Nashville looked away from the screen, blinking to clear her head. She'd used computers before, as they had been a large part of her orientation after she'd been summoned, but this was the first time she'd worked on one. After hours of the monitor's light boring into her rangefinders, she was feeling pressure building in her bridge, of all places, and she often found her thoughts drifting to the waters of Puget Sound less than a mile outside.
Despite that, she thought she'd gotten a lot done. After hours of researching, brainstorming, and bouncing ideas off of Murray and the other Sailors in Nashville's new unit, she'd layed out a plan for the two little opportunities that were still stewing in her brig. The document before her was flooded with tactics, outlines, and contingencies for their future interrogation, as well as things to avoid that she'd learned from her research.
"You know," Nashville jumped at the sudden voice, her hand slipping off the mouse before she crushed it. "You're supposed to be off-duty right now."
The Cruiser sighed, checking her chronometer while she turned to look at her commander.
"I need to get this right." She defended, motioning back at her interrogation plan.
She'd stayed behind for what, an hour? Compared to the shifts her crew would run in poor circumstances, that was nothing! Hadn't Murray also been running himself ragged?
"You need a rest." He shook his head. "Nashville, you've been active since the battle for Bikini." He turned, motioning back to the now-empty office. "We've had little sleep and practically no off time, because it was urgent, but none of us are running on all cylinders anymore."
"That sounds like an average shakedown cruise, sir." Nashville retorted. The Lieutenant Commander was probably going to order her out no matter what she said, now, but if she could buy a little more time…
"You've been staring at the same paragraph for fifteen minutes." The Spook dryly noted. "We've scheduled the next interrogation for Tuesday afternoon. We'll review that with fresh eyes during Monday, but that's not going to happen without a day's leave. Just keep your phone close, in case she surfaces."
"You'll still be working?" Nashville asked, eyebrows raised. She wasn't exactly sure what she was going to do with a free day in Everett.
"For a few hours. Garcia and I have the first watch on the phones, but after that I'll be resting as well." Murray answered, sipping water from a paper cup he'd brought with him. "You're not going to be part of the rotation. Keep your phone close, but get some rest."
She sighed, looking back at the monitor. She was still making progress, but the amount she'd actually gotten done was starting to shrink. Sure, she was a Cruiser, and could stay alert for months, if needed, but the last off-time she'd had had been before she'd left San Diego for Bikini.
"Probably a good thing you stayed, though." Murray continued. "The Visitor Center just notified me that three people checked in, and are looking for you. It'll be easier for them to find you here, but I can't let them into the office."
The 'Office' Everett's Commander had set up for Murray's team wasn't much. Using a portion of a floor that hadn't seen much use since the Nimitz transferred out, they'd had to install some temporary partitions to separate the Lieutenant Commander's Operation from other offices on the floor. A fan and a few tarps allowed them some information security, as long as they didn't raise their voices, and they had a conference room and a few other empty rooms to themselves for true secure communication. It didn't quite match their hasty quarters at Lewis-McChord, but they weren't using any space dedicated to other purposes, so they could operate here indefinitely, if they had to.
"Who are they?" Nashville asked, her eyes still focused on her interrogation plan.
"They didn't want you to know." Murray replied.
A chuckle escaped the cruiser's lips. It didn't make any sense for them to be here, but stranger things had happened this week. Besides The Abyssal, she only knew one person who'd deliberately be so unhelpful.
"Alright, you've convinced me." She relented. "How do I, uh, store this?"
"Save it." Murray provided. "Click on the floppy disk."
"Ah, okay." Since she'd recognized the floppy, she'd been wondering what that icon was for. Closing the document and ordering the computer to shut down, Nashville stood, stretching her keel and shifting from foot to foot. "Well, I guess I'll leave things to you."
Those words hadn't come easy. An enemy carrier was still out there, lurking among the civilian population. Murray had convinced himself on the Saratoga theory, but Nashville wasn't so sure. The logic behind the idea relied on the Wo-class acting far too human for her liking. Nashville wasn't the expert here, but the idea that this abyssal, and only this one, was driven by curiosity instead of malevolence, didn't sit right with her.
Maybe trying to forget about everything for a day and taking a look at the problem with a fresh set of eyes was the trick, here. Part of her wanted to find a local bar and someone to spend a night with, but if this visitor was who she thought she was, Nashville's plans for the weekend were probably already decided for her.
After confirming that the computer had indeed shut down, the cruiser left, making her way to the exit of the mostly-empty office.
"Take care, Nashville." She stopped as her commander's words caught up with her. Nashville turned, nodding.
"You too, Lieutenant Commander." Then, she gave the spook a weak smile. "We'll get her next week, right?"
For the first time since she'd met the man, Murray smiled back.
"Of course."
As Nashville neared the base's visitor center, she became less confident in her guess of the visitors' identities. Even if they had been given leave for today as well as tomorrow, it would take hours to cruise from San Diego to here. A car would probably be worse, and a flight was out of the question, for obvious reasons…
Opening the entrance to the visitor center, Nashville got her first look at her visitors, and her doubt turned to confusion. The three sat next to each other in the reception area, huddled over a magazine as they quietly talked with each other. One of the three caught her eyes immediately, her bright-red hair bobbing as she stood abruptly.
"It's about time you showed up!"
"Honolulu?" Nashville asked, returning the gaze of her red-haired sister, before meeting the gaze of the two other cruisers. "Helena? Brooklyn? How?"
"You'd be surprised at how easy it is to charter an interstate flight, Nashville." Brooklyn replied, the nameship closing the magazine and striding towards her. Maybe her eyes were playing tricks on her, but the tanned cruiser seemed a little more pale than normal.
"That… must have been rough." Nashville replied, remembering the nightmarish flight at the start of this whole ordeal.
"You'd know, wouldn't you?" Helena replied, the youngest cruiser passing Brooklyn to give Nashville a quick hug. "How was the osprey?" She probably got all she needed out of the change in Nashville's expression.
"Let's not talk about this." Honolulu interjected before she could reply. "Captain Newman gave you a room in the barracks over at Smokey Point, correct?"
Nashville frowned. She knew she'd been assigned quarters once she'd arrived at Naval Station Everett, but the team had been so busy Nashville hadn't investigated her new quarters. The fact they were in a separate complex from the offices and port facilities only increased their problems. Come to think of it, she didn't even have a driver's licence! Getting to the off-base housing was going to be a little complicated.
"I think so?" Nashville supplied, removing her phone from her hold. "I think I have more information on it here…"
"Don't bother." Brooklyn commanded, the lead ship taking charge of their group. She walked past the three, her sisters belatedly following her into the parking lot. "We'll rent a hotel room and stay there together. Should help with any noise problems, as well."
"Noise problems?" Nashville asked, ignoring the mild rain that met her outside. "What will we be doing?"
"You'll know in good time, Sister." Brooklyn answered cryptically, "You'll know."
Searching her other sister's faces didn't yield any answers.
"Don't look at me." Honolulu supplied, returning Nashville's gaze with a shrug. "She's been talking about this for days, now, but she's kept it secret."
"Since she's being coy about it, it's probably something we wouldn't agree to if we knew beforehand." Helena speculated, taking a sip from a thermos she'd must have been storing in her hold. "Perhaps it's some kind of training?"
Nashville didn't like the hopeful edge to Helena's voice. All the Brooklyns held themselves to a high standard, but the quiet cruiser applied herself to training more than most. Come to think of it, with all this abyssal business, she'd started to fall behind behind on practice. Given her performance in the battle with the enemy carrier, she certainly needed it.
"Is something wrong, Nashville?"
Brooklyn had stopped at a dark hatchback, its smooth exterior and thin lights another reminder of how much things had changed since her scrapping.
"Oh!" The cruiser shook her head, thoughts refocusing on the present. "I can't talk about it, sorry."
"Classified, huh?" The nameship said, her normally haughty voice softening for a second. It didn't last long, however, before her authoritative persona returned. "Nashville, I don't want you thinking about that stuff tonight, alright? The purpose of leave is to destress, not dwell on problems, understand?"
"Yeah, sis." Nashville accepted the scolding.
"Besides," Brooklyn continued, the car's thin flashing as Helena unlocked it, "after the activity I have planned for tonight, I'll need your help arranging a schedule for Sunday."
The four piled into the car, Nashville's sisters volunteering her for the shotgun seat. Since she was newer to being partially human, they argued, the drive would be easier for her if she sat in the front. For her, it also meant avoiding the argument unfolding behind her.
"The Ascended Hotel's close." Brooklyn mused.
"They're booked for tonight." Honolulu stated. "I'd rather go for the Marriott, anyways."
"The Indigo has a better rating, and is cheaper." The nameship pointed out.
"Do we need a four-star hotel?" Honolulu asked, folding her arms petulantly. That got a rise out of Brooklyn.
"Why would you want to pay more for a worse hotel?"
Allowing her sister's lighthearted bickering to fade into the background, Nashville tried to relax. Brooklyn was the type of person to care about such things, while Honolulu was just trying to wind her up. Nashville wasn't sure Honolulu really knew how to talk with people, even her sisters, but she did help keep the other's expectations in check.
"...and a reservation is booked!"
Still, nobody would be proud of Nashville's recent performance. Guess it was fortunate her less-than-stellar exploits were classified, then.
"You know where that is, Nash?"
The cruiser jumped at Helena's words, her mind suddenly returning to the present.
"Um… No." Nashville replied, shaking her head. What hotel had they agreed on? "I haven't had time to learn the town."
"Oho!" Nashville's keel stiffened as Brooklyn's chuckle suddenly filled the car. That laugh never happened before something good. "I guess you're going to learn two things, then!"
"What?" Nashville asked, giving Helena in the driver's seat a pleading glance. What's with that smirk?
"Do you know how to use Google Maps, Nashville? You are the copilot here."
...shit.
Wasn't she supposed to be relaxing?
En route to the hotel, Brooklyn announced that she'd need some time to make the room 'ready' for what they were going to do. Judging by Honolulu's off-colored comments and Helena's increasingly exasperated questions, Nashville wasn't the only one who was getting tired of being led along by their sister. Brooklyn took all the comments in stride, however, returning them with another smug promise.
"Oh, you three. Could you let your sister prepare a pleasant surprise?"
"Who's it going to be 'pleasant' for?" Honolulu asked, although the edge to her voice had dulled.
"All of you, I hope." Brooklyn replied, opening the car door. "Some of it definitely will be."
With that, the door closed again, the car now minus one cruiser.
"I understand wanting to arrange something special for our short reunion," Helena sighed, "but at this point there's no way she's going to meet my expectations."
"Yeah." Nashville agreed, before another thought occurred to her. "Although none of you told me you were coming… I guess Brooklyn just cut two more people out of the loop for this part."
"We didn't tease you about this beforehand, though." Honolulu pointed out. "God, what's with all the suspense?"
After figuring out the phone's mapping program's search function, the three returned to the hotel, food safely stored away in their holds. Like many things about her new existence, thinking about storing food in their hulls, only to remove them later and eat them, thus putting them back into their hulls, but differently somehow, made Nashville's bridge hurt a little, but there was no way they'd be able to fit this much food into their rental car, let alone carry it the several stories up to the room they'd reserved.
After Helena and Honolulu gave Nashville an idea of the portion sizes restaurants were used to serving, they eventually settled on 'raiding' two or three different restaurants in the local area. Some had catering options, which streamlined the process, but for others they'd had to resort to consulting with the owner, trying to figure out how much their restaurant could actually prepare for them by the time they could get there. Nashville hadn't really realized how much she normally ate until the three cruisers started paying for it themselves!
"Hold on." Nashville stated, looking up from her phone.
"Yeah?" Honolulu asked, stopping short of calling a local pizza place.
"That's how we get her." Nashville snapped her fingers, chuckling to herself. "Food!"
It wouldn't work immediately, of course, as Trinitite probably had plenty of supplies from her raid on the Shelton Fred Meyer, but that could only last for a while. Using the eating habits of one of their Essexes, it shouldn't be that hard to draw up an estimate for how long the Abyssal's stores would last. They were already looking for criminal activity similar to what had happened at Shelton, but if she somehow had the money, they might have to take an alternate strategy. It wouldn't be easy to track every large food purchase and look for patterns, but the idea was worth running by Murray and the rest of the spooks.
"I don't think I'm supposed to be hearing about this." Helena noted, drawing the cruiser's attention away from her epiphany.
"Right." Nashville nodded, swallowing as she nervously glanced at her sisters. "Uh, I didn't say anything, okay?"
"Sure thing, sis." Honolulu nodded, a thin smile playing across her features. "I'll forget all about that."
After almost an hour of collecting food between restaurants and spending several hundred dollars between them, the brooklyn sisters returned to the hotel. Brooklyn must have finished… whatever she'd been preparing, because she was in the lobby to greet them. The blonde cruiser hastily pocketed a phone she'd been communicating on, before greeting the three with a smile.
"Did they give you any trouble?"
"Two restaurants asked for a day's warning next time." Nashville reported. "We lost twenty minutes waiting for them to get everything prepared." They weren't capital ships, but food four four cruisers, even when split between three restaurants, ended up being a major disruption for them. It wasn't nearly as bad as back when she'd been a steel hull, but Nashville was starting to appreciate how much work the navy's cooks did to keep their ships fed.
"I see." Brooklyn admitted, biting her lip and looking towards Helena. "Apologies, it seems my planning wasn't quite what it should have been."
"Are you finally going to show us your whole plan, now?" Honolulu asked. "There's no surprises after this one, right?"
Their oldest sister nodded, producing three keycards and handing one to each of them.
"There might be, but I'm not sure what those are going to be either." Before anyone could reply, she turned, adding. "You'll understand when we get there. Follow me."
The three cruisers hurried after their sister. Hopefully, whatever was up there would be nice, but Nashville couldn't shake the feeling Brooklyn's 'surprise' was just an excuse to get everyone to do something they wouldn't agree to otherwise.
It was… both, actually.
Nashville stood in the suite's main room, staring at the massive television set into the room's wall. On the screen, the blown-up image of a blue-haired woman waved at her.
"Hey, Sister." She smiled, leaning back in her office chair. "We haven't been introduced, have we?"
"Saint Louis?" Nashville asked, frozen in the doorway. She'd never met her half-sister in her previous life, something she hadn't realized she had missed until she had returned. Last she checked, she was still in Zuoying as a part of the Seventh Fleet's current base. "What time is it over there?"
"It's Sunday afternoon. If an emergency crops up I'll have to go, but for now I can spend my afternoon with family!"
"Sadly, Philadelphia is deployed in The Atlantic," Brooklyn admitted, the tanned cruiser walking into the center of the room and adjusting a tiny camera mounted on a tripod, "but that shouldn't stop us trying this out! Think of it as a trial run for when all of us have returned."
Nashville's thoughts drifted to The Falklands for a moment, and the cruiser's mood sank. She wasn't quite ready to say anything about that yet, though. Not until she knew exactly how much they'd kept from her. Instead, she focused on the table Brooklyn had referred to.
The small camera was directed downwards, focused on a map of Europe sprawled across the coffee table. Judging by the way the land and sea was partitioned and how rough the borders were, as well as tokens representing pre-dreadnoughts and primitive artillery pieces arrayed on the colorful board, Nashville guessed this was some kind of risk-like game. She'd known some of her crew liked that kind of game, but she wasn't sure why Brooklyn was so keen on playing it until she got a look at the title on the game's box.
"Diplomacy." Nashville said aloud, picking up the box and looking over the art on it's glossy cover. In sharp contrast to the wargame set before her, the box depicted the image of a cozy study, shadowy men in clothing a few decades before her time discussing something over cigars and champagne. "Of course you'd have us play this."
"You've heard of it?" Brooklyn questioned, and Nashville shook her head. "Ah. It's been around since the fifties, so it wouldn't surprise me if you'd had."
"Isn't this some kind of friendship destroyer?" Helena asked, eying the map suspiciously. "I heard some English battleships tried this out a year ago, and only just started talking to each other again."
"You're exaggerating, dear." Brooklyn tempered. "That was only between two of them, and the fallout only lasted for a couple of weeks. As long as we understand that this game requires us to lie to and betray each other, I'm sure things will go well once we've gotten used to the rules."
"Okay…" Honolulu asked, her face uncharacteristically calculating. "...It just looks like a different version of risk to me, but if the real game comes from stabbing each other in the back, I'm up for it."
"You don't know how much work it was to get this setup figured out." Saint Louis added, her voice from the television's speakers filling the room. "I don't think it'll work perfectly, but we've already put so much effort into this. Let's at least give it a shot."
"Alright." Nashville announced, brushing some hair away from her brow as she studied the board. "Let's conquer… Europe, I guess. This is world war 1, right?"
The game was proceeding… decently. It was ten minutes into the discussion phase of the first turn, and Nashville was busy studying the board. As Russia, Nashville had a lot of land to expand into, and defend. Since the rules said no one should play as Germany with five players, she had to use her fleet to take as much of the country as possible before England (Helena) or France (Brooklyn) gained too much power, while at the same time protecting herself from whatever schemes Honolulu was concocting in Austria Hungary. At the same time, Saint Louis had that fleet she needed to move into the black sea, and if she sat in port while everyone else gobbled up Italy and Germany she was going to be in a bad position.
It didn't help that the Cruiser wasn't entirely sure how combat worked yet, either. Apparently, two ships couldn't sink each other unless one trapped the other in a bay somewhere, and even then they'd need 'support' to put them down for good. Imagining one of the old battlewagons taking hits until they were physically pushed onto land was amusing, but a bit hard to get used to.
Let's see… She needed to figure out something with Saint Louis to keep the balkans from killing her, but she was busy exchanging some kind of electronic messages with Honolulu, who'd pulled a laptop out of her hold and was quietly alternating between typing on it and looking over the screen at the board. Were they scheming against her, or was Honolulu trying to get support to take Italy from Brooklyn?
It was all the stress of command, with none of the reward or consequences. Why'd she agree to playing this, again?
"Hey, Nashville." Brooklyn's voice removed Nashville from her fretting, as she and Helena left the hotel room's bedroom. They'd been plotting in there for about five minutes, now, which didn't help with Nashville's stress. If they were also forming a power bloc, then Nashville's advantage in starting forces wasn't going to mean much. "Could I talk to you?"
"Yeah." She nodded, passing Helena as she made her way to the kitchen, where they'd filled the table with a mix of mediteranian and Italian food, as well as several Chicago-style pizzas. Even with the food's alluring smell filling the hotel suite, the game had her staring at the board instead of enjoying the meal. Hopefully the radiant heater they'd set up would keep everything warm for them as they schemed against each other.
Man, what a happy family reunion.
Brooklyn slid the door behind them, dulling the classical music they had been playing to suppress the sound of conversation. Now that they were alone, Nashville sighed, trying to picture the game board in her mind.
"So… about Germany." She started, but her older sister's look made her trail off. Brooklyn was leaning against the door, searching Nashville's face for something. Every second the dead air continued it felt more oppressive, before finally her sister seemed to deflate, sighing and slumping against the door.
"Nashville." She started, looking back up to meet the cruiser's gaze. "I got briefed on The Abyssal."
For a moment, Nashville thought one of her shafts had seized up. The cruiser stiffened, wondering why she hadn't thought about that before. They had said something about briefing every american flagship on the coast, hadn't they?
"So," Nashville started, her mind racing. Had she chosen Diplomacy because it sounded up the 'Diplomat Cruiser's alley, or was it a ploy to get some alone time with her? "you know, then."
"Not explicitly, but it wasn't hard to draw a parallel from you getting rushed out of the fleet on an osprey and the crisis ONI's dealing with." She stood, approaching Nashville and taking a seat next to her on the bed. "Seeing how you've been acting tonight was proof enough for me, but thank you for confirming that."
She knew. Nashville never really thought of hiding her failure from her sisters, but with her recent actions hidden from most of the Navy, she'd found a silver lining in knowing she hadn't disappointed the class. Now that at least some of them had been briefed, that bright side had been snuffed out like seawater sloshing into a boiler.
"Nash." A hand fell on her port shoulder. She looked up, forcing herself to meet Brooklyn's eyes. "I wasn't there, so I don't know how well you did."
Brooklyn suddenly pulled, drawing Nashville into a hug. "It's just one battle, alright? No matter what happens, and I know the team you're in is going to find this slippery bitch. Don't let it get to your head, alright? Nobody's faced something like this before."
"What, an unsupported aircraft carrier?" Nashville shot back, but she couldn't put any bitterness into her words. She wrapped her own hands around her sister, drawing the hug tighter. Her armored chest pressed against the loose clothing of her sister, reminding her of her desperate need of a refit. If Honolulu or Brooklyn, with their advanced radar, had gone on that osprey, instead of her, then the Abyssal's smoke screen wouldn't have been a problem.
"Stop that." Brooklyn commanded, her grip tightening. "You're a cruiser. You don't question orders, correct?"
Nashville gave a short nod. As a ship, that was true in general, but part of her reorientation had included images of the Nuremberg trials and current policies on the topic. "Not legal ones."
"Then that loss wasn't your fault." Brooklyn sighed again. "Look. We're here to forget about the week, alright? You can get back to being a spy cruiser on monday. Until then..." The hug broke and Brooklyn stood. The dignified cruiser had returned. "...how about Germany?"
Nashville paused, unsure how to bring up the next topic. The conversation had reminded her, and she needed to bring this up before the opportunity passed.
"Actually, one more thing. What do you know about the Falklands?"
She'd wanted to be accusatory, but after Brooklyn's sincere attempt to help, some of the anger behind keeping that secret from her had faded. She still needed to know the answer, though, even if it felt like taking Brooklyn's kindness and throwing it back in her face.
There was another painful pause as her older sister looked back at her, but Nashville was willing to wait for her to gather her words.
"We don't know anything." She finally asserted. "Nashville, almost all of Germany's East Asia Squadron was chased down and sunk near there during the first world war."
"Yes." Nashville replied. "But how many Armored Cruiser Abyssals have we seen? We don't have many reports on the Falklands, but when I had time I looked at reports from submarines passing through the area. That's an american fleet, Brooklyn." She hadn't convinced herself on the true identity of the Tyrant Cruiser Princess in the Falklands, especially since the name the abyssal transmissions used when they were warning away outsiders hadn't made much sense, but now that she was forcing her sister to see the truth she found herself coming to grips with the revelation herself.
It wasn't easy, and the look on Brooklyn's face confirmed that. She needed to change the topic.
"...When were you going to tell me the truth about their princesses?"
Brooklyn sat back down again. Neither of them looked at the other as the older sister spoke up.
"...How they're us? But twisted?"
"Yeah."
Brooklyn sighed again, falling back onto the bed with a thunk.
"I don't know. None of us talked about it, but I think we've all had suspicions that It, whatever it is, got to Phoenix. It was just- never the right time to talk about something so morbid. You've only been back for a couple of months, and with all the preparation for Bikini there we didn't have much alone time."
"Fair enough." Nashville admitted. Brooklyn gave a weak excuse, but if Boise or Savannah returned right now, Nashville wasn't sure she wouldn't do the same. A moment passed, but this time the silence didn't carry any tension.
"So…" Brooklyn finally started again, sitting up. "What are we going to do with Germany? You know Helena is looking to take either most of it or the nordic countries."
"Did she tell you that?"
"She didn't have to." Brooklyn replied with a smirk. "Isn't it obvious?"
"I don't know!" Nashville snapped back at her, but since it was over something so small, Brooklyn only laughed in response. "Have you played this game before?"
"No!" She chuckled. "How about this. You help me take Munich, I'll support you moving into Berlin next turn."
Nashville could feel the knife in her back already, but smiled anyways.
"Deal."
In the end, the short alliance between Brooklyn, Helena, and Nashville fell apart, leaving Brooklyn and Nashville against everyone else in the family. The two vs three war that ensued never concluded, however, as news of an abyssal strike force just northwest of the Philippines disrupted the game, forcing Saint Louis to drop out in case they went further north. Nashville knew she was doomed if it had continued, but she couldn't say she was opposed to giving the game another try.
Woo, techincal issues! Hopefully the chapter is actually out, now. Thanks to Jesseetheswift's fanart on SB and my desperate attempts to preserve my mental health by avoiding any and all political news for this chapter getting out as soon as it did.
So... yeah. Here's a slice of life interlude I did. I guess the fic could have done without it, but I really wanted to write a segment of Nashville's family and develop her a little more, so here we go. For designs and personalities, I'm basing the rigging and clothing very loosely on Kancolle's Helena, which showed up after I already had a rough idea of what Nashville would look like, with Azure Lane being used as a basic template for appearance and personality for Nashville's sisters that appear in the game.
Funnily enough, I don't think Nashville is in anything.
For clothes, I'm trying to think of a combination of the AL and KC designs, using the excuse that Helena's only a half sister. How exactly does that look? No clue. I'm not an artist until I have to dust off my wacom again for when Trinitite, uh... nevermind. Let me know if I missed anything too bad in my last editing pass. This'll get cross-posted to FFN after I've had some sleep and am willing to deal with their publishing system.