Heh, Meiling kinda did the Rina Dragonaar thing. I hadn't originally intended to include her at all, but at that point in the scene she kind of stuck her head around the doorjamb like "I could do a really cool wire-fu rescue leap here. Maybe with a little bit of Batman skylining on the mansion roof first? Tellin' you. Besides, look at this, they clearly need a tank. And Sakuya needs someone down-to-earth to ground her sometimes, just like Remilia. Me and the Chief can be bros with Occasionally Difficult Ladies." :)

>However, while this is labelled "Finale", it definitely feels like
>there's unfinished business around these parts. Is that going to get
>wound into OWaW perhaps?

It's the finale of this particular storyline, but yeah, Thicker Than Water is just the introductory adventure. The hope (I hesitate to dignify anything I do creatively with the word "plan" these days :) is that the Scarlets and co. will be joining the main OWaW cast as soon as I can a) get everybody back together from where the last few episodes scattered them around and b) figure out the logistics.

(I mean, I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but they are talking about marriage there at the end. :)

>Lastly, is there any significant backstory to Flandre's illness, or
>just a one-off thing?

I'm not sure what you might specifically have in mind by "significant backstory", but no, I don't think it was anything other than what it looked like. Becoming a vampire is traumatic and dangerous, and sometimes it goes wrong, particularly when there are complications, as there were in Flan's case. Like I said elsewhere, she wasn't possessed or anything, she had a neurological injury which has now been repaired.

(Which is not to say she won't have to deal with any fallout from the intervening time—everything that happened while she was ill still happened, after all—but she's in a much better position now to cope with any lingering demons there may be. In the psychological sense, not the literal one.)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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