Chapter 34: Turn, Turn, Turn

Being shot at by lasers is a total rush!

All the time traveling has been wearing out the old time machine. Luckily repairing it is far easier than building it was, and Lyle will be back to the future in no time.

A week after getting her first tattoo, Briar Rose got the urge for more ink, this time choosing a butterfly design for her ankle.

Dermott graduates high school. His girlfriend Candy Greenwood is a bit younger and still a teenager. The youngest of three, her older siblings have all moved out with their spouses, and with the recent death of her mother, she's been living alone with  her elderly father. Right after Dermott gets a job at the science facility, he moves into Candy's house to help her take care of father, who won't be around much longer. They plan to marry as soon as she graduates.

The paper sends Briar out to inteview Cletus Lorenz. She has no idea why the paper would want to do a story on a loser like Cletus, he's best known for not paying the child support he owes to the mothers of his children. 

Allyson and Ewan have a nice afterlife chat.

Ghosts! Again! Drew is having a hard time living in this haunted house. Briar has assured him numerous times that they are perfectly harmless, that she grew up with them and they never do anything worse than temporarily possess household objects. But nothing she says can prevent Drew from fainting every time he sees one. Or two, in this case.

Because Briar is so career oriented, she and Drew waited to start having children. Their first is a son, Archer.

Lyle was gone a long time. He hopes he remembers how to live a contemporary life.

Dermott comes by for a visit, and discusses his work with his father.  He and Candy have married and are expecting their first child.

Briar never misses an opportunity to do an interview. 
"I'm a fertilizer analyst, Briar. What could you possibly want to know about analyzing fertilizer?"

Archer becomes a toddler. The family hasn't seen black hair in two generations, though it used to be quite common. Drew's father had black hair.

Archer gets a little brother, Griffin.

Briar celebrates the birth of another son with another tattoo.

"Can you see it okay in this blouse? Maybe I should wear something more revealing?"


"I can see it fine, Briar," Drew says, "But I think it's okay for you have some areas only I get to see."

"You're so sweet, Drew. I promise my next tattoo will be just for you."

This is what happens when you send Lyle out to get the mail.

Briar and Drew both work hard. Archer and Griffin are largely raised by their grandparents.

Griffin becomes a toddler. He's got Violet's hair.

Lyle usually stays up all night and just sleeps a few hours during the day. Today his daily sleep is the final one. Lyle has had an amazing life, and is as fearless in death as he was in life.
"All right, let's do this!"

Grim's visit is more than Drew can handle.

Lyle's grave is decorated with one of the widgets he invented. Briar was checking out a lead at City Hall when he father died and learns of his passing when she gets home.

"I should have been here," Briar sobs on her husband's shoulder.


"You didn't know," Drew soothes, "And he understood how much your career means to you. He was proud of you."

Archer's birthday is the next. Briar had wanted a party, but with the death of her father, she invites only a few close family members. Dermott was invited but his wife Candy comes without him, saying her husband was too deep in grieving to come out. Over her mother's protests, Briar also invited Beau Merrick.

As she sits down for some birthday cake, Violet feels a tingle. "Lyle?"

The birthday party becomes a funeral. Beau is horrified to watch his daughter die.

Lyle had only been gone for a day, but that was one day more than she wanted to be without him, and she's quite ready to meet him on the other side.

At this moment Candy realizes she'll have to tell Dermott that she watched his mother die.

Briar was not expecting such a fierce reaction from Beau. He's not taking this death well at all.

Briar takes him aside, and he does apologize for the outburst. "It shouldn't have been this way. She was born vampire, she should still be a young woman. I shouldn't be watching my daughters die of old age! Briar Rose, I beg you, let me turn you now while you are still young. I don't want to outlive you, too."

Briar is moved by his show of emotion. He had kept his feelings repressed for so long, denying even to himself that he felt anything at all.


"My mother chose to be human, knowing it would shorten her life. She loved her life and met death with grace. It's hard to lose loved ones, but even while you grieve, you should be happy for the life they lived, for what they accomplished."


Challenge Notes:
This generation is whizzing by. Drew is focused on writing, he rarely does any thing but write. Briar's career is less demanding, but there are interviews to do, venues to review and articles to write. So a lot of game time passes with nothing to blog about.
Drew will be turning Adult the day after Archer's birthday party, and Briar will be the next day. She's currently on track to achieve perfect career before turning elder. She'll need to max Charisma and Writing. She's at 8 and 9 on those.
Drew just reached level 6 of the author career. It gets progressively harder. I had to spend 10k of his happiness points to change his LTW to professional author. And now he's achieved it. I then spent 20k points to change his traits. Well, I only swapped his Kleptomaniac., which he doesn't use, for Bookworm. As much as I don't love Coward and Shy, I didn't want to change his personality, just give him a bit more of a professional edge.
He has reached level 10 of writing skill. He's focused on SciFi and Fantasy novels. The Fantasy pays more, but SciFi are quicker to write. He's currently working on getting the 'prolific writer' skill challenge, to write 20 books. 
About tattoos: I'm using the expanded master controller tattoo module that adds better tattoo placement options. While adding the third tattoo I accidentally hit the 'remove all' button' and then had to reapply the original tattoos. I think I put the butterfly on the wrong ankle second time around, lol. Briar gets a new tattoo every Sunday.
My roll for generation 9 is Couple with 5 children (mimi will be pleased). Law Enforcement, Spy branch career, with secondary Farmer. My goal is property mogul and misc. fun in partier. First child will be heir, so it's Archer. Archer's traits are Brave, Genius and Party Animal.
Griffin got Artistic and Loves the Outdoors as a random roll.
So, this is the second time I've given my heir a name that's a last name of someone else's legacy family. I don't do this intentionally, lol. I was fishing around for a name a Fantasy writer would use for his son. I thought of Hunter, but I already used that. Archer came up next. I thought 'cool name!' and went for it. Interestingly enough, Archer's favorite color is the same as R&R Legacy Founder Randy Archer's hair color.