HEARTS AND MINDS PRELUDE NINE
		    TENDO KASUMI AND NABIKI: SOMEDAY

		       Ranma 1/2 manga fanfiction
			     by Gary Kleppe

. Kaede revealed
her intent to teach her art to one of the Nerima bunch, and surprised
everyone by choosing Kasumi.

Everyone but the readers. :)

	There was no question that she had earned her position; the
company had the profits to prove it. Still, many of them constantly kept
their eyes on her, just waiting for her to slip up. That wasn't going to
happen. She couldn't let it. There was a dream at stake, her vision of a
time when things would be better.

 
This is a good a time to talk about this as any, I guess.  I 
dunno...somehow it seems wrong to give Nabiki the sort of conscience 
she has here.  I would expect her to condemn striking workers for not 
having the skills to compete, not feel sorry for them.  But since 
that conception of her is the basis for her part of the fic, I won't 
complain about it any more.

"Oh, come on, it'll be fun! Remember when you were a little
girl? You always wanted to do something like this!"

This seems to imply that they never once went on a picnic in the more 
than a decade intervening.  Is that what you meant?

	Mother never came back home. Nabiki would later muse that fate
had been teaching her an important lesson: always get your promises in
writing, signed and notarized. Not that it would've done any good.

It's interesting how the Tendo sisters' personalities are almost 
always presented as a reaction to the loss of their mother.  If she 
hadn't died, the thought goes, they would have been very different.  
While this certainly makes a lot of sense, isn't it also possible 
that they would have been the same no matter what?  

	Nabiki ate more of the food, deciding there would be no point in
asking how Kasumi got into her apartment.

I would expect Kasumi to be polite enough to ask before entering.

	"Yes, I really can't blame them. Though they did take a
particular interest when I described Hibiki Ryoga. Strange."

 
Heh.

	She let those thoughts float free and returned to her breathing.
Each breath was like a wave on the ocean, water flowing gently to and
from the shore over and over in a ceaseless rhythm. Her muscles relaxed.
Her mind stretched, twisting and expanding until she was looking down on
herself. Her body melted away from her perceptions. Unencumbered by form
and substance, she danced through the ether, being everywhere and
nowhere all at once.

This whole sequence works fairly well, giving a good impression of 
Kasumi's astral experiences.  Especially the part about teriyaki 
sauce.

 
	It was strange, the way she had felt when she left Nerima for
the United States. Nabiki loved her family. She couldn't wait to get
away from them.

Something that's true of most teenagers.

	Of course, there were no shortage of people like that in the
states, either....

Shouldn't "states" be capitalized?
 

	The professor cleared his throat. "Um, yes, that's a very
relevant point. Thank you." The other students spoke to each other in
confused murmurs. Some of them asked whether this would be on the test.

That last line rings very true.  I know people just like that.

	School was an obligatory rite of passage, nothing more. It was a
way of establishing credentials, a way of getting noticed and making
connections. Nabiki always took the maximum allowed number of credits
per semester, to get the obligation out of the way as fast as possible.
It wasn't as if the University had anything to teach her. Like
everything else useful in her life, she had developed her business skill
on her own.

Though I expect if she had been willing to give it an honest go, she 
could have found something new and fascinating in another subject 
area.  Going into college with goals as well-defined as hers is 
probably both a good and a bad thing.  

 It had been Professor Mason's brilliant idea to take the class
to UCF for a field trip. It was so that they could see how a real 
world business really works, he had said. He evidently hadn't 
realized that the company wasn't about to tell anything really 
important to a bunch of students. So all they got was a lot of 
speeches on how they were a dynamic company, with lots of 
opportunities for dynamic team players with positive attitudes.

Field trips are always a waste of time.

Later that night, memories of what she had done haunted her dreams. 
Thoughts of people who were desperate for a little more money, or 
health coverage for their children, and were now not going to get 
it, thanks to her.

Yes!  Liberal pro-union propaganda! Though if I didn't agree with 
you, I might find it a bit irritating.

Since then, she'd always been careful about what she took from whom. 
She'd taken money from Kuno-chan, who had more than he knew what to 
do with anyway; and Ranma, who never seemed to have any use for it 
himself. She'd sold pictures of Akane, whom she was absolutely 
certain wouldn't attack a non-fighter who hadn't attacked her first, 
and who had Ranma to take her frustrations out on anyway. It was all 
penny-ante stuff, never anything that could've caused anyone any 
real hardship.

Her rationalization seems to be as much about what would have caused 
hardship to her as what would have hurt anyone else.  

Jackson sipped from a *World's Greatest Dad* coffee mug; the cartoon 
face molded into the side of the mug was actually a fairly 
good likeness for him. 

Interesting description.


 >. Above, an orchestra of birds chirped out a delightful symphony.

I've only read that metaphor about a million times before.  

She had learned some things about herself the past week, not all
of them pleasant. Part of her actually resented the fact that she 
had been forced into devoting so much of her life to her family. The 
feeling made her uncomfortable; she hadn't even been aware of it 
until her visit to the spirit world the previous week. Not that she 
would've done anything different if she had had the chance to relive 
her life. Seeing Nabiki and Akane grow into such wonderful young 
women was far better than anything else she could've done in those 
ten years. But it would've been nice to have been given a choice.

Of course, the only one who took the choice away from her was 
herself.


Tofu's appearance is  appropriate, accurate, and more than a little 
sad.  Here's where the choice is taken away from Kasumi.

"Nice place you picked here, Naniki."

[snip]

"That's Nabiki, Charlie. And why not go for the best, I alwayssay." 
*Especially when I won't be the one paying,* she added mentally. 
"Better than your idea of us going to a football game."

Hmm...I wonder how much of an accent Nabiki has at this point.  I 
imagine she would pick up other languages fairly quickly.

Brandon laughed. "The old college idealism. Welcome to 
the twenty-first century, Nabini. 

Heh.  I didn't notice this mispronunciation the first time 
through.

Abruptly, Kasumi's gaze focused, as she smiled. "Hello, Nabiki.
It's so good to see you again after all this time."

Kasumi is channeling for her mother's spirit during this scene, 
right?  Somehow I managed to miss that the first time I read the fic, 
too.


I really liked this one, Gary.  It's probably my favorite of all the 
preludes so far. The writing was about average for you, which is 
pretty good.  It doesn't have a dramatic resolution like, say, 
Ryouga's, and it's much more predictable than some of the others, but 
it's a lot deeper, too.  While I'm still not sure I agree with your 
presentation of Nabiki, you make her a very real person, and her 
problems are very affecting.  Kasumi kind of got the shaft as far as 
screen time, but that's not exactly unusual.  

Personally, I hope Nabiki never understands.


Thomas Schmidt
Tschmidt@tcon.net
After April 1, Tschmidt@trader.com will no longer work