The guilty get no sleep
 In the last slow hours of morning
 Experience is cheap
 Should've listened to the warning
 Into temptation
 Safe in the wide open arms of Hell.
 - Crowded House

Mackie: "....."

Hikaru: Ummmmm........

Mercutio: O....kay......

Wot, you expect me to quote Yates all the time? ;)

 Gleeful laughter came from a few bulkheads down. That
 would be the weather researcher, delighted by the 
unexpected squall. Stupid bastard probably didn't care if the 
damn thing sent them to the bottom or not.

Mercutio: Ah-HA!!! So THAT'S where Kodachi's been for the
duration! At sea! I should've known!

Actually, Kodachi has a happy, mildly psychotic high school 
career, starts taking Prozac, studies biochemistry in school, 
and goes to work for an American biological weapons lab. She 
marries happily and has two reasonably well-adjusted 
children, who think she's the best mom in the world.

Hikaru: You have to wonder, why the hell would Akane let 
Ranma do this sort of thing? He's not a doctor. He's probably 
never had any kind of formal training in first aid outside of 
what you pick up in martial arts. They've got good'ol Doc Tofu 
down the street. HE should've been the one to do this.

Well, would YOU trust Tofu to set a bone in Kasumi's presence?

 His eyes refused to meet hers. "She... she was helping
 them. The Ooni Temple was her plan, and she and Tsen were
 the ones who arranged the trap at the Ichishi Building..."

Mercutio: I like how even Ranma buys into the "Nabiki: All >Powerful

Puppet Master" stereotype by assuming that 

everything is her doing. It helps to illustrate that he's NOT the 
omnipotent badass supervillain he's been cast as so far.

Well, it could also be Ranma deliberately trying to paint Nabiki as worst
than she is, for Akane's 'benefit'.

Hikaru: And thus we witness the fine art of writing a lemon 
scene that isn't REALLY a lemon scene.

Mackie: I hate that art.

Hey, you want lemon, go read a Bartram fic. We're the 
psychological drama folks. ;)

 Jyusenkyou had won.

Hikaru: Ranma holds out for several years: Shampoo buckles in
a matter of months. THAT makes a lot of sense.

Well, Ranma has, as far as I can determine from the manga, no 
sex drive. Shamps, on the other hand...

Mercutio: Enter the incredibly convenient plot device! What 
lies inside the mystery box?

Hikaru: Go Hikaru, with the last-minute save! You the MAN!

Well, we can't rule out what it isn't.

Obviously, if it were something clearly incriminating (Ranma 
on tape being psychotic) Nabiki would have just given it to 
Akane, instead of handing it to Hikaru to pass on in the event of 
her death. So it's something that wouldn't have been any good 
to Akane while Nabiki was alive.

Hikaru: Seems a shame to end it. I was really starting to get 
into this.

Mercutio: Don't worry; IMBS will live on in crossover and
elseworlds form.

Ayup, I'll miss writing it. But it really isn't a sequel you can 
drag on forever; when we first started it, no-one believed that 
we could keep up the momentum past six or so chapters.

It's also not really a fic you can write a sequel to, for obvious 
reasons. Although I won't rule out a prequel or two, written by 
someone other than myself. And the crossovers are already 
beginning....

- Mike Loader
===/\=====+==================================================================
  /  \    l  "For, look you, there is humour in all things, and the truest
 / () \   l   philosophy is that which teaches us to find it and make the
/      \  l   most of it." - Jack Point, _The Yeomen of the Guard_
--------  l                    mike@thekeep.org
==========+==================================================================
Fnord.