I absolutely adored this story! So much sadness, funny moments, happiness, angst, and much more! It was all fantastic! Amazing job hun!

"Abraham Stocker." *face-palm* Think I wouldn't notice that reference to the Dracula author?

"Colonel Hathi" made me burst out laughing!

Smiling at how you used Obama who had actually been President at the time of the movie's release rather than the President in the movie. Gosh I miss him.

Yeah, I figured it was something like this. Whilst I think that Dr Cockroach deserves a lot of credit for tunging himself around, there is no doubt that the man he was (and the man that he has potential to be again, given the right circumstances) was terrible beyond words.

I'm wondering if Mary is doing this deliberately. It seems to me that being 200 years old might make her something of a mistress of misdirection, division and deceit. That said, yes, maybe Susan is getting a bit big for her boots (and, considering how big her boots are, that's very big indeed)!

I'm pretty sure that Mary won't be 'tameable' or 'civilisable'. She's done horrors to keep herself alive for the last 220 years or so and that has an effect on the mind. Additionally, whatever effect that is animating her body without traditional organ activity is probably going to override whatever social instincts she has. She will try to escape and she will try to kill anyone who gets in her way.

This will be a new experience for Susan - Someone who simply can't and won't be good.

There isn't much 'outdoors' around Vegas, it's true. There are two things that might interest Dr Cockroach, though.

1) Area 51 - The RL Groom Lake test facility; given the Doc's security clearance, I'm sure that they'd let him in to play with the TR-3Bs;

2) Trinity Valley - Vegas is also near the old overground nuclear test sites (close enough that the detonations were tourist attractions when Vegas was starting as a vacation town). Although the fallout is too dangerous to humans for them to stay for long periods, I suspect that Dr Cockroach and Susan could tolerate it without harmful ill-effects.

It seems to me that the good doctor has fallen for the goddess into whose life he stumbled largely by accident and happenstance.

I suddenly find myself wondering how many yards of steel hawser and how many gallons of surgical glue they needed to sew Susan's arm back together and how many hundred square yards of bandage made up her dressings!

Susan should consider herself lucky that the attack drone (which sounded like something out of Michael Bay's 'Battleship') didn't cut off her arm. As for the Doc, he needs to be more careful about double-checking his doomsday devices before putting his friends lives on the line!

So, I'm guessing that it's the same group of aliens? Has the idiot returned for a second shot or is this just a random revenge/terror attack?

So, now Derek has gone down the revenge porn route? Personally, I'd feed him to Dr Cockroach as an 'experimental resource' but that's just me.

If Susan had kept her head, she could have made a point to the press about 'trespassing on private property' and then inviting them to leave and only return by appointment. Alternately, she could forcibly eject them - Something that I'm sure she could do painfully but non-lethally.

Does California have a 'castle' law? Under that rule, anything she did to uninvited 'guests' on her father's property is AUTOMATICALLY self-defence, irrespective of how disproportionate.

Yeah, I always got the impression that Nancy in 'Attack of the 50-Foot Woman' was driven insane by her transformation. She had a psychotic episode and couldn't be considered responsible for her own actions. However, the simple fact is that she was an immense risk to innocent life; the authorities had no choice but to stop her. That was the priority; stopping her non-lethally would have been nice but stopping her before she killed too many people came first.

As upset Susan is about her 'recruitment' (note she called her capture a 'kidnapping' by implication) she was in a very similar same situation. Disoriented, frightened and running mostly on adrenaline and instinct. There's no telling how many people she could have hurt or killed if the MCF hadn't picked her up so quickly.

I enjoyed the press conference. You did a good job of expressing the natures and personalities of all the characters. It's particularly interesting that Link, even though he arguably was merely trying to protect his own liberty, feels regret at lives lost at his hands. It reminds us that, even though he likes to play the living nightmare, he is a very strongly moral being.

FWIW, the literature doctorate is listed on the Internet as LittD. PhD is ALWAYS hard science of some sort or hard humanities (history, geography or the like).

As for the tabloid press? I do hope that the Johnstone guy wasn't interested in ever doing political reporting even for the local county council. When Monger is done with him, his security clearance will be 'No' and he will probably not be able to get close to a local, state or federal official without being physically tackled by the Secret Service. As for military reporting, I suspect he'll have the listing "Possible Foreign/Terrorist Agitator - Arrest on Sight" on his docket ready for actioning should he ever go lo any military unit or base from now on!