Rhythminthemind

... That the Toranaga family is immortal and Tsuru and Hideyoshi are pretending to be elderly in order to hide it from their grandkids?

Hideyoshi: Hideyoshi Toranaga had never been a particularly subtle man. It wasn’t something that had ever truly been expected, nor, indeed, desired of him. Not even in his youth. He had been taught the opposite, in fact. He was fire. What use did fire have for restraint? It had taken centuries for the boy that he had been to address the severity of that mistake; instilling, over time, a passable head for tactics within himself. Even now, however, subtlety didn’t come naturall

You make my story sound so uplifting. 😁

You're going to be waiting for a long while. I'm pretty sure that's LATE GAME stuff. I haven't even written any of it yet.

What makes you hummm?

Charlie: Charles Vance had spent a long few days unsure of what to think. Stuck alone in a cell with nothing but his thoughts and the passing attention of his wardens to distract him. Stress was too small a word for it. He was angry, he was scared, he was tired, and his skin still itched beneath the bandages from where the base’s surgeons had laid their scalpels about his form, only barely possessing the decency to put him under first. Most importantly of all, however, was this:

Many thanks. "I do wonder if you should not have a playlist to listen to for each chapter. Great taste in music..." Heh. I actually did that once back when I was doing fanfic. Not a full playlist. That'd take way too much time and energy, I suspect. But I had a song to go with things from time to time.

"Do 12 and 13 year olds still know the song Teen Spirit?" Some of the cool ones do. 😛 "Where did Charlie get the phone from?" He borrowed it from 23. "This is getting good." Glad you're enjoying it.

James: Just as he had been instructed, James Toranaga took a slow breath. He filled his lungs, held for a moment, then let it out. He did so again. And again. And again. The movies had been wrong. Wizard training sucked. He opened his eyes. “How long am I supposed to keep doing this?” “As long as it takes to find peace within your mind,” said the Egyptian. “If you want to learn a spell, first, you must open your spellbook. The spellbook will not open until you are truly

Not at cross purposes, per se. They don't share the same goals. James' family (and the U.S government) are trying to prevent a war with the elves. These folks are trying to start one.

Well, I mean, he asked for his grandparents' help last time with Caleb, so... Here's hoping.

Agent Sloan: Sloan hated the night shift. It had always been a chore, even when they had the last generation of assets being grown and trained here, some of them more prone to restlessness than others. That had been almost a decade ago, though; before his age had started catching up with him. He didn’t relish the long nights. Nor the ache in his knees and back that invariably followed. At least the drive was pleasant. He glanced out of his car’s side window, admiring the snowscape, dot

Heh. I have no idea what that interpretation is.

"it seems a bit calm before the storm" Yeah. That's a good way of putting it.

Glad you liked it. 🙂

Yeah. There's presently about twenty four more chapters, I think.

James: “I don’t give a damn if I need bed rest,” Hideyoshi Toranaga growled. “I am going to track that woman down and end her.” “Of course you are, dear,” Tsuru murmured. “Are you comfortable like that, or would you like me to get you another pillow?” “... Don’t patronize me, woman.” “You need crutches, dear.” She moved to his bedside, and began pouring out a pot of tea. Hideyoshi shot a hateful glance at the foam and metal crutches against his wall and let out a groan.

"Does the story Mr Grey told suppose to explain The Bermuda Triangle?" Explain it? No. Make you think about it? Yes.

Charlie: Charles Vance gazed out into the slow snowfall beyond his cell’s window, and once more tried to convince himself that staying at the compound had been a good idea. It was harder than it should have been. Everything Twenty Three had told him had been true. It was just annoying how little that actually helped. Charlie let his eyes scan slowly back and forth across the snow-clad mountainscape, searching once again for evidence of a ski-slope. It was hard to make out anything from

There is certainly a lot of damage there. Whether it is entirely irreparable, we shall see.

Fair questions. Here are my answers: "How far back do these people with powers go?" Thousands of years. "I ask this because among the adults who have these powers don't they at least have some kind of theory among themselves on what is the best way handle the possibility that your children may have powers?" In a lot of places, what Ray and Linda (Casper's parents) did was pretty standard practice up until the mid-1900s. The most effective and consistent way to make a child manifest their powers is to make them afraid. One way of doing that, unfortunately, was beating them until they feared for their lives. It became less standard in magical society as child protection law and understandings of how powers work were developed. Unfortunately, even in the modern day, you still occasionally get people using it as a method of forcing their children to manifest. It's more common in families with a history of magical combat skill, like James' and Casper's. "We are not sure what Charlie's mom did but that also seems to be inadequate." Charlie's mom didn't do anything to make her child manifest. She was happy to let him grow up normally and deal with his powers when and if they happened. "If their enemies were aware of Charlie's ability how were they so unprepared for a possible kidnapping?" Two things here. Charlie's kidnappers were not aware of Charlie's ability. They knew he had potential, but they weren't 100% sure what that potential was. Secondly, though. They were absolutely prepared for a possible kidnapping. Charlie lived with his mother, where she was ready and willing to protect him. If you go back to the chapters where the kidnapping happened, you'll note that the moment someone even tried to take Charlie, his mother punted them through the floor. The only reason the kidnapping worked at all was because Leanne was so devastatingly powerful that even Hideyoshi couldn't fight her off.

Casper: Casper didn’t know exactly what he had been expecting. But it hadn’t been silence. They’d agreed to meet up at a bowling alley, the idea spurred along by some bitter recollection of a happy family moment. Something they both enjoyed. That was the idea, at least. For the moment, they were seated in the alley’s diner, a partially walled off space within the rest of the larger complex, differentiated only by a slightly stronger smell of grease. Plastic tables, plastic tablecl

Bit cynical, yeah. 😛

"When does Bex 'awaken' to her powers?" Just as a warning, the stuff with Bex is a while off, yet. I had that planned as a much, much later arc that I just wanted some early foreshadowing for. 😛

@centexhairysub Funnily enough, when I first posted this chapter on another site, I actually posted it with a note at the end reading "She's dead now. I promise." In fairness, this chapter does specifically note that she doesn't have a pulse after the stabbing.