I have a backlog of about eight fics to C&C... Wait, make that seven....

Elisteran wrote:

"Seal the area! Don't let anybody enter. We're gonna take this bitch
down!" The radio burst out staccato commands. Then a wet sound came
through, as if something fluid-filled had popped. 

Ryoko: Ah...

Aeka: Stop your boorish thoughts right this instant, you dirty-minded space pirate!

Ryoko: (whistles) But I didn't say anything.

Aeka: You were _thinking_ it!

Ryoko: .... (turns to Tenchi) I don't like her. She reads minds.

Tenchi: O_o

The men on call

grimaced. Professional security, they had well-defined procedure that
they were trained rigorously on.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, so suggest revising the sentence so that things would read clearer and stuff.

Genma padded through the town, the soft pads of his hefty frame in

IMO, there's the repetition of the word 'pad' here. Suggest finding another word for 'pad' to avoid the repetition.

counterpoint to the beat of the streets around him. Beside him Soun
trotted along, softly wheezing as he tried to keep up with the
deceptively slow appearing panda. Genma grunted softly at Soun, but
slowed his pace.

Hmmm? Soun seems fully capable of running long distances. After all, Happousai trained them both to be expert runners, lest they experience even more punishments for Happi's actions. ^^;;

At that, Soun eased up, looking a bit less ridiculous only walking
instead of trotting. 

Sentence formation here sounds rather awkward when said aloud, IMO. Suggest separating the sentence into two or something. 

The traditional Samurai clothing he wore went

well with the traditional Samurai spear firmly grasped in his left
hand, but his face was painted a bright white with a fuzzy red ball
firmly entrenched atop his nose.

Uh, right. How funny. And by funny, I mean weird and un-humorous.

The people heading homewards from central Tokyo glanced curiously over
the warrior clown and his performing panda (as the placards strapped
to Genma's sides proudly proclaimed), but showed no signs of worry at
the visible weapons. Instead, they admired the realistic-looking
props, no few of them feeling a tinge of jealousy at the flair the
edges gave the two. They might look ridiculous, but they looked
ridiculous with style.

On whose opinion? It would seem that the fanfic is asserting a point of view which the reader does not necessarily share.

The crowds steadily diminished and the surroundings grew more
lavish. Genma heard distant chimes indicating the hour mark, and felt
rather proud of himself. He and Soun had made good time getting here,
and now with just a little bit of luck, they could meet up with Akane
and the other girls, and avoid any trouble. They were prepared for
trouble, of course; that's why Soun had brought his weapons. He had
two daughters in there, and he was taking no chances; whatever it was
that they thought they had found, he would be prepared.

I think you should use the semi-colons sparingly and just separate the thoughts to one per sentence. Makes for easier reading.

And it looked like some caution was going to have been a great
idea. 

"was going to have been" gives me a headache when I read it. Something simpler  would have sufficed.

Soun was visibly deterred.

Suggest: "Soun was visibly hesitant," or some other word that flows better with the prose than the sticks-like-a-sore-thumb "deterred." 

"Genma...," he began, uncertain.

Doesn't he call his old friend, "Saotome" or "old friend"? 

But while

Soun may have felt uneasy at getting into such a situation, his
partner had no such problems. Instead, Genma drew himself erect. 

"He stood up" would have sounded better. Also, it doesn't lend itself to juvenile innuendo jokes.

He

whuffed 

That's not a word.

an indignant, self-congratulatory snort at Soun's timidity and

his own foresight. The meaning was clear: Genma was saying to trust
him.

If the meaning really is clear, then there's no need to bash the reader on the head of the implication, ne?

Hadn't Genma always gotten them through the rough times? Wasn't

Genma responsible for planning their glorious future?

Soun shook his head animatedly. "No."

Genma's fur began to blur, darkening into a slightly wavering,
slightly larger-than-life image of himself. Soun felt his worry
suddenly being pushed aside -- instead, he felt a great sense of trust
welling up from deep within himself. Filled with a new found

You can use "newfound" as one word, according to Webster.

 sense of

purpose, he began walking towards the guards. When the leader of the
men noticed the armor-clad figure and panda coming toward him, his
hands went immediately to the holster of his stun gun But he was soon

It's either you forgot a period after the word 'gun' or you accidentally capitalized the word 'but'.

Oh, and the pacing of this fic leaves much to be desired. For something so short, it sure drags sooooo long.

"Well, we're clowns, you see, and we were sent for to help calm down
the children. It's important that the younger folk be calm, with the
gas explosions and all. So let us just get on our way, and we'll be
out of your hair."

"Gas explosions? " The man was suspicious. "That's not what I

There's an extra space in between the question mark and the ending double quotation marks.

"Well, maybe it was something else. Some drunken guests or
something. But whatever it was, we -- " Soun waved his hand vaguely
towards the panda " -- got called to calm everybody down." Soun
frowned unhappily. "I was just getting to spend time with my kid, and
my boss has to call us in to save his butt. Think we're gonna get a
bonus? Nooo... nobody cares about the clowns."

I think it's supposed to be "Nooo... Nobody cares about the clowns."

The whining obviously annoyed the man. "Go in, then. Talk to your boss
-- he gets paid to care. Just if something goes down, get out of the

"Just if something goes down" sounds awkward. Please revise, or get rid of the 'just' word. 

way." The man's eyes hinted maybe he wouldn't care so much if a
well-meaning but annoying clown didn't get out of the way.

Soun and Genma went on their way, clowns entering the gates of hell.

To put it simply, that last statement sounded lame.

Nabiki could only stare at what the hurled wrestler had revealed, the
hole in the wall exposing a harsh reality behind the facade of
sophisticated civilization. 

I'm guessing that, with this sentence, you're going for the same effect as the statement that sounded lame. IMO, there's no need for this effort of yours to make the prose sound more important than it really is. It comes off more cheesy than impressive, really.

Or that's how it seemed -- she had been

Suggest: " -- She had been"

The figure in white didn't stir. She might have been dead; except that
the lacy white wedding dress showed signs of breathing.

Nabiki's entire grasp on reality was weakening; first her sister had
crashed her coming-out party (for somehow Nabiki had transferred an
almost romantic notions

notion

 to the very practical business introduction of

earlier), and now this. She took one step further on the landing and
saw the red hair spilling from behind the headpiece and onto the
pillow.

Lacking any sort of conscious will to direct it, the fine gears of
Nabiki's minds

mind

slipped by habit into usual routines. How this would

impact the odds of martial battle that daily beset Nerima. 

I think what you meant was "How would this impact the odds of martial battle that daily beset Nerima?" But I could be wrong. In any case, that sentence is confusing and does not clearly define what it's meant to convey by itself.

Where the

astute gambling consortium would position themselves to profit
thereby. 

It seems to me that your prose is trying hard to sound impressive and important, but instead ends up sounding ambiguous and needlessly complicated. In other words? The 'thereby' in that sentence, I feel, is rather unnecessary.

Nabiki stepped to the side reflexively, as a soldier's head appeared
in the floor where she had been standing. Apparently someone beneath
had decide the soldier should look into opportunities as a
stalactite. 

Uh, sure. 

Briefly, Nabiki's mind slipped into considering whom she

*knew* the someone was; but she allowed the numbness to reclaim her,
and the image was gone.

Again, your slow and drag-on pacing makes this seven-pager seem like a John Biles fic.

But where her thoughts could ignore anybody whom the tides of battle
had shifted from view, her sight was forced to pay attention to that
within its domain.

I believe this fic suffers from needlessly complicated and awkward phrasing.

A figure dashed past Nabiki towards the stairs. "Stay away from
Mistress Kuno, you ... cook!"

Ah.

Was that noise coming from the person's throat? It hardly seemed
possible; it barely sounded human. It was getting louder though; the
blinding aura was washing over Nabiki.  Nabiki had to close her eyes

Suggest: "She had to close her eyes" 

Pronouns are your friends.

But she opened her eyes when she sensed motion behind her, where
Sasuke had been feeding Ranma soup. She felt freer as she looked away

>from the swirling centrum 

The word, 'centrum' reminds me of a brand of vitamins. I don't think it means what you think it means either.

of dark emotions, but then she saw the small

ninja messing with the wheels at the foot of the gurney where Ranma
lay so still. In her frozen silence, Nabiki stood silent -- except her
mouth was moving? 

The prose is confused this time, as opposed to being confusing.

Sasuke looked away from the sumo wrestler, startled.

I must have missed something, for before I knew it, a sumo wrestler has sneaked into the scene without so much as a heads up from the narrative.

The alto tones
close by seemed much more relevant than the high-pitched screams of
agony from the floor beneath. And somewhat more worrisome, in the long
term; Nabiki wasn't one of the martial artists in Nerima, and Sasuke
was well aware that many ordinary people would not understand how
passion could have led to this situation. He hurriedly yanked one last
time at the wheel lock -- it's stuck! -- and began moving the
bed. 'She must be saved -- for the sake of the family!'

You shifted the POV of the narrative from third person to Sasuke's person. Please don't do that.

Nabiki wasn't getting out his way, sadly. Sasuke had time for a quick
toss of his ninja smoke pellets, but they bounced too far. Nabiki's
eyes teared,

That's not a word. Suggest: watered

but she could still see the shape of the bed as Sasuke

tried to roll it by. "No you don't, you little twerp..." Nabiki
blindly threw herself at the shapes.  She hit the bed, but her
outstretched right index finger managed to plunge into something. A
mouth?

Sasuke: OxO

Nabiki: Oh Kami-sama... EWWW!!!

Sasuke: (mumbles something about not being an entrance but only an exit) ;_;

Before she could take advantage of the position, she felt teeth
savagely tearing into her finger.  Sasuke apparently felt his task was
more important than discourse. 

It's not as if he's capable of discourse at the time.

The awkward ninja turned it into a somersault of sorts, to end up
sprawled against the wall. 

The awkward prose of the fic confused the hell out of the reader, who suggested revising the above sentence into: "The awkward ninja turned it into a somersault of sorts. He ended up sprawled against the wall."

Through labored breath, he wheezed, "Master

Kuno is interested in hiring you to make this all go away." He was
lying, of course, but he was sure that if by some miracle the
mercenary Tendo could rescue this unpleasant scene

If by some miracle the mercenary Tendo couldn't tell he was lying through his teeth, that is...

Nabiki didn't bother responding further. Blinking her eyes
furiously, she made her way over to the bed, looking for the buckles
she had seen holding Ranma in.

Suggest: dumping the 'she had seen holding' for 'which held'

"Saotome, old friend, this is it, the end..." Soun's calm was
shattered, his emotions again engaged full-throttle at the sight of a
thick oak table leg flying past throat-high and shattering against a
iron grating that discreetly lined the decorative french windows.

French windows

 But

even as the tears began falling,

Oh please, his daughter has been capable of more damage than that. What's he crying about?

he was looking, looking to see the

root cause for the violence in the room. The pulsating aura made it
difficult enough even to see that it was human, rather than a shadowy
glowing figure. But the way it held itself pricked at Soun familiarly.

Soun: Ohhh... So that's why the table-leg-flying-through-the-air thing was so familiar.

"Akane? Is that " -- he blinked away the tears -- " is that you? What
are you doing?" He moved towards her, trying to collect his
thoughts. "Calm down, these men aren't fighting anymore." And they
weren't; the few men still able were taking advantage of Soun's
distraction to leave, presumably to summon the reinforcements waiting
outside the estate. "Daddy's here. Come on over here, and I'll take
care of everything." It was clear that Akane hadn't waited, and was
now fighting with pure emotion. Her stance was not the skilled martial
stance of a traditional martial artist; it had evolved into the
emotion-based chi-projecting stance of a master of the Musabetsu
Kakutou School of martial arts.  And so Soun was very careful
approaching her.

Emotion-based chi-projecting seems more akin to the Amazon style of fighting, particularly the Shishi Hoku Dan... Ranma merely copied it and revised it as his own.

The explosion hurled everybody in the room backwards, away from the
blast. Genma's furry body

Repetition and unnecessary emphasis on Genma-Panda's furriness. Please revise.

 was helped upwards, to impact with the

ceiling. Smoke detectors were spurred into action, and soon a gentle
rain from ceiling-mounted sprinklers was floating down. 

Gentle rain? Well, gee... That's going to be useful in a roaring blaze! 

"Sasuke, I didn't know you cared." Nabiki was surprised to find her
voice saying this. "That'll be 1000 yen." That was surprisingly
automatic... she hadn't even thought about the price. 

Antivisima: (nods sagely)

Although, now

that she had a second, that seemed about the market price for
embarrassing situations.... 

She's surprisingly cheap, then.

And then the less rational part of her

brain finally awoke to the situation, and her *extremely* rational
part concluded what Sasuke had been trying to do, and she panicked.

Nabiki: You were trying to kill me instead of just copping a feel? Whew. That's a relief... Oh.

Knowing she needed to get out of here, to think if nothing else,
before anything else could go wrong, and *definitely* taking Ranma
with her, she bent to unlocking the gurney's wheels. 'Maybe I can just
wheel him out of here during the after-dinner speeches. Yeah, that's
the ticket, I'm sure the ominous silence as I step here into the open
is because a speech is about to begin...'

The last sentence she spoke in her mind sounded like high-handed prose instead of actual human thought.

But even with her heightened alertness, she wasn't prepared for the
razor hoop slicing through the handle she was pushing the bed
with. Nor the club that hit her head, or the club after that,
or.... She slumped, barely aware of what was going on, barely aware
that her weight pressing on the bed had started it moving, towards the
stairs, no longer propping her up... wait, the stairs?

Folks, it seems that we have a self-aware, sentient narrative here. Does that make for better reading? To answer that, answer me this... does the guy behind you in a movie theater who reacts to every other scene in the movie makes for better movie watching?

Nabiki was dazed and out of it, but Soun, having just reached his
youngest daughter, could see everything that was happening by her.
His middle daughter slumped over, pushing the gurney away from her,
towards the stairs; it came to the edge of one step, whoofed down,

'Whoofed' is not a word, nor is it AFAIK Onomatopoeia. It's just wrong.

Ranma lay sprawled on the floor, a small figure beneath a large
bed. Her legs were crumpled beneath her, a small amount of blood
visible beneath her, only some of which had come from her nose
slamming into the ground. A small lavender-haired girl -- Shampoo,
Soun noted -- appeared to rouse herself from unconsciousness to
stretch over and grasp ranma's hand.

Ranma's hand

It was good that Soun had come to stand by Akane, as she fainted, a
small sigh of air the only notice.

Again, revise 'only notice' to something else. Prose should be clear, not confusing.

Soun managed to catch her, even as

the massive front doors were swung open, and black-suited assult

assault

And he might have made good on that threat, had not behind him
appeared the firemen summoned by the fire alarm, and their
increasingly alarmed police escort, who promptly summoned the
ambulances on seeing the disaster area.

The above 'sentence' would function better as a paragraph, i.e. several sentences, as opposed to one big mess of a sentence. One thought per sentence, please.

The ambulances were rather full, taking the combatants, Ranma, a
gi-clad Genma found in a warm puddle of water, and also Soun -- for
Soun, dear Soun, had himself fainted at Kuno's words. His blissful
unconsciousness would undoubtedly prove the happiest memory of that day
for a long while to come.

The prose meandered and rambled on the parts about Soun. Please revise.

Thanks to Kitsune, Rakhal, and Figment for pre-reading this fic. I'm
thankful to them, and to everybody who has written a review or sent me
feedback on previous chapters. I'm still very interested in how people
receive this fic; and although I do have an overall outline with my
eventual goals that I intend to follow (if only slowly), I'd love to
hear what people would like to see in the fic.

I believe you'll need some work on presenting your so-called ideas before you can even begin working on new ideas. Oh well. 

In any case, even if you decided to completely ignore each and every last suggestion in this C&C, please do keep on writing. That's my two cents. Abdiel out.


_______________________________________
EDSAMAIL. Internet the way YOU WANT IT.
www.edsamail.com.ph

             .---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
             | Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
             | Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
             |     Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject     |
             `---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'