than an expressionless observer had any right to.

Regardless of how they should have reacted, what had actually happened was this: five mechs frozen, riding the brittle edge between disobedience and an overload so long in coming it would crash half of them. He'd riled them up simply by being present. This mid-frag inspection was almost enough to tip them over the edge despite explicit orders forbidding that very action. He gently slid a finger tip between the slats inside a shoulder vent, making Scavenger inhale sharply. The Constructicon jerked, and the other four whined pitiful protest as his hips slammed forward, pushing into Hook's port. That shoved Hook's face into Bonecrusher's lap, causing the heavy-hitter to sit down abruptly and make Mixmaster shudder violently, clenching around Long Haul until the domino effect ended in Long Haul's grunt.

Buried fully in Hook, Scavenger shut off his visor and panted hoarsely. The others weren't any better off. A second ago, they'd been holding back at the teasing cusp of overload, interface arrays bared and brushing ports and lips. Now Hook groaned around Bonecrusher, throat intake doing its involuntary magic around the thick tip jabbing into it, and Bonecrusher was making tiny, desperate sounds that were rapidly becoming familiar. The way he kept shifting had Mixmaster squirming, both of them trying to hold still and failing badly. Long Haul's grunts had an alarmed tone to them as he clawed back from the edge but slid inevitably closer.

Prowl stood back and let them attempt to recover. He had commanded them not to move. They'd delivered so far, even as he set about making them disobey. He'd see how long their obedience lasted

Prowl pulled out of the daydream to the sound of his own fans whirring, this time. He gritted his teeth as he used the manual controls to shut them off. At some point during the fantasy, he'd thrown an arm over his optics, blocking out the light to immerse himself fully in the heat and slow crawl of charge seducing his subconscious one horrid dream at a time. He glared at the ceiling. There were no shadows.

Of course there weren't. It was all in his head, after all.

While the grabby, rowdy, immature attention-seeking antics happened out in the open, the Constructicons were using a more subtle approach underneath. He'd seen in their heads. He knew what they were capable of. They weren't sadists and murderers just because they knew which way to point a gun or enjoyed shooting mechs. They were some of the worst Decepticons because they knew how to make a wound, but they were what they were because they knew how to really make it burn.

Different sensations, but same goal: consume the sanity of their victim. Break down all resistance. Manipulate him into doing what they wanted, just to make the torment stop.

He'd had memory refluxes. He knew what they felt like, even what memories his mind sometimes twisted around to haunt his recharge with. These were not memory refluxes, no matter how stubbornly he insisted to himself that that's all they were. The sights, the smells, even the taste of group orgies had begun playing behind his optics whenever he powered down, and those were not memories. They were lovingly assembled projections from perverted minds, constructed 'memories' and thoughts meant to drive him to distraction.

Prowl got up from the berth and stretched out, door hinges bending out and the transformation joints underneath extending up to straighten kinked cables. His back struts clinked as he squared his shoulders, trying to shake the tension out.

Instead, the ache of stiffened mechanisms yanked a vivid, technicolor dream right into the front of his thoughts.

His back arched in a tense bow, doors up to round off the curve. His helm rolled back as his hips rolled forward, and a spiteful smile flirted with his customary stern frown. Just because he could, he tugged the mouth around him up and away. A tinge of regret shot through him as the hot suction slid off him, but the rush of power he felt was ample compensation. The level of control he had over this mech was glorious, especially here and now. The Constructicon obeyed him, sinking further down under his hand, mouth opening to busy itself servicing him once more.

Prowl let his helm tip back again, the snarl of his engine demanding more. He couldn't quite remember which of the glitches knelt before him, elbows and knees tied. He could hear the twitching clicks of hands closing on air, but the mech had his face buried between Prowl's thighs. That was plenty of surface contact. Hands were unnecessary.

His engine revved, demanding faster, stronger, deeper, and his fingers found purchase between bowed helm and kibble. They dug in and raked down the cables and struts. When he brought his chin down, optics dark and hazily pleased as pressure built low, Prowl could see the way the mech's own crane line had been used to tie him. Hook. The Constructicon lapping electricity and lubricant out of his port like a starving mech slurping energon was named Hook.

His fingers dented metal. A muffled groan thrummed through his port and sent a thrill up Prowl's back. His fingers dug under Hook's armor harder.

Prowl dropped his doors hastily, snapping out of the stretch and resetting his optics repeatedly to clear his vision. His fans were spinning again. He let them. He needed the cool air, because his core temperature had spiked an absurd amount for the short time he'd been lost in the daydream.

Talk to Ratchet. He had to talk to Ratchet. Explaining what was really going on would burn his pride like acid, because Ratchet had no patience for patients who knew what the problem was but didn't actually ask for help. Maybe the medic would be able to help him, however, and that would be worth the flat, scornful glare when he called Ratchet and said something less vague than, "I am having mildly bothersome defrag refluxes."

He'd tried that last time, keeping his voice level and tone bland. Ratchet had run an assessing look over him, pondered for a whole quarter of a second, and barked, "Deal with it."

He'd known Ratchet wouldn't do anything for mere dreams. He'd known that phrasing his problem that way would be too vague, too annoying, to alarm the medic. Practically everyone had memory fluxes. After millions of years of war, the memories tossed up by the defrag process were anything but restful. The only real solution outside of therapy to sort out the initial trauma was to just…deal with it. Through violence, addiction, or whatever it took, the Autobot ranks had been dealing with it on their own for eons.

It showed. What mechs called 'quirks of personality' these days probably would have qualified as insanity before the war. Debatably, there wasn't a sane one in the bunch. Prowl hated the way he was pushed into joining the raving loonies by this - this attack.

That's what it was. The dreams were psychological warfare, and that was the hardest kind of assault to withstand. He felt like his sanity teetered on the brink of giving in and doing something incredibly crazy. He just couldn't maintain the situation much longer. He was exhausted. His mind was a disorganized mess from weeks of being unable to shut down properly. His body wasn't any better, systems spurred up into overheating night after night. He'd been unbearably tired for forever now, time stretching out into an endless series of nights where lying down on his berth inspired dread, where he tried to shut down into recharge and failed.

Every morning, the zing of charge zipping through his systems startled him up from standby mode. He woke ready to overload, aching and loathing whatever weakness it was that made him susceptible to the images filling his mind. He wasn't defragmenting a single file. His systems weren't reaching a low enough activity level for self-maintenance. His mind and body were too hyped up for true recharge. He was just powering down into standby mode and powering up again when his mind relaxed enough to loosen the chokehold keeping the Constructicons from projecting. He relaxed, they projected through the open connection, and he jolted back into standby again. No real rest found him from night to morning.

What found him despite his attempts to hide or block them out were some spectacularly arousing dreams. That was the worst part. That's what made the assaults effective. They were arousing. Slag him to the Pit, they were magnificent. Even once he kicked the insidious tendrils of the gestalt out of his head upon waking, the memory of those dreams lingered throughout the day.

He had figured out early on that the different 'taste' to each Constructicon's mind would have been off-putting if the glitches hadn't had access to his own personal tastes to camouflage the dreams in. The chokehold loosened enough when he neared true recharge that they could tease out minor glimpses of what he liked, and they had vibrant imaginations and creative style on their side. They were more than happy to cater to his interests, and that was what the Constructicons dribbled through the bond at night. His mind provided the vital details, the bits and pieces that got him fired up, and they worked with that.

The dreams were his fantasies, unlocked from the vault such things were locked away in, and that twisted the knife of lust low and searing hot in his chassis. The waking dreams were those shameful, burning thoughts he'd envisioned for a split second before duty, reason, and common sense dismissed them to the gutter where filth belonged. Every mech had those thoughts. They were the thoughts that flashed by with that first impression of strong legs, broad shoulders, and mutual interest, and then reality intervened to squash even the idea of attraction in disgust.

Those ideas and thoughts should have stayed squashed, but the Constructicons wouldn't leave him well enough alone. They seeped under the locked door to steal his subconscious' desires, searched out what he enjoyed doing with other mechs, or the warm, wistful longing for what he wished he could do. They knit the threads of interfacing memory, wishful thinking, and buried fantasy together into something entirely different, something involving five green-and-purple evil slaggers he'd never touch that way. Any way, if he could help it.

But, oh. Oh, was it tempting. They'd found every one of his triggers and concocted ten different ways to pull each one.

Spark chamber open, the energy could be felt radiating out. He could feel it against his face. The spark was so close. He'd never seen one this close before. It wasn't something people did for casual interfacing. A mech opened his spark chamber for a medical exam or a trusted lover - or on orders from someone holding power over him.

This situation took a little from Column B, a little from Column C. It was definitely the control aspect that had Prowl's engine purring a low, lustful rumble, but maybe that added to the lover aspect as well. He was certainly charged up over the open spark chamber cupped in his hands.

Prowl's thumbs played with the locking mechanism of the chamber for a while. Tiny noises slipped out in response to how hard he toyed, and he relished the way Scavenger jerked and shuddered in Mixmaster's arms. Rubbing the pad of his thumbs down the inside of the chamber got a breathy, stuttering sound that wanted to be a moan but came out thin as a whimper. When he dipped his fingers through the outer corona of the spark itself, combing plasma tendrils out until they slipped free and tangled again, Scavenger bucked once, exhaling in a loud burst through every vent. The sound reminded Prowl of hearing someone take a punch, a stab, or even a gunshot: sudden, shocked, and just starting to register the impact.

Mixmaster had just enough time to pin his teammate before Prowl's fingers swept into the spark itself, fingertips wiggling gently against the elastic, molten core.

This time, the reaction was instantaneous. Scavenger wailed and convulsed, fighting Mixmaster's hold to push his chest further forward, encourage the light massage to become a heavy, kneading pressure. Prowl smiled and took his hand away, and the Constructicon slumped, steaming and shaking, interface panels long ago retracted and array ready for the taking any way the Autobot saw fit.

Prowl ignored it and leaned closer. He'd always wanted to taste a spark, and this was the perfect opportunity. He waited for Scavenger to recover enough to notice the hot breaths exhaled into the bared interior of his spark chamber. Mixmaster's optics were wide, awe and rampant arousal dripping lubricant down his own leg. He panted against the back of his teammate's shoulder, no relief in sight for the tormented voyeur, but Scavenger shrieked at the long, leisurely drag of a tongue up one wandering tendril of plasma. With the utmost care, Prowl licked to the end and then turned his attention to the mechanisms of the spark chamber again despite how the spark writhed after him. He nibbled around the edges of the chamber and nipped at the lock, accidentally grazing a spitting ring of the spark itself as it pleaded for his mouth to return. His teeth crackled, lightning filling his mouth, and Mixmaster's legs squeezed together as he watched. Scavenger just whimpered and shook, undone.

The others occupied themselves nearby. Prowl could hear the desperate clanging and see frantic motion from the corner of his optic when he came out of Scavenger's chest to suck in cooler air. The squirming pile of Constructicons sent a wave of gratified smugness through him, chased by another wave of lust. The whole lot of them were overheated and fragging each other senseless in an attempt to relieve charge they weren't even generating. Scavenger had his end of the bond blown wide open, every lick and stroke Prowl gave him broadcasting loud and clear. The rest of the gestalt drowned in his need.

The sensation of a tongue on his own spark did feel rather nice. After a few seconds of enjoying the strange feeling, Prowl blocked his side of the bond, and ducked his head to lap roughly at the glowing core of Scavenger's spark.

The waste-disposal rejects were finding desires Prowl hadn't even known he had to make their fantasies, and he would dearly love to enact one or two.

Just not with the Constructicons. Never with them. He wouldn't give them what they wanted, which was exactly that. Part of it was stubbornness, because he would not be defeated by their scheming. Some of it was intensely personal dislike of them and their minds. They weren't people he'd ever consider interfacing with.

The rest of it was staunch Autobot loyalty, because they were the antithesis to everything he believed in. Yes, despite the distrust and reproofs from Ultra Magnus, Optimus Prime, and everyone else who thought he'd gone too far, he did have strong moral beliefs, and those morals were Autobot. He did sometimes suspend his ethics over methodology in order to achieve a goal, but that was war. There was no end in this situation that he could use to justify the means.

He'd thought there was, originally. He'd thought there'd be terms. The Constructicons would set their terms, and he could justify meeting those terms in order to reach a compromise that he could live with. He'd been waiting for the voices that weren't really there to offer him a deal.

Combine with us, and we will let go.

Leave the Autobots, come with us, and we'll stop.

Just give us a free-for-all night, and we'll call it quits.

He had prepared for that, building strategies to work around and cheat his way through until he could find a way to solve the entire problem, but there hadn't been any demands. The Constructicons' whispers in the silence were suggestive, longing, and had no deals attached. Their propositions weren't bargains. There were no 'if this, then that' attempts to bring him around to their way of thinking, or coax him to meet them halfway, or even the slightest hint of a compromise.

He'd thought furiously about it, until one day he'd realized they didn't need to make demands of any kind. Beneath their obnoxious, noisy cheerfulness, their grabby hands and endless fantasies, patience lurked. They had the patience of a gestalt that knew they'd eventually win. They'd get what they wanted no matter how he fought. This wasn't a siege where he could ransom his peace of mind and get them to back off, which was what he'd assumed they'd intended.

Someday, it would be too much. Too much tiredness, too much charge, too much stress. Just too much of everything forced into him by a nonstop internal war. Someday, he'd stop fighting. He'd stop being able to focus enough to close the bond. Someday, it would be over. They'd win. He'd come to them in the middle of the night and plead to be let into their room. If he surrendered before total exhaustion devoured his will, maybe he'd phrase it as a command, but one way or another? Prowl would come to them, and they would never let him go.

That knowledge ran under every thought they slipped into his mind, ever fantasy they projected. They had faith that they couldn't lose because he couldn't win. He would give in. Their attack would defeat him.

And then? Then they'd give him everything.

Everything he'd lived in his dreams would be transformed from fantasy into reality. That, and more. Interfacing was the lure, the machine-level primal urge they'd baited their trap with, but they planned to be so much more than some sort of harem. They'd be his frag toys, but they'd also be his thugs. They'd be his agents, tools, and ready fists against a post-war chaos that clearly needed Prowl to set it right. They could make that happen. They could bring about his plans - together. Together, they could remake Cybertron according to his will, because Prowl knew what to do. He had no doubt he knew best, and his utter certainty became theirs.

They would give him that, and everything else they were capable of. They would be his bodyguards, his build team, his unit, his harem. In return, he would be their mind, their tactician, their Autobot, theirs. They would make his cause their own, and he would own them. They would force him to surrender in order to regain control.

In their sparks, it was that simple. It was a brutal truth they knew, and he could feel their certainty like a pillar of the universe in the back of his mind. He could feel it now, since the tiredness kept sapping the strength from the part of himself he had to flex to close the gestalt connection. He hissed a breath out, vents narrowed in rage, and threw up another cold wall of disdain between his emotions and their careful prodding. They withdrew, patiently waiting in the silence that wasn't silent.

You can hear us. We know you can. Talk to us, Prowl. We want to talk to you. We want you.

We want you as we've wanted little else in this war, and we will have you.

We won't stop until you are ours.

Their victory was as unavoidable as the frustrated arousal he'd suffer tomorrow morning, and the morning after that. They'd set a chain of events in motion, and their simple plan had the Autobot's greatest tactician backed into a corner with no escape.

He could almost admire that.


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[ Check A03 for a picture by Shibara! ]