For those of you (however many there are) who've been waiting with baited breath for the Preparations story arc with Gabe, my apologies.  RL decided to bite me in the rear, as it were -- a little over four months ago, I learned the store I had been working retail at for most of the previous two years was being closed (part of Sears cutting costs by closing a few of their stores and a LOT of K-Marts).  Fortunately, I was able to switch jobs -- more like, reclaiming a job I used to have about a decade ago -- about two weeks after learning the news, so I dodged a bullet there.  Slightly better pay, more hours... the latter, ultimately, being why I've been so slow.

Well... part of why, anyway.  There might be a few video games and the like involved too.

At any rate, I do still plan to see this through.  Part II of Preparations is pretty well done at this point, so I'm going to do a last check or two and make sure it's polished enough before I submit.  I'll just have to remember for future parts to save it as a .doc file -- due to the insane costs of Microsoft Office (and the fact that I can't even find a version like 2013 or 2010 for sale that isn't expensive as all get-out), I'm currently using LibreOffice.  At any rate, I am going to keep writing, and hopefully Preparations (Part II) will be up soon.  Apologies for the wait.

Hey Azaar,

Good to hear from you again. RL always comes first, there is no panic here form me. I'm still rocking away with re-writes and resetting up the world of the Warrior Guyver fiction and took on the Great war... So free time for me evaporated.

It doesn't matter really which office package you use once it can do standard DOC format. Open Office is another good alternative if you're struggling with LibreOffice