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A [[Legion of Doom|team of supervillains]] in [[The DCU]], there have been several incarnations of the Secret Six, with the current team created by [[Gail Simone]] and Dale Eaglesham. This incarnation is made up primarily of villains who are cooperating for personal and commercial reasons, working as a team to commit crimes and perform services for an exorbitant fee.
This version of the Six first turned up in ''Villains United'' #1 (July, 2005), fighting against the Society of Supervillains. After all, just because they are all evil [[Evil Is One Big Happy Family|does not mean they get along.]] They had a mini-series (''Six Degrees of Devastation'') before finally getting their own monthly title. [http://www.606studios.com/bendisboard/showthread.php?208178-Okay-About-Secret-Six The series was cancelled] as a part of the ''[[New 52]]'' relaunch and replaced by a reboot of the [[Suicide Squad]] featuring a few key members, such as Deadshot and King Shark.
Has a [[Secret Six/Characters|character sheet.]]
{{tropelist}}
* [[Abusive Parents]]:
** Catman's father was an abusive wife-beater who forced his son to shoot a tied-up lioness who was nursing a cub in order to [[A Real Man Is a Killer|make him a man]]. He ultimately planned to kill his wife and frame Catman for the crime. Catman later {{spoiler|accidentally shot his mother while trying to defend her from a murder attempt by his father, who then tried to frame Catman for it. [[Impaled with Extreme Prejudice|It didn't]] [[Kick the Son of a Bitch|work out too well for him]]
** Scandal's father is Vandal Savage, an immortal cannibal conqueror who tried to have her raped by a sexually depraved midget. The clawed weapons she wields were given to her by him in order to continuously remind her of her dead mother, who Vandal threatened to murder if she failed his physical gauntlet. When she was ''ten''. Lampshaded by Catman when, while fighting Vandal Savage, he notes to Scandal that he is amazed that her father is an even bigger bastard than his father.
** Deadshot's mother manipulated his brother into attempting to murder their father, who apparently deserved it.
** Ragdoll's father is a child-molesting cult leader who likes to mutilate himself.
** Bane's dad is a blind, arrogant crime lord named King Snake, the alias of one Sir Edmund Dorrance. While working as a mercenary he got Bane's mother pregnant... and left the two of them to ''languish in prison to serve out his life sentence''. Said prison, as you may gather from the fact that it let that happen in the first place, is a notorious hell hole and Bane only survived by becoming the biggest and meanest evil bastard in the whole place.
* [[Action Girl]]: Plain and simple, the women of this series will ''mess you up''.
* [[And Your Little Dog, Too]]: In issue 35, an hour-long beating doesn't convince the Penguin to go along with Bane's plan; it's when Ragdoll threatens to feed his pet penguins to King Shark.
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** Issue 24 seems to imply that ''all'' the characters secretly wish to atone, even though many continue to act in a despicable manner throughout the series. An [[Elseworlds]] issue, it ends with the characters wishing that, even if only this once, they could have been the heroes.
** Bane ''was'' this in his own messed up way. When he found out that, because the world does not conform to his own particular sense of right and wrong he was apparently going to hell, he decided to give up on being the Atoner and do what he had originally wanted to: Conquer Gotham and break the Batman.
* [[Badass Boast]]: "You'll run. You'll hide. And in the dark... [[Prepare to Die|I will find you.]]"
** and from the Secret Six's promotional video advertising their services: "Your enemies are our enemies, and most of our enemies are dead."
* [[Badass Crew]] They are like a family. A strange, evil, badass family who have stabbed/shot each other many times.
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* [[The Baroness]]: Jeanette, who has more than a touch of sadism and works as a professional dominatrix.
* [[Berserk Button]]: Do not remind Scandal of [[Complete Monster|her father]], do not threaten Black Alice around Ragdoll, do not threaten Scandal around Bane, do not say ''anything'' about Catman's son and do not touch Mad Hatter's hat if you like having your fingers. It seems to work like this: if something can piss one of the Six off, it will most likely ''seriously'' piss them off.
* [[Bilingual Bonus]]: As his slave-based prison island collapses around him, Smythe bemoans the death of his "beautiful dream".
* [[Bi the Way]]:
** Jeanette, who is currently in a relationship with Deadshot, was involved with Scandal long ago. According to Gail Simone they still love one another and care about each other deeply, but they have accepted that they are simply not right together.
** Gail Simone [[Word of God|had said]] during the series run that one of the male members was bisexual. After the series ended she [http://gailsimone.tumblr.com/post/11015369976/who-was-the-bisexual-man-or-is-that-off-the-table-now revealed] that it was Catman and that as soon as she gets to use him in a book again she will bring it up, since the original story got [[Cut Short]] by the relaunch.
* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: At the end of Catman's story arc,
* [[Black and Grey Morality]]/ [[Evil Versus Evil]]: The Six may not be saints, but the people they have fought have included a Society of Villains set out to mind rape superheroes and conquer the world, a sociopathic immortal cannibal, a sadistic poison obsessed assassin, a midget misogynist rapist, and the Nightmare Fuel incarnate Junior. The Six are bad, their foes are ''worse''.
* [[Black Comedy]]: Violence and killing is often played for laughs in this book. The whole sequence with Deadshot and Catman shopping for ice cream at the beginning of the ''Unhinged'' arc, especially the part where Deadshot keeps casually ribbing Catman about his
* [[BLAM Episode]]: Issue 24 randomly diverges from the main Six continuity to deliver a one shot [[Elseworlds]] tale that casts the Six and some of their opponents as heroes and villains in a wild west setting. [[Tropes Are Not Bad|It is a very well done, well written and entertaining example of a BLAM though.]]
* [[Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick]]: Most, if not all of Ragdoll's dialog.
* [[Breather Episode]]: Immediately after the extremely dark "Cats in the Cradle" storyline, we get the stand-alone issue "Predators," which chronologically takes place before the previous story and is pretty much just 22 pages of the Six kicking ass.
* [[Brother-Sister Incest]]: Heavily implied to have gone on between the second Ragdoll and his sister Alex
* [[The Cameo]]: Issue #7 of the ongoing series features an extremely gratuitous (but awesome) appearance from the [[Birds of Prey]], a team that Gail Simone famously wrote before the Secret Six. Inexplicably, the roster shown there did not at all match the one used by then-current writer Tony Bedard, swapping out Manhunter, Misfit and Infinity for Grace Choi.
* [[Carnival of Killers]]: Multiple teams of killers have been assembled with the intention of taking down the Secret Six.
* [[Cast Full of Gay]]: A minor example, but of the main cast there's a lesbian woman (Scandal), two bisexual women (Jeanette and Kay / Knockout) and one, possibly two bisexual men (Catman, confirmed by [[Word of God]] and King Shark, who doesn't object when someone asks if he's dating Aquaman).
* [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder]]: This is getting to be a hobby of Cheshire's.
* [[Cloudcuckoolander]]: Ragdoll is a VERY disturbed version of this trope.
{{quote|"I wonder what it's like to @#$% a butterfly?"
"It's probably all squishy and awkward..."
** King Shark, while nowhere near as out there as Ragdoll, is still a tad on the quirky side of things.
* [[Combat Pragmatist]]:
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* [[The Comically Serious]]: Bane. Trying to be fatherly to a grown woman by talking to her like she is five years old is only the start of it. Not to mention his attempt to comfort an actual five year old, [http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y67/AthenAltena/tumblr_l49ah3Jrx21qzl89so1_1280.jpg which did not go so well].
* [[Continuity Nod]]: Knockout's murder occurred in ''[[Birds of Prey]]'', and was used as a significant plot point in the first ''Secret Six'' storyline.
** Giganta's boyfriend, [[The Atom|Ryan Choi]], was killed by Deathstroke in the ''Titans: Villains For Hire'' series. Since Giganta was serving on the same team as Dwarfstar, the man who paid to have Ryan iced, she
** This itself was later followed up on in ''Titans'', where Dwarstar was shown in a hospital. [[The Atom|Ray Palmer]] explicitly mentioned the incident with Giganta in order to taunt Dwarfstar.
* [[Crazy Prepared]]: When Deadshot tells the story of when he first fought Batman he gets to the climax of the encounter, when he had Batman dead to rights at point-blank range, and says he shot Batman right in the chest. Batman, however, did not die as planned and then disarmed and apprehended Deadshot. The priest whom Deadshot is speaking to asks for clarification. Did Deadshot miss? Did the bullets bounce off Batman? No, Deadshot explains that the answer is actually ''scarier'' than a person able to dodge bullets or withstand gunshots: Batman had gotten to his gear before the fight ''and replaced his bullets with blanks''.
* [[Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass]]:
** Ragdoll. Most of the time he is a wacky, freaky contortionist who is capable but eccentric and mainly spouts nonsensical and/or creepy one liners. But when he hears that Smyth has ordered the deaths of his team mates? He BEATS A WRENCH INTO HIS SKULL and stands over his twitching body calmly noting he's a "Very bad man". We should also mention {{spoiler|coming to Black Alice's rescue in issue #19}}.
** Mad Hatter, who is dismissed as borderline useless for his love of "hat crimes".
* [[Dark Action Girl]]: Plain and simple, the women of the Six will ''seriously'' @#$& you up.
* [[Dating Catwoman]]: In a gender switch Catman has this relationship with [[Huntress]] which Deadshot commented on as, "It's the closest thing you can get to doin' it with Batman."
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** Never try to interrupt Junior on the phone. Seriously. Do not do it. Whoever you need to call, it can wait.
* [[Downer Ending]]: Issue 24 is a non-continuity [[Elseworld]] story that has characters from the Six in a Wild West setting. They face off against a gang of thugs and crooks led by a Wild West version of Junior. Expecting them to win? [[Kill'Em All|They are not that lucky.]]
** {{spoiler|The ending of the series is also this. Bane led the team into an unwinnable situation so he could 'rid himself of responsibilities for others' and everyone else on the team gets captured by heroes, with the text indicating that many of them have broken bones at best. [[Your Mileage May Vary|Luckily, the entire DCU rebooted after this issue
* [[Duct Tape for Everything]]: Scandal uses duct tape to tie up and gag Pistolera after she tries to assassinate Knockout. Giganta later {{spoiler|duct-tapes Dwarfstar's mouth shut to keep his screams from alerting the other Sixers while she tortures him.}} Ragdoll later uses duct tape to tie up and gag Bumblebee from the [[Doom Patrol]], whom he wants to take home as a "souvenir".
* [[Dysfunction Junction]]: Scandal's father is Vandal Savage, the first murderer. Catman's father was a big game hunter who was a complete and utter bastard to everything and everyone around him. Ragdoll's father was an abusive cult leader. Jeanette was raised in the household of mass murderer Countess Erszebet Bathory. Bane spent his childhood in one of the hardest prisons in the world. Deadshot's parents hated each other so much, his mother hired his brother to kill his father - and Deadshot accidentally killed his brother trying to stop him. Black Alice's mother died of a drug overdose, and she brought her back as a zombie. The Six give a whole new meaning to the word "dysfunctional".
* [[Elseworlds]]: Issue 24 is a non-continuity story that has characters from the Six in a Wild West setting. They face off against a gang of thugs and crooks led by a Wild West version of Junior. Expecting them to win? [[Downer Ending|They are not that lucky.]]
* [[Even Evil Has Standards]]: Weird, strange, and difficult to hold on to, but standards nonetheless...
** For a specific example, Scandal tells the Mad Hatter to back off when he tries to mind-control Elastigirl into eating Beast Boy.
* [[Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"]]: Parademon. Also the Lowlies, until we learn one's name (Insignificus, the only being in fiction more wretched and boot licking than Waylon Smithers).
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* [[Eye Scream]]: The Six seem to be one of the few villain teams to realize just how vulnerable the eyes are:
** In the original ''Villains United'' mini-series, Catman threw dozens of syringes into Captain Nazi's eyes and face.
** The leader of the [[Those Wacky Nazis|Zyklon-B Boys]], a white supremacist gang who are [[Too Dumb to Live|stupid even for skinheads]], makes the mistake of TWICE trying to take down the Six. The first time Catman cuts out one of his eyes (
** Scandal gives Grendel a case of this as well.
** Catman outdoes himself in the finale of "Cats in the Cradle
** In "The Reptile Brain" story arc, Ragdoll rips out King Sharks eye.
* [[Fan Disservice]]: [[Up to Eleven|Junior]].
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* [[Goofy Print Underwear]]: #11 gives us a look at the characters' nightclothes, and among others Scandal wears polka dot boyshorts while Ragdoll has a pair of yellow footie pajamas, complete with buttflap.
* [[Haunted Headquarters]]
* [[Heroic BSOD]]
* [[High Turnover Rate]]: Before getting their ongoing series the group had a hard time maintaining six members.
* [[Homoerotic Subtext]]: Catman and Deadshot, which everyone up to and including Simone has noticed, and Simone describes the subtext between them as being like "a neon sign", and given that we now know that Catman is indeed bisexual was probably intentional. Nicola Scott, one of the artists who worked on the book, also gleefully [http://stormantic.com/3673/art/catman-and-deadshot-by-nicola-scott drew a fan a picture] of Catman and Deadshot in bed together.
* [[Hunting the Most Dangerous Game]]: A group of wealthy sociopaths kidnap the Six and plan to hunt them for sport...[[Kill'Em All|it turns out as well for them as you would expect]].
* [[I Ate What?]]: In one issue, Cheshire and Dr. Psycho dined with Vandal Savage after failing him. During the meal, Cheshire suspiciously asks what the food was. The answer:
* [[Implacable Man]]:
** Scandal has a healing factor and determination spawned by her immortal father Vandal Savage; she does not stop until she ''wants'' to stop.
** Catman's
* [[In Name Only]]: The current Secret Six has nothing in common with the ''original'' Secret Six from the [[Silver Age]] except for the number of members and a mysterious leader called "Mockingbird". However, it has surpassed the original in pretty much every way.
* [[Ironic Echo]]: "Let it sink in or you'll never get through this."
* [[I Want My Beloved to Be Happy]]: It might have been Scandal's hallucination, [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane|or it might have been a legitimate event]], but dead [[New Gods|New God]] Knockout seems to possess a stripper dancing before Scandal to prod her into enjoying her life, as Knockout would rather Scandal happy than moping now that Knockout is dead.
* [[The Jailer]]: Mr Smyth.
* [[Jumping Out of a Cake]]: The rest of the Six hire a stripper dressed as Scandal Savage's dead girlfriend Knockout to hide in a cake and give her a
* [[Knife Nut]]: Dwarfstar, whose very first act after joining Bane's new Secret Six team is to ask him how many women he has killed. Given that his teammates include Lady Vic, Jeanette and Giganta, Dwarfstar is probably going to get "fragged". Violently.
* [[Knight Templar]]:
** Mr Smyth. He wants to make the world a better place, and he thinks the best way to do it is to lock ALL the world's criminals in a prison where murder and rape are common occurrences, feed some of them to a shaggy haired demon who is the child of the First Murderer, and return slavery to the world...
** Amanda Waller wants to police the world and take down bad guys, it is just that her methods of doing so vary from Morally Grey to Morally Black-As-Night territory.
* [[Lamarck Was Right]]: Scandal is tough to kill, attributing that to her father's side of the family. Considering her father, Vandal Savage, has been around since the dawn of mankind it is not surprising.
* [[Leaning on the Fourth Wall]]:
** When Deadshot is {{spoiler|puking after being poisoned by Cheshire}}, he narrates to himself, going on randomly about angels... and then asks the person helping him if he said that stuff about angels aloud. He is assured that he did not, and remarks that he worried about narrating out loud.
** Ragdoll does this in a few issues as well, most
* [[Les Yay]]: Between Scandal and [[Bi the Way|Jeanette]]. [[Gail Simone]] has mentioned on her Tumblr that Scandal and Jeanette hooked up once and they are just not compatible, but still very good friends.
* [[Luke, I Am Your Father]]: More like
* [[MacGuffin]]: The Get Out of Hell Free Card.
* [[Man Bites Man]]: Almost everyone on the team has bitten someone at some point. To date; Scandal has bitten off a villain's ear, Bane has torn out a mook's throat, Ragdoll has bitten a man to death after locking up his power armor and Jeanette has bitten off three of a serial killer's fingers and Catman... well, look at the trope's page image. King Shark's special abilities are specifically noted as "Chewing and Biting".
* [[Manipulative Bastard]]: Their original leader, "Mockingbird" {{spoiler|(AKA Lex Luthor)}}. Also the current "Mockingbird" {{spoiler|(Amanda Waller)
* [[Marked Change]]: Jeanette gets [[Prophet Eyes]], black marks on her face, deathly white skin and black streaks in her hair when she uses her banshee powers. We would tell you to run when you see that, but by then it is already too late.
* [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane]]: Deceased [[New Gods|New God]] Knockout appears to possess Liana, a stripper hired to cheer Scandal up, [[I Want My Beloved to Be Happy|to tell Scandal to enjoy her life]]. It is never revealed if this really was a paranormal event, or if Scandal was just having a drunken hallucination.
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* [[Non-Indicative Name]]: The team currently has ''eight'' members, and [[It Makes Sense in Context|when they are filming a commercial]] [[Lampshade Hanging|it is pointed out that their name does not make any sense anymore]].
* [[Not So Harmless]]:
{{quote|'''Ragdoll:''' "Yes. I understand. You're one of '''those.''' One of those enemies who think I am only [[Ugly Cute|adorable,]] and not a threat to be measured '''more''' carefully. A joke, a jester, a 'jape in jammies. '''Do you know how many of those people are corpses now,
* [[Now That's Using Your Teeth]]:
** A tied-up Bane once ripped out a man's throat with his teeth.
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** Catman and Deadshot are both fairly certain they are going to end up killing each other one day. Other than that they get along well.
*** Later lampshaded by Ragdoll, when he comments that the two should just accept their relationship instead of thinking they're going to kill each other someday.
* [[Off the Wagon]]: Bane references this trope by name when he {{spoiler|uses his venom to save Scandal
* [[Our Banshees Are Louder]]: Jeanette. She was betrayed and her husband had her decapitated. The execution was botched, and she 'found the banshee' as she waited to die. As a banshee, she is immortal,
* [[Papa Wolf]]:
** Hurting Scandal is the only thing that will make Bane even ''consider'' resorting to his venom again {{spoiler|and he does at the end of the
** Catman when his son is kidnapped. The other members of the Six recognize that, after what he did to get revenge, he might be too far gone even for them.
* [[Plucky Girl]]: Liana Kerzner.
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* [[A Real Man Is a Killer]]: Catman's father was a firm believe of this philosophy, and once had Blake shoot a tied up lion cub in order to man him up.
* [[The Reveal]]:
** Junior is
** Mockingbird is
* [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]]: Oho, Catman is going to tear those kidnappers a new one. He literally tore [[Giant Mook|Loki]] '''four''' new ones. With a tire iron. And then fed him to lions.
* [[Samus Is a Girl]]:
** {{spoiler|Junior}}.
* [[Shoot the Fuel Tank]]: Deadshot does this
* [[Shout-Out]]:
** To [[Tiny Titans]] of all things, when Ragdoll has a dream involving a similar
** Issue 8 was titled "Double Date", the same titled as the ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'' episode [[Gail Simone]] wrote which was the closest the series ever got to ''[[Birds of Prey]]''.
* [[Slap Slap Kiss]]: Cheshire attempts to enact this after she and Catman fight in the second mini and ''earnestly'' offers to make love right in the middle of the battlefield. Catman is understandably freaked out, is horrified to find that he is actually considering it, and pointedly turns her down.
* [[Speech Bubbles]]: Ragdoll has a pretty, cursive font for his bubbles, while everyone else has more normal speech.
* [[Spiritual Successor]]: To the [[Suicide Squad]]. They share a member (Deadshot) and a similar theme of bad guys acting as (sort of) good guys. The connection was solidifed with a "crossover" between Secret Six and Suicide Squad (through a one-issue resurrection of the title as part of [[Blackest Night]]), and with long-time Squad scribe John Ostrander doing a couple of guest issues on ''Secret Six''.
* [[Squick]]: In universe, Catman finds the fact that Jeanette is technically dead and sleeping with Deadshot to be highly squick-y. Deadshot, naturally, is not that bothered by it (
* [[Take That]]: The controversial ''Titans'' tie-in to ''[[Brightest Day]]'' involved the villain Dwarfstar hiring Deathstroke to kill Ryan Choi, a character Gail Simone co-created with [[Grant Morrison]], and whom she wrote almost all the adventures of. As payback, Gail wrote a scene in issue #28
* [[Taking You with Me]]: Parademon detonates his collection of Mother Boxes at the end of Villains United. In a tragic twist, while many, if not all their attackers survive, he perishes.
* [[Teeth-Clenched Teamwork]]
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* [[Token Evil Teammate]]:
** Although technically they are all [[Anti-Villain|villains]], Cheshire is undoubtedly the most evil, even to the point of being a [[Complete Monster]], as Gail Simone has said she purposefully writes her without redeeming qualities [[Nuke'Em|due to her history]].
** After Cheshire leaves, Dwarfstar takes the role of this until
** Scandal considers {{spoiler|Ragdoll}} to be this. Turns out, she was right.
* [[Too Dumb to Live]]:
** After the [[Those Wacky Nazis|Zyklon-B Boys]] manage to survive an [[Mugging the Monster|encounter with Deadshot and Catman]], having been viciously beaten and then ''lectured'', they decide to '''deliberately''' antagonize Deadshot in order to exact revenge. The thug who was following Deadshot is discovered and Deadshot, having promised not to kill anybody that night (he was on a date), rips out his eye, having already ripped out his other eye when the two first met. Now completely blind, the thug ''still'' persists in his plan for revenge, and the rest of the gang gathers in force. By now, they have been beaten and mutilated on two separate occasions, so they are simply asking for a Darwin Award: after Deadshot beats them again, his ''date'' kills the lot of them, explaining that ''she'' did not make any promises for that night.
** The first team of mercs sent to kidnap Catman's child has a member who is this personified. Confronted by Cheshire offering to surrender he gets close to her, planning to rape her. Bear in mind that Cheshire is known throughout the DCU as one of the most lethal assassins to walk the earth and has a reputation as having once murdered a country full of people (something that only Black Adam and the Spectre can also claim) yet the merc gets close enough to allow her to bite his lips off and infect him with a powerful fast acting poison. [[Distracted by the Sexy]] may apply here given she was half naked but still, that is whole new levels of stupid.
** Dwarfstar also qualifies after
*** Randall, being a bigot and misogynist was already obviously a total moron. He earns his Darwin Award when, faced by a team of costumed SUPERVILLAINS he decides to threaten them. With a normal gun. After going into a tirade insulting them and a friend of theirs. Needless to say it doesn't end well for the little dumb-ass and he ends up getting a lovely bit of [[Eye Scream]]
* [[Too Kinky to Torture]]: Parademon ''enjoyed'' Granny Goodness' torture and Ragdoll gets off on being beaten up. ''How'' he gets off, given he castrated himself, is probably a question best not answered. In fact, ''any'' question about Ragdoll is probably one you do not want the answer to.
** And Parademon actually WANTS to stay in hell.
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* [[Vitriolic Best Buds]]: Catman and Deadshot.
* [[Waif Fu]]: The rail-thin, crooked Junior is a rather grotesque and villainous example.
* [[Yandere]]: Black Alice for... Ragdoll...
* [[You Are Worth Hell]]: Literally. Scandal and the rest of the Six go to Hell to get Knockout back...
{{reflist}}
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