Disclaimer: The characters, much of the dialogue, and sadly, even the plot are not mine; they all belong to Eoin Colfer.

Pages: 296 – 297, 301 – 302, 303 – 306

Chapter 28: Intellectual Equal

When the broad expanse that was the Extinctionists' compound appeared as a dark outline in the shuttle's windshield, Holly flew the ship over the high walls.

Finding a spot behind one of the fancy, large-windowed houses all throughout the compound near the trial building, Holly set the ship down where it would be concealed further should the ship's shields and the cover of darkness not be enough to cloak them from view. She quickly oriented the ship so she would have a clear visual on the conference center's main entrance door, which was hanging at an angle, half-broken off its hinges and looking very much the site of a recent natural disaster.

Before, when Holly had first left the building and was on the run, dodging through the compound to make her way to the high arch exit at the front, the place had been pretty full of the activity of Extinctionists making their escape and Kronski's guards running this way and that following their boss's orders. However, now the place was pretty well empty of its despicable temporary inhabitants and staff. This was the first time she was getting a good view of the building from the outside – It gave her the shivers seeing it, the giant edifice extending from the top of the hall, a human hand crushing the world in its palm.

Holly reached for the release on her restraints. "I'm going in," she said. "You coming, Mulch?"

Mulch groaned loudly and rubbed his face. "How is it that I keep getting dragged all over the place like a mining slave? We make a deal and I play my part fine, then the next thing I know you lot are trying to squeeze more out of me. And to make up for your sad incompetence of all things. I don't know that I like getting my labor taken advantage of like that. I have rights." He paused. "Although, at least I've had some good company," he added, patting Jayjay's head.

"Then don't come," said Holly, a little indignantly, though privately she thought she would feel better about this if she had Mulch and his talents at her back. She just had to accept that this Mulch, like little Artemis, had no reason to serve anyone's interests other than his own.

"Maybe if I had an extra incentive..." Mulch hinted, trailing off hopefully.

"Fine! Anything you want," Holly snapped, fully aware that she would regret this promise later, but she didn't want to be standing around here squabbling about prices when Artemis could be in peril right now.

Mulch's face lit up. "Now you're talking my language, Captain."

"Fine," she said again. "Then let's go. But if we're too late by the time we get there, don't expect a thing."

As Holly turned her attention back to her belt, Mulch spoke up again, tawny eyes staring out the front window at the conference center with the trashed banqueting hall, "Okay then. But you might not want to go out there just now."

"Why?" Holly asked, looking up sharply, but she saw immediately what Mulch meant, her heart sinking as she caught sight of the line of dark forms making their way toward the conference hall entryway. One lone figure stood at the head, followed by a small collection of others, like night tourists led onward by a tenacious tour guide. But Holly would bet anything these weren't tourists.

Holly hit a few buttons on the console, and an enlarged image of the group appeared projected on a section of the windshield, though leaving their view of the actual scene outside unobstructed. She changed the filter so she could see them more clearly in the darkness.

Holly recognized many of the faces in the small crowd from the audience of what had been supposed to be her execution. The man at the front she was positive was the one who had touched her ear and participated in a bit of playacting with Kronski for the Extinctionists.

"It'll be hard to sneak in unseen with all those Mud People crowding around the door like that," Mulch commented conversationally.

Holly swore angrily and banged her hand against the flight instruments. "What are they doing?" she demanded. Like Kronski's guards, were these people after her too? Even with Kronksi out of action, perhaps they suspected "Pasteur's" version of things to not be so trustworthy after all and, realizing she might be a genuine fairy, had thought they would take a shot at the wealth that awaited them if they managed to catch a whole new, undiscovered sentient species themselves.

"Hmm." Mulch leaned in to peer closer at the image of the Extinctionists on the screen. "A rich bunch these are from the look of 'em," he said. "Wonder how much that watch'd fetch. And that gun. Maybe I could just nip down there and..."

Holly ignored the kleptomaniac dwarf and quickly scanned the area around the building. She might be able to get in a back way. But there would still be the problem of staying away from the Extinctionists afterward while she looked for Artemis once they made their way inside.

"Well, we can't wait anymore," said Holly after a few seconds of hard thinking, her forehead still lined with creases in concentration. "We'll just have to go ahead and hope for the best. We might be fine if we're just careful enough. Think you could tunnel in?"

Mulch's eyes were still on the group, but now he was looking decidedly disappointed. "This whole place is built on concrete. I can smell it." He eyed the Extinctionists and their pricey accessories longingly, but apparently not even Mulch Diggums was brazen enough to just stroll right up to the disturbing group of hostile haters of any and everything non-human.

Mulch suddenly stopped, frowning. "Might want to wait a second anyway before you go charging in there, Captain." He pointed at the screen, where the Extinctionists all seemed to be hesitating outside the central building of the compound. Kronski's former cohort who was leading the group had a hand cupped behind one ear and appeared to be listening.

"Paranoid bunch," said Holly. "Maybe I could – "

"Don't think they are," said Mulch. "Don't you hear it?"

Holly listened. Now that she concentrated, she could hear something. Like the dull roar of thunder in the distance, though just barely.

"Not that I've ever been known for fortune telling, but I'm going to take a guess and say that pretty soon you're going to be glad you're in here and not out there," Mulch said wisely. "Might want to check those whatever-sensors of yours or something, just let us know what to expect."

Holly wondered why she hadn't thought of it before. She selected the filter for thermal imaging on what they could make out through the windshield and the image appeared in miniature on one of the small screens set into the dash.

The warm tones of the Extinctionists waiting timidly outside the complex door blossomed in front of her. However, in addition to the orange and yellow tones of the humans, the orange and red of moving bodies in the building also appeared. Not just one or two, but dozens. Maybe hundreds. Whatever they were, Holly and Mulch, as well as the Extinctionists, were about to find out.

The rumbling rose in pitch, then faded away. However, Holly could now feel the vibration underneath her feet.

As it turned out, Mulch was dead right. Suddenly the moving mass of warm bodies on screen exploded out the broken door, taking what seemed to be half the wall with them, and the hapless Extinctionists were swept away in a sea of stampeding animals.

From the scene, the casual observer might have guessed that they were looking at a hoard of beasts escaped from a nearby zoo. Extraordinary animals from every part of the world were everywhere, panic in their eyes. Holly thought she saw a lion and a gazelle as well as a number of strange monkeys, snakes, and birds, all clearly intent on freedom.

Holly wondered if the Extinctionists realized how much they themselves had resembled these animals earlier when they had been treading the same path of attempting to escape the trap the conference center had become. Though Holly had to admit such a comparison was an insult to the animals.

Holly's fingers were tingling on the controls as she quickly scanned the scene. Her pounding heart rose into her throat.

Surely the Extinctionists of all people wouldn't have been keeping a zoo tucked away somewhere as an attraction. No, Holly was sure: These could only be the rare, exotic animals the Extinctionists had put on trial over the years and supposedly executed. Yet here they all were, alive and well, and even getting a bit of revenge on the humans who'd attempted to demonstrate who was master of the planet.

So it would only make sense, wouldn't it? Only make sense that...

Holly held her breath as she looked out over the wide space of the compound, magnifying area after area and placing a night vision filter over everything. Her sharp eyes moved back and forth with careful but speedy precision, as though taking in the contents of a thriller novel, searching among the masses for one exceptionally rare, exotic "animal" in particular.

"Better hope he's not in there," said Mulch. "Or else he's probably trampled flatter n'a pancake by now."

Holly shut out Mulch and his flippant tone as she continued to look. He was there, somewhere; he had to be. This time, she would not fail to find him, as she had earlier by the kitchen door inside the conference center. Even if he did belong with this collection of beautiful, exotically fascinating beasts more than he had with the greedy, bloodthirsty Extinctionists, physically he wouldn't blend in so well.

Then her mismatched eyes fell on a solitary figure. He rode bareback on what appeared to be a kind of striped pony, controlling his mount with surprising skill for someone normally so inept in physical matters. Already separated from the main pack, he turned and headed out toward the open area of the compound's central park.

The young man was looking a little worse for wear, linen suit torn and frayed all over, left sleeve sheared off or possibly rolled up, one lens of his tinted glasses shattered out of the frame, long black hair which had been neatly combed back earlier now askew. However, all this was easily forgotten when at last one's gaze settled on his penetrating blue eyes, bright with determination as always.

Holly could have sworn he turned and looked in the precise direction where the fairy shuttle waited, invisible. The briefest of smiles crossed his thin lips.

Strange how he could look like that, riding awkwardly on the semi-panicking little striped-donkey-like animal, clothing just about as pristine as that of a refugee from a war zone. But there was no denying it; he was empowered, triumphant.

Or perhaps it was simply her imagination, and she was only imposing that interpretation on the scene. The way he was heading toward them in the darkness, sounds and images of the battleground where justice was being carried out serving as a backdrop, his thin form backlit by the bright lights now sputtering inside the center. And in consideration of what Holly had, up until now, half-believed had happened to him.

Holly raised the shuttle and piloted it over the beach house, gliding swiftly to where Artemis and the striped pony cantered along through the park.

Her hands trembling slightly, Holly quickly activated the robotic arm normally used for moving cargo into the ship cargo bay for transport, though with the clunky design the end more resembled the scoop of a bulldozer, and used it to carefully draw the gangly, long-haired teen into the ship's belly.

Then, putting her hands back on the ship controls, Holly easily maneuvered the craft in a quick, neat U-turn, then immediately accelerated for all the ship was worth, shooting off into the dark starry sky.

So, phase one, which had been to get Jayjay and all start safely back to the takeoff point in Fowl Manor, was complete. She really hoped there weren't a whole lot more phases to go.


As soon as the cargo door was shut and Holly saw on the camera feed of the in-ship monitors that Artemis was indeed safe inside the mining shuttle, Holly finally allowed herself to exhale slowly, a long breath that rattled with suppressed nerves.

Finally, they were going back. The mission, she hoped, would be effectively over soon and they would all make it back to where they were supposed to be, all alive after all.

"I'm so glad that all came out right," said Mulch, breaking the silence. "I was real tense there for a bit. Sweat breaking out, heard pounding, you know." He added after a moment's pause, "So, what about my extra incentive?"

"Extra incentive?" said Holly incredulously. "You didn't do anything. We didn't even go in."

"Yes, but I was willing to help you," Mulch said seriously. "And I babysat the brains of this ragtag crew while your Mud Pet was making plans to rescue you." He patted the lemur sitting in his lap on the head again.

"Even if I had anything to give you, which I don't, I wouldn't even give you a..."

Holly stopped herself, shaking her head and wondering why she was letting the dwarf draw her into this. She changed gears and said instead, "Never mind, forget it. Just stop calling him 'my pet' and 'my Mud Boy' already. Where in Frond's name are you getting that?"

"Sorry. I meant to say 'lover.'"

Mulch was really pushing the limit here.

"Say that again, Mulch," said Holly in tones that tread a thin line between frighteningly calm and approaching-thunderhead-level murderous, "if you want to find yourself flying out the side hatch over there. Maybe you can tell me in the afterlife what it feels like to be a dwarf falling out of a shuttle from a couple thousand feet up."

Holly was distracted by a warning icon that flashed up on the display screen in front of her. She looked closer at the reading.

That wasn't good.

"Still haven't gotten that violent streak sorted out yet, I see," noted Mulch, remarkably unconcerned and showing absolutely no signs of repentance.

Holly ignored him as she instantly slowed the ship to subsonic levels in response to the warning and set the autopilot. She knew exactly what this meant – She should have been expecting it.

Mulch, meanwhile, was undoing the strap around Jayjay and his own ample stomach. "And speaking of 'lovers,'" he added, "I don't think I want to be around for this little heartfelt reunion. I like to keep my lunch down where I can."

He dodged around Holly's attempt to give him a hard punch in the arm and skipped to the side door opposite the bathroom.

He turned back a moment. "You should know I don't judge others' bizarre tastes," he said with a wink. "I had a cousin once who had a thing for ducks."

Holly wished she had something to throw at him or that this clunker had some lasers she could use. Unfortunately, she had to settle with the dirtiest look she could muster, which the dwarf probably missed anyway as the moment he got his jab out, he had already turned away and disappeared through the pneumatic doorway, chuckling all the way. No doubt he was off to look for valuables again.

Holly sighed and kneaded her forehead. She would have to start keeping a tally of all the kleptomaniac dwarf's offenses on this trip. The fact he kept getting away with continually poking and prodding her in especially sensitive areas for her already outrageously self-conscious, far too easily discomposed adolescent self was not lost on her.

Holly's eyes flickered to the live, in-ship camera-feed of the cargo hold, where Artemis was now getting to his feet.

She had no idea what kind of expression she had, but she noticed Jayjay watching her.

"Don't believe anything he says," Holly told him. "It's not true. Well, not exactly."

Jayjay showed his teeth in a broad grin and clapped.

"He's going to ruin you," Holly muttered, turning away.

Holly forced herself to focus. She moved her eyes to stare, frowning, at the readouts again. Great, complications. But at least they'd have Artemis here now; he'd been inside the compound in the main building, so maybe he would be able to shed some light on the situation. Knowing Artemis, he probably already not only knew about the fairy who'd mesmerized Kronski, but already had several different plans formed for how to deal with it.

According to the warning, scanners from near the compound had detected their shuttle and downloaded available information about it. It took seriously advanced technology to do that – fairy technology. Those scanners had, in all probability, picked them up because of the speed with which their ship had moved, a speed several times greater than that of a typical Mud Man aircraft, so Holly's strategy was to remain at subsonic speeds and stay within the flight pathways regularly traversed by the Mud Men. It should allow them to slip under fairy radar, so to speak, at least for awhile.

As Holly's eyes remained fixed on the readout, her scowl deepened. They could never catch a break, could they? They had been so close to finally being done, and now the stress was going to stretch on for who knew how much longer. Holly really needed this to be over – She didn't think her body or mental state could take much more of a beating.

The sound of approaching footsteps behind her, however, for some reason made her forget all about this as her throat suddenly tightened slightly with nerves.

Expression frozen, Holly kept her eyes focused on the screen, delaying the moment she would have to turn to look at her friend for as long as possible, as she suddenly realized she had no clue what to say.

A sudden disconcerting idea drifted up from among the lower dregs of Holly's mind. If this was some kind of cliché daytime soap opera, she thought, or typical romance flick that only stayed in theaters for a week tops, she would probably turn slowly around, then throw her arms around him as soon as the boy came within striking distance, sobbing all the while, "I thought you were dead!"

...Needless to say, that was definitely not happening, not least of which because she had already had one emotional outburst that involved an excessive amount of crying recently, which had resulted in the end in what Holly was quickly coming to view as her new most embarrassing moment of her life.

Still, she was plagued with a kind of nervous energy, uncertainty. She was torn between turning and saying something moderately emotional, perhaps smiling a little and saying, "Looks like you made it out of another scrape, Mud Boy. Now let's get back to the manor so we can save your mother" or something totally glib, in line with their usual back and forth of smart comments such as "Well, survived again. Let me ask a question, Fowl. Could you have been a cockroach in another life?"

Holly, however, was saved the necessity of choosing how to set the atmosphere upon this reunion as Artemis spoke first.

"This may seem like a silly question," he began, and Holly turned her head partway so she could see him out of the corner of her eye standing in the entryway to the cockpit. She noticed a slightly perplexed expression on his face; however, Artemis was not looking in her direction. Instead, his gaze was fixed on the copilot's chair, where the lemur was now perched. "But is Jayjay..."

Holly understood what he meant. The person sitting in the copilot's chair was usually responsible for taking over steering when the pilot was engaged with other matters.

Holly felt a mingle of relief and disappointment. Relief because this conversation opener seemed fairly safe, with little chance of her dissolving into tears again. Disappointment because... well, she didn't really know why. Except that maybe after being held prisoner by the Extinctionists for a whole day, enduring all manner of physical discomfort, thinking she was going to die for a group of psychos' entertainment, then finally spending the last couple hours thinking her partner was dead instead, for the first thing he said to her to be some totally stupid unrelated thing about a lemur, it felt just a bit like an anticlimax.

"No. Autopilot," she replied. She added, if just a bit resentfully, "And nice to see you alive, by the way. You're welcome for the rescue."

She didn't really expect a reply so she was startled when she felt Artemis's long fingers gently touch her shoulder.

"Once again, I owe you my life," he said, and the real sincerity in his voice disarmed her as it had before. Holly kept her eyes trained safely on the readout screen, though her heartbeat sped up, the light thrumming like that of a bird's.

Holly had to admit, the reaction was like something out of an embarrassing high school romance fantasy. Which made her tempted to go find a mirror, so she could give herself a good wakeup-punch in the face.

"Now," said Artemis in a tone that clearly had 'Now that that's out of the way' tacked all over it, apparently quite blissfully unaware of any unusual response in the hormonal adolescent elf, "I hate to move directly from gratitude to petulance, but why have we slowed down? Time is running out. We had three days, remember? There are only hours left."

Right, like she had forgotten. Nothing to kill a sentimental atmosphere like Artemis's usual patronizing, and attentiveness to details concerning the mission. For a genius, the boy had a remarkably one-tracked mind. But then, she supposed she had to admit that that unyielding focus was one of the things she had always respected about him.

Besides, if every time one of them had a near-death experience they got blubbery and emotional, Holly had a feeling they'd probably be crying nonstop until Judgment Day.


So Holly explained their situation, only finally turning to look her accomplice in the eye when she asked pointedly if he knew anything about it.

Holly hadn't expected to like the answer and wasn't disappointed as Artemis simply replied with the two words she least wanted to hear right now.

"Opal Koboi."

Artemis took the copilot's seat as Jayjay, looking sour, scampered out of the way. As the teenager did so, he removed his broken tinted glasses and pocketed them inside his suit jacket, as casually as a businessman sitting down to a coffee table to chat with coworkers after a day at the office. The gesture drew Holly's attention to Artemis's pale arm which, for whatever reason, was bare to the elbow, the sleeve of the light, now rather worn suit of his "Pasteur" disguise rolled back. Her eyes went back to his face, and she also noticed he was still wearing that ridiculous fake goatee.

Artemis continued calmly, "Opal is behind everything. She's harvesting animal fluids to increase her own magic. If she gets her hands on Jayjay, she'll be invincible."

Holly had a feeling that a lot was being edited out and simplified with this explanation, but decided not to ask. He was probably telling her everything she really needed to know. Instead, as Artemis was talking, Holly's eyes wandered slightly. She suddenly she caught sight of something for the first time on Artemis's exposed arm, and she had to fight not to recoil.

Embedded in Artemis's wrist like a bite mark from a wild dog was what looked like about a dozen crimson circular holes, forming a strange, eerily perfect elliptical shape.

She quickly turned her eyes away.

"That's wonderful," she said sarcastically. "Opal Koboi. I knew this little trip was missing a psychotic element. If Opal pinged us, then she'll be on our tail in something a little more war-worthy than this clunker."

Holly was quick to answer Artemis's rapid-fire questions and gave him a quick briefing on what she was already doing, going slowly enough and staying near enough other air traffic to make themselves virtually invisible to Opal. Then at the last minute they would blast off for the manor and get into the time stream before Opal could catch them.

Artemis nodded, gaze shifting from hers as he stroked his fake beard thoughtfully. Holly noticed he had two blue eyes, still wearing the colored contact.

For an instant, Holly's eyes flickered down to his arm again, before she allowed her focus to drift back to the computer readouts before her. A nightmarish mental image she'd had earlier was playing in her mind again, the one of her laying restrained, or else drugged, flat on her back on an operating table as figures with white head caps and masks over their noses and mouths leaned over her with scalpels in order to dissect her piece by piece. Only now the image of her own form had transformed into Artemis's, the faceless doctors replaced by an enraptured Opal Koboi dressed in a white lab coat. She could just see the tiny pixie leaning over him, giggling like a schoolgirl as she hooked up the machines to suck him dry of all his fluids.

Pins and needles crawled up and down her arms at the thought.

However at that moment Mulch reappeared, head emerging through the ship's mailbox, which was enough to distract Holly from the grotesque imagery.

"Nothing much in here," commented the dwarf. "A few gold coins. What say I keep them?"

Scavenging as usual, then, she thought with exasperation. He asked that like he was hoping for someone to object, just so he could rub their face in it when he got his way anyway.

Mulch added as an unimportant side note to the results of his usual treasure hunting, "And did I hear someone mention Opal Koboi?"

"Don't worry about it," Artemis assured him. "Everything is under control."

Seeing as how he was standing in front of a teenage Mud Boy in a rather more than slightly ruffled suit, wearing a fake beard and with hair tangled and wild like something out of a Tarzan movie, and an adolescent fairy girl sitting at the ship's controls in a long dress covered with dirt and sand enough to pass as a street urchin, one expensive dress shoe on one foot and a holey sock on the other, it did not take Mulch much to find the humor in this statement.

The dwarf burst out laughing, a bit harder than was probably necessary. "Under control?" he snorted when he was done, though still continuing to chortle. "Like Rathdown Park was under control. Like the leather souk was under control."

Although it was a bit hard to take being said in such an obnoxious tone, Holly had to admit he had a point.

"You're not seeing us at our best," Artemis conceded. "But," he added matter-of-factly, "in time you will come to respect Captain Short and me."

Mulch looked as though he thought it more likely all the cast-off Extinctionists of the now-dissolved organization would take up volunteer work at a wildlife preservation center.

"I'd better go and look up respect in the dictionary," he said dubiously, "because it mustn't mean what I think it means, eh, Jayjay?"

Jayjay, who had trotted over to where Mulch's face was still sticking through the mailbox as soon as the dwarf had appeared, chattered and clapped with evident delight.

Holly decided at this point that they had taken enough abuse.

"It looks like you've found an intellectual equal, Mulch," Holly put in as she turned back to monitoring the ship's instruments. "It's a pity he isn't a girl; then you could marry him."

It really was beginning to feel like things were getting back to normal after all this mayhem and certifiable insanity. She was piloting a hunk of garbage masquerading as a fairy aircraft, Artemis was sitting next to her pestering her with constant questions to fine-tune his plans, and in between, she and Artemis were joining forces to gang up on their pungent dwarf friend.

Although, in retrospect Holly thought she probably should have known better than to bait Mulch Diggums of all fairies, considering the leverage he'd gained against her since Rathdown Park. And unfortunately, he no longer had Holly's dangerously bad mood to deter him.

Mulch looked at her in apparent abject horror. "Romance outside your species. Now that's disgusting. What kind of weirdo would kiss someone when they weren't even part of the same species?"

Holly suddenly became deeply interested in the on-board flight instruments and the computer's readouts on the screen before her. Cheeks slightly pink, Holly had a feeling this was going to be a long ride back to the manor. She honestly couldn't wait until she got back into her adult body again, and was finally safe from all the mortification and embarrassment of adolescent nonsense and impulsive behavior.

Holly silently vowed to herself that the first thing she would do when she saw her dwarf friend again in the future was give him a good hard shove.


A/N: Hey, I'm posting a few days early. (: (Well, it is spring break after all, I've got time... Especially since my annoying word processor froze while I was trying to work on my homework anyway, dangit.)

So, as you know, writing fanfiction is all about trying new things, right? So I decided I would try to shake things up just a little. I explained things in my bio before now, but most of you probably don't look at that, so I'll say it again here. I decided to try combining chapters 28, which was pretty short (it ended after the 'phase one's over' paragraph) and 29, which was about average length, and take more time in posting to get the new, longer chapter ready.

A lot of you have been mentioning that longer chapters might be a better way to go about this story. Are there any opinions, having seen it, on whether this is a better setup? Is it more engaging to have longer chapters and possibly two-to-three-week intervals (maybe a month) than shorter chapters every week or four to five days? If I haven't chased you all away with my wordiness and having too many long, more tedious stretches, I would very, very much appreciate some feedback on this. (And to those of you who've already commented on these issues, thank you very much!) Even if some of you find it doesn't make much of a difference, I would like to hear that too.

Note about reviewing:

Okay, if you've actually read this chapter, this time I'm going to say please, please review! I'm not going to threaten not to update or anything if you don't (and this fanfiction probably isn't good enough that such threats would work anyway, eheh, though I will say reviews can and do encourage me to work on this fanfiction more, and update faster), but I really do appreciate it. Even if you don't have anything much to say and you only have twenty seconds or so to spare on a short message, or even if you found that particular chapter you just read on the ho-hum side, that's fine. It's not about review count; it's just that it's really the only way I can tell how many people are actually reading. (Visitor count and even alert count can't really tell me that) Even if you're just skipping around to the parts of the original TTP you like best, this fanfiction is so obscenely long that I wouldn't fault you for that either, lol, and I'd still like to hear what you thought of the parts you did read.

Like I said, I'm not going to try exhorting reviews out of you, because this is your spare time and you could be doing whatever you want with that time, and you've been kind enough to choose to use it to read what I've written, so if you do take time to review, that's totally your choice too; I'm grateful both to people who have just read as well as those who've both read and reviewed. But I've just realized recently that I tend to be on the pessimistic side, and I can't help but think whenever I post a new chapter, 'oh no, they all think it's going downhill and they've quietly slipped out the back exit' (which, to be fair, maybe a lot of it does seem like it's gone downhill recently X3).

I guess what I'm saying is, I know when I read fanfiction I have this mentality of, 'I'll review if there's something I can totally lavish praise on!' or I just decide not to review because there was something in the chapter/story I didn't like. But really, I'm trying to change that about myself, because I just don't feel that way about receiving reviews myself. Like anyone, I love getting long, thoughtful comments, but that doesn't mean I disregard shorter reviews that basically just say, 'hey, I've been interested enough to read this far,' because those are a great encouragement too.

Let me make it clear though that just because you haven't been doing that definitely doesn't mean I'm saying you've been doing anything wrong. (Oh, and on a side note, I'm also aware a lot of you won't read every chapter as it comes out; that's perfectly okay.) I know I've been the same way a lot of the time, and up until now I haven't made it clear that that's how I would want things anyway, so that's my fault. Just that sometimes when I'm reading a chapter, I'm not exactly sure what kind of review is welcome, and I always feel like I want to say something incredibly meaningful, and end up not reviewing if I can't think of anything, or I have a suggestion to make, but don't know how much constructive criticism the author really wants. (By the way, if you found something confusing or are leery about a choice I made in the writing, you're always free to tell me, even if it's something I can't change; it's still something I can think about in future projects) And so I just want to be open as I can about what my thought processes are, so you won't have to guess at where I'm coming from.

So, that's my philosophy, lol. Oh, and I almost forgot, I reposted chapters 1 and 2 with my newer (kind of experimental) versions. If you're interested, feel free to go take a look while you're waiting for the next chapter. Well then, until next time, and thanks to those of you who were nice enough to muddle through my ramblings at the end! (:

Posted 3/13/12