I like how you gave the skunk a basically useless power... or at least it seems so... maybe it is just a natural talent... we shall see in later episodes.
I also note that Tyler is the most able to survive in ward zero (because he can leave any time he wants without causing TOO much attention especially if they try to keep him drugged up). Thus I wonder if he heroically 'takes one for the team' or if it is bad luck that he ends up there. Another week will probably tell..

I'll say nothing about Victor just yet.

And, dude, did you HAVE to mention that so explicitly!? That was supposed to be the big shocker and now anyone who scrolls down to read the replies first will see it! *melodramatic angst* JK ;)

Nooooooo! I'm never reading ur storys agin! *runs off to cut myself*

Didja have fun? <hands you Band-aids>

I'm trying to be more creative- people argue weather or not it's "down the highway" or "across the street". Me? I prefer "Formula 1 Racetrack".

ROTFL!! That is definitely creative! ;D

The fun part is making the tire-screeching noises.

<guffaw>

Remember kids, it's 'Down the road' not 'across the street'.



...



DRUNK DRIVER!

Oh, and I notice the steadily increasing number of red letters in the title... I wasn't sure with just two points of reference, but 3 makes it pretty sure... nice touch...

How astute of you to notice! Keep watching the thumbnails...

Yay for hidden abilities revealed! =^_^= (yeah I'm too sleepy to make much sense right now)

Hey, you already provided plenty of input before. you go sweepy-bye now. ^__^

Actually at the time I made that comment, I was supposed to be getting ready for work. >.< I woke up around 4:00am this morning. But I managed, I just had to have not only a cup of coffee in the morning but a cup of chai in the afternoon. And me trying to cut back on the gargantuan amounts of caffeine I consume...

Wha.....whats gonna happen to Tyler......pwease dun hurt the lil mousie.

Hey, he's Tyler. He'll bounce back. No worries!

*whimpers and hugs you*

One interesting possibility is that they each 'donate' the most terrible moments of their lives to be copied and implanted in Beatrix's brain in such a way that it is as if she experienced it for herself. To crank it up another notch, one could give her some LSD directly afterwards... Kinda a "walk a mile in my red hot shoes of iron" sorta thing... to blend a common saying and what I have been told was the original ending of 'Cinderella'.

Say WHAT!?

Earlier on someone said they felt like feeding the evil rabbit into a wood-chipper... I think it was you who replied that by the end of things that would seem too good for her. So I started to apply my creative plot-generating skills and came up with what I said.
To take another stab at making it clear:
Well, if one of the kids can copy memories from one mind to another... just take the 3 worst moments from each patients life and force feed them into the albino's brain like she was experiencing them herself...

And yes, the wicked step-sisters originally were made to dance themselves to death in iron shoes heated red-hot. Fairy tales in the original form were NOT NICE.

Ah, okay. However, the kids don't have anyone like that. Be cool if they did though. (And I think I remember hearing that about Cinderella.)

Egads! Not poor Tyler!

Seriously, very well-done. I like how you've gone out of your way to give the kids some unusual powers, rather than using the old superhero standbys :)

Also, very curious to see how the little goblin things figure into the larger plot ;)

Thanks! I really tried to keep this from turning into just another Marvel superhero team-up thing. Not that I have anything against comic book superheroes, but that's not what I was going for. Real life weird phenomenons are usually much more low-key and much more unexpected.

(And see my other comments about Tyler)

Ah yet another good piece added into the overall series Mr.reynard...and it seems the forth of july is around the corner....And I think we need to voluenteer you for firework duty!

Tee hee. Fox go boom!

Hang on just a sec... I might be misremembering the rules, but the way my family always played, a Wild could be played on top of anything, but you called out a color when you played it, and only a card of that color could be played atop it. Ditto for Wild Draw 4's.

Yeah, that sounds right. did I somehow contradict that? (I know I didn't give the most comprehensive synopsis of Uno rules)

You said any card could be played on top of a Wild, with no mention of color-locking.

Shiiiit. Ah well. If anyone actually goes out and buys an Uno deck because of this, I'm sure they'll read the little rule booklet (or this comment). ;)

Or play by house rules anyway. My family'd been playing Uno for years before we re-read the booklet and realized we'd been SCORING it wrong. We'd been playing where you tally up your score based on the cards left in your hand at the end of a round, and whoever has the lowest score at the end of the game (which can end when a certain number of hands have been played, or when an hour has passed, or when somebody hits 500, or whatever) wins.

Then we found out that you're supposed to score it where the WINNER gets all the summed scores of everybody else's hand, and the HIGHEST score wins. But we kept playing it our way anyway. Nobody really cared too much about the score anyway.

I've never given a tenth of a fuck about scoring in Uno. I've always just played it round-by-round. More fun that way, instead of actually taking it serious. :)

True dat!

Hmm...for me and my family...we always played by WIN's and never by score. the rules were the main games rules.

You know, its rare these days with all of the high powered fluff that gets thrown at us in the media and what-have-you that a series of books sucks me in like this. Your characters are nothing short of amazing. Having recently spent some time in a mental hospital for anger issues, all of the various parts of said 'seventh circle of hell' are fully and appropriately represented here, right down to the powdered eggs n' all.

Gotta hand it to ya, man. You have been one of my favorite writer/artists for almost a year and a half now (ever since I read 'Summer Vacation of the Damned') and I can tell, you have gone above and beyond the normal limits here.

This is some seriously GOOD shit. Kudos n' a oatmeal raisin cookie to you!

Thanks very, very much, man. For the praise as well as the cookie (om nom nom nom).

Thanks especially for saying I got it right about the bughouse. King's Orchard is more than a little abnormal, but i really tried to get the minutae of daily mental hospital life down pat. There's even stuff I could have gone into more detail about. The removal of all items you could theoretically use to harm someone (including pencils and pants drawstrings), the scintilating conversations at weekly staff & patient meetings, the brain-numbing horrors of the arts 'n crafts hour... I think you'll agree though that, all media mystique aside, life in a *normal* nuthouse is Boring As Fuck. Thank heaven for individually-wrapped graham crackers and ice cream in tiny styrofoam cups.

Indeed, I've been to the nuthouse twice as a kid due to various reasons caused by doctors being too dim to get a correct diagnoses o.o; so things got really boring when I wasn't trying to stir up trouble or hide from the others in there that happened to be cuckoo for coco puffs >.<

I remember when I was a wee lad having my mom drive me to this really crappy low-budget mental hospital (which was all she could afford). I spent a mini-eternity in the waiting room waiting for all the damn intake paperwork to get done. While there, I read a little pamphlet about manic-depression, and thought that while some of the symptoms were kinda like me, it was only on the surface; it didn't explain any of the deeper stuff that was going on between me and my crazy bitch mother.

So, after two weeks in the mental hospital, during which time a psychiatrist talked to me exactly once, their diagnosis was... you guessed it... manic-depression.

Fucking asstards. I could have told them that was wrong fourteen effing days previous. *simmer and grit teeth*

Indeed, the first one I ended up in wasn't so bad but I was only 10 so to me at the time it was horrible even if the staff were nice, the reason for me being there was due to how I was acting in school, the second time I wound up in the nuthouse was when I was 12 and it was a shithole...I mean the staff AND the patients there were horrible
and I ended up doing ALOT of hiding to escape the horrible stuff the staff and kids were doing..but eh all of that stuff could have been avoided if someone had been smart enough to correctly test me for Aspergers instead of conduct disorder and a few other things which I didn't have. *Wallops the places with a large mallet* I spent a month in each of the places and both months were horrible

*pats you on the shoulder* Sorry to hear that, dude. The ones I went to as a kid were incompetent and boring, but nowhere that bad. Why is it, that if the place is a mental hospital where they're observing you all the time, they never come up with a diagnosis that's anywre on the damn mark!? Rrrr.

Eh yeah they were definately incompitant with all the pills they were giving me which just made things worse and led to even more badly made decisions and idea's...but eh after going thru both of those places I'm now able to deal with ALOT of shit that would normally make other people break down ^.^

*nods solemnly* Ah, the old 'that which does not kill me makes me stronger' thing. I'm _very_ well aquianted.

Indeed, it's been a tough ride for me in life and so i've become quite the muscleman in the league of emotional stuff so stuff just doesn't seem to bother me anymore which really helps with staying calm in panicy situations. oooh and happy 4th of July! *wave waves downing a gallon of nitroglycerin in a big gulp along with some shiny sparkly things before shaking himself up and exploding in a nice toony show of firework-like colors*

Cute explodeyness. ^__^

*rains down in blissful pieces to reform after abit but the joy fills the night of a very 'happy' 4th of july ^.^*

Howzabout having shoelaces replaced with zipties? That one made me laugh upon entry to that godforsaken place. I gotta tell ya, what really makes me laugh is the fact that there was a caseworker there who was EXACTLY like Kimberly. Bright-eyed, just outta college, ready to make us 'all better'.

None of us in there took her seriously either.

Also, on a side note, I find it rathetr spooky that you named one of your chars Brad, the cat with the strong sense of justice? Well, while I may not have the power of shock absorption, my RL name IS Bradley, I used to be (and in some ways, still AM) just like him at his age, and my parents currently have 5 cats runnin aroung their house.

Completely unintentional, I know, but it just makes me love these kids more.

Have another cookie, mint julip this time! <Bling!>

Hey, if I can make a reader's eyes pop out with unintentional coincidence, then I'm a happy guy. ;)

poor tyler, thats gona seriously fuck with the moral of the team for awhile....baring a little idea i just got...but wont mention for fear of screwing up the plot for everybody if im right .and do you have to do it weekly, i put up with this with smokescales story 'population control' [see yiffstar....it might be here too...nothing to do with cubs that i recall] he did it like a weekly show too....it drove me fucking insane waiting for each instalment, and this is doing the same thing

Sorry, mi amigo. I know well I'm driving people mad. But part of the reason for waiting a week to post each part is that I want folks to *savor* the experience instead of just reading it all in a huge chunk. I've done this with books and then not remembered most of what I read just days later.

Plus, I'm a giant prick. :)

*stuffs explosives in you and then sticks a long range rocket up your but and fires you into the sun* thats what you get for being a prick then.....wait a minute....*watches him fly away* i forgot he enjoys that sort of thing.....well dang that sucks

Ha ha ha!! Kill me all you want! It will do you no good!

Well I happen to like giant pricks!! So there!

Me too! Nummy-num-num! ^__^

You are naughty and as such shall be sent to naughty for whence you will learn to be even more naughty with whips and things!

This installment of DL was absolutely awesome -- and a hell of a roller-coaster. :)

Thank you for making Keith gay. But thank you even much, much more for letting Brad handle Keith's attraction to him in such a wonderful way. I think there is quite a lack of role models for straight people to act on in such situations in a good way (i.e. without beating up the gay guy) -- which is why I find it so wonderful to find such here.

I simply absolutely love it how you always manage to sneak such genuine insights of life into your stories.

*resumes gnawing on fingernails until next Monday, trembling in fear for Tyler*

You know, I can't really take credit for Keith being gay since I didn't 'make' him that way. Keith just _is_ gay. I always let my characters just spring up outta nowhere, and their personality traits 'n whatnot are usually just as much a surprise to me as my readers. I'll be planning a scene for them, and just suddenly realize 'Oh, Keith's gay. He HAS to be gay, of course!'

But yeah, I do hope people will take a cue from Brad's clumsy but genuine attempt at being 'straight but not narrow'. The very idea of being horrified of someone for their sexual preference is utterly ridiculous to me. I'm hoping that, with each successive generation, acceptance of gays will become more and more the norm, until kids won't even be able to imagine things *not* being that way. Much like I've seen signs that some kids view racism like that; a total anachronism.

Also, *blush*, I'm glad so many people seem to like me blathering on and on about philosophy in my stories. ^__^

Hey, nuttin wrong with blatherin! Sometimes, its the only way to truly get a point across! <blather blather blather>

Item 1: Zeek. He is a creature of the desert, can see the future, and has deep blue eyes. HE IS THE KWISATZ HADERACH!!! THE SPICE MUST FLOOOOOOOOW!!!

Item 2: So Karen and Brad both got pills from Bitch-trix that were meant to stunt their powers. So what'd Victor get? Beano?

You recieve twenty LOLs, three LMAOS and the keys to a brand new 2007 ROTFL!

But WHAT ABOUT THE LOLLERSKATES?!

They've been replaced with LOLLERBLADES.

Yes, please read it again! There's a ton of details in this one that'll be even more important later.

Sherri was very interesting to write. She's got a lot of problems and is actually kinda creepily amoral at times. Yet I think I did a good job of making her sympathetic. I wanted people to root for her to get better.

As far as the swearing goes, all I can say is that I write down what i hear the characters say in my head. (That, and you shoulda seen how many curse words I edited *out*!) Stephen King once wrote that that above all else, the writer has to be true. So, even if I know people are gonna cringe, I can't have Holly say 'big meanie' when I know darn well she'd say 'motherfucking douchebag'. That's just who she is. And on a similar note, I wanted poor Victors swear-tsunami to be shocking and horrible; he _hates_ swearing, but he gets so frustrated at THEM, all he can do is throw the worst words he knows at them. He has no other weapons.

Till next week!

I've been flipping out over these stories. This is perhaps one of the best story sets I've read ina while. Zeek is awesome. Zeek is the Kwisatz Haderach. (eep someone beat me to that point)

Glad you like Zeek! I originally intended him to just be this tiny cameo character, and he really surprised me with how much his character ends up doing in the rest of the novel.

I beat you to that point by several weeks actually, but I had an advance copy so it doesn't count!! *hugs*

I greatly enjoyed the way you combined needed exposition with plot advancement; might have had more tension (Monsoon just doesn't generate enough) to tighten it up.

I see Zeke more as potentially deus ex machina, and cordially hope he will not feature as such. I'm puzzled over the inclusion of both prophet in-story and prophetic remarks from the narrator.

Cheers,
OT

Well... Okay, yeah, Zeek is kind of a little furry D.E.M. But I promise he will not suddenly show up in the story to instantly resolve any major conflicts.

...more than once. ;)

OK. I look forward to the next chapter.

OT

Oh, Alex, thou art cruel! Leaving us with such a cliffy... T.T

You think THAT cliffhanger's bad? I had my proofreader weeping and unable to sleep at the end of Book Four. *cruelly proud chuckle*

*sigh*
'Tis a masochistic happiness...

BALLS!!!!!

I just noticed another typo. "Bred felt pretty sure that a kid like that " BRED. BRAD. FUCK!!!

Why this late, you ask?

Re-reading portions of your epic for reference; I got a tiny shard of muse-ity and I'm not letting it go to waste.

At this point, I say, 'Fuggit'. It's been out too long to edit. Besides, I've spotted spelling errors *J.K. Rowling's* committed, so I'm far from alone.

And if your muse says run, Run Like Fuck, my friend!!! :D

Tee hee. I just can't help but keep sending 'em in to you. Because seriously, when else are you going to find an error in a book and be able to tell the author directly, and be assured of something other than a form letter brushoff?

And yes. I am running. (Though at the moment I am running to the potty. *CHOOM*)

Hey, good point!

And have fun peeing. ^__^

I pooped in the toilet, and now I am sitting in a thoroughly soaked diaper. You have fun peeing in diapers too!! *huggles* Also a little extra something is on its way, too...

Ooooo! Excited now!

BTW, when my friend comes over for Christmas, I am going to gross him the fuck out by eating snacks out of one of the unused medum diapers. He's quite sensitive to such things, and I am sure he will squirm nicely.

BWAHAHA!!!

*It broke her heart that, as scared as he was, he was still trying to make her feel better with his humor. "Oh Brad... You just be brave, honey. I *will* come get you if you ask me to on Sunday. I don't care what anyone says. I'll drag you out by your feet if I have to. I'll beat off the security guards with my purse!"*

that so sweet!! *teared up*

when I was in jail looking at perhaps 3 years in prison I called my sister, my mother has Alzheimer's and I was forced to lie to her, god I cried like a little girl after that. In jail or an institution you DONOT cry where others can see you.

Actually, people tended to cry rather a lot in the hospitals I've been in, but I can still understand how that must've felt from other experiences I've had.

Interestingly, I think I wrote Brad's mom with every one of my mother's good qualities, and Beatrix Beverly with every one of her worst.

Your story is just getting too damned interesting for me to simply ignore.

You are very interesting and your characters and depth have me enthralled and invested.