Sorry it took me a while to get back to you. Was busy doing other things,
including writing chapter 11 and shipping it off to prereaders. I really
want to thank you for this feedback since C+C on this part was very muted.
Not even the usual 'nice job' one liners.

$Ho~ly crap!  I'm back!

Weee.

I have to admit, I simply gave up this summer.  Work and stuff took up
so much time and energy that I gave up all pretense of writing,
commenting, or even reading.

I understand that feeling.

 I figured I'd get back to it when school

rolled around and I got some free time.  Well, school rolled around, but
seeing's how I'm now living with my fiancee and my bills are mounting
up, I had to take a part time job.  No problem, I thought, I'll find
time somehow...  Then my computer fried.  Motherboard, memory, keyboard,
and floppy drive.  Took WEEKS to get Dell to fix it.

Dude, you got a Dell. What kind of dipsh*t are you?

Sorry, it's the ads that drive me nuts, not the computer. :)

Now I'm back with a new email address and a new webpage, 'cause I found
out my fiancee's family was looking around on the net and reading stuff
I would really rather they hadn't read.  Whoops.

Tell them, 'if you think what I write is bad, wait until I tell you what
I've been doing to your daughter.'

Now I look at my mail folder and wince.  Arg, what a backlog.

Let's start with the most recent, shall we?

Nah. Go with the ones written by 'DB Sommer' The rest deal within whenever
you feel like it. :)

And now on to the story...

$Indeed.  I hope I can help, I think I'm kinda rusty.

Nah. It's like falling off a bike: you never forget how.

The man once known as Herb, but now known to the world as the Mandarin,
stared at the woman he had just captured. His imagination swirled with
the
potential this 'Thor' presented.

$Yeah, I bet.  I don't call autoeroticism 'imagining the potential'
though.

Heh. He's not Shinji, :)

 He was so lost in thought

$, most of which involved her waking up 'Thor' in the morning,

Ouch! That was painful. :)

"He's darn good with the arrows," Speed Demon replied, showing no sign
of
embarrassment.

$Strip search him!  He might have hidden tools or weapons.

And wouldn't that just throw off the author's storyline? :)

The Mandarin looked to Tarou.

$Heh.  Simple, yet funny.

Thanks.

"I don't care about her breast size!" the Mandarin snapped. "Does all of
her
power come from her armor?"

$Power Man: Actually, I have reason to believe it comes from her
breasts.

PM: Let me feel them and be certain.

The Mandarin shook his head. "No, that would destroy the armor. Removing
it
now would be ill advised. It might be booby trapped."

"Excellent!" Power Man and Speed Demon said as one.

$Heheh.  I didn't even see that one coming.

Definitely a spur of the moment thing that came to me as I wrote in the
reason for not removing the armor.

"That means it might explode! It has nothing to do with her breasts, you
idiots!"

Both visibly deflated.

$Awww...  No, wait, you're talking about Mint and Lime.  You shouldn't
use that line when talking about breasts.

Good point. Will leave as is.

You never hear authors use that line. Of course, it's not conductive to
recieving C+C a second time. :)

snicker.
"Now that, can easily be arranged."

$The comma doesn't do much to emphasise 'that', it just looks out of
place.  Suggest you use something else.

Was to indicate a pause in his speaking, but you're right. Will drop it.

blood.
Slowly she felt her lungs crushed under the weight of her sins. There
were
no voices to taunt her, they had all been silenced at the end of a
blade,
but the sanguine fluid that had been spilled would stand in place of her

$Oooh, sanguine.  There's a word I haven't seen used in a while.

Thanks Word's thesaurus for that one. :)

Now Elektra understood: Magnanimity. A useless gesture fools engaged in.
To
give something without the expectation of receiving something in return
was
a waste of effort. Obviously this girl believed herself some sort of
Samaritan whose duty it was to protect others.

$Pretty sure the s shouldn't be capitalized.

Good point. Will change

remember.
Everything the Hand gave had a string attached. When she went
undercover,
she would frequently be romanced with the intention of someone bedding
her.

$No pun intended?  ^_-

Actually, no. I didn't realize it until you mentioned it. However I will say
yes from now on, so I look like a literary genius with wordplay. :)

top
off, using it to tie around her breasts in a very tattered bikini top
style.
"No one's going to take me seriously with my belly button showing,"
Bucky
grumbled.

$I dunno, it seems to work for most of the modern Marvel heroines.

All of the heroines period. :)

The past. For all of Elektra's efforts to bury it, it had come surging
to
the fore. She had not reflected on her childhood for years. Memories of
a
dead past only served to slow one down.

$Could the Amazons take the Hand?

Not sure I get that one.

Elektra shook her head. "I am indebted to you. You saved my life when I
would have drowned. I will not raise my hand against you or signal an
alarm."

$Won't stop me from kicking you in the back of the head, though, she
thought.

Heh. Actually, you're right on the money, there. I thought I could sucker
more people with her apparent switching of the sides.

Wasp squinted at the bright light of the sun. She covered her eyes until
they had a chance to adjust to the sunlight.

$Oh, come on, as small as she is, what, a hundred photons can squeeze
in to hit her retina?

Well, it's proportional. Yeah, that's the ticket. Proportional.

and he would never want Kasumi to give up her new dreams in which she
helped
others, as well as living the exciting life of an adventurer. There were
risks involved, but didn't she take a risk every time she prepared
puffer
fish for the family?

$Heh, only if she ate it too.

Of course she does. Otherwise the others might think she was trying to
poison them or something.

"What's wrong with my name?" The voice came from under a piece of metal
located to the right of Wasp.

$Would have been funnier if he'd thought she was proposing.

Hmm. You're right. Will consider.

a
button located on the bottom. A stream of green gas enveloped the upper
portions of his body, dissipating almost immediately. The growth gas
served
to negate the effects of the shrinking one he had used earlier, and
allowed
Giant Man to live at least partially up to his moniker as his form grew
from
a handful of centimeters to the height of a normal man.

$Only a handful of centimeters?  How big was he?

Smaller than that now. :)

Size of Ant Man and Wasp was always dependent on how large they needed to
be.

Speed Demon shook his head sadly. "That wouldn't happen if we had
uniforms
made out of unstable molecules. They fit you snugly no matter how big or
small you are. It's like the ultimate spandex. Too bad the Mandarin is
too
cheap to buy some for us."

$Heh.

Thought it would be a cute touch.

"Not us. Probably if Pantyhose doesn't like his new name or something,"
Speed Demon assured him.

$Heh.  Of course, they're not very likely to turn on him, either.

Nope. Blind loyalty is their priamry asset.

"We were so busy doing what the boss said, we missed a perfect
opportunity
to touch Thor's breasts."

$*shakes head*

They are fixated on it.

Bucky looked at her as though she had grown a third eye. "How can you be
so
blas� about it?

$Shouldn't he mispronounce it or something?

I just dropped it and had him say 'unconcerned'

"You cannot change the world anymore than you can change human nature.
Society is composed of two types of people. The strong and the weak. The
strong prey upon the weak. That is the way of things."

"That's crazy. You can't live life like that. Everyone would be
miserable.

$Most of them already are.

Yes, but he has Cap's optimism.

Tarou, the first to recover, said, "Well, well, well. What have we here?
I
go out to find a putz, and instead I find a babe." He smiled
lasciviously at
Bucky. "What's your name? Cleavage Girl?"

$Howabout Miss Nipples?

Nah. Too crude, and they aren't showing. The cleavage is, though.

a real man can do with a hot little number like you?"

"You lousy pervert!" Bucky railed. Keeping her eyes on the two
opponents,
she said over her shoulder. "Keep behind me. I'll protect you."

$Is he really that stupid?

Heh, she told him she was on his side now after he saved her life. Why
wouldn't he believe? :)

lot and need a break," Tarou insisted in a smooth voice.

"I said she's mine." The assassin reached down and picked the girl up,
effortlessly tossing the burden over her shoulder. As she turned, she
noticed Tarou shooting her a murderous glare. She found that truly
amusing.
From the moment she had met him, she had taken an intense dislike of him
that bordered on hatred. Probably because he reminded her so much of her
mentor, Matsuo. They were cut from the same cloth.

$Matsuo's nickname was Pantyhose, too?

Heh

him without provocation. And she didn't want to think about what the
Mandarin might do to her if he found out she had lied. While it was true
the
Captain would still be a prisoner and represented no threat, it would
make
her employer trust her less. And trust was always a commodity one tried
to
broker, since it made turning on the person that much easier if one had
to
betray him.

$Words to live by.

Amen.

In a highly digitized voice, the lead robot said. "What... is... your...
command?"

$Thwow him to the floor!  Vewwy roughwy!

Heh.

"Maybe I should run back for a quick grope."

"Aw, come on, Min... Whiz... I mean Speedy. I want to grab them too."

$Speedy: You can grab them after I get back, it's not like I'm going to
tear them off and keep them.

But everyone wants to feel the girl up first. Sloppy seconds are never as
much fun as firsts. :)

Elektra again hid the smile that threatened to come to her. She could
practically feel the anger boiling off Tarou, even if he openly accepted
his
employer's decision with a stoicism she had previously thought him
incapable
of.

$The quickest way to learn tact and manners is to be around someone
that could squish you like a bug.

Amen.

"Is there no end to these interruptions?" the Mandarin snarled as he
headed
for the nearest security checkpoint to monitor the nature of the
intrusion.

$Yeah, really.  My boss keeps looking in and wanting me to stop C&Cing
and actually work.  This'll do for half the C&C, anyhow.  Expect the
next half soon.  Then, working backwards, I'll eventually get around to
all of 'Things', as well as stuff by other people.

Will get to it next. Thanks mucho for the C+C.

D.B. Sommer

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