Battle Vixens! - 82

First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

Episode 82: Changes

Blake woke with a sudden start, sitting immediately upright in his chair and then standing up before he even fully registered the world around him. The sun was setting through the apartment living room's closed blinds; he'd been asleep a few hours. He was...shaking. "Amory!"
His roommate hurried out. "What, what is it?"

He looked, and opened his mouth, but didn't have a good answer right away and slowly shut it again. Then: "I-I don't know. I just.."
"You're shaking," he observed quietly, not meaning to interrupt but clearly expressing some worry.

"S-some kind of dream. Ineedto—just." Blake exhaled, a slow "Fffh," and managed to steady himself. "...Close your eyes. Then look."

"Okay?" The confusing mess of instructions wasn't helping to reassure him, but—Blake was still only maybe half-awake.

He spoke his phrase, changing back into Light, and Amory understood that this was the sole reason for asking him to close his eyes. He opened them again right after the characteristic flash, and quickly returned to a look of concerned surprise. "You're...glowing?"
Light's heart was racing, and she had to force herself to breathe slowly instead of panting, which made it obviously labored and audibly difficult. On about the third intake, she tried talking again: "I dreamed about, her, touching my ears again, like she did Wednesday night. But—" Voiced gasp, exhale. Slow, careful breath in. "Itwasa, normal, dream. I didn't change, I didn't go to that place." More, somewhat louder breaths in and out. "I feel like, I'm gonna, explode."

"Well..don't, do that?" he helpfully advised, taking a small step back and squinting a bit. Her body's glow had brigthened steadily throughout this explanation. "Whatever it is, just..try to let it out slowly, maybe...?"

"HhhuuUUugghhhff. Okay." She took a breath in through her nose, and tried to relax as she let it out again through her mouth. Finally it became a bit clearer what was so uncomfortable and stressful: Something inside her, trying to come out, which it felt as if she had been pushing back for a long while. Days, or maybe even a week plus. Light closed her eyes, focusing on the metaphorical death-grip she had on..whatever it was, slowly loosening the "fist" holding said grip as she continued trying to relax.

It felt...much better doing this. The stress and tightness fell away, giving her a warm, pleasant sensation not unlike being "boosted" by Amp. In fact..her body changed partway to physical light as it did when that was happening, and in the same way it physically transformed—if much more slowly. Her height climbed gradually upward, her muscles tightening and releasing a few times as they gained some strength. Her bust—of course—pushed itself forward a bit, gaining size, and her overall figure "improved" some to match it. It only took a few seconds or so for the change to happen, and when it was done, the stress and discomfort was gone.

Opening her eyes again, Light sensed that she was three or four inches taller—enough to clearly notice from inside or outside—and looked down to see that her clothes had resized slightly to fit her mildly deepened figure. Examining further, she seemed a bit more visibly toned, too, leaning toward a clearly athletic build. "I..w-what even..?" Her voice was deeper by a margin that was, again, just barely enough to easily notice.

"You uh...grew?" Amory wasn't really any more clear on the what or how than she was at first. Then: "Wait. Do you feel any more powerful?"
"Uh..."

---

...Fix my eyes? Emma thought about it. As far as modifications went, was that 'big' or 'small'? Sure, it was physically a small change, but it was something that medicine had been slowly working out how to do for a long time and still had a high risk of side-effects from overcorrection...or, something like that. If it was big, it could take several hours at least, and she wouldn't be able to see properly with or without her glasses the whole time. Maybe...it was better to test out something she could see, first.

She made for her bathroom, specifically in front of the mirror, to look. The changes were supposed to be able to go back and forth freely, but it seemed like a good idea to test that with something that she could undo "manually" if something broke. Fixing her eyes on the dark brown hair of the girl in the mirror for a moment, she tried to concentrate on the idea of turning that red—not bright red, but just red enough to tell the difference. She'd always...sort of wondered what that would look like anyway.

The spell hadn't really come with instructions, but it immediately felt clear when she had made it activate, even without a visual cue. There was some sort of clear separation in her mind between things like imagining herself with red hair (no matter how vividly) or wanting it (no matter how badly), and actively willing it to change. There was some kind of mental 'latch' that seemed impossible to set off by accident.

She didn't really feel anything in particular, but after thirty seconds or so she could make out a clear difference in the color of her hair. Within two minutes it had turned the exact shade she'd pictured. It was...pretty, but didn't feel like her in the mirror. Anyway, this could be achieved with dyes, so—Emma willed it to go back. In around the same span of time, her hair returned to its original brown hue.

Throughout all of this, Emma gradually grew more excited. It worked! And anything she didn't like would go back, at least during the week this spell was supposed to be effective. Eager to start making changes she really wanted, she decided to start relatively small: One inch taller. She focused, and the latch clicked.

This change came with a sensation. It was sort of a vague sense of her body stretching, which somehow failed to be uncomfortable. She could even ignore it, if she weren't practically fixated on it just now. In a mere few minutes, everything in her bathroom seemed just marginally lower than it had been before; her clothes were the easiest tell that something was different, with the hem of her shirt threatening to show some actual skin and her leggings not reaching as far down the ankles. It did occur to her that she hadn't specified where that extra height should be distributed, but it seemed like an even, natural growth had been assumed, leaving her build practically identical to before, only taller.

She really couldn't help smiling into the mirror. Aside from..maybe needing to get some new clothes to fit her, this was perfect. She could be whatever height she wanted, with whatever figure, fix her stupid myopic eyes...maybe make herself a little stronger, with some better stamina. It was hard to decide what to do next! After a moment, however, she realized that it was a bad idea to change her bust size too much before buying some proper support for the...target. So she went with a bit more strength and stamina as the next target change, wanting to check for sure that the spell wasn't limited to purely cosmetic changes. The specific thing she focused on was 'same genetics, more exercise and healthier diet', imagining her build becoming visibly athletic, but not freakishly muscular or anything...

---

Now that she was thinking about it, Light did feel more powerful. Her body felt a bit lighter, yet also stronger—both to a far lesser degree than her "boosted" form, but in just the same way. And... "I can.." With some visible effort, she managed the light-speed trick she could use almost effortlessly in that form, moving herself over to behind the chair. "And...?" Lifting her hands, she was able to 'juggle' two copies of her sword, holding one in each. "I'd say...yes. Definitely. But, why? I mean, I didn't...she hasn't..."

"Maybe it's..'natural'?" Amory said. "I mean—we know a person's original power grows more with each 'stolen' power they get. So..logically, I guess 'owning' powers can have the same effect? Maybe the growth is slower or less extreme, though. But—you didn't grow at all like this, with the first three people. Why would the fourth matter so much?"

"I dunno..that it did." Releasing the weapons again, Light walked back over to the front of the chair, slowly sitting back down into it with her tail curled forward to lie against her left leg. "I felt like...I'd been pushing something down inside me, and hadn't even realized it before. It was—like I said, ready to explode. Like a balloon that had finally overfilled and needed to either be released gently, or else 'pop'."

Amory walked across in front of her, taking up a seat on the couch nearby. "So, you think you were suppressing your own growth? Why would your own powers do that?"

"I don't like owning people's powers," she said, crossing her arms a bit uncomfortably under the larger breasts. Those things had to be, what...a high B or very low C by now? Or, whatever—she wasn't actually well-versed in bra sizing, for obvious reasons. "I guess, if my own power listens to what I 'think' it should do, then it was pushing this back 'cause it came from something I didn't want."

Light thought of something else, realizing aloud: "...She didn't actually make me stronger. On Wednesday. I mean, not directly. She just—forced me to relax so that some of it vented out."

"If that's the case, why didn't me helping you 'relax' or gain temporary power just—cause you to go back to this, after? Why couldn't I notice that you were suppressing something?"
"Well, I mean...I didn't even know. I guess 'adding temporary power' is distinct from 'letting out what's already there'."

"Must be...

"...Are you, okay, though? Want to, talk about anything?" he said after a moment of thinking about it.

"I guess. I'm not, totally exhausted anymore, at least. Not like this, though—close your eyes a sec." Light changed back into Blake, and breathed a sigh of relief. "..Better. I feel, normal again."

"That's good. You looked...almost unwell for a second there."

He nodded. "Hopefully it won't come up again...but if it does, I'll make an effort not to push more power down. Like it or not, it could save people's lives."

"I'll remind you," Amory assured him.

---

"Gotcha! Nrrrgh." Gerald hugged her little girl for a moment before releasing her and getting the expected giggling and running around.
"No fair, no fair! Ning can go faster now, with longer legs!" The complaint was essentially in jest, but it did remind the white-haired vixen of something.

"Hey...c'mere a sec, Nadia," she said softly, beckoning.

Her granddaughter knew a serious tone of voice when she heard it, and walked up in front of her. "You should know...I'm planning to stay like this for good, I think. That all right with you?"

Nadia made a show of thinking about it, then nodded. "Mm-hm! Grampa's happier being Ning, Ning's funner to play with, too!"

"I'm glad you're thinking of my happiness," she said, ruffling the eleven-year-old's hair a bit. "I'm..gonna have to tell a lot of people who I am so I can do that. People around ya might find out real soon that you're related to me, and treat you a little differently. I..don't know if that treatment will be good or bad."

"Why'd they be bad?" she said, "You're a super hero, right?"

"Yes," she nodded, smiling, "but, believe it or not, some folks don't like heroes much."

Nadia seemed to think about it very, very hard. "My friends won't care," she said finally. "I'm still me, after all, and that's who they like!"
"You've made some good friends at school, have you?" Ning said, and she nodded. "I'm glad. Still, if there's ever anybody treating you badly, let me know. I don't...know if I can always make it better, but I'll sure try."
"Heheh. Thanks, Ning," she said, coming in for another hug.

---

They sat in silence for a moment as he visibly gathered his thoughts and braced himself to speak them. Finally, after another sigh, Blake said: "You know that, dumb line, from the Christopher Nolan Batman movies?"
"Uh...which one?"

"I know, right? Aah, 'You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,'" he intoned mockingly. "That one. It tries to establish this nonsense binary on anyone who tries to be a hero, basically suggesting you either die young or turn evil. That's..wrong. Lots of people are just heroes once, and then they go back to being normal people. Some of what're basically career heroes, just get old and retire. And—'see yourself become the villain'? No one ever sees themselves as the villain, that's the whole point—the reason why they keep doing what they're doing. Batman, in those movies, didn't 'become the villain' either, except in the sense of people mistakenly blaming him for stuff he didn't do. So..I still disagree, I still think it's a dumb line. But I...I don't know, option B doesn't sound as impossible to me as it used to."

"So, what, you...think someone can turn evil if they live long enough?"
"Maybe? I don't know. It's just—I've had powers for two weeks. I don't know if the person I was, before that dream, would even recognize the kind of thoughts I have all the time now. Almost nothing I've done as 'Light' would even be concievable for him. I...feel like I couldn't even describe what I've done to my family without sound insane. Another two weeks, or months, or years, who knows what bizarre things I'll start thinking that I, can't even think of right now."

"I don't think your whole idea of what's right and wrong is gonna shift, though," Amory said. "I mean—I sure don't think it has."

"No, I agree with you there. But...think about this: I spent three fights with people who were actively trying to kill me carefully avoiding seriously hurting them. Then the whole puppeteer thing happens, and I felt..actual, like murderous hatred. I would've killed her, if I'd had the chance—no question. I don't know that I ever had a specific rule against killing in self-defense, or in the defense of others, but...it's not something I thought about, really, before snapping to 'yes, that's okay'.

"...I got a front-row seat to what that kind of killing, from...hatred, does to a person. On the way back to the VI. Dr. Quinn was just...staring at his hands like there was something on them. Or, like he expected there to be. I feel like...he was looking for blood there, so he could at least try to wash it off. I think..killing someone for any reason might've been against his moral code, before that day, and I'm sure it is now. I still feel like killing her was right, though—was..necessary. Did I compromise something without even realizing it? If I'm put in another position where killing one person might save hundreds of lives, and it doesn't seem realistic to just stop them..."

"You'll do what you have to do," Amory said quietly.
He shook his head. "That was the answer I gave her, before the puppeteer showed up. I still believe it. I'm just—not sure whether that's something I've always believed, or if I changed into someone who believes it now.

"I don't know..what else I might convince myself is right. I don't know what compromises I might make in the future. So, I hate that I just have, arbitrary power over four other people now. Important people, with powers that might do a lot more good without me if I lose my way."

"You've always been ridiculously careful about using them, though," Amory said. "Maybe even—afraid to. To the point of, maybe not using them when there wouldn't have been much of a problem."
"I-I don't even know about that," Blake countered. "When that—thing—ate Emma, I demanded total control of Ning and Rowan's powers before even thinking. I was so angry that nothing else mattered. What if one of them had been in danger, and needed that power to survive? What if one of them had been in a position to save someone's life, if they could use their power? I didn't need them; I just needed to stay alive long enough for help to show up and we could all take that thing down together!"

Amory crossed his arms. "So you made one mistake, with zero actual consequences. And you know it's a mistake, so if there's ever a next time, you can just remember to control yourself and do something smarter. Emma pretty much proved today that it's possible to maintain self control, even during that 'enraged' state. I don't think that proves you can't be trusted with their powers."

"I guess. That's not really my point, though..I got sidetracked thinking about it." Blake shook his head.

"No, what I mean is—what if, someday, I just decide that I'm the best person to use everyone's powers?" Blake's head turned down to stare at the floor. "If I want to take the ones I have 'control' over indefinitely, there is literally nothing stopping me."

---

Strength gain came across as a mild tightening and stretching of Emma's muscles, which wasn't very surprising; it was also strangely comfortable and pleasant, which seemed to just be the way things were with this spell. This demand also seemed to take a while, long enough for her to actually get bored of staring at the mirror and go find something else to do. Well, of course—she was asking basically every muscle to change into a stronger version of itself...or something like that. Stamina was also not just in the muscles, but it was some kind of...well, the heart was involved and stuff, and...

It made her curious, and she got out her phone and started trying to look up which parts of the body were really involved in someone being able to do things like sprint a mile or run cross-country, as opposed to just lifting weights. This distracted her enough to not even notice the sensation of the change, to the point that she paused in the midst of reading something which was related to her original queries only by five or six tangents around half an hour later and was initially uncertain of why. It didn't take too long for her to realize that it was actually the absence of that vague muscle-tightening sensation which had gotten her attention, and she quickly hopped off of the couch, running to the mirror to take a look.

"Oh..w-wow..." Emma mumbled, grinning and blushing slightly at the girl in the mirror. She didn't exactly appear to be in peak physical condition, necessarily, but she certainly looked much more like an athelete than she ever had before. Poking or squeezing in some places, she found obviously solid muscles all around, and lifting her shirt, she could spot a faint, yet present, six-pack on her belly. It was obvious there was room for "improvement" in this area, but she couldn't help but feel that things were exactly where she wanted them to be. No, she'd rather be about this strong but also...cute still, maybe a little taller...definitely curvier.

"Mmmnngh." After a little more self-examination, Emma couldn't help herself. She had to test this part out too. Maybe just...a modest expansion of her bust, nothing her current equipment couldn't handle, and a little more in...other places to match. Eventually settling on this compromise between her eventual wants and present practicality, she concentrated on the change and, again, went back to the couch to wait it out.

These changes came with a mild pushing sensation. This was—if anything—just a tiny bit actually pleasant, and she couldn't decide whether that was stranger than it just failing to feel uncomfortable like the last couple of adjustments. It was still easy enough to ignore, as she resumed her way down the rabbit hole of various things about human anatomy and development. It wasn't like she was ever going to be an expert in this stuff, but she'd neither learned nor had much of an interest in this topic before, so there was plenty to learn about just on the surface level...

---

"Well then..I'll stop you, if I have to," Amory said. "You can't own my power, and it has a built-in way to break yours. And you know what? There's a lot of other heroes around who you don't have power over. Like everyone else at the VI, the Quinns..vixens from all the neighboring cities. Unless you're gonna start 'owning' dozens of powers while you're still 'good', which seems wildly unlikely to me, there will be plenty of people ready to stop you if you ever turn 'evil'. I mean—if someone does your thing and beats you up but doesn't kill you, then they can put everyone's powers back where they belong."

Blake looked up and over, into his face. "You'll stop me?" he asked, seeming to fixate only on this first point. He'd probably heard the rest, but..

"If I have to," Amory nodded. "I really don't think I ever will. I mean—the first step is reminding you of this conversation, basically, and convincing you that you would think what you're doing is wrong. I still don't really get where you got the idea that your morals can totally shift, though."

Blake exhaled audibly again. "It's not really, if I'm being honest...It's not really the short-term I'm so worried about. It's...what if, like we think, the 'vixen' bodies are immortal? What if I live a thousand years, being a hero and saving people, and...it's so slow that nobody even notices anything is different by the end? I just—the idea of immortality scares me, because of her.

"She's as immortal as anyone could ever be. And—maybe she didn't really start out 'good', but the way it sounded, she started out pretty neutral. Not intervening in anything, for good or bad. But look at her now! She gives people the power to kill each other, manipulates them into doing it. She's so powerful, with a sheer quantity of experience and knowledge that defies imagination, but she uses it to—play games with the truth, and with people's lives. She thinks of the people I have 'control' over as my minions, to be sacrificed! I don't—" He stopped, running out of breath from talking too much and too fast, and took a couple of deep breaths.

"I don't know, how long it takes, for someone to become that. I'm terrified that I'm gonna find out. Or, worse, everyonr else around me does, and I don't even notice."

"...You know, I feel like you're missing something important," Amory said after thinking about it for a minute. "Time doesn't change people—not directly. If the last two weeks were just like all the weeks before them—I mean, overall basically similar, with no superpowered fox-girls and no monsters—then I bet you wouldn't be any different now. 'Cause it's, the stuff you go through—experiences—that cause change. People you talk to and what they say, things you do, what happens to you. And we're not just some—passive rock to be eroded by those experiences. You have a choice, to decide how things change you. You believe that someone doing real harm, killing lots of other people, should be put down because you chose to believe that, right?"
"I guess.." Blake mumbled half-heartedly
"That belief's not in a vacuum! You can think through the consequences of doing it or not, and based on your own idea of what's the best outcome, you make your decision. Aside from, like, impulsive mistakes, you won't 'turn evil' and steal away everyone else's powers just 'cause. You'd have to actually have reasons for believing it's the right thing to do. And you don't."

---

"Hey." Rory had watched her husband play for over an hour, occasionally commenting, laughing, or asking questions here and there.
"Hmm?"
"Is there uh, are there any..that more than one person could play, together?"
"Well..certainly," he said, getting up and indicating the small shelf of games nearby. This was far from his whole collection, but it was as much as they'd more or less agreed was appropriate to have on obvious display. "I uh, bought a few fighting games while we were dating, but...you said they were too hard to get into before very long. Those are, where we'd play against each other. A couple of these actually have two-player co-op I've never gotten to try before now."

"Can we, try one of those last ones, then?"
"Sure!"

Someone who plays video games from a young age builds up certain expectations and reflexes that are easy to just take for granted. Clark had learned from the first few times he'd tried to get his fiancée nto games just how unintuitive everything really was for a newbie. This time, he tried to guide her through every step as simply as he knew how—except when she protested that she understood it already and he could stop.

It took a couple of hours, until around the time the sun was setting, for them to start making real progress. And...glancing over, or just listening to her, she was having fun! And, even though he'd played through this part before on his own, so was he. There was just something special and magical about sharing someone else's first experience with them. He had to be a little careful not to spoil anything important in his excitement.

Once it was dark, they took a break to eat supper, just something simple that could be whipped up in a few minutes. "You know something," he said over the meal. "The Giver told me not to be surprised if, you were different from before—as a warning, like it was something bad."

"Mm hm?" she asked with her mouth full, sensing that he wasn't finished.

"Well—I always felt before, that you were the best person you could ever be. But now I just hope now that, that person wouldn't be too insulted if I said you actually are better now. I don't know...I love your self-assurance and confidence, but you seem more open to new things now, which is great too."
"Oh, I'll say," she said. "When it comes to video games, I suppose I just didn't know what I was missing!

"Can we uh, try one of the fighting games next? They're, what...games where you fight? We fought in that last game too, though..."

"Well. In a fighting game the players usually fight against each other," he said. "It's competitive, with a winner and a loser. But you can play against a computer too."
"Sounds interesting. Maybe you can go easy on me while I'm learning how to play?"
"Heheh, maybe."

After they ate, Clark picked out a Dragon Ball Z-based fighter. After some mild confusion with the massive roster, they just both went with the random option for character selection. They played for a little while before something struck him—a semi-distant memory of an odd feeling he'd had once combining with what was right in front of him, coming together into a brand new idea. How appropriate, he thought once he'd both had this idea and realized that it had come to him in this way. But he kept quiet about it for now so his wife could have fun, just holding on to some plans to test out his idea tomorrow. He would need to explain the idea to Rory first, and then it would largely be a matter of contacting Amp to help them test it out...

---

"I guess you're right," Blake said after thinking about it all for moment. "Besides that, I'm just gonna drive myself crazy worrying about something that might happen years from now, and that's not good for anyone."

"Hey, you know...I want to tell you to stop worrying about it, but I also feel pretty sure it won't happen as long as you do worry. Just..you know, you can worry about it in a more chill way, maybe?"

"Heh..I can try."

He stared off into space in silence for a moment. It seemed like he at least believed now that it shouldn't be a big deal, but the stress from worrying about it ever since the call from Rowan—and maybe much farther back than that—was still weighing on him. A couple of times his eyes flicked toward Amory, even though it seemed like he was trying not to let them—and it didn't take more than a half a second to recognize that expression.

"Hey uh...I haven't 'manually' helped you relax in a while," Amory offered, finally breaking the silence. "If you want..?"
His roommate loudly exhaled. "Speaking of things I wouldn't recognize about myself...yeah. I don't want to..want it, but I do."
"Well, I'm here for you. But it is up to you."

He pushed himself slowly off of the chair and shuffled over in front of the couch. Both of them changed form at about the same time, and Light just collapsed down on top of the small, blonde vixen, pulling her arms around her and landing her head so their cheeks were touching. Amp rubbed her ears, letting their tails curl together, and the white-haired girl's body pushed itself toward the soft, curvy appearance she'd taken a few times before—losing none of its newfound strength and power in the process.

"Mrr~rh..." It was much more obvious now just how exhausted Light was—even after that nap. It wasn't physical exhaustion anymore, but mental and emotional. Everyone had been put through the wringer over the past week. Well, they could sleep in tonight, and rest tomorrow as much as they needed. Hopefully that would be enough. And...neither of them had had supper yet. Once Light was feeling a bit better, maybe Amp would offer to disengage long enough to make them something to eat.

---

Emma set down her phone and cupped her chest once or twice, then run the hand down her sides, faintly blushing the entire time and giggling softly at the end of it. While it wasn't surprising that this had also worked, it was still exciting.

Getting up and looking around, she thought of one more thing she kind of wanted to test. Well, her clothes would still mostly fit after another half-inch of height gain, she thought, and concentrated on that alteration until it began. Once she could feel her body vaguely stretching again, she spoke her phrase to change to the two-tailed fox-girl form.

This form hadn't changed, of course, but it also wasn't nearsighted. She had the curious sense that, even though she couldn't physically feel it anymore, that stretching was still going on. Splitting into two, she went to check out Beryl's room with Plus while Minus went over to turn on the TV for a bit. There wasn't much in the bedroom: Just a computer chair at an empty desk, and a blank mattress that had had sheets and bedding on it just a few days ago, but now was occupied only by a stack of books. Some of them appeared to be normal cookbooks, but others had very esoteric names or outright titled themselves as "culinary spellbooks"...weird. Well, adding on a bit of Rory's strength to her usual extraordinary sense of balance in this form was enough for her to carry the whole lot to the kitchen at once, where they'd do the most eventual good.

Once the sense of something changing had quit, she went back to being Emma and found that, indeed, she was that bit taller. So: Being in the unchanging fox form didn't seem to stop or even slow down the change. That was it—the key she wanted. With a bit of a flutter from her heart, Emma took off her glasses, folding and staring at them, and made the most emphatic demand yet of the spell the Giver had cast: Make me not need these, at all, ever again. Setting them down on the coffee table, she found her vision shifting subtly; it was about as disorienting as expected, but it meant the change was happening. It wouldn't be long at all before the glasses were an overcorrection that made her just as blind as going without them, and who knew how long this would take after that?

Emma went back to being two fox-girls with fully-functioning eyes, both smiling. She could do whatever she wanted until bedtime tonight, and...well, it'd probably be done by the time she woke up tomorrow, right? Or, if not, the upper limit was "an entire day", and she had no need to go anywhere tomorrow. A date with Amory would be nice...but it was sure to be mostly done by lunchtime, and they could probably arrange it in a way that didn't require her to have full vision quite yet.

---

I'll be honest, I was somewhat hoping for more comments on the past couple of episodes. "Hoping for more comments" is my default state with just about anything I write anyway, since it's hard to know if I wrote something amazing or terrible without feedback. But, I know, I kind of flooded with updates all that week, and I guess little being said is better than everyone announcing that they hate the story now, it's jumped the shark, and they're going to quit reading it now. Well, in an effort to prompt something, does anyone have a guess what Clark's idea is?

Anyway, this title comes from David Bowie. I was glad to find that I hadn't already used up such a blunt, simple title somewhere in the early bunch of episodes.