Ok, so running log of thoughts:
- I'm liking the descriptions in the 2nd paragraph (I got a small stack overflow with the dashed-off list of things that were average, but I'm putting that down to not seeing much of em dashes being used as blackets, so not really anything against you)
- The "himself" in "Therwin himself" feels redundant somehow. I was expecting (if there was anything but the name) soem sort of sentence element indicating contrasts.
- "with not real" -> "with no real"?
- "I'd leave to meet" -> "I'd love to meet"
- At this point, I want to know what's up with that smile
- Those First Four Words should have been predictable
- Is Gwenda's daughter already an agent you've published about?
- That's an interesting change of expression.
- Can see why Therwin would be releived, assuming the implication that there's a bunch of shiny newbies who love animals and have no idea about the whole fanfiction thing applying to DMFF is correct
- Re: next pair of smiles. Glad to see Gwenda is getting more comfortable. Also (from previous reading) Therwin, what are you doing?
- Hm. Ok, said smile seems to be a forced social interaction thing
- Why is Ashe mixing mud, and what happened to half her hair? (she seems like the sort of person who doesn't care much about the expectaitons for dress, as shown by the flannel and the blue, so it could be intentional, but probably not)
- I get the feeling the conversaiton about "Awesome Ashe" has happened a lot
- You know more about lizards than I do, so I'm assuming that running for the door and biting a boot are both normal behaviors
- Took me a moment to figure out it was Therwin's boot, given that Ashe swore right afterwards (also, explaining that the dash was pronounced is funny)
- "tried whip" -> "tried to whip". Also "Big red" -> "Big Red' right before that
- Can't blame Gwenda for being shocked by this.
- Rotating the lizard around is also, I take it, a reasonable thing to do?
- Ah, that's why there's a lizard running around the RC
- The description of the RC is a good level of vivid. I can imagen what's going on, but it doesn't feel like I've had a picture shoved down my throat
- Is Ashe ... sane? Probably not, PPC
- Gwenda is, from what I can tell, super not looking forward to the prospect of a mission with Ashe
- Ok, so Therwin usually takes the newbies by Ashe's to give them an idea of what they actually signed up for. Makes sense.
- I'm going to guess that Ashe is unhappy about that because she'd prever not to be bothered by people? It's a bit hard to tell
Broad thoughts:
- I got a pretty good idea of how the characters act, and a slightly less clear (esp. with Ashe) idea of what they're like. That is, it's a bit tricky to build an idea of how these guys (mainly Ashe and Gwenda, Therwin seems a bit easier to pin down) think. To be fair, it's a short peice, and a lot of that sort of thing gets established over time. This could also just be me.
- The meta-ish stuff (First Four Words, funny pronounciation of the swears, the bit about th pleudo-skylight benig really weird, not that Gwenda would know, etc.) was well-done
- Big Red is cool
(( woah, that turned into a wall of text ))

For me, the thing that stands out the most in this story is the sense of time it gets across in very subtle ways. The change in the world's attitude towards powered people is communicated not just through Ward telling us of the "hunter" groups from his college days, but also, in retrospect, from the fact that he's being interviewed about his heroism in a newspaper, with his team's real names revealed. Another example is the cynicism of Ward's present attitude when compared to the event he recalls, when his group didn't even think about killing their captives, and instead got them arrested for indecency instead. The one weakness to it is that there isn't really a "pay-off" to Ward's cynicism, as it felt at the start that there would be sort of a worldview-changing moment for him—but you did say this is only "part 1," so maybe that's coming up further along in the story.

All in all, a different and interesting way to set up your setting's world-building early on.

Typos and stuff:
"How many times must someone break out of prison and threaten others lives before you realise that you should put them down for good?"
"Others" needs an apostrophe.

"So I’m not sure if you remember, but right when this was all happening there were quite a few groups worldwide who were ‘discreetly’ getting rid of those humans with powers whilst paying, or sometimes even getting paid, as the government's looked the other way."
Ah, the apostrophe escaped and hid inside of "governments."

"Now it was about 4am when the rest of the group came back . . ."/"We woke up about 1pm the next day . . ."
The time . . . descriptors? . . . should have periods after each letter, as they're abbreviations of Latin words. ("a.m." and "p.m.")

"Because 'Sorry I missed the lecture because I was asleep after a hard night of fighting crime,' wasn’t going to cut it we figured."
Since "we figured" is the actual subject and main verb of this sentence, it reads really awkwardly for them to be tacked on to the end of it. I would move them right to the front as, "Because we figured,' . . .'" There should also be a comma after "figured" since it's leading in to dialogue. (Even if you don't want to move "we figured," there should still be a comma after "because," and also after "cut it": " . . . wasn't going to cut it, we figured."

"It was Cassie, the girl we’d rescued, who came up with an answer and so skipping the rest of Monday and spending it relaxing we headed out Monday night with the unconscious members of the group and managed to set it up so that they were all arrested for public indecency the next morning."
This sentence is two independent clauses with the dependent clause, "and so skipping the rest of Monday and spending it relaxing" in between. As written, you need commas splitting those parts up: " . . . who came up with an answer, and so, skipping the rest of Monday and spending it relaxing, we headed out Monday night . . ." However, it feels like a bit of an overly large sentence to me, and it can easily be split apart. I think I would personally say, "It was Cassie, the girl we’d rescued, who came up with an answer. So, skipping the rest of Monday and spending it relaxing, we headed out Monday night with the unconscious members of the group and managed to set it up so that they were all arrested for public indecency the next morning." There are probably other ways to do it, though.

"To read the first part of this exclusive interview turn to page 23 and make sure to get your newspapers for the rest of the week as Ward talks his way through the entire history of The Protectors."
I like this last line's inclusion, since it reinforces the newspaper interview aspect. It needs commas, though! It's also another sentence that doesn't need to be as long as it, especially since it's intended as a blurb at the end of an article/bottom of a page. My take would be, "To read the first part of this exclusive interview, turn to page 23. And make sure to get your newspapers for the rest of the week, as Ward talks his way through the entire history of The Protectors." Some exclamation points might not hurt, either.

This is an interesting little piece. It actually feels more like a character study of Headquarters's typical hallways than anything else. It works pretty well in that regard; there are definitely some new and unique ideas here. Ventilation plotholes are a logical idea, but also a bit dangerous in the sense of letting wildlife, diseases, and potential allergens like pollen through, not to mention the question of what happens when a larger aircraft flies into the plothole's space. Then again, the narration mentions it's the first one Daniel encountered that directly opened to sky, so maybe that's not the standard. I just generally like some of the imagination you put into some of these concepts: breaking concrit exposing fossilized words, physical locations marked by different sensations and feelings, the implied backstory of a couch blocking a stairway. They all feel like they fit into HQ, and it's a bit surprising some of this design space hasn't been touched on before.

You've put so much focus on the setting, however, that I do feel like the characters have suffered for it. I can infer some sense of Daniel's personality, insofar as he's clearly a bit of a dreamy personality: spending his off-time wandering HQ alone, learning tiny details about the walls and such. His position as a Cafeteria worker adds to this impression, since he doesn't need the aggressive mindset of most action department agents. His dialogue . . . I think you were aiming for a bit of an airy Luna Lovegood voice? You succeeded with a few lines ("'I thought you would find it interesting. Now I remember what happens when you assume.'"), but for the most part, it just comes out as a bit dull and basic ("'Why were you following me?'" "'By the way, where are you going?'") The female agent has almost no development at all, though it appears she is indeed just a background character, rather than an agent you're planning to use, so maybe that was intentional? But it still contributes to the blandness of Daniel's dialogue, since they make no real attempt to get to know each other. Neither one of them is described, either.

So ultimately, very imaginative descriptions and world-building, but the characters need more description and development.

Read-through Notes (stream-of-consciousness-style):

- I also love wandering the hallways. Vicariously through characters, anyway.

- Daniel can memorize routes through HQ? That's very impressive, if useless enough to not be overpowered.

- I understand this superpower.

- Lighter shade of grey = clouds?

- Didn't know we had ventilation plotholes. Makes sense, though.

- The trail of sue-blood seems boring to our hero. I kinda want to know why it's there.

- Crumbling concrit? Someone needs to get Building Maintenance on that. Also, is it made of fossilized words? I don't think I've ever heard that before. More research may be necessary.

- I know I've heard of Dirk Gently, but I can't quite place the name. More research definitely necessary.

- I like the feelings that get thrown in. I can see them being very confusing to agents. "Why do I smell fudge?" "I don't even know any showtunes. Why do I want to sing them?"

- They never entered the stairwell, did they?

- "Then they then" You can cut a "then" from that sentence.

- Cafeteria worker, eh? I had wondered.


General Thoughts:

There are some very interesting things going on in this piece. The non-visual descriptions of the surroundings are not something we see often and, in this case, help to "tilt" the world a little. It makes the whole thing a little more surreal, which I liked.

As interesting as the surroundings were, though, the two characters were not. They were kind of bland and featureless. We don't get any description of them, at all. We know little about Daniel, and less about the woman. And the few times we do get any indication of what they are feeling we get "he was tired of staring at walls" and "The woman blinked dispassionately." It might work better if Daniel was openly excited about the details that only he knows about, and is disappointed when the woman is dispassionate and aloof. That, at least, would give you two levels to play off of and break up the monotony.

So, to summarize, the world building that you did was good. The characters need some fleshing out. There is potential here, I think.

I don't know this canon, but that largely didn't affect my reading. You said this is an excerpt from a longer fic; I'm not sure if the beginning of this passage is also the beginning of the fic, but it's an excellent beginning either way. I immediately started to get a sense of both characters' personalities from their dialogue and movement/body language, supplemented by the slightly-Hitch's-point-of-view narration. You do a great job of expressing Hitch being pulled between staying professional in a formal setting and being bored enough to want to play a game. You also get across the fact that Hitch clearly respects Ruby a good deal, despite the age difference, and trusts her enough to start playing this game in public without expecting any really terrible consequences.

Despite the very excellent characterization right at the opening, I do think the setting needs a bit more description early on. Knowing that the party is so packed that Ruby has to squeeze between people to move away from Hitch colors the conversation about playing the lemon game, as it implies that it will be harder to move the lemon around without being seen—but we don't know it's that busy until the end of that scene. Knowing more of the party's layout would also be useful for mentally visualizing the lemon's different locations. In particular, the sentence, "It took him nearly ten minutes and a momentary false alarm with somebody’s brightly-colored yellow handbag to track down the lemon, which was almost smugly resting on a drinks tray carried by a tuxedo-clad waiter," feels rather empty, and like a bit of a cop-out, as it's too hard to see in my mind's eye what Hitch could have been doing in that time without knowing the layout of the party. However, I recognize that this may just be the result of this sequence being removed from a larger story, so I may simply be missing information here that is supplied in the final version.

A couple of formatting notes:
Firstly, on the internet, it's typically easier to read multiple paragraphs when there's a line between each one (double spacing), rather than simply indenting. I know this may have been copied and pasted from another format, but it does make the words from different sentences run together in some spots here on the Board.

Secondly, you typically want to use different lengths of line for hyphens and dashes. You use hyphens correctly already between the words in adjective phrases ("Hitch corrected half-heartedly"). For the dash that separates parts of sentences or represents an interruption, you need a longer line. "'My gosh, sir, I’m so sorry- I didn’t see where I was going!'" should look like "'My gosh, sir, I’m so sorry—I didn’t see where I was going!'" That long dash doesn't exist as a key on most keyboards, but there are two easy ways to do it. My preference is to use the html code "& mdash;" without the space which creates "—". You can also hold down the "alt" key while typing in "0151" in the square number pad on the right side of the keyboard, which produces "—" . Which is actually a lot better, because you can see it right on the page as you type, so that might be my new preference.

Also, some multiple-word adjective phrases don't need the hyphen in between the words—namely, the ones that have adverbs ending in "-ly." So "cleverly-hidden lemon" can just be "cleverly hidden lemon."

I have to start off with saying that I really enjoyed this story. I have no idea who these characters are, though I learned a few things about them during the story. Ruby is a mischievous teenage daughter of very, very wealthy and powerful parents. Hitch is the head butler, possibly head of staff? He seems to have more of a sense of humor and less patience for formal affairs than the stereotype of that position. I never imagined that I would find a story about hiding a lemon so entertaining. It also plays on the other meaning that lemon has in fanfic circles. (Was that intentional?)

On formatting: I prefer to read on screens with a blank line between paragraphs. It's easier on the eyes.

“It’s not too bad,” he said. “I can deal.” Internally, he was hoping desperately that she’d find some way to shake things up without actually causing any sort of damage.

This is something I have been working on in my own writing recently. You have three adverbs in this one sentence, and a lot of them overall. Too many adverbs slow things down and weaken your writing. They are hard to get rid of, but it when you do it does help.

“But she won’t,” Ruby interrupted, “because we’re both excellent at this game.

This is picky, but she is supposing that he is excellent at the game. She just had to explain how it's played, so he must not have played before.

It took him nearly ten minutes and a momentary false alarm with somebody’s brightly-colored yellow handbag to track down the lemon, which was almost smugly resting on a drinks tray carried by a tuxedo-clad waiter.

I particularly liked this line. I know I am hitting you overall for adverbs, but that lemon sitting smugly on the tray is funny.

I think she must have been cheating a bit to know so quickly that he'd put the lemon in the coat pocket, but it's kind of a non-visible hiding spot so it balances out. When this is all de-anoned, I wouldn't mind a link to finish reading this.

So, just getting this out of the way: Even though I've seen the names of these characters in the #Rudi's RP room, I didn't bother to memorize their author, so I may be the only person here who has no idea who you are.

This also means I don't really know Finch and Bingle going in to this, either by description, origin canons, or established personalities. However, I found that doesn't really hurt this piece at all. You write both agents to have immediately identifiable voices, even without Finch's dialogue being always bolded. I also gleaned the two most critical details needed to understand this story (Finch is a robot and floats) very early on. (We get Bingle's identity as a bald wizard later on, too, but since that doesn't directly impact the story, its lateness is immaterial.) The personalities and speaking styles of the two agents are as close to being perfect foils to each other as one could ever expect, and it makes for very enjoyable dialogue.

In fact, this story is driven almost entirely by dialogue, with narration being used in just the right amounts to get across necessary information (Finch's "species", the travel). It makes for an incredibly fast-paced read, which matches the whimsical, light-hearted tone in a great way. I quite enjoyed the overall tone, for the most part; the one part that I disliked is the use of sound effects in text, as I'm the type to mentally read them all out, and it does get a bit silly in places. That said, it again matches the tone, so I'm willing to write that off as not jiving with my personal preferences, rather than something that needs fixing. (And I certainly couldn't argue that textual sound effects have no place in the PPC. [BEEEEEEP!])

My one complaint—again, a subjective one—is that more isn't done with the "seeing everything backwards" gag. That's quite an original and clever idea, but we only see it applied to Bingle's hands and hair. I realize the shortness of this piece restricts you a bit, but it still would have been fun to see more of the malfunction explored. Perhaps we'll see another follow-up story in DoSAT?

And again, I really liked the interplay between your agents, and I do hope you get permission some day so we can enjoy them in missions.

I looked up Bingle and Finch, but still didn't find their descriptions, except that one of their voice sounds like a cheese grater. The mention of the vending machine is familiar.

I can work out that Finch is a type of machine, and that he hovers. Somehow I mixed up which one was Bingle and which one is Finch. I know you point it out more than enough, so maybe a picture would help.

"‘Oh, dear,’ Bingle commented, taking his hands down. He watched and frowned as Finch fluttered awkwardly through the air, spurted hissing wind from his vents, tapped against a wall and rebounded like it had kicked him. " I feel like this sentence is too long. I do like the imagery, though.

I especially like the succinctness of slow, complaining pinball.

"‘It would be more durable, Finch, you know.’

‘Oh, shut up, Bingle.’ "

I like the play where Bingle seems very irreverent and Finch is fed up with it.

The explanation of how Bingle lost his memory last time and then says, "I think I would remember that," is still pretty funny.

I'm going to do this one a little differently from the other one I've taken a look at. Mostly because...I have a hard time reading this one.

There are several reasons why:

1) The "Mister X and Mister Y" thing that you've got going on means that, in this short piece, we hear the characters' names about 300 times. When that happens, the names lose all meaning and stop registering as words.

2) You have a tendency to repeat bits three or four times in close proximity. This gets monotonous and bogs down the whole thing.

3) Speaking of monotony, Finch has as many lines featuring the word 'Bloody' as he does without it. I understand wanting your characters to have distinct voices, but this goes a bit far.

All of that together makes this one hard for me to get through. You have taken all of these things, which are not bad in moderation, and used them to an extreme.

So, that's what I've got. I'm sorry I can't get into more specifics about the story.

I don't know these characters, and they don't get a lot of description, but I am imagining Finch as looking like a Mr. Handy from Fallout 4, particularly the very fussy voice personality of the butler types. I don't know why really, that's just what I pictured.

Have you ever read Hank the Cowdog books? Bingle reminds me a lot of Drover. He's friendly and generally calm in the face of Hank's histrionics. He seems like he's only half there in the conversations. Always going on a sort of tangent that almost makes sense, but not quite. He gets Hank into some of the strangest conversations, and I imagine that Bingle gets Finch into some weird places conversationally and he seems really chill about Finch's situation, as well.

It makes for an interesting pair. The description of the noise they make in the halls is quite entertaining. It's hard to remember to include enough auditory description in stories.

I'm afraid that I don't have a lot of good input for you with this story. I enjoyed reading it. I couldn't find any grammar or general usage comments to make for this story. It reads smoothly, although the bold and dash instead of apostrophe took some getting used to.

I think I've seen Bingle and Finch before, but I forgot what they looked like. I seem to remember that Bingle is dead.

It's an interesting bit of back and forth banter. No plot, just a slice of life.

I really like the part where he says he should remember getting amnesia.

The first paragraph doesn't grab me. I am interested when it starts showing that she has PTSD.

As she is examining herself in the mirror, I don't feel anything. There was a flash of sympathy when she decided not to fall back to sleep.

I'm reacting more to her having cut her hair than to her cleaning her sensitive burns. A feeling of wanting to restore a feeling of normalcy.

I feel like I should have a reaction to her eating frozen waffles. I'm a little irritated that she was watching the news, but it was unimportant.

I'm interested when she's waiting for the train, and thinking about why she takes it. The word "penance" sticks out for me, it makes me feel bad.

I'm curious about the man, but agreeing with her that it's nothing. Just the wind, nothing to worry about. I'm imagining the Randolf street L station downtown, but I know that's wrong.

I'm getting a little bit of head-hopping when she's talking to her boss. She doesn't know that there wasn't much more he could say.

Why did she feel the need to say that they're on the twelve floor? We don't know, but her boss should.

I'm feeling disoriented when she's jostled by the crowd at the light. Intrigued at how there aren't window washers.

For a moment, I was in the dark and muggy Metra electric train station underground. I have a feeling that's also the wrong place, like she's outside and not at a trains-are-parked end of the line.

This is a great little set-up, and I hope you can continue this and get it published someday.

Chapter 1
The bulk of this chapter is providing details about KC's car accident, and all the thought you've put into it is amazing. I love how you use the cliche of a nightmare to introduce KC's car accident and mental trauma, but then use the hard reality of her scars, and the time and effort of work she has to put into taking care of them, to bring home just how real and awful the accident was. You've really done an amazing job of thinking of all the little day-to-day details that bring her affliction to life.

I also love, right at the end of the first scene, the hint of a news report that will almost certainly factor into KC's life down the line, which she simply didn't catch. It leaves me intrigued about how much she'll regret not hearing that info, after some plot has happened to her.

Chapter 2
Picking up on the slightly off detail from the end of chapter one, and cranking it up into the realm of the supernatural makes for a great lead-in to future conflict and mystery. I like the contrast between the fairly typical sympathy expressed by Bill and the disturbing, alien behavior of the faceless man.

The one weak point here, I think is this particular sentence: "Her assurance didn’t seem to ease his concern." This is a very tell-don't-show sentence, and stands out all the more plainly for detailed and explicit you make the actions in the rest of the story. The following sentence seems to indicate that Bill paused before answering, so I think explaining a bit of his facial reaction to KC's words, or other aspects of his demeanor, would be a much more descriptive way to show this. Also, Bill's reaction should be attached to his dialogue, not to a part of KC's.

basic errors:
Chapter 1
"It would have been worse, but some bystanders has pulled her from her car and put out the flames."
"Has" should be "had" to match the verb tense of "pulled." The sentence also still works if you remove "has" entirely.

"She adjusted to temperature of the water to make it cooler, because her burns were still sensitive to heat."
"To temperature" should be "the temperature."

"Ten minutes later, KC was in the kitchen of her one bedroom apartment."
"One bedroom" should be "one-bedroom" since that's an adjectival phrase describing the apartment.

"While she waited for her breakfast, she turned on the television that she kept on her counter"
The period at the end of this sentence is missing.

Also, I may have noticed a contradiction between that sentence and the following paragraph:
"She returned to the table and, when she looked up, saw that they had moved on to sports. She wasn’t interested in that, so she turned the television off and ate her breakfast."
That first sentence says the television is on the kitchen counter. The second pair of sentences imply that she moves away from the counter to sit at a table, then turns the television off. I'm not sure if you intended for the television to be on the table in the first place, or if you meant for the reader to understand that she got up and walked to the counter again to shut it off, then returned to the table to eat. This is further muddied by the use of the phrase "returned to the table" when the narration never stated that she had been to the table at that point.

"There was no reason him to be watching her, in particular, and there were at least a half dozen people closer to the man."
You missed the "for" in the phrase "no reason for him to be."

"When she had boarded the train and found a seat, she tried to locate the man on the other platform, again."
You don't need the comma before "again." It's an adverb modifying the verb "tried," so it's a proper part of that clause and doesn't need to separated from it by punctuation.

Chapter 2
"'Hey, Bill,' she said to the balding man behind the desk. 'Mind if I take off a little early today?'"
Since all this dialogue is a single sentence, keep the entire thing together as a sentence. Replace the period after "desk" with a comma, and change the beginning of "mind" to lowercase. ("'Hey, Bill,' she said to the balding man behind the desk, 'mind if I take off a little early today?'"

"'Thought I saw someone out the window.'"
I would usually use "outside" instead of "out" here, but I don't know if this is a speaking quirk/regional dialect sort of thing.

"KC realized that the light had changed when she was jostled by the crowd moving into the cross walk."
According to wiktionary, "crosswalk" is always spelled as one word, though this could be another regional thing.

"She sat down on a bench to wait and looked around at the people on the other platfrom."
"platform"

"He had his back to her, and all she could see, in any detail, were his jeans and tee-shirt."
This one is me being anal-retentive, so feel free to ignore this. Technically, "tee-shirt" is the French word for the English word "t-shirt."

The first sentence is often the most difficult, at least to me. How to get the readers' attention, and then keep it, without sparking wrong expectations? Here, I was immediately dragged in, and even when I realized that the first paragraph was a nightmare, it kept me going through Kim's morning routine.

she started toward the bathroom to shower
Right after an early start and before she started the water for her shower, this is a bit too much starting for my taste. Maybe you can find some other way to phrase this sequence.

Also, I was tempted to say that peeling the nightwear off only after starting the water for the shower is the wrong order and a waste of good water. Only when The mirror began to fog over, I realized that this may be a necessary routine to get lots of cold water out of the tubes when you live high up in a multistory apartment building and the hot water comes from a boiler in the basement. And Kim doesn't enjoy the luxury of a thermostat that would keep the water at a preset temperature as soon as enough of the hot water component is available. After that, I didn't even need the mention of a one bedroom apartment to know how Kim lives. This is a good example of showing rather than telling.

It's amazing how much we learn about Kim just from her getting up. Alas, there are two mistakes in this part of the story:
It would have been worse, but some bystanders has pulled her from her car and put out the flames. Should be "had" (plural).
She adjusted to temperature of the water to make it cooler, because her burns were still sensitive to heat. Should be "the".

Unlike J.E., I did not feel like Kim should still be early at the train station. I assumed that her alarm clock is set to give her the bare minimum of time she needs every morning, so getting an early start just allowed her to take more time on everything she otherwise would do in a haste, and still get the same train as usual. I don't know how important it is to take the usual train. Otherwise, the mysterious stranger wouldn't have found her, at least not at this day?

I imagined that Kim cannot afford to buy another car (or to rent a better apartment), but from your comment to Daniel this isn't actually true. Do we learn something about her job and how well she is payed?

The one closest to her was reading a newspaper, the other was too far down the platform for KC to tell where he were looking. Shouldn't this be "was" (singular)?

There was no reason him to be watching her ... Apparently a word ("for"?) is missing there.

She didn’t have much time to wonder as her train pulled up, blocking her view of the other side of the tracks. You may want to insert a comma between "wonder" and "as", but punctuation is one of my weaker points.

I'm not much into creepily being stalked by a mysterious stranger, and much of this looked just too familiar, so I started to feel like I mostly continued proofreading out of a sense of duty.

As she sat at her desk, KC’s mind wandered. This looks a bit clumsy to me. Maybe you should try "While" instead of "As", or maybe I'm just too afraid of as-eritis.

She was thinking of calling it an early day going home. I'm not sure whether something is missing near the end of this sentence.

Oh, and a warning: if you really change the time Kim was early, like you implied in the answer to J.E., don't forget that The loss of over an hour of sleep was beginning to wear on her. [Yep, folks, that's why another (and a third, and a fourth) read-through may be required.]

... she strode out of the lobby and out into the bright, afternoon sun. I'm not sure whether this comma belongs there, although I can't exactly explain why. It's probably that "afternoon" modifies "sun", but unlike "bright" is not an adjective, so you don't have a list of adjectives that should be separated by commas.

I am sure that the police will not see any danger, and that KC will have to go through this alone. How the stranger managed to appear outside of a twelfth floor window and how he may be connected to the accident are still intriguing questions and may keep me interested for a while, but generally I feel like this story is not made for me.

~Lurky

I'm having trouble focusing on how the story is made. I keep getting lost in it. Very good.

Kim seems very bothered by having been in a fire.

I find it interesting that she would feel the need to be punished by not driving. That's something that she has control over, unlike the scars and her hair that she seems not to want to think about.

Sorry. I like this story, but I'm having trouble being constructive about it.

I keep wondering about what city she is in, but I have a feeling that it's supposed to be the every-city from the Matrix instead of a specific one.

In no particular order:

-From the way Chapter 1 is written, it seems like KC should be doing everything an hour earlier than normal. She specifically decides to get an early start, and nothing you describe seems like anything she wouldn't do normally. But this seems to drop out later; she says it was 'just like any other morning', even though she is now out at dawn (per the description) instead of an hour after. It's a little thing, I know, but it felt like it was going somewhere... until it didn't.

-It feels like the description of her injuries is inconsistent. It's been months since the crash, but the burns still need gause over them? And yet she hasn't permanently turned the shower down to cooler (possibly this indicates she just has an awful shower). She also doesn't have burns on her face, despite her hair scorching back to something less than shoulder-length.

-I assume the local-news line KC half-hears is relevant in the unwritten portion. It's a fairly classic mode of foreshadowing.

--In fact, 'classic' is a word I'd use to describe the whole piece. A classic nightmare/flashback sequence drifts into a classic sitting-bolt-upright, and then a classic morning montage. You've then got the half-heard news media, the commute during which she sees someone out of place... it all feels like you were deliberately aiming at the feel of a particular genre of movie, and if so, you hit it spot-on.

-Look out for your compound words. I've spotted "work appropriate" (should be 'work-appropriate'), and I'm not flagging up many hyphens on a quick skim of the rest, so I suspect you've missed a few.

-I feel like you sometimes drift into 'too much trivia'. Take a look at this:

KC leaned forward to look up the track for her train. It was just coming around the bend and would reach the station in about a minute. When she turned back, to wait for the train, she felt like someone was watching her. She couldn’t shake the feeling

There's a lot of information in there, but most of it we don't need. What we need to know is that a) the train is coming, and b) KC feels like she's being watched. Something like this: "KC glanced up the track - her train was just coming round the bend - and then turned her attention back to the growing feeling that someone was watching her."

--Actually, your 'she felt like' etc feels... off. It doesn't seem to come from anywhere - it's as if KC just stepped into the next picture in an album. "And this is where I felt like someone was watching me." You've got a few others further up; notably, I don't think she actually walks anywhere in the entire chapter, other than a 'started toward'. (No, I take it back - she 'returns' once.) Still, it feels like... I don't know. Just strange.

--That said, since you're working in third-person limited, this could be a KC trait. It would imply that she's focussing very hard on the Now, to the exclusion of thinking about transitions. She doesn't give off a feeling of changing, because she doesn't want to think about changes - which ties very nicely back to the fire. Checking your second paragraph again, she does seem to be working through frustration at the fact that Then keeps intruding into Now.

-In general, KC comes over as damaged to the point of self-absorption. She's doing her best to pretend the fire never happened - she covers the wounds to keep from feeling them, she cut her hair, she hasn't bought a new car - but along the way she's descended into herself to the point that she doesn't exhibit any emotions at the news, doesn't register the differences in it being an hour earlier, etc etc. She's smothered her feelings about the fire to the point that she's ended up smothering everything else, too.

If that's the sort of thing you're going for, you could definitely heighten it. A simple and sneaky way to do this would be to strip out every emotion, right up until (late in Chapter 2) she sees the stranger again. Cast everything else either as logic, or in the passive voice ("It was as if someone was watching her"). Obviously if you're not aiming at this, then ignore this advice. :)

The main reason is probably that I know next to nothing about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Since I couldn't recognize speech patterns or the general ways Buffy and her mother interact with each other, I had a hard time figuring out what happened in the first paragraphs. Joyce mimicking what her daughter should have said, I got relatively fast, but I kept wondering what Buffy was looking at when she said, "I know that face!" while her mother's new friend was out of sight. It actually took me three reads to realize that of course it is Joyce's face that gives it away. I may just be stupid.

I still wonder what Joyce was doing there, being lost in reverie in the entrance hall or living room while her friend-of-yet-undetermined-gender is sitting alone in the kitchen? But I don't know Joyce, so this may just be what she would do.

So, Hermione Granger's plan to keep her parents save backfired when she neglected to give them both the same kind of dream about living in Australia. I never thought of this possibility, and I only got the stealthy hint on second read. I would like to know why Monica moved to what's-the-place-where-Buffy-lives-again? Surfer's Paradise? Does it match what Monica initially expected when she moved to Australia? I hope we will hear more about that in coming chapters. If we do, the first foreshadowing being so stealthy that it could easily be overlooked is a good adaptation of Rowling's style.

"Hello! Yes. Sorry. Um."
This is a remarkable break from Monica's previous lines and I'm not yet sure how it is justified. Monica adapting to how Buffy speaks? Actually seeing Buffy after only having heard about her yet triggered a memory that confused Monica? If Hermione did not do something else wrong, Monica should not remember that she should have a daughter of Buffy's age. Did she remember before she met Buffy? (BTW, inserting Buffy's thoughts there didn't help to get that Monica is speaking.)

I actually have a vague idea of who Rupert Giles is (from looking through reviews on "Mark watches", to get an impression of what the show is about without watching it myself), but some references may have gone straight over my head. Anyway, there is definitely something going on with meeting Monica feeling so natural to Buffy. Will we find out that Buffy is actually Hermione-after-losing-her-memory? Since this was too easy to guess, finding out something totally different would be more interesting, but finding out what happened to Monica and Wendelll Wilkins would be interesting anyway.

This may be a good start for a BtVS x HP crossover, but currently there is not yet enough of it for me to tell.

~Lurky

I'm not up-to-date on my Buffy canon, only up through season four. From my perspective in the timeline, I'd say you have Joyce's voice down absolutely perfectly, but Buffy's, I'm not so sure of. The last I remember of Joyce doing any dating, Buffy was rather resistant to it, so it feels a bit off for her to be supportive and encouraging about this. Then again, part of her reservations in that episode were sensing something wrong with Joyce's boyfriend, and again, my lack of newest info in the canon may make this criticism irrelevant. I do think the overall interaction, with Joyce teasing Buffy with information and playing on her assumptions, is spot-on between the two of them.

I did catch the neutral pronoun usage, so I guessed the reveal early on. (Although my very first initial guess was that Joyce had gotten a pet of some kind, until I reached the phrase, "about my height.") More importantly, though, I think your characterization of Buffy, not noticing the pronoun game and failing to imagine her mom as interested in women, is true to Buffy's direct and stubborn mind in canon. And again, after the reveal, the dialogue between Joyce and Buffy feels right for the way they tend to interact in the show. Buffy's reaction to her mom being bisexual is realistic, and Joyce acting proud and just slightly smug feels right, too.

I was initially pretty confused by the choice of Hermione's mom. (Do we seriously not have a name for the parents of one of the Golden Trio? I'll just call her Granger here.) Then I thought I understood it better, but just now realized I'm still at least a bit confused. The fact that Granger introduces herself as "Monica" seems to indicate that this is taking place during Deathly Hallows, when Granger's mind has been charmed by her daughter. If that's the case, though, Granger shouldn't have any memory of her daughter, and also calls to question where her husband is. This made me briefly think that this is meant to be an AU where Granger lost her daughter young and left her husband, except Hermione was the source of that name—unless you're using that name as a stand-in because SERIOUSLY HOW DO HERMIONE'S PARENTS NOT HAVE NAMES. Except, then you would go Monica Granger, since we do know the surname, at least . . . Ultimately, the confusion caused by these details, as well as the suddenness and brevity of the closing paragraphs, weakens the ending for me. I suppose if this were an actual, published fanfic, there would be a continuation where the reader could glean more details, or at least an author's note explaining how Granger got here. As it is, it feels like a quickly thought-out twist to throw on the end for the sake of a surprise.

Also, Buffy's thoughts in the middle of Granger's dialogue should be moved to their own paragraph.

"I know that face!"

Joyce's reverie was interrupted by her daughter's voice. She turned her head, unable to keep the smile off it. "Hello, Mom. How was your day, Mom? I'm just off to clean my room, Mom-"

This did get me the first couple of times I read it. I thought it was Buffy sucking up. That maybe she was in trouble again. So the next line was jarring. I would suggest changing said to interrupted. I know said is the most invisible dialogue tag, but in this case it might help make things smoother for your readers.

"Don't think you can get out of it that easily," Buffy said with a wink and a knowing tone to her voice. "I know that face. That right there is a grade-A, accept-no-substitutes, 100% new guy face. So c'mon, spill!"

I don't believe it is absolutely wrong to use a number here, but I would spell it out as one hundred percent.



"Oh, hello. You must be Buffy! Joyce has told me so much about you..."

Buffy looked at the mid-sized, dark-haired British woman. They were really nice eyes, now that she looked, but there was something else there -

this is an extreme nitpick, but it might read smoother as 'They really were nice eyes...'

"Your old mom's got a few surprises in her yet, you know."

"I... yeah. You, uh, you sure do, Mom! Uh... hey."

"Hello! Yes. Sorry. Um." Ah, thought Buffy, the Giles is strong with this one. Wait, why does this feel so, um, normal? "Sorry. It's just... she'd be about your age now."

I am having trouble following this bit. Monica is articulate in her greeting to Buffy. Buffy is taken aback by her mom's quite sudden announcement that she is interested in women, but she's rolling with it. Then Monica says hello for a second time, only now she is stammering. Then a thought from Buffy is inserted in the middle of Monica's dialogue. Then Monica finishes up with what I believe indicates that she remembers having Hermione, but perhaps thinks her daughter is dead. These three things should be separated out into three paragraphs, so you don't have more than one person's input in a paragraph.

Oh. That was it.

I thought the comment about Giles was directed toward his tendency to stammer a bit, but this doesn't go with that thought at all. I never managed to get through the last season and a half of Buffy, did we find out that Giles had a child that he lost? I don't remember him ever mentioning that he did. Buffy understanding that Monica has lost someone is good, but as is seems to relate to the comment about Giles.



Overall, this is a nice little story. I think Buffy's voice is right in line with canon. The story raises more questions than it answers, so if I stumbled across this on a fic site, I would hope that it was the first chapter, or the first section of a longer fic. How did Monica get to the US? Why didn't she just go home? How does she remember Hermione? Why did her husband stay under the spell that compelled them to Australia? Lots of questions, which are never a bad thing

I picked up on the use of "they" and knew that Buffy's mom was dating a woman.

I saw the movie and was aware that there was a show, but didn't watch much.

It's a little jarring that Buffy is saying "I'm just going to clean my room, mom." and then switches to wanting to talk about why her mother is smiling.