I have to agree about the ending, although for slightly different
reasons....

1) Mara gave up on K1 way too easy.
1a) Mara never really showed (in my opinion) that she really cared
for him in the first place. The (very) few times we see her acting in
some way other than the "normal, selfish, bitchy demon" are so few
and far between that it's no wonder that K1 doesn't believe her tears
when he broke up with her. I didn't believe them either.

   Well, part of that (I think) is because she's not sure if she believes herself.  :)  If Mara showed that she cared for K1 during the fic, he wouldn't have a reason to leave her and end the trouble.
   And as for her giving up on him too easily, I think that if K1 hadn't gone to talk to Verdandi immediately, her pride would have kicked her self-pity in the head and lead to her actively hunting him down.

1b) If she couldn't convince herself to be honest with K1, the guy
she's supposedly falling for, I find it *real* hard to believe she'd
tell Urd all about it.

   Ah, but Urd's an old friend.  And it's not like she headed to the temple to spill her guts - it just sort of happened.

2) K1 accepted the new situation with Bell way too easy. So did
Megumi. And Bell just leans over and kisses him as soon as her
memories return? Looks like Xig (or whatever his name is - I'm not
even going to bother *trying* to spell it  ^_^  ) did a little extra
tampering while he was blocking her memories.....

   Bell's very happy that K1 chose to wish for her, even when he didn't know that he was really wishing for her.  And in this timeline, she's spent a fair amount of time with K1 and knows him better.

3) The ending seemed *too* perfect, considering all the trouble that
K1 went through to get there. Mara leaves without so much as a word,
everyone's back at the temple, no problems whatsoever.

   Well, not no problems, but at least for the moment things look nice.

4) But I agree, a sequel is definitely in order. Considering all the
resources Mara used to mess with Bell and K1, I think she could be in
serious trouble for flubbing up the plan. Demons probably don't look
too kindly on others of their kind who can't get the job done. I can
envision a story where Mara is on the runfor her life (literally),
and the only place that she can thin of where she has even a chance
of making it would be with the three godesses at the temple. Would be
a source of lots of plot points - Skuld would hate her outright for
what she did to Bell, Urd would be wary of her, Bell would.... well,
I have no idea how Bell would feel. K1 probably wouldn't like it
much, either, but wouldn't say much about it, nice guy that he is.
Mara would have plenty of time to think about her previous actions,
and might even try to make it up to K1, perhaps leading to a romantic
triangle like was mentioned in a previous post, although K1 tends to
be a one-woman guy (and who could give less that 100% attention to
Bell, eh?). Perhaps being in the vicinity of a nice guy like K1 for
long enough may even convince Mara to give up being a demon, which
would be another long, hard road for her to travel.....

  Oh, I'm sure there'll be more story.

  Personally, I'm happy with the ending, and with the whole fic.  I really liked it.

The Gentleman Caller
Pandering to Humanity's Lowest Common Denominator since 1999!
gcaller@hotmail.com

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