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Chapter 4: Growing Up is an Unnatural Part of Life

The next second was as if a bomb had gone off in the building. Jake felt as if his whole body had exploded with the surge of energy that rush through it. But just as fast it was over.
When Jake opened his eyes, his dragon vision saw through the clouds of dust all around him. It took him a minute to understand what he was seeing though. It was the edge of the hole in the roof.
He was a giant.
Standing at 40 feet tall, the top of his head stuck out of the roof. His arms brushed the walls as he shifted and he could feel his tree-trunk thick tail sweep whole crates away, turning them into splinters just by touching them.
He had to act fast, the criminals were blinded from the dust thrown up by his growth, but they'd be able to see again soon. Yanking down the chains from more light fixtures (thankfully not caving in the roof any further. Jake fashioned them into a giant lasso and slipped it around the criminals, quickly pulling them all into a bunch and tying them up with the remaining length of the chain.
By now the dust was thinning, Jake hurriedly grabbed the bundle of criminals and proceeded to sniff out any others nearby. He'd almost gotten them all when the dust was clear enough for him to be seen. One twitchy kid remained, unfortunately, he was holding a fully automatic and looked like he'd wet himself any second at the sight of Jake appearing out of the dust.
Jake tried to grab him quickly, but the gun went off. Jake winced reactively as he felt the multiple hits in his shoulder before he snagged the last criminal who fainted dead away.
Once he had them all bundled up tight for the cops, Jake checked where the bullets had hit. Amazingly, there was almost no sign of it. The only clue was one or two of his scales were dinged slightly, but the indents were so minor as to be nearly invisible, save for his powerful eyesight.

As Jake flew away from the harbor and back towards the shop, he was witness to the magical creatures having their field day. Herds of Centaurs were galloping down the street, pixies were dive bombing humans, he even saw a leprechaun trying to use a gold coin to buy some irish whisky from an all night liquor store.
Mostly his mind was on what had happened at the warehouse. The fact that the bullets hadn't hurt him had been gladdening, but it made him wonder... Was it simply part of the growth? Was he only bullet proof when huge? Or was this some new power that adult dragon scales had? He was determined to ask his grandfather about it all when he got back to the shop, whatever the case.

"Gone? What do you mean gone?"
"Emergency meeting kid, he had to."
Jake had arrived at the shop only to find his Grandfather missing and Fu guarding the shop from various troublemakers that had scattered when Jake arrived.
"What meeting?" Jake asked, feeling a little worried, looking down the street at all the playing magical creatures, wondering if the city would even be standing in another 23 hours.
"Emergency meeting of the Dragon counsel," Fu explained, "He wouldn't say much, just that it had something to do with todays Magical 'reset' at Midnight."
"I don't know Fu. I've got a weird feeling something's wrong here."
"You're tellin' me. Look at you, 40 feet tall if you're an inch and one hour hasn't gone by."
"Wait, what?" Jake asked, surprised, "Fu, are you saying I'm not done growing yet?"
"Heck no, you just got your first spurt. And let me tell ya kid, with your height doubling every hour, you are gonna out class every dragon on this planet."
"Doubling?" Jake looked worried. It was true he hadn't measured himself after the candy binge and the muscle he'd gained, but he thought he hadn't gown in that time at all. But if Jake had checked, he'd have found he'd grown to 20 feet tall by the time the first spurt had hit...
"Yep," Fu pulled a calculator from his folds, "And with some basic math, a little converting and... Wow, congratulations kid, you'll be the first dragon nearly the size of a planet yourself."
Jake would have collapsed then and there, but doing so would have crushed the shop.
"A planet!?" he mumbled worriedly, "Are you serious!?"
"Well not quite kid, you'll be just over six thousand three hundred miles tall, and the planet is only just under eight thousand, so it'll be a sizable difference, but you'd still be a new content unto yourself."
This time Jake did collapse, though he fell into the street thankfully and missed other magical creatures running past.
A whole continent in size... After a long stretch of no thoughts on the subject, Jake simply decided he didn't know how to feel about that.

Jake would never be sure quite how long he lay in the street just trying to wrap his mind around such an idea. He knew it wasn't an hour because he didn't feel the next spurt of growth in that time, but whether it was just a few minutes or nearly a half hour he couldn't be sure. Fu had left to make sure the back of the shop was secure and Jakes massive size prevented anyone from coming near him as he stared at the sky.
All he knew is an unidentifiable amount of time later, he awoke to a loud noise that reverberated through the concrete. He'd felt only one such earth rumbling vibration once before, some years back.
On September 11th.
Somewhere, not far away, a large building or buildings had collapsed or been blown apart.
His instincts had him in the air before he even knew he'd stood up. Flying above the city Jake spotted the zone of destruction quickly. Being on the Jersey side of the River, he was half-tempted to just ignore it. But then he noticed something rising through the dust and rubble.
For a weird moment Jake thought it was another dragon growing big like him, but the creature, despite being scaly, had no wings. The thing was large and ovoid in shape, covered in green scales and spotted with darker green splotches all over. A pair of large legs supported it as it stood, clawed feet ripping into the concrete below. It had four arms oddly enough, each looking strong, but still a bit weaker than such a huge body should have had. Atop the curve of it's rounded body was a long neck, thin, but still as big around as a car for the creatures size. It's face was reptilian, but with two extra eyes on horns of some sort where the forehead was.
Jake hovered in mid air, taking all this in for a long moment before he spotted the unicorn in the creatures hand as it brought the struggling creature up to it's huge mouth. Jake sped into action, dive bombing the monsters face and slashing with his claws as he tried to pull the unicorn free.
The creature didn't even react to the slashes save to jive jake a hard look before batting him away. Jake tumbled through the air but managed to regain his orientation quickly. Flying back up, he was ready to make another run at the creature, when he noticed something odd.
The creature was holding the unicorn close to it's face, but didn't seem to want to eat it. Instead, the scaly being inhaled deeply and Jake watched in amazement and some horror as a golden yellow energy was pulled from the unicorn and sucked down the creatures throat.
The unicorns struggles weakened as the reptile swelled slowly adding another dozen feet on it's hight before it stopped and threw the unicorn away.
Jake barely managed to catch the poor thing before it hit the ground. The Unicorn was in a sorry shape, it looked completely emaciated, as though it hadn't eaten in weeks and could die of starvation at any moment. But even as Jake held it, he could see some of the same golden energy pulled from his body and enter the unicorn, helping ease it's pain and restoring the creature slightly.
Jake pondered this turn of events and decided, whatever the monsters intentions, he needed to get the unicorn back to Fu first. So leaving the monster to search through the streets, Jake flew the poor unicorn back to the shop.

“This is bad kid, this is really bad,” Fu muttered looking over the unicorn and listening to Jakes story, “That thing drained her magic. She would have been dead in hours if you hadn't caught her.”
“It drained her magic?” Jake asked from the front of the store, where his head could barely fit inside the doorway, “How is that possible? I thought noting could transfer magic energies.”
“Almost nothing kid, you yourself did it when you caught her. Well, more like she did it to you sort of. Place a dry sponge against a wet sponge and the dry one will absorb some water.”
“Back to the monster Fu, what are we going to do about this thing? If it's feeing on magical energies this is the worst day it could have shown up. Magical creatures are out in force.”
Fu sighed, “I won't kid ya kid, this is the worst situation I've seen yet. I bet this thing has something to do with what Gramps was talking about too.”
“The emergency about the 'reset' at midnight?” Jake mused and then a thought struck him, “Fu, all the magical creatures have to agree and pool the magic right?”
“Yeah.” the magical Sharpei nodded.
“So, if this creature is sucking up the magic and it's not part of the magical community...”
“...then if it absorbs enough that when the reset time comes it'll be impossible.” Fu finished with eyes wide, “Kid you've got to get out there and stop this creature however you can!”
“But how can I?” Jake asked, “Last I saw it was almost four times my size.”
Jake paused as he felt a tingle run through his body, quickly yanking his head out the door as he felt his body begin to grow again. As his body reached a full 80 feet tall the shop front didn't even reach his knees.
“Well, that should help some at least,” Fu replied stepping out of the shop, “Now go get 'em kid. I'll spread the word for magical beings to get out of the way.”
Jake just nodded, not trusting his voice to not break windows at his new size. Flying off Jake began what was to be the longest day of his life.

Dawn is a beautiful time of the day. Normally. As the sun rose over New York this day it found a scene not unlike the classic Godzilla movies. The giant green monster tussled with a near equally sized dragon, Jake. Jake was really getting worried now, they'd been at it for just over five hours, and despite his size doubling every hour, the creature managed to find just enough magical beings to drain dry and keep up.
By now Jakes Grandpa had returned, along with whatever dragons could be spared, but even the biggest of their natural forms wouldn't have been more than child sized to Jake at this point. So they had mostly set up a sort of search and rescue team for all the beings that had been drained and helped get others out of the way.
Jake backed off briefly from the fight, silently marveling that he was now twice as tall as the Empire State Building, the tallest building in New York. This also struck a harsh chord though as jake realized he was doing almost as much damage to the city as the monster. True, if he won, everything could be reset at midnight, but if he lost... Jake couldn't bear the thought and tackled the creature again, pushing it closer to the ocean, in hopes of dragging the battle out to sea.
The plan worked and huge waves crashed against the buildings as Jake and the creature tumbed into the sea. Jake would have been overcome with grief if he focused on how many might have just drowned from the waves, but he kept his mind focused on the battle. He had to win. He had to set everything right.

Noontime found the combatants fighting further out at see, the water barely coming up to jakes thighs as he now towered an amazing 31 miles tall, taller than New York was wide. By now a plan was forming in Jakes mind as to what to do with the creature, who still managed to keep up by finding mermaids and silkies in the ocean depths.
Jake had tried many ways of getting the magic out of the creature, trying to make it throw up, squeezing it tightly, even trying to roast it with his breath did little to nothing. There was only one thing he could think of. He'd need to ware down the monster, wait until the last hour (if possible) then hurl the giant creature into the sun. He could only pray he'd have the strength to do so before their time ran out.
For now, all he could do was keep the creature from feasting on magic. So far it had worked, the monster was a head shorter than Jake by this point and soon Jake would double in size again.
However, when the one o' clock growth came about, he had a problem. The Earths atmosphere was only sixty miles thick, and he was fast approaching that limit. The cold, void of space loomed over him and he had to crouch to keep breathing.

From there the battle got harder. Ever hour Jake ducked lower and lower, staying within the atmosphere as best he could, and still the monster grew beside him, completely unhindered by the cold vacuum of space.
Six o' clock (NY time) was fast approaching, and Jake was pressed flat against the planet, his back in the cold of space. If not for his thick dragon scales it would have hurt like hell. The monster was barely the size of his arm, despite having near free reign for the past couple hours.
Jake braced himself, took the deepest breath he dared, and grabbed the monster before standing up. The cold was like a lance through his heart, but he braved it as he summoned all his strength to hurl the creature directly at the sun.
It vanished into the sunlight and Jake dropped to the planet, unsure if it had even worked.

Midnight neared, Jakes skin inexplicably burned with the cold of space, Even pressed in close to the planet,, much of his body was still in the cold of space. He concentrated on his inner fire, trying desperately to stay warm as the final moments ticked down.
He could feel it, the last spurt happening and at the same time, this other force, a gathering of power. But he could not identify it as he slipped into unconsciousness from lack of air.

-------------

His eyes snapped open, rubble covered his body. He only had a moment before he dug his way through the wooden planks below and feel into the water.
He'd come back, the day had started over, and he'd just missed getting spotted by the gangsters above. Swimming away, he emerged from the water and took the time to look over himself. He was back to his old normal dragon body as far as he could see. Nothing unusual or out of the ordinary.
Still, before he did anything else, he wanted those crooks caught. So he slipped over to a pay phone and dialed the police, informing them of what he'd seen. He left back for the shop as soon as the cops arrived and busted the art smugglers.

Sometime later he sat in the shop, explaining all that had happened to his friends. Needless to say, his Grandpa and Fu remembered, but he had to fill in Trixy and Spud on all the details. He was also thankful to hear that his plan had worked. Even with his strength, the monster had hit the sun, been vaporized, and released all the magical energy just in time. And everything had been restored to normal.

Jake returned home that night and sighed happily as he sank into bed. Idly he turned his hand into a claw and back again, a bit of reassurance that all was under control once more.
Still, he couldn't stop thinking about all the changes he'd gone through, and how good some of them had felt. Maybe some day he'd have to explore the possibilities.
For now though, all he wanted was to sleep. He had been one long day...

THE END

Description
Chapter 4: Growing Up is an Unnatural Part of Life

The next second was as if a bomb had gone off in the building. Jake felt as if his whole body had exploded with the surge of energy that rush through it. But just as fast it was over.
When Jake opened his eyes, his dragon vision saw through the clouds of dust all around him. It took him a minute to understand what he was seeing though. It was the edge of the hole in the roof.
He was a giant.
Standing at 40 feet tall, the top of his head stuck out of the roof. His arms brushed the walls as he shifted and he could feel his tree-trunk thick tail sweep whole crates away, turning them into splinters just by touching them.
He had to act fast, the criminals were blinded from the dust thrown up by his growth, but they'd be able to see again soon. Yanking down the chains from more light fixtures (thankfully not caving in the roof any further. Jake fashioned them into a giant lasso and slipped it around the criminals, quickly pulling them all into a bunch and tying them up with the remaining length of the chain.
By now the dust was thinning, Jake hurriedly grabbed the bundle of criminals and proceeded to sniff out any others nearby. He'd almost gotten them all when the dust was clear enough for him to be seen. One twitchy kid remained, unfortunately, he was holding a fully automatic and looked like he'd wet himself any second at the sight of Jake appearing out of the dust.
Jake tried to grab him quickly, but the gun went off. Jake winced reactively as he felt the multiple hits in his shoulder before he snagged the last criminal who fainted dead away.
Once he had them all bundled up tight for the cops, Jake checked where the bullets had hit. Amazingly, there was almost no sign of it. The only clue was one or two of his scales were dinged slightly, but the indents were so minor as to be nearly invisible, save for his powerful eyesight.

As Jake flew away from the harbor and back towards the shop, he was witness to the magical creatures having their field day. Herds of Centaurs were galloping down the street, pixies were dive bombing humans, he even saw a leprechaun trying to use a gold coin to buy some irish whisky from an all night liquor store.
Mostly his mind was on what had happened at the warehouse. The fact that the bullets hadn't hurt him had been gladdening, but it made him wonder... Was it simply part of the growth? Was he only bullet proof when huge? Or was this some new power that adult dragon scales had? He was determined to ask his grandfather about it all when he got back to the shop, whatever the case.

"Gone? What do you mean gone?"
"Emergency meeting kid, he had to."
Jake had arrived at the shop only to find his Grandfather missing and Fu guarding the shop from various troublemakers that had scattered when Jake arrived.
"What meeting?" Jake asked, feeling a little worried, looking down the street at all the playing magical creatures, wondering if the city would even be standing in another 23 hours.
"Emergency meeting of the Dragon counsel," Fu explained, "He wouldn't say much, just that it had something to do with todays Magical 'reset' at Midnight."
"I don't know Fu. I've got a weird feeling something's wrong here."
"You're tellin' me. Look at you, 40 feet tall if you're an inch and one hour hasn't gone by."
"Wait, what?" Jake asked, surprised, "Fu, are you saying I'm not done growing yet?"
"Heck no, you just got your first spurt. And let me tell ya kid, with your height doubling every hour, you are gonna out class every dragon on this planet."
"Doubling?" Jake looked worried. It was true he hadn't measured himself after the candy binge and the muscle he'd gained, but he thought he hadn't gown in that time at all. But if Jake had checked, he'd have found he'd grown to 20 feet tall by the time the first spurt had hit...
"Yep," Fu pulled a calculator from his folds, "And with some basic math, a little converting and... Wow, congratulations kid, you'll be the first dragon nearly the size of a planet yourself."
Jake would have collapsed then and there, but doing so would have crushed the shop.
"A planet!?" he mumbled worriedly, "Are you serious!?"
"Well not quite kid, you'll be just over six thousand three hundred miles tall, and the planet is only just under eight thousand, so it'll be a sizable difference, but you'd still be a new content unto yourself."
This time Jake did collapse, though he fell into the street thankfully and missed other magical creatures running past.
A whole continent in size... After a long stretch of no thoughts on the subject, Jake simply decided he didn't know how to feel about that.

Jake would never be sure quite how long he lay in the street just trying to wrap his mind around such an idea. He knew it wasn't an hour because he didn't feel the next spurt of growth in that time, but whether it was just a few minutes or nearly a half hour he couldn't be sure. Fu had left to make sure the back of the shop was secure and Jakes massive size prevented anyone from coming near him as he stared at the sky.
All he knew is an unidentifiable amount of time later, he awoke to a loud noise that reverberated through the concrete. He'd felt only one such earth rumbling vibration once before, some years back.
On September 11th.
Somewhere, not far away, a large building or buildings had collapsed or been blown apart.
His instincts had him in the air before he even knew he'd stood up. Flying above the city Jake spotted the zone of destruction quickly. Being on the Jersey side of the River, he was half-tempted to just ignore it. But then he noticed something rising through the dust and rubble.
For a weird moment Jake thought it was another dragon growing big like him, but the creature, despite being scaly, had no wings. The thing was large and ovoid in shape, covered in green scales and spotted with darker green splotches all over. A pair of large legs supported it as it stood, clawed feet ripping into the concrete below. It had four arms oddly enough, each looking strong, but still a bit weaker than such a huge body should have had. Atop the curve of it's rounded body was a long neck, thin, but still as big around as a car for the creatures size. It's face was reptilian, but with two extra eyes on horns of some sort where the forehead was.
Jake hovered in mid air, taking all this in for a long moment before he spotted the unicorn in the creatures hand as it brought the struggling creature up to it's huge mouth. Jake sped into action, dive bombing the monsters face and slashing with his claws as he tried to pull the unicorn free.
The creature didn't even react to the slashes save to jive jake a hard look before batting him away. Jake tumbled through the air but managed to regain his orientation quickly. Flying back up, he was ready to make another run at the creature, when he noticed something odd.
The creature was holding the unicorn close to it's face, but didn't seem to want to eat it. Instead, the scaly being inhaled deeply and Jake watched in amazement and some horror as a golden yellow energy was pulled from the unicorn and sucked down the creatures throat.
The unicorns struggles weakened as the reptile swelled slowly adding another dozen feet on it's hight before it stopped and threw the unicorn away.
Jake barely managed to catch the poor thing before it hit the ground. The Unicorn was in a sorry shape, it looked completely emaciated, as though it hadn't eaten in weeks and could die of starvation at any moment. But even as Jake held it, he could see some of the same golden energy pulled from his body and enter the unicorn, helping ease it's pain and restoring the creature slightly.
Jake pondered this turn of events and decided, whatever the monsters intentions, he needed to get the unicorn back to Fu first. So leaving the monster to search through the streets, Jake flew the poor unicorn back to the shop.

“This is bad kid, this is really bad,” Fu muttered looking over the unicorn and listening to Jakes story, “That thing drained her magic. She would have been dead in hours if you hadn't caught her.”
“It drained her magic?” Jake asked from the front of the store, where his head could barely fit inside the doorway, “How is that possible? I thought noting could transfer magic energies.”
“Almost nothing kid, you yourself did it when you caught her. Well, more like she did it to you sort of. Place a dry sponge against a wet sponge and the dry one will absorb some water.”
“Back to the monster Fu, what are we going to do about this thing? If it's feeing on magical energies this is the worst day it could have shown up. Magical creatures are out in force.”
Fu sighed, “I won't kid ya kid, this is the worst situation I've seen yet. I bet this thing has something to do with what Gramps was talking about too.”
“The emergency about the 'reset' at midnight?” Jake mused and then a thought struck him, “Fu, all the magical creatures have to agree and pool the magic right?”
“Yeah.” the magical Sharpei nodded.
“So, if this creature is sucking up the magic and it's not part of the magical community...”
“...then if it absorbs enough that when the reset time comes it'll be impossible.” Fu finished with eyes wide, “Kid you've got to get out there and stop this creature however you can!”
“But how can I?” Jake asked, “Last I saw it was almost four times my size.”
Jake paused as he felt a tingle run through his body, quickly yanking his head out the door as he felt his body begin to grow again. As his body reached a full 80 feet tall the shop front didn't even reach his knees.
“Well, that should help some at least,” Fu replied stepping out of the shop, “Now go get 'em kid. I'll spread the word for magical beings to get out of the way.”
Jake just nodded, not trusting his voice to not break windows at his new size. Flying off Jake began what was to be the longest day of his life.

Dawn is a beautiful time of the day. Normally. As the sun rose over New York this day it found a scene not unlike the classic Godzilla movies. The giant green monster tussled with a near equally sized dragon, Jake. Jake was really getting worried now, they'd been at it for just over five hours, and despite his size doubling every hour, the creature managed to find just enough magical beings to drain dry and keep up.
By now Jakes Grandpa had returned, along with whatever dragons could be spared, but even the biggest of their natural forms wouldn't have been more than child sized to Jake at this point. So they had mostly set up a sort of search and rescue team for all the beings that had been drained and helped get others out of the way.
Jake backed off briefly from the fight, silently marveling that he was now twice as tall as the Empire State Building, the tallest building in New York. This also struck a harsh chord though as jake realized he was doing almost as much damage to the city as the monster. True, if he won, everything could be reset at midnight, but if he lost... Jake couldn't bear the thought and tackled the creature again, pushing it closer to the ocean, in hopes of dragging the battle out to sea.
The plan worked and huge waves crashed against the buildings as Jake and the creature tumbed into the sea. Jake would have been overcome with grief if he focused on how many might have just drowned from the waves, but he kept his mind focused on the battle. He had to win. He had to set everything right.

Noontime found the combatants fighting further out at see, the water barely coming up to jakes thighs as he now towered an amazing 31 miles tall, taller than New York was wide. By now a plan was forming in Jakes mind as to what to do with the creature, who still managed to keep up by finding mermaids and silkies in the ocean depths.
Jake had tried many ways of getting the magic out of the creature, trying to make it throw up, squeezing it tightly, even trying to roast it with his breath did little to nothing. There was only one thing he could think of. He'd need to ware down the monster, wait until the last hour (if possible) then hurl the giant creature into the sun. He could only pray he'd have the strength to do so before their time ran out.
For now, all he could do was keep the creature from feasting on magic. So far it had worked, the monster was a head shorter than Jake by this point and soon Jake would double in size again.
However, when the one o' clock growth came about, he had a problem. The Earths atmosphere was only sixty miles thick, and he was fast approaching that limit. The cold, void of space loomed over him and he had to crouch to keep breathing.

From there the battle got harder. Ever hour Jake ducked lower and lower, staying within the atmosphere as best he could, and still the monster grew beside him, completely unhindered by the cold vacuum of space.
Six o' clock (NY time) was fast approaching, and Jake was pressed flat against the planet, his back in the cold of space. If not for his thick dragon scales it would have hurt like hell. The monster was barely the size of his arm, despite having near free reign for the past couple hours.
Jake braced himself, took the deepest breath he dared, and grabbed the monster before standing up. The cold was like a lance through his heart, but he braved it as he summoned all his strength to hurl the creature directly at the sun.
It vanished into the sunlight and Jake dropped to the planet, unsure if it had even worked.

Midnight neared, Jakes skin inexplicably burned with the cold of space, Even pressed in close to the planet,, much of his body was still in the cold of space. He concentrated on his inner fire, trying desperately to stay warm as the final moments ticked down.
He could feel it, the last spurt happening and at the same time, this other force, a gathering of power. But he could not identify it as he slipped into unconsciousness from lack of air.

-------------

His eyes snapped open, rubble covered his body. He only had a moment before he dug his way through the wooden planks below and feel into the water.
He'd come back, the day had started over, and he'd just missed getting spotted by the gangsters above. Swimming away, he emerged from the water and took the time to look over himself. He was back to his old normal dragon body as far as he could see. Nothing unusual or out of the ordinary.
Still, before he did anything else, he wanted those crooks caught. So he slipped over to a pay phone and dialed the police, informing them of what he'd seen. He left back for the shop as soon as the cops arrived and busted the art smugglers.

Sometime later he sat in the shop, explaining all that had happened to his friends. Needless to say, his Grandpa and Fu remembered, but he had to fill in Trixy and Spud on all the details. He was also thankful to hear that his plan had worked. Even with his strength, the monster had hit the sun, been vaporized, and released all the magical energy just in time. And everything had been restored to normal.

Jake returned home that night and sighed happily as he sank into bed. Idly he turned his hand into a claw and back again, a bit of reassurance that all was under control once more.
Still, he couldn't stop thinking about all the changes he'd gone through, and how good some of them had felt. Maybe some day he'd have to explore the possibilities.
For now though, all he wanted was to sleep. He had been one long day...

THE END