The Gathering Storm - A Group XS Story

Emily slumped over. Her chest had been transformed to a fiery stinging mass of bloody bruises. Her freely flowing tears smeared the makeup that she had so optimistically applied early that morning, expecting to start a grand new chapter in her life. Instead she'd been painfully reintroduced to the horrors of her past: bondage, slavery, pain, humiliation.

The last few snaps of the elastic bands against her breasts had pushed her to her very limits. Her hands shook so bad that she had to pull the bands back with both arms. Each attack left her screaming until she felt lightheaded. All the while Mistress Lisa urged her on, punishing Beth's defenseless body if she moved too slow, and threatening to destroy her clit if Emily gave up.

"Whew, this morning just seemed to fly past," Mistress Lisa remarked at last. "What do you say we take a break for lunch?"

"Please, mistress," Emily practically whispered. "I need to go pee."

"How responsible of you for waiting until your break to ask!" Lisa beamed. "I wouldn't have you wasting company time on such a trifling thing. Go ahead and visit the bathroom then. I'll wait."

Emily turned her sorrowful eyes to her mistress. They both knew that she was going nowhere with her legs shackled and a tall vertical pole shoved up her cunt. "I can't," she replied.

"Well we can't have you messing up your workspace now, can we?" Lisa said. "Maybe I have a solution. Find package number six on your table and open it up."

Emily tore open the brown paper wrapping, finding a catheter connected to a long tube inside. "Go ahead and put that in."

Emily removed the sterile wrapping on the catheter, but noted that she had nothing to lubricate it with. She brought it up to her mouth and licked all up and down it.

"Mmm, you look so sexy when you do that," Lisa remarked, causing Emily to blush.

She brought the catheter to her pee hole and clumsily poked at herself with it. She'd never inserted anything into her urethra herself before and was having a particularly hard time considering that she was standing on tiptoe with a large dildo in her cunt and her big, swollen tits hanging in the way. Mistress Lisa watched Emily try and fail a few more times before offering to demonstrate the proper technique on Katie. "Nnngh! Nnngh!" Katie pleaded.

Lisa picked up a shiny chrome piss plug the width of her little finger and waved it in front of the camera. "There's just one problem," she said. "Katie's mouth is all taped up. And I'm not about to put my mouth on something that has probably been in a dozen different girls' pee holes. What should I do?" She tapped her chin in thought for just a second. "I know! I'm pretty sure Mistress XS keeps a supply of chili oil around here somewhere."

Emily gasped. Katie shrieked. She desperately pleaded with her cruel mistress while the woman donned a latex glove and dipped the piss plug in a tub of red-tinged lubricant. Katie was hysterical as Lisa knelt down in front of her. Emily could tell that she wanted to lower her unfettered hands and swat the plug away, but she'd been threatened several times to keep her hands behind her head and somehow she did.

"This may pinch a little," Lisa warned. She angled the plug just so, and slid it up into the girl with one smooth push.

"Aaaiiiyeeeeee!" Katie nearly bent double as her nether region blazed in a raging hellfire. She howled and howled, her face turning red. Lisa ignored her suffering slave and turned back to Emily.

"Your turn."

Despite the awful cruelty of the piss plug, Emily did see now how to best insert her own catheter from the example. She angled the slender tube just right and pressed it up inside herself. She grimaced in pain as the device burrowed into her urethra. "Oh!" she gasped as it entered her bladder and the clear tube connected to it filled with pale yellow urine, stopping at the clip near the end which sealed it closed.

"Excellent! You're a fast learner - something that will serve you well in this organization," Lisa said. "Now for somewhere to dump the urine. Please open package number seven."

Lisa watched excitedly while Emily found and opened the next package. Emily could feel her stomach drop as she realized what it was. She had just unveiled a thick, stout butt plug with a tube running through the center. The other end of the tube had a connector which would mate perfectly with the tube at the end of her catheter. Emily tried to stifle the groan as she realized she'd be giving herself a piss enema.

"Do you need a demonstration for this one?" Lisa offered. "I have plenty more chili oil!"

Katie and Emily reacted in unison. "No, mistress!" Emily hurriedly said. "Thank you, though."

She quickly licked a few fingers on one hand and used them to start loosening up her asshole while her other hand brought the butt plug up to her mouth so she could start slathering it with saliva. She was unfortunately well versed in involuntary anal sex despite being a few years out of practice and soon felt the wide plug slip up inside her ass until her anus managed to close around the narrow base.

"Good. Now connect the two tubes and you're all set," Lisa said. Emily begrudgingly complied and she soon felt the bizarre trickle of warm piss entering her ass as the intense pressure on her bladder slowly abated.

"On to lunch!" Lisa enthused. "Open up the cooler that you've got there on the table."

Emily held her breath and flipped open the lid. Inside the cooler were a pair of wine bottles and several tins of dogfood.

"You may open up one of the tins and eat it," Lisa instructed while she pulled out her own lunch - a salad. "We forgot to pack you a spoon, so you'll have to use your fingers to dig it out."

Emily could feel her stomach turn as she pulled the ring on the can lid to open it. The disgusting smell immediately brought back memories of the hundreds of awful "meals" she'd eaten at The Farm. She was often forced to beg for the meager sustenance after days of being starved and punished.

She stuck her fingers in the greasy mush and gagged as she brought them to her mouth. It was just as bad as she remembered. The only consolation was that she knew this meal, at least, hadn't been fouled by the shit or rotting food that they often mixed into their slaves' fare.

Emily choked down the greasy, gristly dogfood without complaint. She was so tired and sore already, she didn't want to anger her mistress by refusing to eat a meal that she might find herself desperate for at a future date. She tipped the empty can towards the camera before setting it down and resuming her submissive pose with her hands behind her head, mirroring her friend, Beth, who was still moaning miserably to herself. The meal sat in Emily's stomach like a brick. She stood and watched with dogfood smeared all over her lips while Mistress Lisa finished her salad.

"Now I'd like to propose a toast," Lisa said. She opened a bottle of wine from behind her desk and poured herself a glass of the crimson liquid. "Open up one of the bottles that you have there. We've sent you some especially fine vintages. Normally we would never condone someone of your station drinking alcohol during the workday, but I don't think we need to worry about that." The reason why was quickly answered as Emily pried the cork out of the top of the bottle and was assailed by the strong smell of piss within.

"Cheers," Lisa raised her glass. "Bottoms up!"

Emily took a swig from the bottle and nearly spit it out. The cold, stale piss was especially foul and acrid. She lowered the bottle as she forced herself to swallow what was in her mouth.

"Ah, ah," Mistress Lisa warned. "Keep drinking."

"The whole thing?" Emily asked incredulously.

"The whole thing," Mistress Lisa smiled. "But where are my manners? I bet Katie would like a glass, too."

She stalked over to her slave and tore the tape from the girl's mouth.

"Ah! Oh, mistress, please remove the piss plug. It burns so bad. Oh, god, it hurts," Katie pleaded.

"Shut up, you stupid cunt!" Lisa struck her hard across the face. "You're being punished for Emily's sake. Besides, it's the chili oil that burns, not the plug. If I took out the plug you'd still feel just the same." Lisa took out an large wine empty glass. "Now let's get you a drink."

She peeled her tight latex panties down over her hips and held a glass between her legs. In an instant she filled the glass almost to the brim with a jet of piss, then she handed it to Katie.

"To a long and fruitful career in our service," Lisa toasted, lifting her own glass of wine. Katie ruefully gulped down her own glass, while Emily tipped up her bottle. "The secret to making that delicious beverage you're drinking is to start with the finest piss that the masters and mistresses of Group XS have to offer. Then we run it through several slaves, being sure to lovingly add plenty of misery and suffering along the way, before we eventually bottle it up. Why, you've probably got the piss of a dozen wretched slave girls in there. Drink up, your break is almost over."

Emily felt sick as she tipped the bottle higher. Her stomach was full and getting fuller and she knew that all the liquid she was drinking now would soon be turned into her own piss, filling her bladder and, eventually, her ass.

---

Tania wasn't sure how long she had been left hanging by her thumbs in the dark. Her tits, ass, and abdomen still convulsed under the scintillating agony of Zorhof's bee sting serum. Every breath, no matter how slight, was miserable as it expanded her chest into the plethora of pins that engulfed her upper body. She swung tantalizingly close to the ground, her toes could just graze the cool concrete if she stretched.

Suddenly the chains suspending her from the ceiling went slack. Tania screamed as her spiked panties tore at her bruised and impaled bottom when it crashed into the floor. She crumpled to the ground feeling more spikes from her corset and bra assault her body. There was no position she could lay in that would spare her the press of spikes on her body. She painfully rose up onto her knees as the lights flickered on and Mistress XS and Olga returned to the dungeon. Mistress XS leaned down and unlocked the thumb cuffs from Tania's hands. Tania flexed her bruised digits.

"Come with me," Mistress XS said. She led her miserable slave over to a table and set down a piece of blank paper upon it. Then she thrust a pen into Tania's hand. "Tania, you've been back with us for some time now, but I have been so busy lately I must admit, regrettably, that I haven't been giving you the attention that you deserve. I vow to rectify this today. I think it is pretty clear why you are here and what your status is. Nevertheless, I am prepared now to accept your written confession so that there is no doubt."

Tania stared blankly at the lined paper with the pen trembling in her aching hand.

"Having trouble getting started?" Mistress XS asked. "I'll tell you what to write." She began dictating slowly enough for Tania to keep up with writing.

"I, Tania Sarducci, hereby confess that I have committed the gravest of crimes against Group XS by helping Miss Catherine Grace identify members of the Group and have them prosecuted. I now realize that my act constituted a heinous crime and am willing to pay for my crime by giving the members of Group XS my whole body. In so doing I request that they exact whatever punishment they wish from me, but specifically request the following:

1) That I be kept confined in the most extreme ways for the rest of my days.

2) That the members of Group XS torture me regularly for prolonged periods.

3) That when not being used by members of Group XS, they leave me bound, gagged and in as much pain as possible.

4) That, if I am fortunate enough to be serving Group XS, I am given only the most distasteful and unpleasant of tasks.

Signed,

Tania Sarducci"

Tania finished writing the confession, though by the end of it tears were pouring off her cheeks and splashing down onto the paper. Her hand was shaking uncontrollably as she signed her name on the document.

Mistress XS snatched away the paper and pen. "Very good," she said. "I think you've earned this." She set down a tall glass of water on the table and offered it to Tania. Tania, severely dehydrated by this point, eagerly grabbed the glass and drank it as quickly as she could. The cool, clean water was infinitely refreshing.

"Thank you, mistress," she said quietly when she finished.

"See?" Mistress XS said to Olga. "I told you she'd drink the amphetamines with no problem. Those will keep her awake and screaming for hours during this next punishment."

Tania's eyes shot open in fear. Before she could react, Mistress Olga grabbed her by the neck and slammed her upper body facedown onto the table. Tania screamed as her large breasts were flattened into her spiked bra. Her thumbs were locked back into the tight metal cuffs and her arms were yanked past her head toward the end of the table and secured there. Her legs were kicked apart and an ankle was locked to each of the legs of the table on that side.

"Now, as I recall, when I came in earlier Olga was giving you your punishment for failing her task during your outing," Mistress XS said. "Why don't we pick up from there? What was it Olga?"

"One hundred seventy cane strokes," Mistress Olga replied. "Though, for the life of me, I can't remember where we left off."

"Ninety two!" Tania said. "It was ninety two, mistress." Despite her recent torture, the previous count had been seared into her brain.

"No one asked you, traitor!" Mistress XS hissed with a hard slap on Tania's rump. "We'll start from zero. And I'll add another hundred seventy with my paddle for you lying to Mistress Olga earlier."

"Nooooo! Please! No!" Tania pleaded.

"I want to hear you count out each stroke individually from each of us and thank us by name," Mistress XS added. "But don't worry, if you lose count we won't start over. We'll just gag you and switch over to this instead for the remaining strokes."

Tania could feel her blood run cold as she looked over at the braided wire whip that Mistress XS set down on the table next to her. It was the implement of torture that she feared most of all - in fact, it was responsible for the majority of the scars that she had acquired during her first visit with Group XS in Russia.

"We'll flip you over at the halfway point so that we get a good even coverage. Sound good?" Mistress XS turned to Olga. "Ready?"

Tania was screaming before the first cane strike landed. She continued screaming after it did. She only briefly interrupted her screaming to choke out, "One. Thank you Mistress Olga," before Mistress XS laid into her with her paddle.

---

Zap! Georgina screamed in unison with her girls as the electricity surged up through her bare feet to her daughters' clamped tits. She could feel their pussies clench around her buried hands as their muscles tightened from the shock. Her fingers had long since gone numb but she didn't dare adjust her hands lest she yank on the clamps that attached her wrists to her daughters' clits. Her feet reflexively sprang from the spiked floor to escape the cruel electric current, but this only shifted her weight to her tortured tits, which swelled under the pressure of her wire bra as it closed in tightly around them while simultaneously yanking them upward as they suspended her body from the cables overhead. Her scream morphed as her suffering shifted from her feet to her tits and she inadvertently bit down on her choke gag. The rubber device expanded into the back of her throat, choking off her scream and replacing it with a fit of coughs and retches that left her jerking her suspended body all about on the ends of the cables, magnifying the suffering for her tits. The shock of pain instantly made her want to lessen the weight hanging from the ceiling by pressing down on her hands, driving them deeper into the pussies of her girls, suspended upside down on either side of her. She could hear their anguished grunts as they tried to recover their breathing from the assault - the inflatable rubber rebreather bags puffed weakly in and out in time with their sobs.

With the threat of the electricity momentarily passed, Georgina quickly put her feet back down to the floor to take her weight off her daughters' cunts. The balls of her feet flared in pain as they set down on the spikes beneath her. Standing on tiptoe was the only possible way to lessen, not eliminate, the dreadful pull of the wire bra on her tits. Her legs trembled with exhaustion and anticipation of the next bout of torture which could strike at any instant. The only constant was fear and pain. She gazed through the dim light of the back of the truck at the clock mounted on the bulkhead before her. It was a quarter past one. Mistress Spite had told her when they left at ten that they should be at their destination around one. Despite the unknown horrors that awaited their arrival at Group XS, Georgina eagerly looked forward to the moment when the door on the back of the truck would roll open and she would be freed from this cruel, horrendous, and humiliating predicament.

Minutes ticked past and still the truck rumbled on. Georgina found herself questioning whether Mistress Spite had indeed said one o'clock. Could she have heard her wrong? No, she decided. She was sure of it. She clearly remembered her despair as the truck set out and she realized that she'd be in store for an agonizing three hour journey. Unless...

No... There was no way! They couldn't be that cruel! It would kill her! What if - she could hardly bring herself to finish the thought - what if Mistress Spite meant one o'clock in the morning! Georgina's heart thundered in her chest at the prospect of twelve more hours enduring this unfathomable torture. She screamed and shouted her dismay into the gag mounted inside her crushingly tight punishment hood. The burden of the realization weighed down heavily upon her and she could feel it sap her strength. The sharp tug of her wire bra on her tits reminded her that there would be no quitting, there would be no rest, there would be only pain.

Zap!!! Another surge of electricity stole away her thoughts of what was to come, focusing her attention on the terrible, horrible here and now.

---

Beth waddled into the dungeon with the flogger still shoved up her ass. Master V had pointedly ignored her questions about where she was going, or what they were doing. She only knew that she was to be punished for disobeying her master's wishes.

"Stand here," Master V ordered, pointing to a short crate in the middle of the small room.

"Master, please, I'm sorry!" Beth pleaded as she stepped up on the box. "Unngh!" she grunted as her master removed the handle of the flogger from her ass with one hard yank.

"Open." He held the handle up to her mouth so that she could hold it in her teeth. She could taste her ass on the makeshift bit gag as her lips closed around it. "Don't let it go."

He picked up a stiff, black leather corset from a table. Beth helpfully lifted her arms out of the way while Master V fastened it around her waist. She could feel the corset narrow as he tugged at the laces. Yet, he didn't pull them as tight they would go - strange, considering how her master usually preferred her bondage. Indeed, rather than tying off the laces once he had pulled out most of the slack, Master V raised them up to the ceiling and hooked each one to a chain dangling down behind Beth's shoulders. Beth suspected that in this configuration she could loosen the corset simply by standing up on her toes.

She didn't have time to wonder what this meant, however, before Master V knelt down behind her and shoved an inflatable butt plug into her ass. She groaned as the dry rubber dragged past her sphincter and settled into her sore butthole. Her master wasted no time pumping it up. Rather than expanding deeper into her ass, Beth could feel the plug growing in width. She moaned in distress as her anus stretched to accommodate the unwelcome invader. Finally her master dropped the inflator. He gave the butt plug a good tug to make sure it couldn't be easily dislodged.

Beth's eyes darted around the room, searching for clues about the punishment in store for her, but she could discern nothing. Master V came around in front of her and held a tit press up to her chest. "Put them in," he said.

Beth guided her tits between the two flat plates that were held apart by several heavy bolts. She bit her lip in trepidation as she felt her breasts slide across the dull metal studs that were spread along the inside of each plate. She knew from painful experience that it was best to insert her tits as far in as possible to try and distribute the crushing burden of the press.

Her master had her hold the device while he worked the wing nuts on the top that forced the two plates together. Beth groaned as her tits flattened. Master V kept turning. The tips of her breasts swelled out the front of the press like batter rising out of a muffin tin. She could feel the areas where the studs poked even deeper into her flesh than the ever-tightening plates. She scrunched her face in pain as the pressure on her tits grew and the wing nuts became harder to tighten. Master V was undeterred, he adjusted his grip and focused on one nut at a time, switching back and forth to keep the plates parallel.

Beth grunted and groaned, pleading with Master V to stop as her tits were crushed flat as a pancake. She no longer needed to hold the press in place, its biting grip on her aching tits held it securely on its own. Master V did stop, not because Beth asked him to, but because if he made the press any tighter he'd risk doing permanent damage to his beloved pain toy. Beth sagged under the weight of the press as it wrenched her tits downward.

Master V went and retrieved a pair of leather straps and handed them to Beth. "Put one around each thigh."

It seemed her master was interested in having Beth be an active part of her own bondage. She sighed and bent down to wrap her thigh with the first strap, feeling the corset resist her efforts to bend at the waist. She noted ruefully that the inside of each strap was peppered with dull spikes. She buckled the strap closed and moved onto the next thigh.

Smack! Smack! Smack! Master V spanked her ass hard with an open hand. "Tighter!" he growled.

Beth revisited the first strap, pulling it a notch tighter. She looked up at her master, whose angry glare told her to try harder. She struggled to move it one notch further, but she did, instantly regretting it as she felt the spikes grind into her muscular legs. She moved to her second thigh, putting that strap on just as tight.

Master V handed her a pair of clamps. "On your labia."

Tears formed in her eyes as she accepted the clamps. She couldn't see past the press on her breasts to her cunt, so she worked by touch. She pinched her tender pussy lip between her fingers and pulled it away from her body so that she could slide the flat tabs of the clamp around it. Her hand struggled to separate the jaws, which were held together by a strong spring. She tried her best to release the clamp slowly so it wouldn't snap shut on her delicate pussy. Nevertheless, the bite of the clamp was excruciating. She bit into her gag and stamped her foot as she let go and felt her labia spring back towards her pussy. Her hands were trembling as she forced herself to apply the next clamp.

When she was finished Master V knelt down to inspect her work. Then he took an elastic cord and tied each clamp to a ring on the corresponding strap around each thigh. Beth threw her head back in pain as she felt her pussy stretch downward. But he wasn't done torturing her cunt yet.

He produced a metal dildo and let Beth watch while he lubed it up. The worrying part wasn't the size - it was only about six inches long and an inch thick. The worrying part was the pair of small presses set at the bottom of the dildo. She immediately knew what they were for once her master rammed the dildo all the way into her pussy. She felt him tease her inner labia into each press. He had to wrap one arm around her to hold her still while his other arm tightened the screws on the small presses, eliciting pitiful screams from Beth. She could feel the breath pressed out of her as her legs grew weak and she sagged in her bondage, pulling the corset laces tighter.

By the time Master V finished tightening the mini-presses around her inner labia to his satisfaction Beth's tender folds had darkened several shades where they jutted out from between the thin metal plates. The hard dildo remained fully buried in her pussy, held in place by the tight grip on her pussy lips.

He handed her a collar. She didn't need to be told to fasten it tightly around her neck. The tall leather wrapped the entirety of her slender neck. Beth pulled the two buckles tight enough to cause her face to shade a light red. Her ability to swallow was compromised and saliva soon dribbled out from behind her gag and ran down her chin.

Next Master V handed Beth two large candles, one in each hand. They were six inches long and thick enough around that she couldn't quite get her thumb to touch her forefinger when she gripped it. He took out a match and lit each candle. Beth held them away from her body, watching the red wax soften into a liquid.

Now it was time to tie everything together and let Beth see exactly what she was in store for. Master V went to a mini refrigerator and took out a glass tank from within. He reached up high over Beth and suspended the tank from the ceiling with a rope that he threaded through a ring. The end of the rope he brought down to her to titpress, where he tied it off. Beth's distress intensified as he let go and the weight of the tank pulled up on the press and yanked on her tits.

She looked up to see that the tank was mostly filled with a block of ice floating in a small amount of clear water. Condensation quickly formed on the outside of the glass, dribbling down the sides and splashing onto her bound tits directly below. The whole thing weighed at least twenty pounds.

Now Master V retrieved a long plastic tube. He walked around behind Beth and attached one end to her butt plug. The other end he fed between her legs and brought up to the tank where he hooked it up to a valve on the underside. When he opened the valve she could see the clear tube fill with water. She squealed as she felt the first splash of ice cold water enter her ass through the plug.

"You have become a tremendous disappointment to me, slave," Master V said. "I will return in two hours. If the contents of that tank are not in your ass then I'm afraid you will have to answer to Mistress XS."

Beth stiffened. There was no one she feared more than Mistress XS - a woman whose cruelty and sadism was unmatched. She was determined not to fail.

Before Master V left, however, he had one more surprise in store for her. He connected a thin, loose wire from a device behind her to a plug on the bottom of the metal dildo in her pussy. Then he ran another wire to a metal pipe that was mounted horizontally in front of her several inches above the floor. Finally he wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her up from the box that she stood up on. He kicked the box out from underneath her and dropped her down.

Beth grunted as she as fell. The laces of her corset, still connected to the ceiling above her, stretched to their limit and now Beth's bodyweight served only to pull the corset tighter. She exhaled as she felt her torso crushed in the unyielding grasp of the stiff leather. She bobbed up onto tiptoe, feeling the laces loosen just enough that she could draw in a shallow breath. Master V blew her a kiss and left the room.

Beth appraised her situation and realized that she had several problems. First, there was no way that the ice block would melt entirely on its own in the next two hours. She figured this was why she had been given the candles. Reaching as high up as possible, she was able to raise the candles just a few inches below the bottom of the glass container. However, in doing so, she jostled the sticks, sending hot wax spilling down onto her tits directly below. With the way the weight had been connected to her titpress, her tits were wrenched upward so her soft nipples pointed toward the ceiling. The falling wax spattered down onto her sensitive areolas rather than the metal plates that enclosed her breasts. She squealed as the searing hot liquid hardened onto her tits. If she held perfectly still, she thought, the wax might only spill down onto her fingers rather than her chest. But, she realized with dread, she would need to hold her arms high over her head for two hours. She doubted that she could keep still as exhaustion set in.

The next problem was the ice cold enema flowing into her ass. Already, several ounces of water had made their way through the plastic tube and into her butt. She shivered against the chill that touched her very core, unfortunately translating into her arms, which shook a few more drops of wax onto her nipples. She could already feel the pressure of her inflating insides pressing against her tight corset. The pressure would only grow as more and more of the liquid filled her up. Eventually the crush of the tightly laced corset would prevent any additional liquid from entering her overfull butt. But the only way to loosen the corset was to lift herself higher. She remembered the metal bar just in front of her feet. She stepped up on it.

"Aiyeee!" she squealed. Touching the bar with her foot closed the circuit running from the electronic device behind her to the metal dildo buried in her cunt. A sharp electric shock surged into her pussy. It wasn't a "jump out of your skin" kind of shock, but rather a "thousand angry hornets" sensation that rose and fell in intensity over time. However, she would discover that as she remained in contact with the bar, the peak of each wave would grow stronger and stronger until standing on the bar became completely unbearable. For now, though, she stood with the bar pressing into the arches of her feet. The additional height it afforded her allowed the corset to loosen enough that she could actually breathe normally, but the convulsing muscles in her lower body sent more tremors into the candles held high overhead.

Soon Beth decided that the added electric pain was unnecessary while she was relatively unfilled. She would save that for when the corset grew too tight to allow more liquid into her. For now, she perched up on tiptoe on the floor, trembling with the cold and dreading what was to come.

(Author's Note:  Thanks to Mari0 for suggesting this scene.)