On Wed, 9 Sep 1998, Jurai-Knight wrote:

    It was strange, Nabiki found it very easy to just let her body 
react without thinking, like she was an observer.  *I _have_ to get 
Ranma to let me try this again.  I never understood what Akane 

Uh-oh, do I smell trouble later...Nabiki has a way of finding things
out...^_^ although if Ranma always sends Nabiki to quantum band 16 or
something, she'll probably never find out about what the device is REALLY
for. :)

    On a whim, she grabbed a random male student from the crowd 
by the lapels, and then she pulled him in for a kiss.  The other 
male students in the crowd murmured in envy, and many of the 

ROTFLOL!!!!!! Hmm, it would be interesting to see how the native Nabiki in
that quantum timeline copes with this Nabiki's actions. Fortunately for
her, that guy probably understood that her kiss meant nothing and she was
just playing with him, unless he's an idiot...^_^

    "Now we show your Captain Nabiki that she shouldn't have 
messed with the Men's Martial Arts Club," said a gruff male voice 
from behind the girls.  The girls turned, and Nabiki saw a group 
of very tough-looking male students dressed in Security gray 
suddenly come around the corner behind the girls.  One of them 
supported a staggering Kuno.

It's weird, how the fact that when Japan was Westernized in the 1600s,
they ended up becoming such savages in some ways...first the Security
Dictorate, and now this. (Too much dark content can detract away from the
enjoyment of a fic, IMHO. When used carefully in moderation though, it can
add depth.)

You know, this kind of reminds me of the book "Star Trek: Dark Mirror". In
the book, the crew of the Enterprise meets an alternate universe version
of themselves; in that world, there is no Federation, instead there is the
"Empire", and the USS Enterprise is called ISS Enterprise instead. The
people in the Empire are almost all savages, and they've conquered all the
races (the Romulans were erradicated). When they found out about the way
to cross into another world, they tried to come through so that they could
conquer it, but fortunately, the crew of the USS Enterprise were able to
seal them off. That's a lot like the Security Dictorate in some of the
quantum universes that have been visited here; they want to get their
dirty little hands on the quantum travelling device so that they can go do
what they want with the other quantum universes.

Hrm, with all this quantum travel going on, I wonder what's the chances of
one of the people in the main quantum universe being "possessed"
temporarily. Imagine what would happen if Akane was suddenly replaced by
an alternate Akane that acted like Azusa. *ROFL*

    "Oh my," replied Kasumi quietly.  "This simply won't do, 
Ranma."  She turned back to her bag, and pulled out a small 
syringe filled with a yellowish fluid.  "Why don't I give you 
something to help you relax before we talk?"

I have one word to say about the above paragraph:

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :P

    Hours went by.  Genma looked at his watch and noticed the 
time.  The various circuit boards of the Resonator were laid out on 
the workbench along with the master schematic.  "Let's break for 
lunch, son."  Genma removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of 
his nose tiredly.

Seems kind of careless of them...dismantling a working device like that,
especially one as hard to create as this one.  What if they can't put it
back together? :) One would have thought they could just work with the
schematics

made her way to the stairs.  She walked slowly, her body protested 
when she tried to walk faster.

That "protested" should probably be "protesting" (otherwise, you have a
grammatical error called a comma splice).

    "My son already ate his lunch, but I'm sure that he would like 
to spend some time with you outside, young lady," said Genma 
with a smile.  "I have some thinking to do on your work, Ranma.  
Why don't you take a break with this pretty, young lady while I do 
that?  Spend some time in the sunshine."

*chuckle* Genma playing the matchmaker? :)

    Akane was bored.  Normally, to relieve her boredom she would 
pick a tough-looking student to challenge to a fight.  Other times, 
she would find a weaker student to bully to see if she could 
provoke a fight.  Her recent injuries prevented either from being 

*shakes his head sadly* Savages. Such savages.

goofy look on his face that Akane knew that she did not like.  She 
became angry when she realized that he was having this effect on 
her.  *Why do I care if Ranma Saotome talks to another girl?  It's 
not like we've even dated or anything.*

This Akane gives new meaning to the words "overpossessive" and "abusive".
I say she's worse than the Akane in "Bitter End". :P

    "I guess I should start at the beginning," said Kodachi in a 
thoughtful tone.  "On my world, you never existed Ranma.  Your 
father never married.  Instead, he devoted his life to his research.  
He managed to create the device himself after twenty years of 
research into quantum theory and quantum mechanics.  He taught 
at my world's version of this Academy."  Kodachi made a 
sweeping gesture to take in the whole area.

Ranma is probably a genious then; he managed to create the quantum
travelling device much faster than Genma would have done working alone.

    "I'm getting a little bit tired of you bothering me, Miss Tendo," 
said Ranma in a warning tone.

    "Take it however you like," he replied.  "If you don't leave, I'll 
give you that fight you want right this minute."

    "I'm going to give you what you want from me," replied Ranma 
in that same neutral tone.  "Three weeks from today, in this spot, 
we fight.  If I win, you acknowledge me your superior before all 
witnesses."  Akane frowned at that one.

Finally! How I've waited for Ranma to say that! :)

curled into fists at her sides as she walked.  *I'm going to _break_ 
you, Ranma Saotome.  No matter how much you may have 
improved, I'm still better than you.  After the fight, you're all 
mine.*  Akane chuckled a bit as she walked.

Looks like Ranma'd better go brush up on his Martial Arts skills, learn
the Kachuu Tenshin Amaguriken and stuff (although he might want to be
careful about the more obvious ki attacks, e.g. Mouko Takabisha, lest the
Security Dictorate comes to give him trouble). If not, he's going to end
up as Akane's slave for a month. :P

    "It was my fault," said Genma in an apologetic tone.  "I was 
examining it, and it slipped from my grasp.  I'm sorry, son."

    "Great, pop," sighed Ranma.  "This is just... great.  It's going to 
take me a week to request more materials and fabricate another 

No more quantum travelling for a week, eh? (Why do I sense a hint of
irresponsibility from Genma? Or was that a freak accident...?)

Ranma IS going to meet Ukyou soon right? (after he's gone to the arena and
lamented over Shampoo's fate...:P)

    "It happened on my seventeenth jump," she said.  "Professor 
Saotome was experimenting with fine-tuning the scanning pulses 
to pick up more worlds in a band when he picked up a second 
signal.  It caused the transfer pulse to activate before he could 
abort, and I found myself slumped against a wall of the lab.  The 
body I was in was shot through one of the lungs, and I could feel 
myself dying.  I didn't know how long I might have, and I didn't 
know if Professor Saotome would be able to retrieve me in time."  
Kodachi drew in a shuddering breath before she continued.

I got a little confused as to what was going on here...I assume Kodachi
jumped to a universe where her alternate self was dying, so she had to
jump a second time out of that universe in order to save herself?

    Genma looked helplessly at Ranma.  Ranma was shaking his 
head slowly, a sad look on his face.  "I don't see how we can, 
Kodachi," said Ranma.  "I doubt we'd be able to even _find_ your 
original world.  Even if we did, I think the personality integration 
is probably complete.  Like it or not, this is your home now."

What happened to Kodachi's body in her original world anyway? Would she be
in a coma or something, since her consciousness is in another quantum
universe? BTW what's the "personality integration" thing Ranma is talking
about here?

    Ranma sat down next to Kodachi.  She clutched at him, and she 
sniffled softly against his shoulder.  Ranma stroked her hair 
awkwardly, and made gentle sounds in an attempt to comfort her.  
"I'll help you adjust, Kodachi," he said in soothing tones.  "I'll do 
my best to be your friend."

Ranma's sure full of surprises today.

He looked at Kodachi, suddenly puzzled.  "What do you want to 
do tonight?"

    "I want to do something special," she replied.  "My family has 
box seats at the Arena.  Let's go there tonight."

Next up: Ranma meets Shampoo?

Judging by that scene from the universe where Ranma is in jail, I assume
there's going to be more scenes with that world? Perhaps a Ranma with
martial arts abilities will jump in there and beat people up? ^_^

IMHO I think you are putting too many scenes with the "dark" tone, e.g.
when Kodachi describes how she got stuck in this universe. I had the same
problem with Shampoo 1/2; it started out looking like it would be a light
hearted romance story between Ranma and Shampoo, but the recent chapters
were not light-hearted at all, starting with Nodoka's meddling, then later
the hopeless fight to save Shampoo from being taken back by the
Joketsuzoku. 

I'm dying to see how martial-Ranma deals with what happens later when
people confront him about going on a date with Shampoo. :)

Oh, another thing that I was expecting to see...when are Ranma and Genma
going to talk about Nodoka's attempts to engage him to a bunch of girls? I
find it strange that they have not discussed it at all so far.

-Philip Mak (pmak@cs.dal.ca)
http://is2.dal.ca/~pmak/ukyou.html