Author's Note: This is somewhat of a filler chapter that segues into more exciting ones. I hope it's not too boring. And in case I don't update again beforehand, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays :)


Flies circled Takeda slowly as their wings buzzed, a low hum that filled Olivia with fear. The sun above was only barely rising above the eastern horizon, but already it was ruthless. Blinding rays shone into the teenagers' eyes, promising another day of scorching, uncomfortable heat. It wasn't long before it began shimmering in waves off the low hills. A thin rivulet of sweat trickled from the Cryomancer's forehead, around her swollen eye socket, and onto her sliced breast where Reiko's scythe had cut her deeply the night before. It stung, and badly. The only sounds she heard were the steady stomp of the iwanas webbed feet on sand – they had crossed from the festering region hours ago, blessedly enough – and the faint jingle of shells and beads in her hair.

And of course, there were the flies.

They were large and loud like bumblebees, and seemingly a close cousin of Earthrealm's horseflies. At least, that was the closest comparison Olivia could think of; the occasional few strayed from the growing swarm around Takeda and found her, and when they did, they bit her so hard they drew blood. She started freezing them in a deadly cloud of fog and ice whenever they got too close. Takeda, however, hated them more than she did. Whenever one came near him, his free hand – his other was tightly gripping his belly where Reiko stabbed him – would shoot out like a striking snake and close around it. And then his fingers would tighten into a white-knuckled fist, and when they'd open again, they'd be smeared with a brown stain of bug guts.

Eventually, the swarm grew closer and closer to him, and he stopped fighting them. His dull eyes were fixed on the distant mountains and the rolling hills of sand that stretched ahead of him. Beneath his shirt, he clutched an ice pack to his skin to slow the oozing blood and reduce the swelling in his abdomen. She made these packs for him often, pressing her hand to his belly so that the ice would conform to the shape of his body. At first, he had resisted because the cold burned and stung, and the packs eventually soaked him as they melted, so he'd angrily cursed her abilities as a Cryomancer. But as the night turned to day and the heat began to return before sunrise, he stopped arguing with her about it.

Every mile that they traveled Olivia noticed one more line of pain etched into Takeda's face. And now, he'd gone completely silent. Inwardly, she began to freak out. Since daylight had dawned, he hadn't said a single word to her, not to bitch at her, not to complain, not to ask for water. When she spoke to him, she didn't receive a worded answer, only a grunt, and not even that much since sunrise.

One of the flies landed on his shoulder. Another circled and landed on his hair but crept downward to his mouth. Takeda swayed on the saddle as if he was drunk as his iwana kept walking beside Olivia's at a steady pace. The Cryomancer, worried, pressed her heels into the beast's side and rode closer to her classmate.

"Takeda?" she asked. "Are you okay? Do you need to stop?"

He didn't seem to hear her. Another fly landed on his cheek and bit him in the crease beside his nose. A small trickle of blood sprang from the wound and trickled into his mouth. "Hey, Takeda!" she gasped, now on the verge of full panic mode. Anxiously, she waved her hand in front of his face, blasting him with cool air in the hopes to snap him out of it and drive away the annoying little insects. The flies scattered, but Takeda reeled in his saddle, went limp, and fell like a lump into a sand dune.

"Takeda!" she yelped as she reined her iwana to a stop and then leapt off her saddle to help him.

The boy cried out in pain as Olivia knelt beside him. His breath rattled harshly in his throat, and he looked at her as if she were a stranger. "Momma," he gasped as tears filled his eyes. At the declaration, tears filled her eyes as well. She thought of her mother, and wished, for the umpteenth time since Reiko had kidnapped them, that she was there to help her. Only this time, she needed her mother to save her classmate and not her.

She lifted his shirt and saw that the wound had scabbed around the edges, bubbling fresh blood over crusty black borders. Red lines of infection were already streaking through his skin in thin tendrils. And worst of all, his skin burned to the touch. He had a fever now, she knew. Trembling, her eyes full of new tears, she turned away from him and winced at thoughts of the inevitable. Out here, without access to a Healer or antibiotics, he would die. Once more, she couldn't believe Reiko did that to the boy he claimed was the leverage he needed.

You have to clean him and get his fever down like you did for Erron, the Cryomancer heard her mother say in her head, and she knew she was right. He was like a bonfire in a human hide.

Quickly, she scrambled to her feet and summoned her powers around her. Then, thinking of her father and of the igloos he'd spent hours teaching her to make in the wastelands of Arctika, she conjured ice with both hands and willed its unyielding substance into the shape she desired. Soon, a large hollow mound of thick ice formed beneath a jagged outcropping of yellow rock whose shadow gave some relief from the sun. Even so, it won't last long in this stifling heat, she reminded herself as she helped Takeda to his feet and then hobbled into the shelter she'd made for him. She'd have to frequently reform the structure to keep it from melting and collapsing on them completely.

Once safely inside, Olivia covered the ground with more ice and then stretched Takeda out, flat on his back. "Momma," he muttered again, and then began gasping the same phrase in Thai over and over again. It seemed to be the only thing he was capable of saying. If she had to take a guess as to what he was repeating, she'd wager that he was still crying out for his mother in his native tongue.

"I'm here, Takeda," she reassured him as she gripped his hand, choking back her persistent and annoying need to sob in fear and worry for him. There is no time for such emotions right now, her father's voice reminded her.

The Cryomancer heeded his advice and calmly formed a thin tomb of ice around him up to his neck to cool his fever. He was still moaning, his voice weak and pathetic, when she scrambled from the igloo to rifle through the supplies that Rowena gave to them to find anything of use, and he was still moaning when she returned with clean clothes, clean squares of silk, a bar of soap, and a few canteens full of water. The ice she'd formed only a few minutes prior was already melting and breaking in spots. She quietly stroked his hair as it melted away completely, humming a Hydromancer lullaby her Aunt Kailyn had taught her when she was a child, and was relieved when she noticed that her efforts seemed to work. His fever seemed less severe, though he was still in and out of consciousness.

After she helped him sit up enough to chug down half a canteen of water, Olivia formed a kori knife to cut away all of his filthy, travel-stained clothes, even his underwear, which was nasty too. She then bathed him as best she could with only one good hand and a limited supply of water and soap. She scrubbed the dirt and the dust from his entire body, gently cleaned his face with one of the pieces of silk, soaped his longish black hair and rinsed it with water, then combed out the knots and tangles until it shone like onyx. She didn't touch his genitals and tried hard not to look at them directly as she poured the water on them to simply rinse them off. Around his stomach she took greater care because he hissed and groaned in great pain as she wiped the skin up to the very edges of the wound. When she finished cleaning up the injury, she formed a fresh ice pack on top of it and watched in satisfaction as it seemed to comfort him. She left him unclothed to keep him cool, save for the clean pieces of silk that she draped over his groin for modesty.

It was well past noon when she finished, and she was exhausted. She tied the iwanas to a rock formation like a pillar, and then she ate a bit, but it was all she could do to nibble at a fig-like fruit and drink some water. What she really wanted to do was sleep, but she was too frightened to shut her eyes. If she did, he might die. He might die and she could've done something to stop it. So no, she couldn't sleep just yet. She owed her wakefulness to Takeda, for letting him believe he'd been betrayed when Reiko took her in his tent, if for nothing else.

Olivia had been so worried about Takeda since they'd escaped Reiko's camp that she'd hardly noticed her own pain, but now that he was resting easier and his breathing seemed to improve, the aches and pains came screeching back to her like a vicious slap in the face. Wearily, she looked down at her right hand and saw that an ugly black and purple bruise of her own now spread across a tight knot that had enveloped her knuckles. God, it had felt good to punch Reiko so hard, but it didn't feel that great right now. She tried to flex her hand, but it hurt too badly to move, and she suspected she had broken at least one of the tiny bones. Her eye was swollen as well, and it probably matched the color of her hand and the split in her bottom lip.

With eyelids as heavy as molten lead, she formed an ice pack for herself and pressed it to her hand. Without even realizing she did it, she dozed off sitting completely upright by Takeda, and wings immediately swept her into dreams of an ice blue dragon carrying her away from Outworld. It was a nice dream, and she clung to the beast's back as they drifted through clouds for a while. But a sudden hand on her arm jerked her awake, and she started, looking at her classmate. The boy was looking at her with a weak but wakeful expression.

"What happened?" he whispered, and then he coughed and cleared his throat. His eyes were wobbly in their sockets, but he managed to steady them long enough to look around him. "Where are we?"

"You passed out and fell off your iwana," she told him. "You're very sick. I made this igloo to shelter us from the sun and keep you cool."

Takeda inhaled deeply and then looked down at his body. Alarmed by his nakedness, he was suddenly wide awake and staring at her with his most accusatory expression. "Why am I naked?" he hissed. He instantly crossed his hands over his groin.

"Again, because you're running a high fever," she shot back, now mildly annoyed. "And I had to bathe you because you were dirty and it was infecting the wound."

He thought about that for a long moment before he finally said, in a lighter tone, "You know, Olivia, if you wanted to see me naked, all you had to do was ask."

She rolled her eyes. "Dream on," she replied before she rubbed her temples tiredly. She felt a headache coming on, but from stress or heatstroke, she couldn't be certain.

"Yeah, you're right," he said. His voice remained steady but quiet and labored the entire time. "I don't want you to see me naked even if you ask permission first. I hate you."

"I hate you too," she spat, but she smiled at the joke.

Now more relaxed, Takeda folded his fingers across his chest and looked up. "How long have we been here?" he asked.

"Half the day, I think," she said, shrugging. They'd wasted far too time, she knew. But it couldn't be helped.

"Reiko's going to catch us again," he mumbled. "And I'm going to go out on a limb and say he won't sleep with you and give you the opportunity to escape this time."

"No, he won't catch us again because I killed him. Again. Now Skarlet on the other hand…" She sighed as she leaned onto her elbows. A drop of water from the ceiling dripped on her in a splatter, first one, then two, then a steady trickle. Calmly, she placed her ice-charged palm onto the curved surface of the igloo and commanded it to reinforce the ice with a new layer. It obeyed, and the air around them immediately grew cold once more.

"It's so cool how you do that," he said, examining her handiwork.

Olivia bitterly chuckled. "No pun intended, I'm sure," she said, and he snickered.

"By the way, I didn't tell you thanks," he said.

"For what?" she asked.

"Doing what you did to get us out of there," he said, wincing at the memory. "I shouldn't have said what I did."

"I don't want to talk about it," she said, shooting upright and pulling her arms and legs tightly to her.

"No, I know," he said, holding up his hands deferentially to her. "I just wanted to say thanks. And thanks for helping me now. And that's all I'm going to say."

The Cryomancer suspiciously eyeballed him. "I don't deserve thanks," she finally told him. "It was despicable, but I couldn't think of any other way. Alex is going to hate me if he finds out, and so are my parents. So please, don't thank me."

Takeda merely nodded. Then he said, "Why are you even here?"

She raised a quizzical eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"If you hadn't come to the Shirai Ryu, you wouldn't be stuck in this mess. So why did you come to the Shirai Ryu? You've never told me the whole story."

Olivia cleared her throat and then offered a fig to him. He turned it down so she bit into it herself. "My father decided that I needed more discipline than he could give," she finally said. "He thought Grandmaster Hasashi could be a good teacher to me. So in the middle of what I thought would be my Rite of Ascension, he sprang it on me that I wouldn't be testing."

He thoughtfully nodded. "What is this Rite of Ascension anyway?"

"It's when the Lin Kuei stops looking at us like we're children and recognizes us as fully-grown, adult warriors." She bitterly chuffed. "But my father, in all his glorious wisdom, decided I wasn't ready."

"Ready for what?"

"To test. To prove that I know what I'm doing and can handle myself."

"And then what happens once you pass?"

She shrugged. "We get our battle uniform and then my father tells us what our job in the Temple will be," she explained. "We also get the Lin Kuei symbol tattooed just above our wrists. And in front of the Temple, we choose our code-names."

"What was your name going to be if he'd have let you test?" he wheezed like an old man.

Olivia cleared her throat. "I didn't have one picked yet," she confessed.

He began coughing as she spoke, and when he answered her, his face had long since turned beet red. "Well, how does one go about choosing their code-name?" he asked, weakly lifting the canteen to his mouth with her help. "Are there restrictions or anything?"

Again, the Cryomancer shrugged. "People usually choose their name based on what they can do or on their interests," she told him. "My father's code-name, Sub-Zero, wasn't his original name. It was Tundra. My uncle was named Sub-Zero, and he named himself after an ancestor with the same code-name. But my dad took that name too when Grandmaster Hasashi, as Scorpion, killed my uncle and my dad wanted to keep his memory alive, especially when my uncle became an evil wraith who worked for Quan Chi. And then my uncle was resurrected by Raiden and-" She cut herself off when she noticed that Takeda was giving her a funny look. "My family history is a bit weird," she muttered, suddenly embarrassed by it.

Takeda smiled. "So is mine," he said.

"Anyway," she said, clearing her throat, "my other uncle calls himself Smoke because he has powers to create or become smoke. Alex picked Caliber because he's really good with guns. My best friend, Morgan – she's also my cousin – picked Hydro after our grandfather, Halsey. He was a great Hydromancer warrior for Outworld and the Lin Kuei, hence the 'Hydro' part." She noticed Takeda blinking again and said, "Okay, my family history is really weird."

"So why don't you do like she did and take your dad's name?" he suggested. "What was it? Tundra?"

"Yeah," she said. "Tundra. But I don't want that name."

"Why not?" he asked.

"Why not?" she shrilly repeated. "You, of all people, should understand, especially now," she said. "The only reason I'm stuck here is because of him."

"But I've heard you say a bunch of times that he's in your thoughts and guiding you through this place and every obstacle we've come across."

Olivia was going to argue with him, but she stopped herself when she realized that he was right. Her father had been with her every step of the way, in spirit if not in reality, pushing her to keep going, reminding her how to use her powers in certain ways, and coming from her soul in her moments of conflict. And she'd longed to see him just once more, more times than she cared to admit out loud. She missed her dad, yes, but it suddenly occurred to her that he'd been right there with her all along. Tears sprang in her blue eyes in spite of herself, and she angrily wiped them away.

"I couldn't name myself after him," she finally confessed in a small voice. "I don't want a constant reminder of him hanging over my head for the rest of my life, especially now when I know he'll hate me after everything I've done."

"It seems to me he already is hanging over you," the boy told her. "With or without the name." He faintly smiled and then patted her arm. "But hey," he weakly croaked, "I actually think Snowflake suits you better."

Now Olivia scowled. "What is it with you and my brothers?" she hissed, thinking about the twins' suggestion as well. "Snowflake is the most unoriginal, stupid, cheesy-"

"Well, there's a movie I heard about," he interrupted her, and dread filled Olivia because she automatically knew where this was going. "It's very popular, I guess, and it's about a girl who can freeze stuff. I want to say her name is Eliza or Elsie."

"Elsa," she grumbled. "And no. I will commit hara-kiri before I name myself Elsa."

"Can I call you Elsa?"

"No." She felt his forehead with the back of her hand, and he was still warm, but much cooler than he'd been a few hours ago. "This isn't a joke, Takeda. The Rite of Ascension is one of the most important days in a Lin Kuei's life. Kind of like becoming a Chujin in the Shirai Ryu."

Takeda chuckled, causing himself to cough again. "What's so funny?" she demanded to know as soon as he'd recovered his breath.

"It just sounds like this test is quite a big deal, but to be honest, I think you've gone through a test and then some," he croaked. "I think we both have. So if we get home, your dad should let you skip the test part of the Rite of Ascension."

She scoffed. "Well, it's a nice idea, but good luck convincing the Grandmaster." Now she leaned backwards on her elbows again and then loudly sighed. "It doesn't matter anyway. Not anymore."

"Why is that?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Because I'm not going back to the Lin Kuei when and if I get out of Outworld," she said. "I can't go back. Not now. So I want to live a normal life, and I'll go to stay with my Grammy in New York until I can figure out how to go to college and get a job."

"A normal life sounds nice," he said. "I sometimes wonder what my life would've been like if my mom never died and my dad never took me away. I'd probably end up working in a crap job like my mom did. She worked in a restaurant, so she couldn't afford to send me to college, and my grandmother wouldn't have helped her. She didn't like me very much."

"Why not?"

"Because she didn't like my father," he sighed and looked up at the ceiling. "She always said I reminded her of him. My mother always told me not to listen to her because my dad was a good man. Boy, was she wrong. She should be in the Guinness Book of World Records for the world's wrongest woman."

"I'm sure Kenshi had his reasons," she mused. "But knowing what fathers are like, they were probably all selfish reasons."

He scoffed. "Probably," he agreed. And then he started coughing. At first, they were little coughs, but quickly they became harder coughs like a seal bark, and he choked up blood and clots. Gruesome gore spilled over his lips like a waterfall.

"Oh, God," she gasped when she saw it. Immediately, she grabbed a piece of silk and wiped his face clean.

"Water," he wheezed, and she obliged him. She propped him against her body and helped him sip from the canteen once more.

"Takeda…" she trailed off, fighting back her frightened tears. She didn't particularly know what to say to him.

"We…We need to get moving," he managed to say, though he looked considerably paler than he did only moments before.

"You're not strong enough," she argued. "You'll just fall off your iwana again."

"It's not going to matter much if Skarlet finds us and kills us," he shot back. He struggled to sit up, wheezing and gasping, so Olivia gave him her hand and helped him.

"Fine," she grumbled, but she knew he was right, and he wouldn't be deterred even if he wasn't. They had to start traveling again. "But at least ride in the saddle in front of me so I can catch you if you faint again. The last thing I need is for you to fall on your head and get a concussion or break your neck."

"Yes, mother," he panted.

So they abandoned their shelter, and Olivia helped Takeda climb onto her iwana with much difficulty. It was challenging for him. The pain in his belly hurt him so much that even walking was nearly impossible, even with the Cryomancer holding him up with one shoulder, and he stumbled more than once. By some miracle of God, she managed to thread his foot through the stirrup, ignoring his wails of pain. She felt bad for him, she really did, but he wasn't going to get up without the stirrup helping him. Then she pushed him up with her shoulders like a bull, and he fell into the saddle, sucking air through his teeth and groaning, hobbled over. Then Olivia untied the other iwana and handed him the reins before she scurried up behind him, and they set off again at a somewhat slow canter.

Olivia stared around them, saw a rocky escarpment lifting out of the desert ahead like a beach rising from the sea, and wind-carved palisades beyond. There came a rushing sense of motion to their passage – blurred shadows of dunes, rocks lifting like islands. The iwanas ventured down a dune, skipped across a sand valley, ascended yet another dune. A brutally dry wind screamed around them, blowing stinging granules at them from behind their backs. It carried with it the pungent odor of burning flint.

And then, about an hour after leaving their igloo, there came a rumbling. It came from the southeast, a distant hissing like a whisper. The ground began to vibrate and hum; it was hardly perceptible at first, but soon, the ground began to sway and groan, recoiling as if something hideous had touched it. Sand slid down from the tops of dunes like an avalanche, throwing thick clouds of dust into the air. Immediately, both of the iwanas reared back, bellowing in protest as the rumbling became steadily louder, and Takeda's beast yanked itself free of his grip.

"What's got them so spooked?" he asked, concerned, as she jumped off hers and fought to catch the braying and prancing lizard by its reins. It was too upset, though, and she only managed to catch one of the saddle pack's leather strap and accidentally break it free.

Before she caught the iwana, a great roar bellowed from the earth, and she slowly scanned the horizon, listening, watching for signs. Nothing could have ever prepared the Cryomancer for what her eyes saw; quickly, the faraway outline of a creature's long track below the surface of the desert slithered into view against the afternoon light, and it was then that she realized she'd never seen anything so large in her life, never heard of anything this large, not even the dinosaurs. It appeared to be a mile or so long, and the rise of the sand wave at its cresting head was like the approach of a mountain.

"Olivia, get on!" Takeda screamed at her when he saw the approaching monster rising from the sand. But even as he yelled it, both iwanas bolted, taking him with hers and leaving her behind. "Run!" he shrieked at her as he fought to grab the reins.

His beast raced up the dune face and beyond it where there was a rock tower undercut by sandblast winds. Olivia followed, scrambling and sliding up the dune. The creature – whatever it was – was coming fast for them. She gasped for air as she ran, and her terror summoned her powers to her hands. Every place she touched when she stumbled turned to ice. Had she time to reflect on it, she would've found the icy hand prints littering the side of the dune a funny sight to behold.

Soon, they came out onto a sand ridge that curved away towards the rocks. "Follow the ridge!" she cried ahead to him. He was still struggling to get control of her iwana, and she heard his loud groans of pain as he twisted to catch the reins.

She slogged towards the rocks after them, the sand gripping her booted feet and dragging her down. And then, a loud and frightening sound began to impress itself on her: a grinding noise, a hissing, an abrasive slithering. It grew steadily louder, and she knew that the monstrous creature was almost upon them.

"Faster!" Olivia shrieked.

She shifted the saddle pack she'd yanked from the iwana to her right arm, holding it by the straps. It slapped her side as she ran and caught up to her classmate. She took Takeda's arm with her other hand, and somehow, he mustered enough strength to yank her back onto the trotting beast. Once back on, she snatched the leather reins from him and took control once more, and she guided the iwana onto the lifting rock, up a pebbled-littered surface through a twisted, wind-carved channel. Breath came dry and gasping in her throat as she panted.

Olivia now stopped them, pressed them all into a gut of rock, turned and looked down onto the desert. A mound-in-motion ran parallel to their rock island – sunlit ripples, sand waves, a cresting burrow almost level with the Cryomancer's eyes at a distance of a quarter mile. The flattened dunes of its track curved once – a short loop crossing the patch of desert where their iwana now raced in fear. The monster was gaining on it.

Flecks of dust shadowed the sand around the doomed creature now, choking out the air with a cloud of dirt and debris. The overgrown lizard brayed in fear as it tumbled to the right, knocked about by the growing earthquake. While Olivia and Takeda watched in horror, a gigantic sand whirlpool began forming around the animal. It moved faster and faster. Sand and dust filled the air now for hundreds of yards around. And then they saw it!

A wide hole emerged from the sand. Sunlight flashed from several rows of glistening white teeth like that of a great white shark. The hole's diameter was at least three times that of the iwana, Olivia estimated. She watched as the frightened creature slid into that opening in a billow of dust and sand. The hole pulled back with a terrifying, trumpeting roar. Then it dove beneath the sand dunes again just as fast as it had come, and where it had been there was no sign of the poor animal.

"Oh, my God," Olivia muttered over and over to herself, shaking. Unbeknownst to her, she hugged Takeda tightly to her from behind.

"What is that thing?" he nervously chattered, his voice weak and pain-stricken, but as terrified as hers.

"I don't know," she mumbled as tears streaked down her dirty face. That poor iwana. "It almost looked like…a worm."

They watched with hearts pounding in their chests as the burrow mound turned outward into the desert again for a moment, then coursed back across its own path, questing. And then, the thing turned towards the rocks, speeding now on a straight track toward them. It surfaced once more, and sand tumbled into its wide-open mouth, its enormous teeth getting larger in their sight.


Author's Note: The worm creature was inspired a little by Beetlejuice, but also Dune. Didn't want to say that above lest I spoil this chapter.

DarkAssassin15, thank you. To answer your musings, I think he still would've been pissed off, but there probably wouldn't be a story now, so...Yeah. LOL

MKDemigodZ-Warrior, well, you don't become a killer for hire by having a warm and fuzzy childhood. ;)

Lightrunner, thanks. Hopefully, Kuai Liang and Olivia's reunion will be as good as you're expecting! And sure, I'll give it a read. Is it on your profile?

PinkRedRose2, first of all, thank you for adding me to your fave authors and following Tales of the Lin Kuei. I agree with your statement that Olivia gets her stubbornness from both of her parents. I think Anya has a little bit more faith in her than her father does, though. I think he's starting to see that she's far more resourceful than he gives her credit for, that she's a survivor and a fighter.

Hell-on-Training-Wheels, oh, pooh. Yes, you will. Wait, what am I saying? You already have. His whole tragic childhood is good stuff. Don't dog yourself. Plus, you're much more in tune with Erron's character than I am! But thank you for that high praise. It means a lot to me, especially that you've given me your seal of approval for the way I write Erron :)

Westcoast Witchdoctor, you know, I actually like that idea of Erron and Scorpion having a common ground. I may work that in somehow. LOL As for Kuai Liang becoming a rage monkey, I think he's starting to chill out (forgive the pun). I think Erron's story and what he said about his own kid not making it to her first birthday has shocked some sense into him. And Smoke and Fujin are always going to throw shade at one another. Ever since they met each other, that's been their thing. :D

ROCuevas, thanks!

iceangelmkx, oh, no worries. I'm glad you're catching up now. I've wanted your opinion so much but I didn't want to annoy you! As for Olivia's misadventure with Reiko in the bedroom, well, you know I've never played fair. ;) I've always thrown as much crap at my characters as I can. It makes you root for them all the more, and when they're victorious, it's about ten times sweeter. Oh, man, I totally forgot how Subby helped Kenshi in Deception, and how I mirrored that in Curse. Good eye, my friend!

Reptaliator, first thing, unless you review under a separate name, then no, I didn't say your comments were sexist. That was, as far as I know, someone else. Anyway, your grievance makes more sense now, but here's the thing. We may know that Outworld generals come back, but keep in mind that Olivia is young and that she doesn't know. Why would she? She's never dealt with them before. And she doesn't know that Reiko's under the influence of Blood Magik. As far as she know, stabbing someone through the chest should kill them. Anticipating anything else would just be unrealistic. As for your request, I appreciate the offer, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to decline. The only reason I asked Firebending Master to help me choreograph fight scenes is because I actually know him in real life. Plus, you don't have a permanent account, so how would we interact? And even if you had an account, I don't really feel comfortable doing collaborations, especially since I don't really know you. So, thanks anyway. And lastly, in regards to your request that I only focus on the kids, again, the answer is no. I have a plan that I'm following, and I won't abandon it simply because you want me to. It's my story. I'm the author of it and I steer this ship; I'm not anyone's trained monkey. I've switched back and forth between the adults and the kids for a reason, and to stop that now would create a huge inconsistency in tone. In short, it would be bad for my story. That said, my plan does have me sticking with the kids for the majority of the time for at least a few chapters.