“Cinderella?” Lucy sneered. “A Christmas Carol?" She flipped through a few more novels. "What's this, Virginia Woolf?"
"It’s an Austen, actually," I said, tenderly picking up Pride and Prejudice and dusting it off. "You really couldn't have expected them to let you get into any dangerous situations like in The Black Phantom."
It was one week into the imprisonment, and we were being treated very reasonably by my standards. Yes, we were in a cell, we were being subjected to all kinds of tests and the food was awful, but this was nothing compared to what could have happened. We were even allowed to choose our location for the first assignment. This all after I had stolen a valuable object from powerful people, made them search all over the place for it, and then, when they had the meddlesome bug under their heel, they chose to let it live and sooner or later, we would escape with the help of our resident angel. Nathalie was in hiding somewhere in the building, trying to squirrel out our position. After that—freedom.
"Aw, come on," said Wayne, "let's try the Austen!"
"Yes, let's take Austen. And I want to know if they really had to wear those dresses all the time," Amy said.
"Oh, I don't know..." said Lucy, paging doubtfully through the novel.
"Come on," I said. "I think Darcy is going to be handsome. If we think it, he will."
"Have you decided yet?" came the familiar drawl of Madame Bouvier.
"Yes, it's the Austen," Amy blurted before Lucy could say anything.
"Good choice," she murmured. At the clap of her hands, two men seized each of us by our arms and dragged us out of the cell.
"They really couldn't allow us to walk, could they?" I yelped as the men twisted my arms violently, blocking the flow of blood to my muscles.
"The nice treatment ends here," announced Madame Bouvier, gliding effortlessly beside me. "Safety is of the utmost concern—that is our safety, if you were wondering. Every precaution must be taken to ensure the success of our little mission."
I craned my neck to try to see something of the place I was being dragged through, but my twisted arms cramped my movement and my neck soon grew tired. After some time we were hauled through a doorway and hurled onto hard steel chairs. Blood seeped back into my cold arms as thick metal bands were snapped onto my wrists, legs and neck. My hands were taped roughly to Lucy and Amy on either side of me—straining sideways, I caught a glimpse of Wayne on my far right taped to Lucy. A shadow fell over my face and I looked up, startled, straight into Madame Bouvier's cool eyes. She placed the decoder on my lap and held up Pride and Prejudice.
"Now, I want you to concentrate on this. If you stay longer than a week, I shall kill all of you. If you stay for shorter than five days, similar punishment will soon follow. Am I clear?"
I nodded mutely. This would be problematic. Leon could decide to get rid of Nathalie at any time. Madame Bouvier flicked open the decoder with her long nails. The folds slowly revealed themselves to her gentle probing.
"State: Frustrated
164 897.3"
Three more sets of numbers appeared. Lucy, Wayne and Amy were respectively afraid, worried and excited.
"State: Alpha
672.5"
End of chapter
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140,799 Literary Works • 673,688 Reviews
Okay, Black here for another Review Day review on your awesome book, barefoot!
And yeah, in case you were wondering, I still do think that you should spend a bit of time on this piece and get it into a better draft.
Okay, well, your pacing needs a bit of work, but I'm still enjoying the piece! You did a good job! I advise you to keep an eye on your plot though and not just go visiting a bunch of different story-world for the sake of just 'being able to do it!'
I really think it would be worth it!
), and probably all you really need is time and practice. But is there more to it? Is there a better way? My answer? Well, sadly I don't really have an answer. I'll just prescribe you (if you're still in this stage) time and practice, other than that I can just advise you to maybe plan a bit, maybe think your story over a bit, maybe try to find some more interest in the more 'boring' parts of writing . . . there's not much I can say really. >>
You need to take the meds or you won't be getting better. 
Really though, this was a good chapter! Good enough that I'm DOOMED to go on to chapter ten -whether I like it or not -_-. Your grammar is getting much better as the story proceeds, as is your pacing and description. I'm able to understand things so much more easily!
Now, for those annoying little problems! What I DIDN'T like! I didn't like your pacing, in a number of places. I didn't like your thinking. I didn't like your description (in a few special ways). And I didn't like the way you're changing the way you were going at first. Plot and Originality wise, at least! You're messing up!!! I'll cover each of these problems as I can, but remember to be sure to go and do the hard application work on your own, after this!
So, first off! So what did I not like about your pacing exactly? . . . simple: You skipped an entire essential week of time in which you could have developed your characters and done a whole kaboodle of work introducing the, er, Nathalie girl. As I mentioned in, I think, my chapter eight review, you need to do a good bit more work on developing your characters. These seven days of jail time would have been PERFECT! I know, I know, you're eager to get to the action and all, but don't overlook other essentials because of that! (Of course, you know this now, but I hope I help anyway!).
Next thing! Why didn't I like your description? . . . simple again: You had a perfect chance here to get to work and describe character's, inside and out, and their prison, in a whole ton of ways . . . but you didn't. At this point I'm beginning to get an 'inner hint' as to what your general writing problem really IS! But let me get through these small points, and I'll lead up to that at the bottom of the review! You need more description, but remember to put it in unobtrusively, tossing it in on the dialogue and action!
Test: Moving on! The third objection I stated. What I don't like about it is that you're borrowing from a story world that you didn't create, and you're jumping through the awesome one that you did create really quickly, killing it! I think I have a reason for this, and I'll lead up to that later! I advise you to be careful with your view of things here, keep an eye on what you want and what you have to say!
Okay, I am finally now going to be getting to that summary of what you're doing wrong. And this is it: You're trying to rush along through the 'boring' parts and get to the action. I see this in everything. You want to get to new story world again and again, but not the same ones, so you're plot is all zig-zag, you're a bit fanny so your originality is too, description is a bore for any action-writer and so you skip that, only an intermediate/ advanced writer notices things such as character and world development, so (at this point, about seven months ago – you're probably 500% better now) you don't really pay any attention to them . . . on and on.
My solution to this problem? Well, I myself grew out of this stage of being a writer (it actually took me about six months to get to my present position
Annoying as that finale note is for me (though probably not for you -seeing as I'd bet you're out of the stage), I still did enjoy your story a lot. Most readers would. I enjoyed the action! It was what kept the story alive and out of the dead! One more final note on this (yeah, another) is that these chapters are EXTREMELY small. A normal novel chapter is usually 15 to 30 hundred words . . . not five or six hundred. Work on that . . . as time goes on you'll find more filler to put in! (Oh, yeah, and describing what the numbers on the decoder are would be really great!)
Anyway, good work! And keep writing – Remember, I prescribed you PRACTICE!
~Black~
Hello again barefootrunner. Once again jordin is here with a review for you (Fellow at arms also a knight of the green room.) I really hope it is of some kind of use to you buddy... (I wish I cold review all of your works.)
This line is written in the wrong wordings. :pFirst off you need to make your writing larger again it is getting annoying. (Very annoying.)
Again good job this time it made a good bit of sense.
Overall great work. (Beside the tiny writing.)
Grammar: Great as usual.
Punctuation: Better than last time. (Which means it was great.)
Spelling: Great!
keep writing and good luck.
~Jon~
I hope it helped.