Subject: Re: [FFML] [C&C][NukuNuku] SSOA: Planetary Defense Catgirl Nuku-Nuku!
From: Douglas MacDougall
Date: 6/17/1999, 5:57 PM
To: Vincent Seifert
CC: Fanfic Mailing List <ffml@fanfic.com>

Who will C&C the C&Cer?

"Ooh!  Ooh!  Me!  Pick me!"

"PsyDoug, I choose you!"

(ahem)

C&C Below.  Snippage throughout.

Kyoko was worried. Being worried wasn't on her job description, but it
should have been, along with "keep Arisa away from explosives" and
"make sure nothing's leaking from the aircraft". As it was, most of her
duties seemed to fall into the category of "other tasks as may be
assigned," which evidently included everything from serving coffee to
visiting generals to detecting and correcting poorly-chosen fly-by-wire
control-law parameters while the vehicle being controlled was falling
out of the sky with her aboard.

A very good opening paragraph.  I think you set the tone for the rest of
the story, and have a good handle on the brain of the overtaxed Kyoko.  :)

I did have some problems with the last sentence.  What are "control-law
parameters"?  It's too techie.  (I thought it was some sort of air space
zoning law that didn't let them fly their gun ships in downtown Nerima.
;)

[...]

"I'm improving my eye-hand coordination!"

I've always heard this referred to as hand-eye coordination.

[...]

Akiko stood up, picked up two envelopes from her desk, and moved around
it to her subordinates. "As your performance this last month has been
exemplary," she told them, "I am pleased to give you your bonuses." She
held out an envelope to each of them, inclining her head.

"Who are you and what have you done with Lady Akiko?!"

Arisa elbows her partner.  "Shut up!  She's giving us a *bonus*!"

"I never liked the old Akiko much, anyway."

[...]

"Lady Akiko, can we use the ATCCV-X?" Arisa asked eagerly.

Akiko waved her hand. "Use whatever you feel is necessary," she said
casually. "I have full confidence in your judgment."

So, she has confidence in something that doesn't exist?  :)

[...]

Akiko stared unblinking at the door for a few seconds, then shrugged.
She touched a control on her console and shutters began to roll down
along the window-wall of her office. In a few seconds the room was
dark, and lights came on. Akiko stood and walked to a solid cube that
appeared to be an end table, placing her hand flat on its side near one
corner for a few seconds.

A cup of coffee materialized out of nowhere.

Akiko sweatdropped.

"Oh, my!  Sorry!"  A dark-skinned blonde stepped into the room.

"H- How did you get in here?!"

"I think we swapped cubes..."  The other woman presented a familiar
looking cube.  Akiko numbly took it.  "I'm afraid I accidentally
used yours.  There's some guy, Mareg, in my head.  He keeps on
talking about 'a horrible emptiness'.  Oh well!"

She shrugged happily, and picked up the cube on the table.  Clapping
it between her hands, it turned into a powderpuff, which she attached
to her hip.  "Byeee!"

[...]

"Technocrat Darshian reporting," Akiko said to the cube. "I have
completed phase one. Production of strobolators, diagliders, and
interociters using local materials and labor is underway. I have begun
phase two; the immobilization of the NK- 1124 will render Dr. Natsume
Kyusaku vulnerable to capture. I will shortly require the assistance of
my mate. Please arrange for the transfer of Technocrat Mareg to the MHI
lander."

The Fellani sure are big on the nepotism.
They're all trying to get their husbands or wives jobs.  :)

[...]

Nuku-Nuku bicycled like a super-powered android with digital reflexes
and a cat's understanding of traffic regulations, which was exactly
what she was. [...]

Heh.  :)

[...]

"YOU! SCHOOLGIRL ANDROID! YOU WILL COME WITH US! LADY AKIKO ORDERS IT!"
The bullhorn nearly made Kyoko's voice unrecognizable, but not quite.
Nuku-Nuku and Ryu turned to see an MHI transporter truck drawn up in
the street outside the apartments.

suggest:  The bullhorn make Kyoko's voice almost -- but not quite --
entirely unlike tea.  (er) almost -- but not quite -- unrecognizable.

[...]

"You dare defy Lady Akiko's orders?" the bullhorn thundered weakly.

Thundered weakly?  Not the best description of volume...

"Then you will be subject to the Mishima Heavy Industries All-Terrain
Crowd Control Vehicle, Experimental: the Riot Spider!"

Ooh!  Spider platforms.  8)  Shirow would approve.

The sides of the transporter swung down with a hiss of hydraulics, and
the mecha inside unfolded and stood up on eight articulated legs. It
did look a lot like a spider. Ryu and Nuku- Nuku could clearly see
Arisa's determined expression behind angled transparent slabs at the
"head".

Slabs of what?

suggest:  The sides of the transport vehicle
("Transporter" bring up visions of a certain starship...)
You use transporter is several places; consider this
comment applied to each.

"Oh, it's so cute!" Nuku-Nuku breathed. She turned to Ryu and clasped
her hands in front of her chest. "Oh, please, Ryunosuke, can I?" she
pleaded. "I've been good for a whole month-- well, almost."

I'm reminded of our youngest cat, Samson.  The dog come home from a
walk with three ticks on him.  Somehow Sam managed to get one off,
and was batting it around the kitchen floor...

She guiltily recalled The Incident With The Soda-Vending Machine.
"Pleeeeease?!"

Flashback:
Kyusaku spoke gravely, "We will not speak of this incident again."

[...]

Steam burst from the Spider's power unit and it quickened its pace to
an octopedal trot. Nuku-Nuku waited until it was almost upon her and
then skittered aside in a quick series of rolls. She came to her feet
next to a leg that was about to move and grabbed it. Spider servomotors
struggled against android pseudomuscles, but then the Spider stopped,
lifted the leg to which Nuku-Nuku was clinging, and flicked it sharply.
The catgirl sailed through the air and landed with a crunch on a
compact car, indenting its hood deeply.

*Spider* servomotors?
suggest:  The Spider's servomotors

I guess cats don't always land on their feet...  ^_^;

Nuku-Nuku rolled off the little car and stared at it in horror. "Oh,
no! Mr. Kimura will have kittens!" She wheeled and fixed the pilot of
the Spider with a vengeful glare. "You'll pay for that!" She charged
the Spider, wearing a look of grim determination.

But kittens are a *good* thing, Nuku-Nuku!  ;)

[...]

"WA-HA-HA-HAAA!" the Spider's amplified voice laughed triumphantly. "I
HAVE YOU NOW!" The Spider advanced menacingly. Nuku-Nuku watched,
struggling, as its foreleg lifted and poised to crush her. She rolled
aside just in time, and the foreleg came down on the webbing.

It stuck.

"Aw, CRAP!"  Annoyed, Arisa scraped the unsavory substance off the
underside of the foot unit.

[...]

"HEY!" Arisa protested as Nuku-Nuku reached for the next leg. The
Spider hastily ripped free of the webbing and backpedaled, limping
mechanically. The net-guns swiveled, but Nuku-Nuku was already moving,
and the shots entangled a parked motorcycle and a newspaper vending
machine.

Kyusaku cries out, holding his head, "NooooOO!  Not another vending
machine!!!  The horror.  The HORROR!!!"

BTW:  Spiders can walk just fine when they're only missing one leg.

[...]

The Spider advanced over the slick paving, the sharp spikes on its feet
preventing it from slipping. [...]

If it's got spikes at the end of it's feet, wouldn't the reduced surface
area also make it resistant to the sticky net?  (It's walking on points,
not surfaces.)

[...]

Arisa watched in disbelief from the cab as Nuku-Nuku sailed over her
head and landed behind her. In the rear-view mirrors she saw the
catgirl wrap her arms around the rotating-light housing and hold on for
dear life. She grinned viciously and tapped another control.

More techie stuff.  Is it a cab or cockpit?  What's a rotating-light
housing?  One of those flashing light sirens on police cars, tow trucks,
and labors?

[...]


POIT! Like a watermelon seed between the fingers, Nuku-Nuku shot up out
of the narrowing space and flew across the parking lot. Her enhanced
sensor arrays snapped up and locked into place behind her ears. She
twisted in midair and landed on a third- floor balcony.

NARF.  If she was on the ground when she was almost-squished, I'd think
think she'd squirt out along the ground.  Going up three stories sounds
more like tiddly-winks.

And, uh, wouldn't she slip when she landed?  One foot's still slick,
right?

(I really like the imagery; I'm just having problems with the details.)

[...]

Nuku-Nuku grabbed a neglected towel and cleaned the slippery stuff off
herself as best she could, finishing just as the Spider's legs reached
over the balcony, spalling chips off the concrete. She darted between
them, bounced off the Lexan slab in front of Arisa's face, and leapt to
the next balcony up, then the next. The Spider followed cautiously.

"Spalling"?  I don't think that's a word.  I can't guess what you meant
to say, though.  :/

[...]

Nuku-Nuku peered over the parapet just in time to see the seven
remaining legs of the Spider, which had given their all to try to
cushion the impact, succumb to a terminal case of operation outside
design parameters and collapse. Kyoko jumped down from the transporter
and ran over to the cab. "Arisa! Are you all right?"

suggest:  design parameters, and collapse.

You might want to quote or hyphenate "operation outside design parameters."

[...]

Kyoko and Arisa gaped at Nuku-Nuku. The catgirl was barefoot and her
hair was still frizzy from the electric charge; her uniform was
shredded, soaked with slippery stuff, and festooned with sticky stuff,
and yet she looked like it was her birthday and she'd just gotten the
best present she could imagine. Humming, she picked up the main body of
the defunct Riot Spider, staggered over to the tranporter with it, and
carefully deposited it it on the bed. Then she started retrieving the
legs.

sp: transporter
dup:  carefully deposited it on

[...]

Nuku-Nuku had managed to straighten her hair and clean off the webbing
and slime before coming into Lady Akiko's office, but [...]
the author doesn't want to show scenes of Nuku Nuku grooming herself.

[...]

"Stop that at once, NK-1124," Akiko commanded. "You two, restrain the
android and take it to Lab 14."

Arisa and Kyoko looked at each other, then looked back at Akiko and
pointed to their own noses. "Us?" they chorused.

Theirs is a sorry lot in life...

Akiko gave them an annoyed look. "Is there anyone else here? Yes, of
course you."

Kyoko and Arisa looked back at each other, gulped, and turned to Nuku-
Nuku. "Um, be a good girl and come with us," Kyoko quavered.

"Surrender before we get hurt," Arisa added hopefully.

Heh.  :)

[...]

"An android resembling a schoolgirl is attempting to escape the
building. See to it that it does not succeed. Do not damage the
android."

Awfully polite of her, seeing as her intention appears to be to
just get her away from Kyusaku.  Damaging the android would only
HELP keep the unit away from the good doctor.

There was a short pause. "Yes, Lady Akiko. We'll do our best." The
voice didn't sound very confident.

Akiko stared at the desk and shook her head. "Humans," she muttered to
herself. "They deserve to be invaded." [...]

"Ma'am?"

"N- Nevermind."  Next time she'd remember to turn of the intercomm.

[...]

"Money movements. This is the master file that actually generates the
orders that go out from the top office to the department managers, not
the one that goes to the Board. This is Reality."

suggest:  This is the reality.
(I more picture Washuu fiddling with the computer and accessing
Reality than Kyoko.  ^_^)

[...]

"And when I sniffed around a bit, I started running into security
checks. People in those labs wouldn't talk to me at lunch, even when I
wore the special blouse."

Ooh!  The special blouse!
(Warning, do not breathe deeply while wearing special
blouse, as catastrophic failure of buttons may result.)

[...]

Arisa stared at the oddly-shaped structure at the heart of the small
vehicle. She was intimately familiar with every principle humans had
devised to get craft into the air, and this wasn't one of them. Worse,
it had none of the flavor of a device conceived by human engineers. "It
can't be...."

"...A levitating pokemon!"

[...]

"WHAT?!" Arisa grabbed the screen and stared at it. "No! It was going
to be so cool! I had a hand in the design, even! It was going to be the
fastest, meanest thing in the sky--"

"--and we were going to get to test-fly it," Kyoko completed. "Now its
funding is going to one of these alien- technology projects."

"Well...  As long as it's got lots of guns, as we can still fly it,
I don't care."

[...]

"Now I hack around a little more," Kyoko said, turning back to her
console. "Then we go see Dr. Natsume."

"Kyusaku? Nuku-Nuku?!"

This sounds like two forms of address for the same person.
I suggest you drop the Nuku-Nuku.

[...]

"The Nigetanji," Kyusaku said off-handedly.

This adds a degree on confusion to the fic, since we're all expecting
Fellani.  For a while, I thought they were *another* body-snatching
race that used ear-things to posess people instead of ghost-hacking
(or whatever it's called).

[...]

Kyusaku looked embarrassed. "Er... 'Mad Scientist Mailing List'. It's
just a joke name, really," he said over an assortment of snickers.

"It's a joke it, tell you.  Stop laughing.  Stop laughing!
ALL KILL YOU ALL!!!  YOU MOCK THE MSML, BUT WE'LL TAKE OVER
THE WORLD!"

"..."

"Eheh.  ANYway..."


[...]

"To do what, Dad?" Kyu asked tensely.

sp:  Ryu

[...]

Ryu stayed his father's hand. "That's not what I meant, Dad. They're
people too, aren't they? We can't just wipe them out. That's just
wrong."

"Don't worry, Ryu.  After we kill them all, we'll give them android
bodies, just like what we did for your Nuku Nuku!"

"Alright, Dad!  You're so cool!"

"And we'll get Mr. Colonel's Chicken, too!"

"YAY!"

[...]

The two guards dropped like puppets with their strings cut. Kyusaku
bent over them and peeled small widgets off their heads behind their
ears.

"What's that?" Arisa whispered from the elevator.

"I think it's an alien brain interface," Kyusaku whispered back. He
suddenly triggered his device again, and several thumps resulted. Arisa
stuck her head out around the frame of the elevator door and saw that
Kyusaku had bagged a few more camouflaged guards and was collecting
more of the alien widgets.

What's the deal with those widget things?  How can they be alien
brain interfaces?  I don't recall seeing them in the other stories.
Nuku-Nuku wasn't wearing one when she got possessed.  They didn't
put one on Kyusaku before they were *going* to posess him.

They could be plain vanilla mind control devices, but Akiko is
wearing one, and she's hosting a Fellani.  I'm smelling
inconsistency, here.

[...]

"On a night as exciting as this? I think not. You have no shortage of
courage or ingenuity, I'll grant you that," Darshian said in Akiko's
voice. She stood up from her console as Ryu and Nuku-Nuku came in.

suggest:  said Darshian, in Akiko's voice.

[...]

"Then talk we shall, Dr. Natsume," Darshian said, moving gracefully to
the angled couch in one corner. "Have a seat and I'll send my, er,
flunkies--" she gestured at Arisa and Kyoko in the doorway-- "for
refreshments."

Downgraded from respcted employees that get bonuses back to flunkies.
;_;

[...]

Darshian tapped the side of her head with one manicured finger. "Oh,
she's here, child," she said smoothly. "She has come to no harm. I
haven't stolen her body, merely borrowed it."

"Without permission."

"Well, yes..."

"Isn't that stealing?"

"Uh..."

[...]

"You didn't even TRY another way! If you'd ASKED us, maybe we could
have helped you!"

"You could have said no."

"Hey, I saw that Star Trek episode, too!"

"What?  I don't remember that one."

"Sure, first season of Next Generation.  The binar things took over
the Enterprise.  You know, Riker and Minuet?"

"Next Generation?  That SUCKS!  Classic Trek forever!"

"What?  I won't have some oldie loser posessing my wife!"  [flash]

[...]

To Nuku-Nuku, the energy buildup around Kyusaku was as obvious as a
bonfire, and just as alarming. Top-priority items flooded into her
action queues, streamed into her biovolition interfaces, and were
accorded the bionic equivalent of a small gray cat waving cheering
fans. "PAPA-SAN!" she screamed, and leapt.

Uh... ^_^;;;  Say what?  Why is Nuku Nuku cheering inside but jumping-
to-take-the-blow outside?

[...]

"Damn my eyes, but it's TIGHT in here," she gasped in Fellani.

"That's because of... The Blouse!"

"Hey, that's mine!" squeaked Kyoko.

[...]

"What's that? A remote?" Darshian said sharply, turning. Mareg crouched
for a leap.

"Sort of," Kyusaku said casually. He squeezed it. Squeek! Squeek!

Heh.  :)

[...]

Nuku-Nuku looked vacant for a moment, and then blushed. "I can't say
what he said back," she said. "You'd wash my mouth out with soap." She
looked like she was finding the vocabulary lesson quite interesting,
though.

"Ooh, so that's what that means..."  She suddenly fixed an unhappy
glare at Arisa.  "Hey!  You said those words to Nuku-Nuku!  That's
wasn't nice!"

[...]

"I'm so glad you asked that. We're going to work on a little project.
You've been using MHI for the production of Fellani-technology devices
to aid the Fellani conquest, yes? Well, we're going to see if we can't
come up with some way to let the Fellani use that technology to buy
themselves a place on Earth, and devise android bodies-- not as strong
as Nuku-Nuku, of course-- that suit them better than human hosts."

I was waiting for the Star Trek solution.  Anybody remember Sargon?  ;)
They wanted human bodies for sex, too...



I know this is going to sound weird, but I'd have a much easier time
C&Cing your work if you left some damned errors behind!  Jeez...

I'm not terribly impressed with the premise of the series, but this
was a good part.  It does sound rather like a Star Trek episode, though.
I really likedthe overall style, especially the humor.

I thought the plot was O.K.  The ending wasn't very conclusive, so
there's not a lot to say.  Was anything resolved?

The grammar was disgustingly perfect, :) but you used some awfully
long sentences in places.  I didn't have any problem with them, but
it probably wouldn't hurt to snip them down.

Vince Seifert Network Analyst	seifertv@csus.edu
Techie: http://webpages.csus.edu/~seifertv/ Fanfic:
http://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/seifertv/toth/ CSUS hired me to build their
LANs, not to give away the homeworld.

I know you've had this sig for a while, but it kind of takes on a
different meaning with this storyline...  :j

Lookin' forward to more of your stuff, Vince!


Doug

----
Douglas MacDougall                  "You were nicer when you were evil.
http://www.dougmacd.net/             Cuter, too.  Definitely more sexy!"