Ohoh! Sooo LOVED this chapter! Please, more soon, real soon please! The scenes with T'Lissa and the new baby were great as well as Anna and T'Lissa. Let Koss and Stark get their comeuppance soon! And I hope Jorin takes over that clan to redeem their honor! I so love Hess giving it to Jorin though the poor man didn't deserve it. I like this OC! :) The way you write Vulcans and Andorians is so great! And of course your humans are perfectly in character, even the new OC ones! Thank you, thank you! :)

Oh awesome chapter, nice and long and full off stuff - good story telling stuff.

Adored the scene between baby Mal, T'Lissa, and Anna.

Excellent work. Of course the vultures are circling now that the two of them are out of commission. Can't wait for more!

I hope Koss gets his.

Love the compromise, ingenious way for the andorians to have a firm foothold in this. Anna is a hoot!

Man I hope this series isn't winding down. BnB you have been involved with both my favorites Lerterian and this series. This chappie was great. I thought the way you handled the assault on T'Pol off screen was great, not to mention bye bye to Tolaris. I pray for your continued recovery.

I would like to echo the comments of Transwarp. You are taking us on a magnificent adventure and I can hardly wait to see what happens next to my friends. I will be very sad when the series ends, but grateful for the immense enjoyment your story has brought.

Nicely written and a good twist. This has been an excellent story and a good series.

Bad

The usual, amazing firework.
You have to read this slowly, to really appreciate it.
A piece at a time, otherwise you lose the big picture, and this would be a real shame.
A slight notation. Wow! What sort of a psychopathic worm is Tolaris!

Yes, THE MELD!
The last of T'Pol's secrets open to Trip.
This is lined up to be a barnstormer of a finish to an incredible series.

Yay! I love this story. I hope T'Pol and Trip are OK. I think Tolaris's clan is involved in all this and I think in the last chapter we will see them again. This story is so good, it is the best :)

Two things:
First, I am glad to hear of your determination to finish this, despite the rather daunting physical obstacles life has thrown your way. It makes my reasons for procrastinating on my own fanfic seem rather paltry by comparison. (Though I am also determined to complete it. Eventually.)

Second, I'll be a little sad when you're done. Sad, because this has been one of my all-time favorite fanfics and I'll be a touch sorry when it's finally wrapped up. I can still remember the intense emotions of that first chapter in 'For Want of a Nail', when (courtesy of Daniels) T'Pol from "These Are The Voyages" met T'Pol from "Terra Prime".

You have created something I have enjoyed immensely over the years. Thank you for that!

Hey BnB this storyline is still one of my all time favorites. Hope you fully recover and continue it sooner or later. My only comment here is that if the Vulcans govt is anything like ours (US) the first reaction to all the requests for citizenship would be for an increase in funding for the bureaucrats and "other purposes"...

Uh Oh Anna is in trouble. I really like Kov and Anna in this story :) I think its funny how surprised the new alien was with typical human behaviour. This is very well written. But what about Tolaris? He must be coming back into this soon. I hope you are well x

Thanks everyone. I am amazed that anyone is still reading this. It makes me even more guilty about not having it finished yet. I have the end already written. I just have to figure out how to get there:) I hope you like it.

Asso: You have been a rock. You will never know how much it helps just knowing that you are still hanging in there. Thank you my friend.

Darksnider05: Thanks for the input. I wasn't going so much by muscle and circulation as I was by bone. Assuming that a two hundred pound man is living under the strain of carrying his own weight around with him 24/7, awake and asleep, for years at a time led me to conclude that spinal issues would crop up. They certainly crop up on earth with people who are grossly obese.

Fallen arches might eventually occur as well, I don't know. But when you sat down, your feet would still be holding up under twice their own weight. Even when they are not carrying the rest of your body. Your ribs, horizontal as they are, would be carrying twice their normal weight. And they are not designed to be weight bearing structures. Connective tissues would just about have to suffer trauma in those circumstances, to my way of thinking.

A young person could probably stand it for a while. But over the course of years it would wear a person down. My best guess of course. I don't think anyone really knows, aside from observing the result of obesity and long term manual labor. Just like wearing a suit of plate armor at all times, awake and asleep, walking, eating, showering, laying down, climbing stairs, etc., it would wear a person down. It would toughen you in the short term, certainly. Until you hit middle age and your strength started to go away. And a woman's bones started to weaken from menopause.

Then there is the fact that objects in a higher gravity field fall faster, requiring a person to react faster, which would force you to constantly be jerking and snatching at things faster than normal, while simultaneously carrying the equivalent of another person (Maybe/maybe not as big as you are) spread out over your body. An open invitation to joint injury.

Then, since you mentioned circulation, there is the pesky varicose veins problem, etc. What I kept coming back to was the impossibility of ever getting a chance to rest from it. Like a toothache, it would never stop hurting. Maybe not much, but it would be relentless. Even a small stream can carve granite, eventually.