Chiaki is really short and slim. Vinnie could probably break her in half, and he's not exactly a bodybuilder. Now that he's teamed with her, he might start to ask himself why most of the criminal underworld in Paradopolis is afraid of her.

If he asks her, he'll have his answer about how he can use leverage against his own enemies without having to sacrifice what he cares about.

First thing she would tell him is just because Xander went it alone doesn't mean he has to. That perhaps his strength is in cooperation.





That might motivate her to show Vinnie how to turn the tables on those who keep trying to manipulate him like that.





Do we need one of those musical montages to cover it?





The interesting thing about Lara's "teleport" is unlike a real one, it's not point-to-point. If you noticed in my tie-in, she became hyper-accelerated in her energy form. When she re-materialized, she expected to have a negligible amount of acceleration left, but she had way too much to slow down in time, and crashed through the Lair Mansion main hall.

Easiest way to describe it in scifi terms is it's like accelerating into hyperspace and then exiting it in a short distance.

Unfortunately things like miscalculating the accelerate/decelerate points, and the destination moving in the time it takes to get there, can screw it up completely. That does make her vulnerable to someone like the Hooded Hood, who can either pull her out of "hyperspace" and redirect her, or simply retcon some other destination at the exit point.

The other issue is that she generally has to have an idea where she's going before leaving. It's a bit like a normal human hopping into an airplane to find a shopping mall. If you miss it, you're going to REALLY miss it, and turning around will be too difficult.





And that would be the issue for Lara, because the way I understand it, Fairie pretty much is part of Mab at the moment. It means Mab can change the location and arrangement of things at will, or create new entities specifically designed to deal with her.

It's not a safe place for Lara. But she knows that, and then takes to heart Chiaki's advice to hide her true power.





At one point I tested a feature that made wide threads encase inside a scrollable DIV, but that did horrible things to Internet Explorer, so I left it this way. The only fix right now is to create a new thread, which this is.