My Unstable Ways is My Solution [OPEN]

[celebrityskinned]

WHO| Venus Dee Milo and Pansy Parkinson, Venus Dee Milo and open
WHAT| Venus kills Pansy with a hair dryer and hangs out making her hair pretty.
WHERE| One of the salons.
WHEN| Week 2
WARNINGS| Death, mentions of torture.

Venus hasn't slept. What few snatches she's got have been interrupted with strange figures, with shadows that leave chills in their wake. It's been two weeks since she last had a dose of her medication and the booster shot is wearing off; given that she can't have Sponsors, Azula hasn't been able to provide her with anything to take the edge off, either. When she lies still on her bed of stolen clothing and a sleeping bag from the sporting goods store, she feels as if there's layer between her and her skin, and little electrical impulses and miniature rodents run along inside it.

She refuses to see Kankri on his terms. Instead, she visits him once a day. She doesn't want to snap at him when he invariably fusses over the brand on her face or the burns on her hands from the fryer oil. That means she's been spending most of the Arena alone and in silence, at least, if you don't count the endless Sleigh Ride loop.

Her feet are swollen from running barefoot on splinters of glass for the last two weeks. As she sits up in the salon today, she doesn't particularly feel the urge to go hunting for people, to grapple with the part of her that's evolved beyond a ruthless killer, that doesn't sit well with tracking people down and beating their brains out with household objects.

So instead she unbraids her hair and uses a flat iron, and turns up the radio next to the hair stylist's dock. Mercifully, the little radios are programmed to something besides Sleigh Ride. Were she not someone who could take care of herself in a fight, it might be stupid to make noise that announces her whereabouts.

Once upon a time she had a recording contract. Her voice is rougher now, older, but she sings along. She turns up the radio as loud as it'll get, blasting that some goddamn top forty song, and waits for her enemies to come to her.

Comments

super late week 2

[silberfuchs]

Everything hurts.

It's not the worst he's had - it's hard to top the excruciating torment of his remodeling surgeries - but all the cuts, burns, and bruises he'd acquired in the food court explosion have only had field medicine to treat them and he hasn't had good sleep for days thanks to Jet waking him up every several hours to make sure he's not concussed. Albert's fairly certain he is, but he'll power though it, just as he does the constant low tone in his ear and everything else. He has to or they'll starve to death.

Food court runs make him even more wary than usual now. Oft times he'll sneak close enough to judge that there are too many people around and retreat. Today though, he's lucky. Two little plastic containers of sushi and a handful of loose rolls are tucked safely in his pack as he makes a slow way back to where he and Jet have resettled. The third floor is too difficult now with their limited mobility so they've settled back down on the first in a side-way, holing up inside stores for the night - rarely the same one - for safety. It's working so far.

Only Albert has to sit and rest on his way back this time. The walk to the food court is nothing all that long, but with his legs somewhat unstable under him - he's certain he needs stitches in the left after having to pull a good chunk of table out of it but they can't seem to find any needles so he's making do with bandages - it seems interminable. The nearest seat, however, is the salon and there's music that's not the god awful repeat of the same terrible holiday tune meaning someone's already holed up there.

Someone who's singing.

Someone familiar who's singing.

He risks a peek and nearly collapses with relief right there. Venus is an ally, a friend even, and he can take a seat for a few minutes without fear of being brutally murdered. Albert sends a brief soft message to Jet through the walkie talkie that he's taking a brief seat somewhere safe, then steps into the salon with his uneven and labored gait.

"You have a lovely voice, you know," he smiles a little, tight with pain but still relieved to find a small haven.

Re: super late week 2

[celebrityskinned]

Given their last conversation, Venus has almost hoped that she wouldn't see Albert again. It's not that she dislikes him; far from it, she considers him a friend. It's that she's learned that the things in life that she should hold close are invariably the things that hurt her, be they love or friendship or goodness. To be a friend with someone in this hellish place means that she has to be reminded that one of them has to suffer a death soon.

The hours of the Arena blip by like the spikes on a heart-rate monitor, counting down their mutual mortality.

Still, she greets him with a smile.

"It sounds better with auto-tune." She swivels her chair and looks at him, one half of her hair hanging flattened, already starting to rebel against its hot molding by twisting away. The other half frames the brand and the pink lip gloss she's used to line the archways of her lips, which flatten as she sees the state he's in.

"Al, you look like shit."

[silberfuchs]

"I prefer a natural voice, frankly. Synthetics are interesting but not as rich." He lowers himself gratefully into the chair beside her and grimaces at his own face in the mirror, a mess of healing cuts and scabs, his short steely-grey hair in disarray. The rest of him, he knows, isn't much better but at least he can cover that with clothing.

"I feel about as good as I look," Albert grumbles a bit, but it gives way to a sigh. "I was caught in the explosion at the food court and thrown into a wall. At least I think that's what happened." The details are still a bit fuzzy and punctuated by his dream of warm sand beaches and mismatched foliage. It had felt so real at the time and leagues more pleasant than waking up amidst burning wreckage and the smell of his own blood.

[celebrityskinned]

"As rich as a sour note can get, I guess. Or a natural break." She sings a trill, voice cracking right on the 'la' note. "Supposedly you can work around that with voice lessons, but I never got around to that."

She shakes her head. She heard the explosion, but left upon seeing that none of Ellie's crew were nearby and that Kankri was with his allies. Maybe she should have stayed longer, considered the other people she knew who weren't quite enemies yet.

"Did you see who did it?"

[shenunigans]

There's a little something-something Loki have had in the works for a while. Since they'd encountered Clara and she'd urged them not to go for Venus in a violent sense, actually. When she'd made the mistake of suggesting that they play pranks rather than get into fights. A dangerous suggestion for a trickster god and a.. well. Dave. His malicious streak wasn't as fine tuned as Loki's, but a few well-worded suggestions had made it easy for him to tap into his. It's pretty easy to cut yourself off from concern for a person when you don't know anything about them but the fact that they attacked someone who, in Dave's mind at least, wouldn't initiate violence without damn good reason. Maybe it's a greedy drive urging him, this arena hasn't precisely gone to plan from the get go, it might be his chance to swing things in his favor. It isn't the all out violence the Capitol wants from him, but it's cruel and it's sure to be a spectacle.

The supplies had been gathered long ago, consisting of rope, glitter in various shades, watered down glue and copious amounts of googly eyes in different sizes. A perfect storm of crap.

Though they hadn't been tailing Venus, their eyes had been peeled enough to watch her enter a salon and busy herself in there. The plan had been hatched, leaving Loki with the real dirty work while Dave takes on the more dangerous role of being a distraction. He has no idea what her temperament is, but he has a saber with Alex Murphy engraved on it that he isn't afraid to use.

He doesn't know the song, thus can't cut in with the lyrics, so clearly his best course of action is to loudly interject her solo with "Eeeyyyyy Macarena" as he points at her like he's the Fonz.

[celebrityskinned]

She's getting into the repetition of the iron moving over her curly hair, pulling shreds of burned bits and flattening out the kinks. She looks at her face in the mirror and pretends it's a different person, the mauled visage gazing back at her with almost peaceful dullness in its eyes. There are lines in her twenty-two year-old face that are aging her up, that may very well be permanent. The brand is starting to look like a shape instead of just a wound, the scabs turning to scar tissue and ripples in her formerly smooth cheek. Shiny scar tissue like a half moon.

She's zoned out, moving and singing on automatic, when Dave interrupts. She swings the chair around to face him before she even draws the mental connection that a loud sound could be a threat, her legs coming up in case she has to kick - but she doesn't.

So she gets out of the chair instead, dropping the iron. It swings from the cord over the edge of the counter liked a hanged man.

"Macarena? Really?"

[shenunigans]

At this rate, Dave doesn't really know what to expect of Venus beyond her being someone with a vicious streak. He's sure he's seen her before, but his memory is poor enough that matching names to faces is always a challenge. Speaking of faces, he notes the brand, though he doesn't zero in on it. It's funny how they could be turned against each other in here but on similar sides outside when shit like jail is an issue. Even so, the possibility that she'd been tortured doesn't reach his mind, because he's thinking less of her and more of Clara at the moment.

He's quick to brace when she spins around in the chair, but he relaxes quickly when it seems like she doesn't intend on attacking him for his shitty sense of humor.

"The Macarena is the Nic Cage of songs. It's not always good, it gets the job done and it's hard to say whether it's intentionally hilarious." He shrugs, happy to keep an easy pace here. He doesn't look to be under any duress, so it's on Loki's judgement to enter as he pleases.

[arrogantalloy]

When Tony comes across the salon he stops and just looks at it for a long moment before deciding to walk in. After all, a salon is going to have things inside that he can tamper with and repurpose.

He could hear the music as he got close enough to the door, it made him pause long enough to contemplate going in. On the one hand it could be just someone taking a break not interested in being murdered or murdering.

Or. It was a murderous trap.

Either way Tony pushes open the door but doesn't make himself available to the gap.

"I come to scavenge your electrical goods."

He announces through the opening loud enough to be heard, which makes him do a quick check to make sure no one's hunting in his eyeline.

[celebrityskinned]

She hears him and she doesn't quite care. She stays where she is in her seat, switching from singing along with some shallow, auto-tuned declaration of love and parties to just humming with it. He could kill her, she knows; even being as capable as she is of combat doesn't mean that she's invulnerable, especially when her guard's so perpetually down as to be nonexistent. Especially when so many of her competitors are as deadly as she is.

But she doesn't care.

"What if I like my electrical goods?" she says mildly, not glancing up until she's finished straightening this chunk of hair. She swings her legs and the chair swings with her, turning to face Tony. "Who're you?"

[arrogantalloy]

At the question Tony actually pops his head around the door, hearing her change from singing to just humming.

"You aren't that bad, you know." He says before actually coming into the salon and looking around, hands buried into cotton sweatpants pockets.

"As for your electrical goods. You might like them, but I can put them to better use."

He wanders around the room and picks up and pokes at a few things with idle curiosity.

"Uh, I'm Tony."

[medecin]

Joly's adapted by now, to a few rules of the arena. Right up there with the ones about not eating strange insects or interrupting the mentally unstable and making oneself a threat, there is also one which points out that extremely loud noises could actually be a trap. Making someone think there is a person stupid enough to blast music out there, does seem like a reasonable way to lure them close enough for a kill. That said, he's being rather cautious, until the singing kicks in.

It's rather familiar enough that Joly decides to risk popping in, reasonably confident in who it must be, although he's not heard Venus really sing before. Once he's slipped into the shop, he's giving her a little wave, then continuing closer.

"Oh good." He adds, when he's near enough that he might be heard, "I was beginning to think your absence would be permanent. It's good that we can start straightening that out."

And then, a moment later, his face was rather serious considering what had happened after the attempted jail breaking.

"Is there anything I can do?"

[celebrityskinned]

"Your Stylists taught you what one of these does?" She turns in her chair, the face framed by her redone hairstyle morphing into a smile that would look horrid, with the brand, if it weren't so clearly joyous.

And she gets up and walks to him, taking him in her arms without allowing for protest. She gives him the tight hug that has been lurking in her wishes for the last two weeks.

She doesn't need to say she's glad that he's alive, that his presence does her enough after that awful week, that she'll have to talk and maybe cry to him, so she settles for telling him "you can sit and harmonize with me while I finish my nails."

[medecin]

"There were some horrifying moments where I was deathly afraid of having one of those turned on me." Joly explained, shaking his head a little. "It apparently was one of the elegant outfit hairstyles that they decided was not going to look right after all. I do admit I braid they wouldn't just brush me off, and for once, it worked."

Like with Courfeyrac, Joly wants to get a better look at her face, to try and at least make sure that there are no infections, the doctor in him wanting to help where he can, but the friend in him doesn't want to make Venus feel self conscious, though, once he's hugging her back, he does have to admit that thought is mostly faded away.

"I have missed you," He adds, no puns at all springing to his mind at that point. "I think that I might manage that."

[googledox]

Brainiac 5 had finally collected himself after his brief bout of basically freaking the fuck out. He still wasn't even sure what he was feeling - it was like the crackling static that you heard on the comms after a ship's distress call went devastatingly silent.

He was still more himself than before, though. Maybe too much himself. That was the problem with this place - put him amidst death and destruction and try to wear him down mentally and his response was to rally. After that brief scare with the cyborg, he'd reverted to something harder inside, but harder for him wasn't a cold edge of steel, it was coal compressed into diamond, something that caught and focused the light around it. It was being the best of himself and it was instinct to be that by now.

He couldn't skulk this time, act menacing, walk with the weight of pretend wasted potential on his shoulders. He couldn't bring himself to reek of having a hollow soul. Not after everything that had happened with Lyle, not after having the smallest tastes of victory, here and there, not after being pushed so hard he'd reverted to himself, the strongest thing for him to fall back on.

He had helped his fellow Tributes break into one of the Capitol's prisons. He had stolen technology right under the Capitol's nose. He had given the other Tributes and the Capitol citizens that dared to fight against the injustice of their society a way to take their own chances and make their own plans. Here in the arena, he had protected a child again and as frightening as it had been to come as close as he had to had to killing the one responsible, he'd stopped short of breaking his oath.

He still could hold to that, the Legionnaire still lived in him. He still was himself, despite all they'd done. The problem was that the best side of himself was giving him mental refuge but it was the facet of himself he needed to show least. This particular arena, though, seemed to be one where he couldn't help it.

That was why he walked over to her, following the sound of her voice, cautious and purposeful but clearly not on the attack, crow bar in fact tucked into a holster he'd made for it on his backpack. He was wearing a fitted grey athletic top, black cycling shorts that went down to the knee, and black boots; the ensemble gave off a definite air of someone who missed their spandex.

He stopped in front of her, body language not offensive or defensive, strangely fearless, staring down at her, at her brand. His own skin bore the usual bruises and cuts that came of the arenas, but there was no brand. Instead his hand was bandaged as if he had cut it. For just a moment, he considered them both, his cut and her brand, and found it somewhat ironic. He had given quite a few of his fellow Tributes the tools that got them into the prison but hadn't been able to get most of them out. Perhaps it was appropriate that while so many of them walked around scarred, one of the hands that had failed them was injured, too.

But even more appropriate was using those hands to treat some of the damage, just like, if he survived this arena, he was going to use them to keep building and creating to let them cause more damage to the Capitol.

"Your wounds look like they could use further treatment. I have a first aid kit," he said quietly.

He was different now than she'd saw him last arena, eyes clear, shoulders back, devoid of shame or fear, mental anguish or self-doubt. The hardness she'd gotten but a glimpse of while he was sick was present in full and somehow it was a hardness that wasn't cold.

[celebrityskinned]

The last time she saw him, he seemed a ghost of a person, or some nature spirit from a morality tale; stammering, circling himself, mad, a creature of the earth that simultaneously sank below and shot beyond the higher faculties of reason. He was the faun or the sphinx that dispensed riddles in the Greek plays that sat in stacks on her bedside table until Enjolras took them back; he teased at her better (or her baser) natures as Athena pulls at threads in weaving, while claiming none of the humanity for himself.

(They should find a better word than 'humanity', for aliens and dark matter in human casings.)

It's enough to nearly make him unrecognizable now, despite the green skin and shock of blond hair. He seems a wholly different person, and she wonders if her own madness transforms her so much. She hopes it doesn't, hopes she doesn't escape her own image, and yet she hopes it does as a warning and an excuse to others for her less-rational exploits.

She sets the flat iron down. It exhales the last of its heat into the counter instead of into her straightened curls, which are already starting to wind like snakes again without the help of a chemical straightener. She turns to face him.

"How'd you fuck up your hand?" Why are you being kind to me again?

She wonders if this is a way that he gets away from all the killers, by disarming them with words and unbidden-for generosity when they could kill him here. If this is the bloodiest blade in his toolkit of the villainy he espouses but she doesn't believe.

[googledox]

Interlac had a word for the multitudes of beings that could think and reason and feel. The closest English translations were "sentianity" or "sapianity." English needed a made up word for something that'd had a word in thousands of tongues in his long-dead universe.

Perhaps that why he'd seemed so alien to her, so ethereal. Why wouldn't someone be unearthly when they didn't come from Earth, when the Earth she came from wasn't a sprawling multicultural jewel, crowded with nonhuman species that loved their home and humans that, by and large, accepted them as Earthlings?

"I directed my grief and anger over losing my boyfriend on an innocent and unsuspecting glass display," Brainy said, his voice strangely calm despite the subject matter. He held up his hand and examined it. "I emerged the victor but there was some retaliatory damage."

His acts of kindness were random. That was what was likely the reason it was so difficult to peg his true motivations. A child here, a confused civilian there, a murderer, a scientist who was his friend and then wasn't anymore (but really was, in secret).

Wounded one second, trying to wound the next.

But people loved their villains complex, didn't they? And the questions she thought about were ones that didn't even occur to most Capitol citizens. To them he was damaged bad boy, either with a secret heart of gold or a hollow soul, depending on whether they liked hope or angst.

He crouched to be closer at her level, though he did it far enough away that he could easily jump back to his feet and run if he had to.

"Do you want my assistance or not?"

super late as well

[knifewithnoname]

Pruna frowned at the music. Who would be so stupid to be so loud? She crept towards it, knowing it might be a trap. After all she doubted even the most stupid weak tributes would be too smart to blast out their place with loud noise.

She peaked around the wall and frowned when she saw Venus. Venus wasn't stupid, not at all. A trap then. Pruna lifted the ice skate with the arm that wasn't injured from the explosion.

What was Venus doing? Singing and... doing her hair... in the arena. The one place they weren't strapped down and forcibly bathed and hair forcibly combed.

Pruna watched, half in suspicion, half in confusion.

no worries!

[celebrityskinned]

Venus sets the iron down and starts painting a frosted pink gloss onto her lips, staring at the mirror in a sort of boredom and detached sadness. Her brand is hideous, even as it heals. Her brand makes the makeup look like a cruel joke, makes the beauty God wrote into her features seem tragic.

She can see Pruna in the mirror, looking at her with wrinkled brows.

"Hey, kiddo, not that I don't think you couldn't slit someone's throat with that, but are you seriously about to attack me with an ice skate?"

Re: no worries!

[knifewithnoname]

Pruna frowned at the brand, the Capitol had gotten her too... was there anyone that they hadn't thrown in prison and tortured. They were stupid if they suspected everyone.

Pruna didn't have a brand but there was still some evidence of bruises and when she opened her mouth to speak she had teeth missing at the front of her mouth. She wrinkled her nose at the comment but shook her head. She liked Venus, she wasn't stupid and had shared her ice cream with Pruna. She wouldn't attack unless the other girl attacked first.

"I have been doing it before, it do be being sharp."

[failbender]

The singing made him curious but not quite curious enough to reveal himself. However, as he sneaked closer to see who was stupid enough to sing and attract attention to themselves, he marveled at the singing box.

It was a singing box. He was almost certain that was where the main singing was coming from and that the woman was singing along to it.

For a moment, Zuko felt compelled to try talking to the woman herself. A lot of the people here looked nothing like Aang or himself or anyone from home but her darker skin pegged her as possibly maybe Water Tribe and he figured allies from home would be useful.

It was a testament to how stressed he was that he didn't think that over further before impulsively stepping into view. Only right after he did it did he consider two things:

1) If she was Water Tribe she probably wouldn't have known the words to the strange song. And 2) He was probably not the best person to try to make an alliance with someone from the Water Tribe, anyway.

Too late now, he was already in view. Maybe if she was Water Tribe and showed him hostility, he could drop a quick 'I'm friends with the Avatar and he could use your help' to smooth things over.

"You wouldn't happen to be from the Water Tribe would you?"

[celebrityskinned]

When Zuko enters the salon, Venus is embarking on the complicated task of singing a chorus while she applies mascara to her lower lashes. It involves contorting her face in a way that makes her look momentarily cartoonish, all lolling eyes and flexing lower lip. It's also one where, if she jumped, she could take her eye out with a bristle-brush, and that would just be embarrassing.

She knows he's there, although she isn't paying him much mind, but it surprises her when he talks. Not enough to startle her too bad, but enough that the mascara gets a bit smeared along the underside of her eyelid, like one of her still-healing bruises from the Peackeepers. She swivels her chair to look at him, a peevish expression cutting new wrinkles alongside her nose and mouth.

For a split second, she thinks the burn on his face is a brand - but no, his is more healed than hers, and he's new. She knows the face of every Tribute who was in the Capitol after the last Game. His burn is a settled landscape while hers is still swirling pool of coagulation and scabs.

"Water Tribe? The hell is that?"

[failbender]

"I thought you might be from my world. You look almost like you could be from one of the tribes there."

He didn't know where to place her as being from now. There were so many people in this place that looked like they didn't even have an equivalent to the peoples of his world at all. He wanted to ask questions about it but one) that would've been rude. He didn't even need to be schooled in court etiquette to know that, and two) it probably wasn't a good idea for him to strike up conversation with strangers anyway.

Because he was terrible at it. He definitely wasn't going to be the one making friends here. He was lucky he was with Aang in that respect. He didn't really trust his ability to talk to people to get him out of trouble and the more he spoke, the more likely he was to get himself into it.

He could see even it in his head. 'So I see somebody burned your face, I sure know what that feels like.' He didn't want to talk about his scar and he doubted she'd want to field questions about her wound, even if he was wondering where she'd gotten it and why he'd seen more than one person with a gaping wound like it.

Except, he was really, really curious now. Ugh, this wasn't going to go down well, but he wanted to know. In a way, he needed to know, because if someone was doing this to people, he wanted to know if that someone could be stopped.

"Who did that to you?" he said, nodding to her face. "And why?"

There was an awkward pause and a stricken look that came over his face.

"Uh, you don't have to say if you don't want to talk about it, but if there's someone going around doing that to people..."

Then he would try to stop them. No one deserved to feel that kind of pain, and no one deserved to feel the shame of being publicly marked that way.

Stars have died, Galaxies have expanded, but finally I am here.

[unconchonable]

The noise certainly gave away that someone is in the Salon, that's for certain. Eridan, having been recently armed with his carbine, found himself less apprehensive when it comes to discovering people throughout the arena. He has no reason to worry, he has a lethal advantage over most of them, which only aiding him in his quest to kill as many of these scum-sucking landdwellers as possible.

Arrogantly he strolls into the salon, gun in his ringed hands as he discovers none other than Venus. He halts, surprised at first, though it quickly fades to something far more amused. It's almost ironic, as he thinks on it, the terms they chose to use that day. I'll gun for you in the arena. It's almost sickening how ironic it is, and here he is, armed and ready to do just that.

Though, where would the fun be if he just shot her down right here and now? Random people he'd shoot down without a second thought, but no, Venus is special. Venus needs to be knocked down a peg or two before being brutally murdered. Or so that's what he thinks, anyway.

"Go bloody figure your ilk would be worryin' about such wain practices when your pitiful life is on the line." He says in a mocking sort of tone. Not that he has much room to talk, finding what threads he thought looked best, assembling himself one hell of a hipstery looking outfit with what he could, complete with a shitty blue-striped scarf. He does, however, aim the gun at her, if only to show off what advantage he has in this situation.

"Good to see you again, Wenus."

[celebrityskinned]

If there's anything more obnoxious than this guy, it's his speech impediment.

She tilts her head up and away from the flatiron to see him, and her eyes widen slightly at the gun: that she didn't expect. She realizes that this must have been the flip side to her oversized 'Participant' t-shirt, which is now swathing her body in a chic belted tunic cut. Guns, the great equalizers.

If she had her teleportation, she thinks, he'd be dead by now. She realizes right then that she isn't scared; she's reckoned with death a thousand times, and once you've exploded at age eleven the fear of eternal torment starts having diminishing returns.

No, she isn't scared. She's annoyed.

Still, aside from the momentary startle on her face, she manages to keep it cool. Her lip lifts into a sneer that comes not from her foster kid childhood but from her years in Hollywood and the entitlement that came with them. She sits back in her chair and crosses her ankles, casual and disdainful as if he were some undesirable asking for her number.

"Wow, you're going to shoot up a girl minding her own business. How manly of you. Are you going to ask me for my pearls and cell phone first?"

[unconchonable]

Accent. It's an accent. Or so he'd tell people.

The fact she isn't scared makes this all the sweeter. Fear's nice and all, but there's a thrill in opposition that strikes his fancy far more. It's almost like a need of his, some sort of rivalry, even if it's temporary. Like a fling, but without the intimacy.

His eyes scan over Venus' features, bemusement crossing his own.

He never lowers his gun.

"I don't need your trinkets, an' besides. If I really was after your personal swag, I'd take it after I'we pumped you full a lead." He says it all rather smugly, completely full of himself as he approaches. He keeps some distance, he hard needs for her to try and grab at his gun, and for there to be some struggle.

"I'we merely come here to make good on my promise, y'see. I said I'd gun for you, an' as fate would hawe it - not only it bein' on my side - but it's quite the fan a irony." With his hand not busy with the trigger, he pats the side of the gun.

"Any last words?"