InBrightestDay

Great that you enjoyed the chapter and thank you for the review.
I thought this was a good point of include the world building aspect of why the forces of Heaven are not around so to say. There is really lots of talk about demons in the story and barely a mentioning of angels and this might come across as weird to some readers. Having the demon revealing her ignorance give an explanation why Jennifer has not really thought about the theological implications of the demon attacks.
Patric improving...*chuckles*...but people can be dangerous in different ways.
LOL, yep that is pretty much how the scene reads. If I get around to write a future story about this setting I should have Mindeye really have psionic tech support as occupation.

If you really consider what happened in the previous encounter between Linda and Eagle where she overload the G.S.P. protective gear and compel him to have sex I think the news that she have mental powers is possible to anticipate, but I also suspect I make it kind of hard to spot since I work hard in the previous chapters to make Linda seem like a very minor character.
Very karmic indeed.
You have literally have made my day perfect. When you asked me by PM if the story was safe to read considering you liked the story hook but was a bit worried about the story codes I had to think hard exactly about this scene that is very very far from feel good. Not that I can promise the rest of the story is a pure safe read, but this was the actual scene that I was not sure how you would view. Good that it got exactly the right response.

About the maze thing...the maze is not locking her memories away but is actually the psionic defense Mindeye put there to protect what he had done to her mind. Psionics cannot have slaves that knows all their secrets and is an open book to other psionics. The solution is to put traps there that will be dangerous for eavesdroppers. These are in the setting called logical mazes and trick the intruder to become lost inside the maze. The only reason Linda manage to get free from the trap is her great mental strength. The reason why Carol does not have access to her memories is more basic suppressed memories due to trauma like it work in the real world.

I look in the other directions for a few days...aka working overtime on my real job...and bam...there is suddenly two new reviews posted since I visited AFF last time!

I really appreciate these very well written reviews that you provide for every chapter. It is good that my earlier guess that you would enjoy the story seemed well founded. You are approaching what I consider to be the better parts of the story.
Thank you, the bad guys that return is very much a deliberate act made possible since I planned it in advance.
I would argue that it also is a team effort even if Mindeye is the one that makes the sacrifice that allow them to turn the battle. Blade getting Fang to finally start to come over her gun shyness so she can participate in battle also plays a pretty big part. Fighting a furious werewolf that is immune to psionic powers is narrow rooms...not the favorite things to do if you are psionic that used to disable attackers with your telepathy.
The super hero team is meant to have super powers that fits together for the battle task. The Firefly and Thundercloud combo is one of many reasons the government decided to recruit them to the team.
Yep, Firefly is really on the suffering end. It will eventually get better.
Great that you liked it. I can completely understand where you are coming from with bit about enjoying it. A bit like lots of real world asian porn that I cannot stand since they far too often show girls that is not enjoying the sex for most of the sex scene and is forced to stuff they don’t like. I understand most porn participants does it for the money and just act but if there is not passion but sex without passion is just dumb violence to my ears.
I am actually quite pleased for the dialogue in that original sexscene. Linda recognize her sister but cannot understand how she can have turned into a sexual bombshell and this give Patric the time window needed to order Jennifer to have sex with her and Linda does not get enough time to say enough for Jennifer to realize what she is doing.

When Linda talks with Eagle about Jennifer being Blade in a later chapter she talks about her mother dismissing the idea that Jennifer is Blade, but Linda actually avoids revealing she knows the truth since that would require her to reveal her embarrassing encounter with her sister. .
The aptitude part of the test is meant to allow the government to filter out candidates that have a personality that does not work in a team and does not have right kind of hero quality. Exactly what the agents are measuring is not something I spent much time to define...but heroes like the marvel hero Captain America would max out on the aptitude test. Fang and Jennifer run into trouble here because it is impossible to create a test without including bias from the culture ofthe person creating the test and Fang and Jennifer are not really sharing the same kind of culture as ordinary people due to their special background. Their aggressiveness is of course part of this but only a part of it.

Thanks!

Regarding the daddy stuff, that’s no problem!  It’s just that we’ve both come across reviewers that will read something in a story that they hate and complain about, yet will keep reading future chapters and continue to complain about it, and it just leaves you scratching your head wondering why the hell they’re continuing to read something they don’t like. lol
And no, no offence taken!  I just thought I’d explain that because many people – including a surprising number of writers – really don’t get that concept.  So that wasn’t just for you but for anybody else reading that post who might not quite grasp that people can (and should) write for themselves first, even if that limits the number of readers you’ll get.  It’s not like we’re professional authors that feel the need to write to a target audience, after all, so we’re free to do as we wish.  One bonus of not being published authors, I guess!  Not becoming rich and famous authors is the downside though. ;-)
Anyway, we do appreciate the fact that you’re a diligent reader and reviewer!  Not many people out there that are both, that’s for sure!
 

I wasn’t saying “well that really turned me off,” just that I didn’t find it super hot.  As I mentioned in the review, it didn’t cause me to stop reading the chapter (there was plenty of other hot stuff in the scene).  The only part of the story thus far that made me wonder whether I should continue reading was some concern over consent, which was cleared up several chapters ago.  So no, further uses of “daddy” might not be a turn-on for me, but they’re not going to prevent me from enjoying the story.
I really hope I haven’t upset you two with my reviews.  I wasn’t trying for that; all I was doing was giving my completely subjective responses to each chapter.  I didn’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings.  I want to point out again that this story is five chapters long so far, and the only chapter that alarmed me was Chapter 2, and that was due to me misunderstanding what was happening.  Please don’t take any of my reactions as an indictment of your work.  I’ve read stories that legitimately hurt me (emotionally, I mean), but I’ve never said that the authors shouldn’t have written them.  I am a big believer in the idea that an author or authors should tell the story they want to.
I also very much understand writing something for yourself but hoping someone else might enjoy it as well.
So again, please don’t take this as me saying you two have done anything wrong, and know that I am genuinely enjoying the story.

That’s the thing about the internet: you can never really tell whether you’re being trolled or whether this is just some really weird fanfiction.
If nothing else, the title’s kinda funny.
Well, I’m never going to like snuff, but it was mercifully short, so it didn’t hurt as much as a longer torture/snuff scene would have.
I was like a living pinball, bounced from this story to WoH, where I stuck for about a decade before being launched back out...okay, the pinball analogy doesn’t really work, but even so it is kind of strange how things work out sometimes.  Fic works in mysterious ways...

Thanks again for your review!
Right off the bat, I’d like to point out that if the daddy part bothered you then we wonder how worthwhile it would be for you to keep reading, since there’s going to be plenty more of that to come over the following chapters, many of which we’ve already written, and right to the very end, which we haven’t written yet.  We just thought we’d warn you to give you a more informed decision, and to cut off any ‘well that really turned me off!’ complaints, because… well, you were warned.   Anyway, it’s entirely up to you, of course! 
Also, I just thought I’d give you a bit of an insight into the reasons behind us writing this story.  We wanted to write something that really appealed to the both of us, something that we would really enjoy writing and exploring, and that’s very much what we came up with.  We love the story and we each love both of the characters – so much so that it’ll be a bit of a wrench when we have to leave them behind.  We decided to upload it as well since maybe others might also enjoy reading it, but it’s first and foremost for us two.  But we’re both firm believers in writing to appeal to ourselves first anyway, which we feel every writer should do! 

Reds Under The Flower Bed is one of my oldest stories writing as JayDee – it was one of the first I loaded to AFF, back before I took my stories down and and then re-loaded a bunch on the same day in 2007. Near the start it says “Additional Credit: The idea for this came from an internet discussion with reikorikku and Deathstalker.” I no longer have any recollection of the discussion, and it even has the old story codes for using other than on AFF at the start. Ayy. It's short and unpleasant, like hungover toad.
...and now I remember the discussion a little. I’m 99% it included “Hey, I wonder what lines I could put in that would really get Godawful Fanfiction users spitting feathers?”
Thanks for your review! I just had a quick scroll down it and I couldn’t face reading the fucking thing again, so good for you on managing it.
I think it was intended to be a trollfic originally, when it went on the grey archive. Then I think I posted it here because, fuck it, some folks like it. I have no such excuse for my later Piranha Plant snuff flashfic,  Phytoerotic Asphyxiation.
I mean, an actual communist revolution would be pretty bloody in Mushroom Kingdom – no wonder they took Koopa and co out as well!
I haven’t played any lately. Most recent one I owned was Mario 64, which was a heck of a lot of fun but, what 20 years ago? The old NES ones were great fun in the late 80s/early 90s for little kids. Hard though.
Yeah, absolutely have a lot less character establishment with fanfic, because you figure the fans know ‘em! But also with it being one of my earliest snuff fics I guess I just didn’t have a lot to work into it.
Hell, I’d wonder why someone who did like snuff bothered. I couldn’t do more’n skim it.
I bet about now you’re wishing you had continued not remembering it?  
I guess it all worked out in the end, as if you hadn’t gone for it we wouldn’t be getting The Woman In The Statue! The angel did come out of it not entirely broken thanks to you
Thank you again for this unexpected review! I appreciate it.

“Hey sis! How’d it go with that new girl?”
“I hoped her touch would be amazing because she’s a musician.”
“And?”
“She only plays the theremin.”

Apologies for doing all the reviews so quickly, but I wanted to get caught up before the next chapter was posted.
Oh, age difference isn’t really a problem.  I mean, my longest running story (which I have vowed to finish by the end of July!) features an eighteen year old boy paired with a fourteen billion year old woman, so compared to that Ray and Nina are practically the same age.  The thing that made me uncomfortable during Chapter 2 was really just the question of how consensual this was.  The whole reason the age of consent exists in the first place, after all, is that sometimes younger people are mentally more vulnerable to being forced or manipulated into sex, and I misunderstood what you were doing with Nina’s thought process and thought Ray might be coercing her into sex, which was where the Bad Touch feelings popped up.  Of course…
...that was the key component I was missing, that it was Nina thinking “Wait, what am I doing?” rather than “Wait, what is he doing?”  The subsequent chapters did a lot to change my mind on the pairing, and definitely reassured me that Ray is ultimately a good guy.
Yeah.   I’m definitely going to have to check out more of Melrick’s work in the future!
I was just joking.  When it comes to what one finds aesthetically pleasing, it’s all a matter of personal preference.
Definitely.  I imagine the titular awakenings are more Nina’s, as a pubescent girl just now experiencing sexual attraction for the first time, though it could to some extent apply to Ray, I suppose.
Again, that was mostly intended as a joke, though my reaction was kind of like:
Me: Okay, I’m genuinely starting to accept that this relationship could work.  For this story, I think I’m getting over the “fourteen year old” thing.
Ray: Even if she were 13…
Me: Don’t push it, man.
I think I will.  In spite of my reaction to Chapter 2, I actually am rooting for these two now.

Sorry for the misunderstanding!  I felt bad leaving the reviews that fast myself, so I read your statement wrong partly out of guilt.  I will definitely continue reading!

That would be a fair reaction.

lol… I’ve only just realised how that sounds. Of course I meant I hope you will continue reading!

And lastly… for now, hopefully…
lol… I will not say a word about breasts, or we’ll be here all day.
But they are kind of equal in being awkward, so I’m glad that comes across. Ray is extremely lonely, and he’s not having an easy time of it even without having a girl throw herself in his way... and Nina is so terribly curious. “Goddamnit Ray” made me laugh though. 
I hope you enjoy the rest
Thank you so much!

Thank you for this one too!
I’m glad that their communication made you feel better about them. Well, he has been worried about those consequences, so they’ve been at the front of his mind. Even though Melrick and I are really making him go there. He doesn’t mean to do any harm.
Ah… Melrick made you laugh… (points)  
 

Hey again, and thank you!
Well… I think she was more frightened of herself just then. She hasn’t been in any situation like this before, but she’s also very daring. It’s amazing how easy it is to get right out of your depth… lol. Silly Nina! But Ray is a good guy really. He’d never hurt her or deliberately scare her. He’s not thinking rationally at all right now.
 

Hey, @InBrightestDay and thank you so much!
Thank you for reading, even if it is out of your comfort zone. I’m entirely responsible for Nina’s age, and it’s interesting to think back and imagine what she would be thinking and feeling. But we wanted to try and write about two characters first and foremost, so if you do stick with it, be prepared for this to go a lot deeper.
As for Ray, he absolutely does realise, and I think ordinarily nothing would happen here. But this is fiction, so we are just having a little fun as the Gods of this world, and watching what unfolds, so I’m really happy that it seems to be just happening, rather than being forced. I hope you will root for Ray and Nina by the end. Together, they are more than their age difference

The Super Sabre reference is actually quite obscure. I reada comic arc as teenager when the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants manage to secure position as a government sponsored “superhero” team named Freedom Force. This group of “reformed” villains does some minor good deeds here and there, but mostly they serve as enemy team for X-men and the Avengers when the plot need an extra fight. Super Sabre is a mercenary that joins the team to escape prison. Over time lots of villains and minor super heroes serve in the Freedom Force, but eventually the government scrap the initiative and replace it with X-Factor. When I needed powers for a opposing team for the G.S.P. story Super Sabre came to mind.
As for inspiration for the others the character I can mention a few.
Mesh draws inspiration from Bureau 13...a very horrible computer game...but I liked the battle suit that the heroes fail to make use of in any sensible fashion. I think there is roleplaying game that is the source material of the world setting, but my irritation about the stupid game killed my interest.
Entrope’s power draws inspiration from the X-men hero Bishop mixed with the villain Sebastian Shaw.
Bio is basically inspired by the Marvel character Madame Hydra even though the Marvel character has no real powers but uses technology to do stuff.
Cyclone’s flight was inspired by X-men character Banshee...but I later realized that there of course is a Marvel villain named Cyclone with the same powers as my character.
As for Firefly the inspiration is Marvels Firestar...except I learned about the character in animated series where her power was very nerfed down and not over the top flexible like in the comics. I have later learnt that Firefly actually in the comic use the alias Firefly for a timeperiod. :-)
Thundercloud is kind of based on Captain Brittain in  Excalibur (that super hero really have very different power depending on comic) with the removal of the flight power and different vulnerabilities.
It might be good to have the heroes highlight this point at some point in the story. I will see if I can find some scene where it does not intrude on the actual action.
Very true. :-)
Yep..quite horror materialto that scene. Thundercloud is not as his best there...but basically back in the days he offered to skip his by then very successful superhero career and the comforts of civilization to be with her. She rejected him since she wanted more to become a super hero more than to be with him...in fact she preferred to be a young superhero even if that meant Thundercloud would be old or dead when they learned to control her powers. Given this background and she suddenly being a villain for no obvious reason when she returns...not the best day for Thundercloud.

An Old God so nearly free decides to not break free of its prison but rather bends the bars just a bit and uses its tentacles for some fun. To the dismay of the monastery and its clergy. With the nunnery nearby sure to be visited next.
The Lord of Hatred possesses one of his cultists and woos an avowed demon hunter determined to kill him and his cult. Mixing business with pleasure has always held certain risks.
Unicorns wage war on vampires
The god of war is tricked by his lover the goddess of love into seducing his most favored warrior
a father discovers his only child is a possessive demon. the cruelty of children mixed with raw demonic power
A princess gets bored so she charms a dragon into abducting her chaste, courtly love knight protector
A virus turns all androids and robots into sex crazed machines while its up to sexbots to save their creators from an orgasmic fate. 
Games no longer are mere games but objects of life or death as even friendly games of chess or checkers results in the death of the losers.
Deimiurges rush to complete a universe on time as the deadline approaches.
Harem wars. A world where one’s harem size determines their power.
A lesbian is cursed with the power to seduce any man is encountered by a gay man cursed with the ability to seduce any woman. Each with the ability the other craves.
With Ragnarok fast approaching Hel goes fuck that and takes her siblings to the mortal world to live happily as mostly human. Mostly functional family.
Freya provokes the ire of Aphrodite and this time no mere golden apple is going to cut it.
Hera, Queen of the gods leaves Olympus for the mortal world where she unexpectantly meets the god of divorce.
Aliens invade earth only to discover that lust is contagious.
bored as hell the god of destruction tries to create something for once.
An elder god decides to save the world despite the small fleshy things on it seemingly determined to destroy it.
There is a secret war behind the scenes as people with their own private dimensions. These lords and Ladies of their own demesnes try to absorb each other holdings because only one can have their own complete world. While others are content to enjoy their own personal fragments of one.
Only werewolves can find their one true love. Since they are the only beings capable of seeing the invisible threads of fates that binds two people together. 
Turns out gods are real, the latest tech makes it abundantly clear… And then the gods take notice.
 

Thomas the Rimmer – a re-telling of the ballard of Thomas the Rhymer where the Queen of Elfland gets her asshole licked a lot.
 

Maybe the blankness was like writing “...”
Like they read the story and were like “Well, this...I...you...I just...what?”

The inspiration of Hyper is actually a little known character named Super Sabre  from the Marvel comics. He could create sonic booms by running quickly but not Flash-style insane power feats that basically means only speedsters can compete.
I so very much agree about the need of putting a silencer on the communicator...the reason they neglected this is probably that the super hero group was thought to be fighting aliens and the government really never thought about them going sneaky stuff.
Very accurate analysis.
Thank you...I have been considering using Hyper in a follow up story since she is fun to use in sex scenes.
It is a matter of time. One reason it goes slowly is that most of the team have still not understood how powerful healing Blade really have. After this chapter everyone expect Eagle and Mindeye is really aware of it.
It meant to be kind of ambient. Neither Thundercloud or Mernosh comes out looking good from it. It will be interesting to hear what you think when the wider context of what happened to Mernosh is revealed in a later chapter.
That is mistake on my part, thanks for bringing it to my attention. The idea for fang to use a weird word falls flat on that I am quite certain she also talks about leader of pack.

The Crushing of Cassie Cage
...Thanks for taking the time to leave a blank review. I think? Maybe? I’ll leave it up a couple weeks in case you check and it was unintentionally blank then I guess I’d best delete it as a non review.

The chapter is very much meant to be emotional and to raise the stakes for the hero team. There is an obvious tension from the superheroes not making any progress with finding the source of the attacks on the city and only stopping attacks already in process, but it gets more interesting when this chapter add the plot element that there are groups that want to shut down the operation for other reasons.
Yes, there is much more to happen around the dilemma Eagle has ended in. Actually the situation is also a bit more complicated than what it first looks like. The sister talks about their mother not being convinced to avoid saying what she really thinks herself.

As for it to be wonderful to meet the family there is intended to be parallel here with the scene at the end of the chapter.  Interacting with people that you don’t remember yourself might not be the best thing that can happen.
That is very much the intention with the Firefly character, no matter how good she is as superhero she can never escape the gossip since she is too sexy to be taken seriously by the media. Same goes for the opposing superhero team plot...would media really stay on the superheroes side if there is a possible story about the underdog that is not state funded.
Good that it gave the intended reaction, but I want to point out that Mindeye is also not totally wrong about there being large parts of Carol there. The upcoming story will reveal that there are serious differences between the characters even while Carol might have inherited some skills from Jennifer they are not the same.  
Jennifer would have agreed totally about that. It is a play with identities here where the cover persona does things Jennifer herself would not do herself if she was in charge of action.
He is literally doing a jump from the air plane in motion and using its momentum to smash into the house. Hitting a few threes on the way inside is just a plus side to avoid that he smash the house too much. The actual action he does here is kind of rash actually since his entry could literally murder just about anyone in the house except Jennifer. He is too worried about his love interest to follow superhero protocol. I suppose there off screen is a scene where the management have quite a lot to say to Thundercloud about this. I don’t actually recall exactly why I skipped this scene, but it not quite obvious how such a scene would end.
Nice you liked it. Myself I really like the different perspectives as the other superheroes take time  disposing the mindless smaller demons while Blade’s demon think the leader of the demons is just critter she can execute.

I was literally fuckin’ singing the “Holly and the Ivy “ Christmas Carol in my head when I named her. Well, the first verse anyway. Been a good 20 years or so since singing it in school.
*Looks up the Japanese* Heh, exactly! I figured it also worked because most folks’d assume it was just a Polish version of Lucas.
He’s definitely a power hungry controlling POS, but I think even he can change – heck he’s probably gonna make a great parent.
“Son, your pappy used to be a real asshole.”
Heh, I half wondered if it was a TV Tropes thing. My tiny reference pool showing there!
Ahh I see, yeah, doing it from Lailah’s point of view would probably make for a pretty interesting/more nuanced take on both the wider politics, the ethics, AND Shannon’s mpreg malarky. After all, she’d know every one of the State Senators involved, too.