Okay, I've written Mason Templar out of the story, for better or for worse. I had planned to bring him back healed from his wounds in this story, but I figured that would have been a cop-out, and I wrote that large chunks of his flesh were cut from him, so I don't imagine that anyone could recover all that quickly from something like that. That's something I'll have to remember next time I put one of my characters in a situation like that...
I don't want Mason brought back in this story, but he'll be back at some point in the future in some capacity or another. Maybe with yet another fake name (a la "Mason Templar")... who knows?
Suffice it to say that he's not dead and will return.
Meanwhile, I'll probably introduce yet another new character to work with the team by the end of this story or the beginning of the next. I want to do some experimentation with a fairly ordinary person who just happens to have some extraordinary abilities. But I'm waiting to find out what the dillio is with Gooz's subplot involving the Vanguard Complex. If the next story is just going to be another "heroes vs. villains" scenario, I'll probably just sit it out altogether.
