I'm sending this from the University, so I can only hope the formatting
isn't screwed up.

Alan Harnum <harnums@hotmail.com> wrote:

    Konatsu woke up to soft, weary darkness.  Someone was
holding his head in their lap, and there was a pain behind his

Since it's only one person, 'their' isn't correct. If you don't
want to use a pronoun because that would indicate a gender, you
could rephrase as 'His head was held in someone's lap' or somesuch.

    "Konatsu," she said softly, "don't talk like that.  It's not
important what other people want you to be.  Who do you want to
be?"

"Whatever I'm told to be!" :)

    He moved down the hallway towards one of those kitchens now.
Ukyou had been unconscious for almost two days, rising fitfully
out of her sleep to murmur words he did not understand before

"Ran-chan, you $%#%%! @#$#@^%$#^%#$#^%#%@#!!!!!!!"

    No peace here.  Desolation, perhaps.  The boards of the
wooden floor creaked alarmingly beneath his feet at times as he
walked.  He shouldn't have been here.  He should have been in the

The "have been" tense seems wrong here; sounds like he's referring
to sometime before the current point in the story. I'd write it as
"He shouldn't be here." Or, if you want to make it explicitly in
the past tense, "He knew that he shouldn't be here" or "He shouldn't
be here, he thought" or "It was a bad idea for him to be here."

    "We diverge," Fuhaiko interjected.  "That matter is beside
the point.  We cannot be seen in open rebellion.  But if evidence
can be brought forth that she attempted to move secretly against
another member of the Circle..."

"Like if we caught him listening in on one of our private
conversations? Nah, what are the odds of THAT happening...."

    Konatsu swept the last shards of mirror glass and broken
perfumes bottles into the dustpan, and emptied them into the

perfume bottles

    He crossed the room to the lightswitch by the door, and

Light switch is usually two words.

    "Konatsu," Ukyou interrupted, "what happened to my spatula?"

 
"Damn it, Konatsu! We can't do a lemon scene without my spatula!"

    "Thank you," she said simply, and reached her arms around 
his waist, laid her head against his chest.  The glossy darkness
of her hair spread out across the red silk of his tunic.  His eye
was drawn to individual strands, held like a caged thing by the
beauty of her.  After a moment, she spoke again.  "You're 

Might sound better to say "her beauty" instead of "the beauty of
her."

   "Use it well," the crow whispered, only to him, a sweet,
clear woman's voice that he vaguely recognized but could not
place.  "When the time is right."

    It had dropped whatever it had held onto the sill when it
spoke.  A pale, slender thing, gleaming in the moonlight.  
Konatsu picked it up and stared at it.  

"'Trojan?' Hey, Ukyo! What's THIS for?!"

    And about then, they crested the slow rise of the hill that
they had been walking on, and joined Rouge and Lang Bei as they
looked down upon Jusenkyou spreading out below them.  The rising 
sun spilled down across the dip in the land, cradled in the arms
of the mountains, that held the pools and they shone like 
mirrors in the light.

That last part doesn't look right. Seems like it should say
'...pools AS they shone...' Or maybe you just need a comma before
'and'.

    Shampoo stood a few steps back, the closest thing she'd to a
smile all morning on her face.  "Men always so indecisive."

Missing a verb there... 'the closest thing she'd had to' maybe.

    "Is Nyannichuan," she said wonderingly, holding up her hands 
in front of her and staring at them disbelievingly as she waded 
to shore.  "I... cured."

Not necessarily... that could've been the "spring of drowned female
serial killer" or something like that. Or the "spring of drowned
demon who happens to look exactly like Shampoo."

    Nabiki settled down across from him, trying to arrange her 
dress in such a way that it would protect her bare legs from the 
chill ground.  Kuno tracked her with his eyes as she sat.

'Chill' should be 'chilly'.

    His eyes went hard again.  "The man you report to reports to
my grandfather."

Kuno-chan's a formal speaker, so he probably ought to say "The man
to whom you report reports to..."

    "Yes," Nabiki snapped.  "Do you think I've got no heart at
all?"

    A long silence.

 
Hard to answer that one tactfully....

    Now that she knew the connection, she was sure.  Kuno's eyes
were like the older man's had been on that day five years ago,
staring down at the girl who'd grabbed onto the sleeve of his
expensive suit at the corner.  The image of the man was still
firmly fixed in her mind after all the years; she compared him to
Kuno, found traces of the same features.  "I told him I'd do 
anything if he gave us the money, but he explained that dad 
didn't want to take money from him."

Dad should be capitalized when used as a name.

    She laughed, suddenly, because it was either that she laugh
or start crying.  "I told him I had a plan.  It was such a good
plan; dad never suspected a thing."

Same here.

    She shrugged.  "A kid's plan.  He made it work, though.  He
had the resources to do it, to make it all look legit, look real.  
And I gave the money to daddy, and he was so grateful, I 

and here.

    She remembered her father crying, sweeping her up into a hug 
as she showed him the fake letter and the cheque, and told him
about what she wanted to do with the money.  It had made her feel 
smarter than everyone else, it had made her feel important, even 

Technically, this is a run-on; you might want to start a new
sentence after 'else' or at least change the , after else to a ;

    "From what my grandfather has told me," Kuno said quietly.
"Those who he reports to have been watching Ranma for a long,

Again, should be "Those to whom he reports have...."

    "Grandfather said little of them," he answered.  "They are
all women, I know that.  They don't age.  They are very hard to 
kill."

    Fear was nothing.  Fear was a word for what she had felt
before, when she had been entrapped in something she could
understand, something she could reconcile with the world of
numbers and dealings that occupied most of her time.  Fear was
not adequate; terror, perhaps, as if she had lit a candle in some
deep, dark pit only to see that all around lay all the bones of 
all the dead.

Very effective way to convey Nabs' feelings here.

    "I had a dream," he replied.

Yes, it's Martin Luther Kuno! :-p

    Ranma backed away, saw Mint, his curved sword drawn and held
slightly nervously in his hands, do the same.  

Seems like there should be an 'and' in there before 'saw'.

    He turned his eyes to Ranma.  They were simply fire in the
sockets.  "A deal, perhaps, Lord of Waters?"

"Okay... seven card stud, nothing wild...."

    The Ravager lowered his arm slightly, almost letting 
Wiyeed's feet touch the floor.  "Choose two of them."

    "What?"
    
    "Choose two of them," the World-Hater repeated.  "I will let
them and yourself leave this place.  The other three will stay
with me."

Welcome to the Ranma/Sophie's Choice fusion.... :)

    "No," Ranma said, and struck.  He remembered Galm, held in a
world he should never have existed in by those black chains that

Would be correct to say 'held in a world in which he never
should...' but since this is Ranma, an informal thinker, it might
be more in his character to leave it as is.

    It was astonishingly easy.  If the Ravager had been 
expecting it, it would not have been, but he was taken by
surprise as Ranma began slicing, with a bright blade of purest
will, at the weave and wind his trap.  

Seems like there's an 'of' missing there or something.

    A last cutting, a last act of will, and the darkness became 
as light, and the stone became as water.  Again, now, they were
falling, down into a depth of the ocean, with waters closing in
over their head, and a blinding, beautiful light at the end,
welcoming them home.  And in the darkness behind, a voice
shrieking hatred and vengeance denied.

    As he had so many times before, he gathered the tortured, 
fragmented soul of the woman who had sacrificed herself to send 
him here, and made it whole, and inflicted agonies upon her that
would have broken the strongest will.  She broke, of course.  She 
always did, in the end.  But such a thing gave him little 
pleasure after so much time confined, and he casually threw the
essence of her being into the lightless space, as he had so many
times before.

You used 'so many times before' in the paragraph preceeding this
one. How about a synonomous expression here?

    In time, though, he heard the voice of his master calling -
like him, only a part of a part, though a far greater part than 
he - and he left, returning to merge with the Dark like a river 
comes in time to merge with the sea.

Likewise here, you've got two 'merges' where you could probably
use a synonym for one... 'meld' for the first one, maybe.

Overall, a good chapter with some really good character
development. I liked Kuno quite a bit more here than in previous
installments; he seemed less like Nabzy's all-knowing
conscience and more like a guy with troubles of his own.

I noticed also that you've also managed to give a logical answer
to one of the great mysteries of Ranma 1/2 -- how the Tendo family
supports itself.

Looking forward to the next installment!


Gary