Hanna? Cool! Well, cool as in the character had lots of potential... but i really hope you do a better job than the movie's staff... which, you probably will. I'm sad you killed the family since she saved them in the movie, but i always thought that part was bogus. I mean, spy stuff? The second the uberly normal family became involved, they were as good as dead. Saving them would have been good for "Spy Kids" but for such a harsh movie as Hanna? That didn't make much sense.

Anyway, i may be biased when i said Hanna had lots of potential, but among my favorite characters are both Kirika and Chloe from the anime "Noir", and Madlax from the "Madlax" anime. Three girls who all were raised as weapons.

Yeah, I didn't see how that family had a ghost of a chance between Marissa Weigler and that Isaacs psycho. Look what they did to Knepler, for heaven's sake!

If you like the whole 'girls raised as weapons' trope, you might check out "Gunslinger Girls" or "Grenadier", two anime which are about as far apart as you can get on the angst-meter, but both have a lot of the 'girls raised to be weapons' trope: in Greandier, the protagonist is 16, and in Gunslinger Girls, the girls are like *eight* which is just as disturbing as it is intended to be.

Every major screwup needs an incompetent agency and this time it looks like the CIA. The IT guys are looking like the heroes so far :) Although it was Alex who pulled it all together. Jo doesn't seem to be making a good first impression though!

I think that *everyone* pulled it all together at the same time. Jack and Riley and Jo all spotted the holes in Marissa Weigler's story, Acid Burn and the IT guys all worked together to ransack and pillage the CIA databases, and Alex is probably not the only one who realized what it meant when they had 'Maggie Walsh' and 'experiments at time of Hanna's conception' in the same sentence. But she got to say it out loud.

So is Myrhorod another crossover reference, or random factoid thrown in?

Myrhorod is going to be a Noodle Incident (TV Tropes ref, from 'Calvin and Hobbes'). Jack and his team had to go in there and save the day, and it's sort of known in the European spy biz. It's *not* a crossover.

BTW.. I just saw that this story ranks 98th of 22 276 stories when it comes to recommendations. And it's your SECOND most recommended story. Bravo.

Thanks. The number of recs has exploded since I did the whiny thing. When that reader asked, this story had 18 recs. When I replied, it had 22. It now has A LOT, even though not that many people *read* each chapter (amazingly low hits/chapter score). I attribute this to awesome readers.

Josephina Ballerina!!!! This just completely made my day. My week. My month. And even my year.

Loved the subtle use of TK there. Alex should practice that more often. And nice use of the Earth Sciences stuff too.

Well I was thinking Mystery Girl would turn out to be Vixen from the JL. But Hannah is awesome too. And she really needs a dose of normal. And I like the backstory connection to Walsh. Better done, imo, than Marvel's Ultimate way of having everything tie in to the Super Soldier Formula.

Alex should practice a LOT of applications of tk. You never know what might be needed. And I'm a science nerd, so this is the kind of plot device I like. It's not as bad as the classic Eighties cartoon where the factoid they learn in class that day is just what they need to defeat today's supervillain/monster/weirdness, but it's my kind of trope.

Ooh, I never thought of Vixen. I thought she was central Africa instead of northern Africa, anyway.

Great story as always. I loved the way you managed the info dump without making it boring, but still giving all the relevant details.

Although, now with the continuous use of the Annie Ferrell disguise, I have to wonder if maybe some people may make the link, not to Alex Mack, but to Terrawatt. In fact, given Atron's thoughts that Terawatt must be military, she might make the link to Ferrell.

We'll have to see how long that cover holds up, and whether anyone tries to backtrack Annie Farrell to Terawatt. After all, they don't look anything alike. Okay, no one looks like Terawatt. She's... what? Six feet tall, blonde, built like a brick something-house...

And yeah, turning an infodump into something readable is a skill I've had to work on. Fortunately, I have some great co-authors in the Whateley Universe who are not afraid to say 'that sucks, fix it' and are willing to make suggestions on how to make that fix.

Excellent, long chapter. I liked that you had two cases of under-estimation in this - one for "Annie" and one for the team. I didn't see Hanna, but remember the movie trailer, and figured by the time you said "Hanna" that's where you were going. I only watched a few episodes of Eureka, so I appreciate your end reference on that.

Well, I stole Jo Lupo out of that setting. I thought about it a lot, and I decided that Eureka was too powered for what I wanted to do with the setting, so it does not exist. Also, I really didn't like the time travel, which I wanted to avoid for the Alexverse.

Hanna seemed like a perfect fit for where I wanted to go in the Alexverse.

I really like Alex as the super smart data gathering guru helping Jack. It *really* helps her cover since if she's so helpful no one is going to wonder what she's doing there.
And with all the Willow babble and not-Willow babble, Jack does need the help to take all that data and put into form. Which she did nicely by deducing exactly what was happening.

This is a great chapter! I love it!

Also, thank you for the reading advice.

I tried to give everyone on the team the chance to use their brain, since they're all really smart. You don't get to be first in your class at West Point without being pretty damn smart. And Jack IT guys are smart too, just not as smart as Willow.

Oh HELL yes....I loved "Hanna". Can't WAIT to see this play out.

Bear in mind that this is a couple days after Hanna got shot, too.

One has to love all those horrible CIA operations going terribly wrong... Never saw the movie, but did read Batzulger's tale. I look forward to what you'll do with it.

Thanks for writing

The movie's worth watching. I liked the 'bookends' of the movie and the 'fairy tale' symbolism in it, but then I'm a movie geek too.

Not sure where 'Myrhorod' came from, but Hanna Heller sounds like she'll be an interesting addition to any future 'team' Alex might assemble... IF they can get to her in time, of course.

Keep up the great work; always fascinating to see Alex develop.

BTW, if you're interested, I did a quick bit of fanart for 'League of Extraordinary Women'; let me know what you think.

Well, since Marissa Weigler is already dead, we (as moviegoers) know that Hanna has already been shot in the abdomen, which is not a good thing.

And I looked at your fanart before I got around to here, so I already saw it and commented on it. Thanks!

Speak of the devil... why do i have a really bad feeling the two will meet?

I think Alex is going to have enough to deal with, without a Walsh/Atron tag-team event.

Charybde, meet Scylla... or not. Hopefully the two never meet each other. Walsh is already way worse than Atron... the two of them together? To quote Alex... or Buffy, "Of the bad!!!!"

Just what Alex needs: a Rogues Gallery of her very own. Not!

Forgot to review this one earleir. Danielle's "The Shadow" comment? Does it mean there ARE DC comics in Alex's dimension? Even if there aren't Batman comics? Or did her comment refer more to the old radio show, or maybe the movies?

No DC comics in the Alexverse, but The Shadow comes from the original 1930's pulp novels and radio shows. I mean, Orson Welles as The Shadow? Top that, Alec Baldwin!

I have a LOT of ideas who Willow's "maybe" may be, but i won't give any in case i may be wrong.

Nice fight! Can't believe i'll say that, but George rocks. Jack rocks too, but that's not a surprise is it? And so does Burn, of course.

Couple chapters back, Jo said something that caught my interest... they said the cops shot her mom? When? I feel a story here.

You'll find out who Willow's 'maybe' is, in about 48 hours.

As for Jo, her mom died when she was little. And even when her dad is not in prison, he's hardly Ward Cleaver. (Okay, I made this up; there was never any canon backstory to explain why Jo was a bully.)