...for good reason, as you'll see further down.





Sounds like she's not going to be happy.





But then she'll have to remind everyone else every 30 seconds.





In some cases though I'd have to find them first. In other cases, most of them so far, the changes I make are generally not liked, so I'm not confident about asking.





What's funny is, as an aside, I've been placing a few things carefully for some issues relates to these, should they come up. For instance:

- Faite's choice for Hatman: I fully expect that if poster-Jay returns, it's very likely, like an 8 out of 10 chance, that he'll just be stopping by to say that (like 90% of the posters who left here) he's concentrating on raising a family and career, and he's not "back". Like AG, he's always sort of taken ownership of his character Hatman. So I fully believe that if he decides to formally take leave of the board, his character will have to leave the Lair Legion and be shelved. I also believe the only reason it hasn't been yet is poster-Jay had in the back of his mind to visit here or email someone to say something but either hasn't gotten around to it, or doesn't know how to say it without feeling bad.

So I left the option - in a single scene, Hatman can take Faite's offer and give up his hat-power, retire, and as I believe is in true Hatman style, leave without saying goodbye to start his new life. It beats the other option, which Faite predicted - Hatman being killed first by the Carnifex. Though this might create good motivation for the always cool Psychic Samurai to lose her temper (more on that below) or Liu Xi to go rogue.

- And speaking of the Carnifex, in this latest arc I've posted, there's a new less self-aware android that SPUD seems to have developed. Since it's their job to be paranoid, it's quite likely they were designed both as a counter to the Lair Legion and to the Carnifex.

- Let's see if you can meet this challenge: Take a guess which things Faite nudged along to alter the present so the Carnifex and his bosses are easier to deal with in the future. There are three so far, and only one of them is obvious (one of them happened a long time ago).

Also thinly laid-out plots that I've scrapped or shelved in the last few months:

- Liu Xi "going rogue". Now she's a complicated person, so she wouldn't just go insane or fight the Lair Legion. Some kind of catalyst would have to convince her that standing idly by is no longer acceptable, and she would start using her power to take matters into her own hands. People would likely get hurt in the process, but only people who deserve it. Of course because of her sentimentality toward the LL, she'd always stay close enough to the curb to avoid having to fight them.

- Like I briefly mentioned above, some sort of major catalyst causing the Psychic Samurai to lose her temper. That doesn't sound like much until you realize that true to her name, she sees weaknesses in her foes - and because of her training, anger increases her focus dramatically. Which doesn't amount to that much when she's on the defense, but if she goes on the hunt, she becomes very dangerous.

For instance I thought it might be ironic if the professional hunter The Carnifex is shaken and worried because of this fairly weak relentless human who will hound him from the shadows and never let him be until she kills him. He'd have to worry about sleeping, drinking beverages and eating, or leaving his home. That's the kind of thing that may occur if he kills Hatman, or any of Chiaki's friends for that matter.

Or another possibility, since you mentioned the Lynchpin, what might happen if Akiko was killed, especially if it was a message to the rest of her organization. Chiaki might just go vigilante, and bodies would start piling up.

Anyway, the point is, I had a lot of radical ideas, but I've been shelving them as quickly as I've been making them up to avoid making too many waves. Those are the walls I have to work within.