Hmmmm...

Interesting thought... Could Alex take Hanna 'silvery' and remove the bullet?


edit: Actually, I would think a foreign object would be relatively easy. A tumor, being a biological perversion of the person's own biology would be significantly more difficult. Alex would have to probably do years of medical study to even consider attempting such a thing, whereas a lead bullet is a discrete object. On the other hand, what damage might it cause to remove the bullet from where it is lodged.

But yeah, that is exactly the kind of thing I was implying ;)

Wow, that would be pretty amazing if she could. If she could do that, could she 'cure' cancers too? Just pull someone into her morph, pull out the tumor... Could she grab a felon and inject a tracer or a control package into his brain?

Okay, I'll admit it, she can't do that stuff. For in-story and meta-fictional reasons.

Heh! I pity Alex. I mean, most superheroes already have trouble dealing with only two identities. Civilian and super. She already has three. Civilian teenager, military, and superheroin. She's bound to slip at some time. I hope Jack at least has thought something just in case.

And after having read all this story line so far, and even though you haven't killed anyone so far... i'm not putting it past you to let Hanna die from her injuries before they manage to help her. That's most likely very unlikely, but i still think you could do it to try and surprise us.

You can never trust an author. I still can't believe JKR killed Dobby! And Remus and Tonks! Okay, Dobby's death developed her plot, but some of the deaths were just 'piling on'. (Okay, I really figured she would kill Ron and give Harry that 'I will avenge you!' moment. I figured Hermione was safe, because Hermione=JKR herself.)

Good work from the whole team, but of course I'm particularly impressed by Alex, Jack, and Willow, and their respective skills! :)

Jack is really good at getting people to overlook his considerable talents.

Terrawatt needs to carry ziplock baggies. She could have stuffed one of those bloody bandages into it to give to Jack to hand over to the analysts... Even dried blood would give them information.

The subject of utility belts *will* come up. But not for a few chapters yet.

Looks like Jo must be augmented genetically as well if the opinion is she could defeat Hannah. Hannah who already defeated John Reese level people in a straight up fight. I wonder if either is at the Jason Bourne level of abilities? I also wonder how Harold Finch or Root would match up against Willow? That would be an interesting cross.

Well, the opinion is that Jo (and Graham and Riley) all have years of serious combat and hand-to-hand training, and they think they can take Hanna. None of them have *faced* Hanna yet. They could be wrong.

And so the awesomeness continues.

Thanks. But how can you fail with Jack O'Neill and Willow Rosenberg at your side? :-)

Yeeeesss, more delicious Alex Mack.
To celebrate this special occasion, I am going to write a medium-length review instead of a short one! If it's TL;DR the gist of it is "yay! more Alex Mack!".


Is the T-phone like the B-phone? With less bunnies and more terrawatts?
Why is Willow repeating the achievements of the SRI agents? We've already read all of that.
When I saw that the powers returning wasn't unique to Atron (possibly due to the many experiments she did on herself for the ultimate powerset, or her status as the current Big Bad Thing in the Dark) I started to wonder if Alex's mother would eventually turn into a crazy supervillain. I thought "nah, Diane wouldn't be that evil", but then I realized that actually yes, you would definitely be that evil with your* characters.
And then relief upon learning that this sort of thing shouldn't happen. Unlike some people, Alex does occasionally catch a break.

> Get there a little before sunset, so you can look around inside near the front windows with using a light.
Shouldn't that sentence end with "without using a light"?

> And what if they changed to something like Marissa Weigler’s beliefs, or Maggie Walsh’s beliefs?
In that case, you're going to have to start shaving to groom your goatee correctly. It may not look like it, but it's a lot of work.

> In various places, she pushed a few filters and fanblades and a fancy filtration system out of her way, and she slipped out one of the big air intakes.
I'm surprised at the lack of comments on the "yucky things" she probably has to push out of her way down there. Maybe it doesn't really bother her when she's silvery? Or she's just used to it by now?

> He had a nice little house that sort of reminded her of a fairy tale cottage.
Personally, "nice" isn't the word I'd use. More like "creepy", to be honest.

> If it was Hanna who had done that, she was one tough girl. Alex wouldn’t have wanted to try to climb a drainpipe to a roof with a bullet hole in her.
Oh, yes, of course. She would still have done it, but she wouldn't want to. Speaking of being "one tough girl", how does she thinks Hanna feels about battling fire-breathing dragons?
Yeah ...
(must resist urge to go back and re-re-read The League of Extraordinary Women)

> Alex took a couple pictures of the blood drips,
That's good, it's too bad she didn't think to...
> and even found a ruler and put it on the floor next to a couple of the spatter-y drips
0_0
She DID think to provide a reference! Wow, that's one smart teen. Is she a genius or something? Now that I think about it, given her family history that would not be even remotely surprising.

> [Alex's first big step for her Hermionne plan is to get her at the meeting ... and she warns her just a few minutes before it starts]
Yeah, she's smart, but she's not perfect, she messes up regularly (and she learns from her mistakes too!). That's good.
Relatable amazing** characters with humanizing flaws are one of the main draw of Diane Castle stories.

> It was just too bad she couldn’t have a swirling magic wind
She could do that with Telekinisesis.
> Ooh. She could do that with telekinesis!
Smart girl ^.^ And yes, practice would be good, or else she risks landing straight in the uncanny valley. Definitely not the effect she wants there.

> She came down with her right leg slightly raised, which just looked better when she practiced and watched herself in a mirror.
You already explained that earlier. Granted, that was some time ago. The repetition is deliberate?

The "we're not friends" trick? Sneaky! I like.

Flying away in the classic superman pose, wheeeeeeeeeee!
Most likely just to sneak back inside ;)

* neither Alex Mack nor her mother belongs to Diane Castle. This is disclaimer. This warns you.
** usually amazingly smart, which is very hard to write well

Yes, the Beard Of Evil is an essential trope. Unless all of your versions are evil (like Lex Luthor), in which case you get a pass.

And the number of really stupid 'supposedly smart' characters in fiction is clear evidence that writing a really intelligent supervillain (or just important character) is too hard for most writers. Shows like Star Trek and The Big Bang Theory bring in scientists just to make sure their dialogues sound right. Dickson's "The R-Master" is a good example of the problem: I was continually frustrated by how lame the 'super-genius' plans of the supposed super-genius characters were. A well-written, highly intelligent supervillain is really rare (examples: Dr. Diabolik, Helen Narbon). More commonly, it's an informed attribute. Doctor Doom must be a genius because he built a time machine! Only he uses it in a fundamentally stupid manner and fails to plan for the intervention of people he KNOWS are likely to intervene...

Cool chapter. Lots of stuff going on.

And it's mainly set-up for the upcoming chapters!

Looks like Terrawatt has found the best clue to Hanna's whereabouts but it is still a few days old. They will have to do better than that! Maybe they can now that Hermione is on board!

Now they have some real info on what happened to Hanna. That's got to help.

Cool, very cool :-)

Cheers.

thanks!

Hmmm, the many uses of government offices. I wonder if the Company will get away with what they're doing or if the Government will step in and slap them down. The disappearance of Walsh is worrying. Atron of course is far too smart to start a reign/trail of terror. She will first try to get at funds, possibly some she has hidden even beyond the reach of Willow. Then she might go after the Macks again...

I wonder how Hermione will be treated after her line of command was bypassed to promote her. (And probably more people saw through Jack than Alex thinks...)

Thanks for writing, Vid

Yeah, if Atron learned from her mistakes, that would be bad.

And we'll see more of Hermione one of these days...

The key word in that statement is 'unconsciously' I've no doubt that once she becomes aware of, and practices she could indeed affect the entirety of her mass and not just the trace metals in her blood, tissue and bones. But lets face it, who's going to figure out, and then bother to point it out to her that she in fact has electrokinesis? Or that the GC-161 has activated dormant pathways in her brain making her smarter as well as the small measure of telekinesis that she developed, or that she's essentially a walking, living, bio-chemical battery? That, exercising and expanding her cognitive capability will also likely lead to her growing stronger with her telekinetic strength. That eating as much as she can will not only give her extra electrical energy but potentially expand her already present abilities just through sheer available resources (bio-chemically, and bio-electrically wise) or even grant her newer ones as more energy intensive functions suddenly find themselves with the power to operate. ... Though, if anyone could figure it out, O'Neill probably already has.

But, short of someone realizing that she's depolarizing the particle strong force of nuclei and atoms to do her 'slivery trick'. The best that in the story world, that we the reader, can hope for is that someone crunches the numbers and realizes that Mack can't be flying that fast through use of her telekinetic strength alone, especially if they can confirm that the around 200 mark is virtually her best lift force capability. And if they demonstrate having common sense with that brain, might actually figure out that given the amount of electricity she can discharge, might be a reason she can fly at the speeds she does. Which almost guarantees that they'll have her trying to gravitize some metal plates (probably even a manhole or two) Either way, eventually it should be possible for her to go faster.

And on the off chance that someone realizes that her Electrokinesis allows her to do, in general, everything that she does, and with a little practice, she could simply generate directional weak force fields around her than would repel ambient weak forces in the areas around her, that would essentially pull any strong forces away from her propelling her even faster than supersonic. All she'd need to do is actively control to versus fields, a strong force piercing field ahead of her, while simultaneously using the weak force field to propel her, and with enough strength... yeah she could fly at nearly Superman speeds, also without the devastating effects that Alternate Sam, Willow, and Hermione figured should be happening.

(edit) Err, sorry, was just removing some rambling rants, and for some reason it moved it to the top of the reviews.

> I decided to make her experiences *freakishly* close to those of RealHermione, as you'll see in later chapters.
o_o

> as you'll see in later chapters.
0_0

> as you'll see in later chapters.
Haaaaaaaaa!
I wanna read the next chapter, I really wanna read the next chapter, I wanna read it now. Why do I have to wait to read the next chatper?
The world isn't fair.

You there, writing this awesome story. You know the consequences of teasing your fans mercilessly, do you not? If you give up on this story halfway without letting those tantalizing hints materialize, I will do something *heinous* to you. Like, send a letter to Jade Sinclaire telling her you'd write the best Hello Kitty fanfic ever if she could make you understand how awesome it is.
Don't try me. Keep posting. (also, I'd like you to keep writing, pretty please)

:D

Hmm, you know, I could make Jade do that. (With Babs and Starwolf out, I'm sort of the primary writer for Jade and Billie also, right now.)

And you don't have to worry about my giving up on the story: I'm currently editing several chapters in the range of #110 - #120.

Oh, and when I wrote "as you'll see in later chapters" I did not mean in the next five or ten. Or fifteen.

So reading through some of the comments, and your comments - if there really is no supernatural magic native to this world - it could be a community of psi users/mental abilities based on advanced physics concepts directed by the brain and powered by body energy. Another name might be "micro-kensis" which could explain things like healing powers (if you know enough anatomy and chemistry to back it up), changing chemical and physical properties of matter, etc. Keeping in mind that the terms psionics is psi plus electronics (which you probably are already well aware of).

I'm assuming that magic won't work in the Alexverse because the universe doesn't have the right physical constants for it. But psychic powers are clearly a possibility, because Alex has telekinesis and electrokinesis.

A quick recovery by atron there cardboard prison or not.

Also I'm suprised he didn't include a line like "they weren't smart enough to realize we notice our CIA contact wasn't a 50 year old retiree" in his rant about them.

Well, actually, it was a few weeks. Alex gets through being sick and the last weeks of classes and then finals week and the start of summer break. That's a lot more time in the slammer than Danielle wanted.