Sponge: Welcome back! Thanks to everyone who reviewed, and to those who tried to guess the song title! There are many, many, many songs called "Chicago," though I was thinking of the one by Sufjan Stevens. This weeks' chapter is pretty long, so let's get the show on the road! Warnings: language and dog peril. Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Scooby Doo characters. They belong to Cartoon Network, Warner Brothers, and Hanna Barbera. Information about fluorite, African grey parrots, and Great Danes come from Wikipedia. Ideas for the location and interior of the home the gang visits come from a listing on Zillow. Again, I would like to thank Google Maps and funlovingfangirl for refreshing my shoddy memories of Navy Pier.

Chapter 7: Dog Days Are Over

Fear clenched Shaggy's heart as he watched Scooby vanish into the lake. "Scoob!" he shouted, stricken with worry. He bolted for the low chain, Velma hot on his heels.

"What's gotten into him?" asked Velma, clutching a stitch in her side and gazing anxiously out towards the horizon.

"I don't know," Shaggy replied, his voice frantic. "But he's like, never done this before!" He shielded his eyes to watch Scooby swim out into the water. Velma gave his arm a comforting squeeze, and then pulled out her phone to call Fred and Daphne.

"Freddie," she said as she scoured the area for life preservers. "Scooby ran away and jumped off the pier."

"What!?" asked Fred, incredulous. He had just parked the Mystery Machine in the garage and was walking back to the observation deck with Daphne, but he halted abruptly as the gravity of Velma's words reached him. "What happened? Is he okay?"

"We don't know," Velma panted. "He just dove into the water."

"Can you see him?" asked Fred. Daphne, who couldn't hear Velma's end of the conversation, gazed at Fred quizzically.

"Yes – it looks like he's swimming out towards the horizon. Shaggy and I are still on the observation deck."

"We're on our way," said Fred, abruptly hanging up. He turned to Daphne. "Scooby ran away and jumped in the water," he explained, grabbing her hand and racing towards the observation deck.

Daphne gasped. "What?! Why?!"

"I have no idea," Fred replied. "But we need to find Shaggy and Velma."

When they arrived at the observation deck, Fred and Daphne found that it wasn't nearly as crowded as they would have guessed. They had no trouble at all finding their friends, and joined them at the end of the deck. Shaggy had stepped over the chain to stand closer to the water.

"Scoob!" he shouted. "Like, come back!"

"What happened?" Daphne asked Velma.

The bespectacled girl shook her head, still scanning the area for life preservers. "I have no idea. We were just walking along when suddenly Scooby bolted."

Fred peered out into the lake, staring at Scooby, and frowned. "Wait…what's that?" he wondered, pointing in Scooby's direction.

"A leash," Velma explained. "We met a cop who made us put a leash on him."

Fred shook his head. "No…what's that?" He pointed further out into Lake Michigan.

Velma stopped her search for life preservers and shielded her eyes against the sun, following Fred's gaze.

Shaggy and Daphne looked too, and at the same time, they all noticed the frantic splashing that Scooby was swimming toward.

"I have no idea," Velma replied, scrunching her eyes behind her glasses.

"Well, whatever it is, Scooby's trying to get it," Daphne said.

Shaggy squinted. "Zoinks!" he cried. "I think it's like, another dog!"

Scooby, meanwhile, was swimming as fast as he could towards the dog that was struggling in the water. As he swam, he wondered – not for the first time – why he ran away from ghosts and monsters, which time and time again had proven not to be real, and yet jumped (or rather, swam) headlong into action during an actual life-or-death matter.

He was closer to the second dog now – she appeared to be a girl. She had bows on her ears, anyway. Her own leash, he realized, was wrapped around her paws, thereby preventing her from being able to stay afloat. He reached her just as she started to go under, but he was able to wrap his leash around her before she sank further. Luckily, she was a small dog.

Once she was securely wrapped in the leash, Scooby swam back towards the pier, where he could see the rest of the gang waiting for him. Velma, Daphne, and Fred had joined Shaggy on the other side of the chain, and they all reached into the water to help pull Scooby and the second dog onto the concrete. Once Scooby was back on land, Shaggy threw his arms around him, feeling only relief, and not caring a bit that the dog was soaking wet.

"Scoob!" Shaggy scolded the moment he let go. "Like what the hell, dude? What were you thinking?"

Scooby merely panted, too out of breath from all the swimming to properly respond. He shook himself dry, splashing everyone with lake water, and wordlessly glanced over at the second dog, who was still caught up in the leash and struggling to get out.

"I'll get it," Fred offered, hurriedly untying the leash.

Once the dog was free, she too shook herself dry and gave a few spluttering coughs.

"You okay, girl?" asked Daphne, softly patting the dog's head. Her body was fawn in color, but her ears were a dark brown.

The dog gave another cough and a sniff before looking up at Scooby.

"Thank you," she said.

In perfect English.

The dog's eyes widened, as though she'd made a mistake and just realized it. Everyone gaped at her in astonishment, including Scooby.

"…Roo can ralk?" he murmured.

The dog's eyes only widened further as she gazed at Scooby. She took a slight step back. "You can talk?" she responded, just as flabbergasted.

"Okay, like, what the fuck?" said Shaggy. He'd never met another talking dog besides Scooby – and certainly not one with a voice as clear as a bell.

At that moment, a pair of adults rushed into their midst.

"Nova!" exclaimed the woman as she approached.

The dog finally tore her gaze away from Scooby and a look of relief crossed over her face as she leapt into the outstretched arms of the woman.

"Oh, thank goodness you're all right," murmured the man, petting her ears. He, like the woman he accompanied, seemed unperturbed by the fact that the dog was dripping water all over them – they both just seemed happy that she was safe.

The woman turned to Shaggy. "Was that your dog who jumped in after her?"

"Uh…like yeah," replied Shaggy, who was still too flummoxed over the second talking dog to properly verbalize anything.

"I think he saw her in trouble," Velma added. "And went to her rescue."

"Well, that was exceptionally brave of him," said the man, kneeling down to pet Scooby. "What's his name?"

"Scooby Doo," the gang responded in one voice.

Scooby himself said nothing – he was still staring in amazement at the other dog. Nova.

"And what about your names?" asked the man, straightening up and finally making eye contact with the teens.

The moment Fred met the man's eyes, his mouth went dry. His tongue felt too heavy, and his throat constricted. He gazed at the man, just as astonished as he'd stared at Nova moments ago. He stared at the woman too, and he knew them both instantly. They'd both aged considerably these past several years – the man had gone gray, and the woman's hair had been cut short – but it was unmistakably the pair in the old photograph in his pocket.

"My name is Thad Sternum, and this is my wife, Trudy," the man said, though at this point they needed no introduction. "And this is Nova, our cocker spaniel."

Cocker spaniel. Of course.

Fred's heart was thudding in his chest. This was it. The moment he'd been anticipating – and dreading – for days now. But perhaps they could finally start to get some answers.

"It's nice to meet you," he said, reaching out to shake the man's hand. He'd still think of them as Brad and Judy, even though they'd introduced themselves by their aliases. Now that he thought of it, he wasn't sure he was ready for them to know who he was yet. Maybe he'd better come up with some aliases himself. "My name's Geoff," he improvised. "These are my friends, Kelly," – here he gestured to Daphne – "Linda" – Velma – "and…uh…" Fred's mind went blank as he looked at Shaggy. His brain struggled to come up with a name, and his eyes roamed around. He noticed one of the few other tourists on the deck, who was wearing a Weight Watchers shirt, and he ran with it. "W.W," he finished, clapping Shaggy on the shoulder.

Everyone gazed at him incredulously. Fred hoped they didn't think it was too much.

Brad and Judy didn't notice their stares. "Well, thank you very much, Geoff," Judy said warmly. "We walk here with Nova every week, but nothing like this has ever happened before. She got spooked by a bird and fell off the deck. We thought we'd lost her." She pressed the top of Nova's head up to her cheek affectionately.

Nova gazed at her meaningfully. Then, in a low voice, she said, "Their dog can speak."

Both Brad and Judy stared aghast at Nova, then immediately turned their astonished gazes on Scooby Doo.

"He can? You can?" Brad first asked Fred, then Scooby.

Scooby glanced at Shaggy, who merely shrugged.

"Res," Scooby admitted. "Rye can ralk."

Brad gasped, and Judy brought a hand to her chest in amazement. Shaggy didn't understand why they were so surprised, when their own dog could talk as well.

"How…where…" murmured Judy, who seemingly had so many questions she was unable to decide which one to ask first.

"Is he your dog?" Brad finally asked Fred.

Shaggy cleared his throat. "Like he's mine," he told Brad. "He's been in my family for a long time."

"How long?" Brad demanded.

"Uh…like, eight years?" said Shaggy, feeling rather taken aback at Brad's intensity.

Brad, Judy, and Nova all exchanged significant glances.

"Where are you from?" Brad asked Shaggy. "If you don't mind me asking."

Shaggy wasn't sure how to answer that question. He'd been born in Vista Heights, though he'd been living in Coolsville for the past few years. But if Fred was introducing everyone by false names, Shaggy assumed he didn't want Brad and Judy to know that. A quick glance at Fred confirmed this theory – he infinitesimally shook his head.

Shaggy looked back at Brad and Judy. "I like, lived in California for a long time," he answered. That was technically true. "That's like, where we got Scoob."

"Where in California?" whispered Judy.

"Vista Heights," Shaggy answered.

Brad and Judy both looked frightened and aghast.

Velma frowned. What on earth was going on?

"Are you…okay?" Daphne asked Brad and Judy.

But the pair of them continued to simply gaze at each other fearfully.

"Um...excuse me?" Daphne tried again, her voice a bit stronger this time.

The pair of them suddenly glanced at the teens as though they'd just remembered they were there. "We apologize," Brad said to them. "We shouldn't be having this conversation here."

"Why not?" asked Daphne.

"It's not safe to discuss this in public," he told her.

"And…why is that?" asked Velma.

Brad and Judy shared an uneasy glance.

Nova cleared her throat. "I believe they can be trusted," she murmured. Her voice was so soft that the gang had to strain to hear her.

"Rusted with rhat?" Scooby wanted to know, his voice as loud as a gong compared to Nova's.

"Shh!" Brad and Judy shushed him simultaneously.

"Not so loud, please!" Brad implored him. He looked at Nova in Judy's arms. "What makes you so sure they can be trusted?" he asked her quietly.

She looked at Brad, then at Scooby. "It's…just a feeling," she whispered.

Brad nodded, then looked at the teens. "Are you hungry?" he asked them.

The gang blinked at him.

"Uh…like yes?" said Shaggy, who of course was always hungry.

"Let us treat you to dinner," Judy offered. "We don't live very far away. There's a lot that we have to explain, and it would be best if we didn't do so in public."

The gang all glanced at each other. Then, Fred nodded.

"Okay," he replied. "We'll follow you."

x.X.x

It turned out that Brad and Judy's home was only a ten-minute walk from Navy Pier. Velma felt quite confused…why had there been so many clues pointing to the Armour Square neighborhood when Brad and Judy lived in Streeterville? Something didn't add up.

The house itself was a townhome on a quiet, tree-lined street with a gated front garden. Fred gazed up at it as they ambled up the walk. Would he have lived here if Brad and Judy had kept him? Or would they have stayed in Coolsville? Answers to questions he'd never known he had would be coming out shortly – if only he could keep his wits about him.

Daphne had taken Fred's hand with no intention of letting go anytime soon. She knew this was going to be a difficult meeting, and she was determined to do whatever she could to help Fred through it.

Shaggy, meanwhile, felt rather uneasy. As they followed Brad, Judy, and Nova up the front walkway, he shared a glance with Scooby. He didn't know why Brad and Judy insisted on being so secretive about Nova, but he had a feeling they were going to find out – and that they wouldn't necessarily like what they heard.

Scooby was the only one feeling merely curious, rather than bewildered or wary. Nova must be the dog that Roy had told them about back in New York. But how could she talk?

The gang followed Brad, Judy, and Nova into the house and found themselves in a sunny hallway. Directly in front of them was a staircase leading to the upper floors. To their left was a cozy living room, beyond which was a kitchen and dining area.

"Have a seat, please," Judy said, gesturing towards the comfy sectional in the living room. "I'm afraid we don't have much to offer you kids in the way of a home-cooked meal. We were planning on ordering pizza tonight."

"Rye like rizza!" Scooby proclaimed enthusiastically. Shaggy nodded in agreement.

Nova stared at them bemusedly, but said nothing.

Judy chuckled. "All right. I'll place the order. Are there any allergies or dietary restrictions you all have?" Everyone shook their heads, and she took her phone out of her pocket and disappeared back into the hallway.

"Can we also get one that's not deep-dish, please?" Brad called after her. He looked at the gang. "We used to live in New York, and I never quite got over the loss of that style of pizza."

Fred and Daphne shared a glance. They already knew that Brad and Judy had lived in New York, of course. But they couldn't let Brad know that they knew.

"When was that?" asked Daphne, trying to sound polite and not nosy or suspicious.

Brad sighed as he sat in an armchair beside the gas fireplace. Nova leapt gracefully up into his lap and he pet her absentmindedly. "Eight years now?" he said, as though thinking. He gestured to the dog in his lap. "That's where we got Nova."

So, it was confirmed. Nova was the dog that Brad and Judy had adopted from Roy.

"And…why did you leave New York?" asked Fred quietly.

"The same reason we leave anywhere," Brad replied. "To avoid discovery. Detection."

"Detection from…what?" asked Velma.

Judy re-entered the living room then, slipping her phone back in her pocket. She caught on to the direction of the conversation and sat in a second armchair, sighing as she did so.

She looked at Nova. "They're trustworthy?" she confirmed with the dog.

Nova nodded. "Without a doubt," she replied in that same clear voice.

Judy sighed again, then glanced at Brad.

Brad looked at the gang. "Our real names aren't Thad and Trudy Sternum," he admitted. "We change our names every time we move, so that those who are hunting us don't find us."

"Originally, my name was Judy Reeves," Judy said. "And he was Brad Chiles. We're both from a small town in Ohio called Coolsville. We met in school there."

The gang knew all this, of course, but they still had so many questions. Perhaps this was the reason they still had confused expressions on their faces.

"We'd known each other for years," Brad told the gang. "But we didn't get together until high school. That was also when we met our friends Ricky and Cassidy. We all bonded because we shared a belief that our town had been built on a pocket of massive alchemical energy. We called it the ley line, and we spent ages looking for it."

Daphne felt like screaming. She knew this. They all knew this. But she didn't care about what they already knew – she wanted new information. But Brad and Judy were taking an awfully long time to get to the point.

"And then, in the fall of our senior year," Judy said. "We found it."

Velma blinked rapidly behind her glasses. She'd been sure that the ley line was just a legend, like all the monsters and ghosts they'd investigated over the years. "Wait…what?"

"We weren't the first ones to go looking for the ley line," Judy explained. "Many people who had searched before us had left codes and clues that they had discovered that were meant to lead to its whereabouts. We spent nearly our entire high school careers deciphering those codes. Eventually, we discovered a numerological sequence that we believed to be some sort of equation, but we had no idea what it meant until Pericles got out."

Fred's head was spinning. Judy had just said so many words that he didn't understand out of context, and he felt totally lost.

Velma felt confused as well. Who the hell was Pericles? Judy couldn't possibly mean the Greek general. "Uh…Pericles?" she prompted.

"Right, I'm sorry," Brad apologized. "Our friend Ricky had a parrot named Pericles. One day he got out and we followed him through the forest to a huge oak tree in the middle of a clearing. Once we caught him, we discovered that we'd never ventured that deeply into the forest before, and Cassidy realized that the sequence of numbers that Judy had discovered weren't an equation at all – they were latitude and longitude coordinates. To the exact tree that we had found."

"I remembered feeling so annoyed that we'd done all this work, and the parrot had stumbled upon the location on a whim," Judy chuckled, a bit emptily. "After that, we started calling him 'Professor Pericles.'"

Everyone gazed at her, still uncertain of how this tied into them being on the run for so long. Daphne sat forward, brow furrowed.

"We searched the area for clues but couldn't find anything.," Judy continued. "We came back day after day for weeks, convinced that there was something of value in the oak tree. By Halloween night, we were all frustrated, but none more than Ricky. He kicked a root out of anger…and that was when we discovered the secret tunnel."

The gang stared aghast at Brad and Judy. "Secret tunnel?" asked Daphne.

Brad nodded solemnly. "It turned out," he said. "That if you pulled up on one of the roots, it opened a door in the side of the oak tree."

Shaggy gasped out loud before he could stop himself.

Brad and Judy looked at him.

"Like sorry," he apologized. "I'm uh…invested."

But that wasn't why he'd gasped. He'd gasped because he knew that tree. They all knew that tree. They'd been there. They'd been inside of it. It was the same tree that had been the secret lair of the counterfeiting Wendigo, their first ever case. They had unmasked their first villain in that cavern. Their entire story had begun there.

Apparently, Brad and Judy's story had begun there as well.

Shaggy glanced at the other members of the gang and saw similar looks of astonishment and realization on their faces.

If Brad or Judy noticed their stunned expressions, neither commented. "Anyway," Brad continued. "We discovered two tunnels under the tree."

"Where did they lead?" asked Velma, even though she already knew. The left tunnel lead underneath the high school, while the right tunnel ended in a large room which, when they'd found it two years ago, the Wendigo had been using to hide the counterfeit money.

But Brad shook his head. "We never discovered where the left tunnel went, because Professor Pericles immediately went right. We followed him and found ourselves in a large open area that had flecks of blue dimly glowing in the walls."

Fred and Daphne shared a look. Glowing blue walls? Those hadn't been there two years ago.

Velma frowned. "Why were the walls glowing?" she asked. "Fluorite?" It was the only thing she could thinking of that might cause the walls of that cave to glow blue, but she didn't think there were any natural repositories of fluorite in the United States.

"Rhat's that?" asked Scooby. He'd never heard of fluorite before.

"It's the mineral form of calcium fluoride," Velma told him. "It's been dubbed the most colorful mineral in the world because it's allochromatic – it can be tinted with elemental impurities."

"That's what we thought too," Judy told her. "But there aren't any natural occurrences of fluorite in the United States."

Velma had been right. "So…what then?" she asked. "Was it radioactive?"

"That was the more likely theory," Brad said. "Especially because of what happened to Professor Pericles."

Daphne furrowed her brow. "What happened to him?"

Brad sighed. "Nothing, at first," he replied. "He pecked at the wall for a long time, and when we tried to take him away from it, he'd screech at us. Eventually, Ricky extracted a section of rock and took it home with him."

Fred held up his hand. "Wait," he said. "You let the parrot ingest possibly radioactive minerals?"

"We didn't have a choice," Brad insisted. "He'd attack us if we tried to take him away from it. Besides, we learned later that the mineral wasn't radioactive, in spite of the side effects."

"Side reffects?" asked Scooby dubiously.

"They were so gradual we didn't even realize they were happening," Judy told him. "But even when we figured it out, we didn't worry. They seemed harmless, at first."

"What do you mean 'at first?'" asked Daphne.

Judy sighed. "Like we said, there were only a few mild side effects. His head swelled a bit. Literally – it grew to be about twice the size of a normal parrot's. And for some reason, he spoke with a German accent."

"Like he spoke?" asked Shaggy, bewildered.

"Many parrots can imitate human speech and other sounds," Velma reminded him.

"That's why we didn't think it was odd at first," Judy said. "Pericles had talked a little bit before, but only to repeat words or phrases he'd heard in the past. After we found the mineral, we discovered that it gave him an accent and made him intelligent enough to form his own words."

"Of course, we researched it," Brad continued. "But we found that it wasn't radioactive at all. The mineral had been imbibed with some kind of…energy that we didn't recognize. We figured that it was alchemical. After all…we had found it on the ley line."

Velma looked incredulous. "Okay," she scoffed. "So, you mean to tell me that there was some sort of magical alchemy in the mineral that caused the parrot to gain super-intelligence and speech?"

"And longevity," Judy added. "Professor Pericles was already an old bird – the average life expectancy for an African grey parrot is between forty and sixty years, and he was already pushing fifty. The mineral extended his life far beyond what it would have normally been."

There was a brief silence, during which Velma's face clouded over with confusion and skepticism.

"Like can I ask a question?" Shaggy spoke up finally. "What does any of this have to do with anything?"

Velma couldn't have put it better herself.

Judy sighed. "I'm sorry. You're right…this is a very long story, and I know it sounds like nonsense. But you need to understand the backstory about what inspired Cassidy to create the serum in the first place."

Fred blinked. "Wait..." he said. "What serum?"

"Cassidy broke down the mineral to its basic elemental structure in order to study it further and decided to create a serum so that the effects of the mineral would be less potent, but still safe," Judy replied. "She worked on that serum for the majority of our senior year, until..."

She broke off suddenly, clamping her lips shut and casting her eyes downward.

Brad reached out to comfortingly cover her hand with his own.

Judy took a trembling breath and continued. "Cassidy had a makeshift laboratory in her basement," she whispered. "It was awful…after the explosion, there was almost nothing left of her house..." Her breath hitched, and she broke off once more.

Velma's heart suddenly twisted with a realization. Cassidy Williams had died in an explosion. A basement lab explosion. In a flash, Velma's mind brought to the forefront a memory that she'd quite forgotten – an almost throw-away research session from the fall of eleventh grade, when they'd been searching for information on a phantom who'd been after Daphne. Legend had it that the phantom in question had been killed during an accident at the high school several decades ago, and so they'd gone to research at the library. She remembered flipping through a heavy tome of newspaper articles and skimming the headlines.

"There are a lot of headlines about other fatal accidents in these archives," she'd said. "Car crashes, falls, even a basement lab explosion..."

A basement. Lab. Explosion.

"Are you okay, Linda?" asked Brad kindly.

It took Velma a moment to realize that he was speaking to her.

"Yes," she replied. "Sorry. That's awful, what happened to Cassidy. I'm sorry to hear that." She blinked, trying to focus on something other than the insanity of this situation. "And I still don't...understand."

"What don't you understand?" asked Judy.

"I'm a scientist," said Velma. "I can't believe that there's something supernatural about that mineral...it doesn't make any logical sense."

"I think I have to agree with her on this one," Fred added. Normally Velma was the most skeptical of the gang, but Fred was having a hard time suspending his disbelief in this situation.

Brad chuckled emptily. "You say that as though you don't have proof if it right in front of you."

Velma looked at him. "What on earth are you talking about?"

"Think of it this way," said Brad, gesturing towards Scooby. "Average life expectancy for a Great Dane – do you know what it is?"

Shaggy cleared his throat to speak up.

"Eight to ten years," he replied.

"Precisely," said Brad. He looked at Shaggy. "Now, you said you've had Scooby Doo for eight years, isn't that right, W.W?"

Shaggy blinked – he'd forgotten about his fake name. "Uh...like, that's right," he said. "We got him as a puppy when I was ten."

Brad looked back to Scooby. "So, at age eight, you would be what we call a 'senior' dog," he said. "Your movements should be slower, and you should be less alert. You should be experiencing aches, pains, incontinence, arthritis, heart problems...possibly even cancer." He eyed the dog. "And yet...you seem as healthy as a horse to me."

Shaggy and Scooby shared an astonished glance. Indeed, Shaggy couldn't remember the last time he'd needed to bring Scooby to the vet for anything beyond an annual check-up.

"Great Danes have average intelligence," Judy added. "But Scooby is an exceptionally smart dog, isn't he?"

"Like, the smartest," Shaggy answered, his voice breathy. "But like...I don't get it. Are you saying that he was exposed to that mineral somehow? Like…in the serum?"

"Why do you think he can speak?" asked Brad. "Why do you think Nova can speak?"

"But...like how?" asked Shaggy, horribly confused. "If you created the serum in Ohio, how did it end up in California?"

Velma blinked at Judy, realization washing over her. "Because it wasn't created in Ohio," she whispered. "It was created in California, wasn't it?"

Judy nodded. "After Cassidy died, we took it upon ourselves to finish her work," she said. "It took...a long time. But we finally perfected it, after we graduated from Stanford's biochemistry program. And we distributed it to a few dog breeders in the area – including a Great Dane breeder – before we left for New York to start a PhD program in biochemistry and molecular biophysics."

That explained why they'd been in New York. And why they'd been in California. But not why they'd left Ohio in the first place.

Fred swallowed. "So...in order to do all this..." he began haltingly. "…Why did you need to leave your baby behind?"

Brad and Judy both stared at him, looking utterly startled. "How...how did you know about our son?" Judy murmured.

The time had come for the truth. Fred sat up straight and looked her in the eyes. "Because...my name isn't really Geoff," he whispered. "It's Fred. Fred Jones. And I'm the son that you left behind."

Sponge: WHEW lots of stuff happened in this chapter. Because it was so packed with information, there's no "official" clue this week, but more will be revealed next Wednesday! In the meantime, review if you please, and don't forget to guess where the chapter title comes from!