Alan Harnum <harnums@thekeep.org> wrote:

Commentary's appreciated; public or private, your choice.

Commentaries? On something that's not a 3 kb spamfic? Whaddaya think
this is? :-)

    Then He seized him by the throat with the hand of gold, and
hurled him back down among the dead.  His eyes were plucked out
here too, and his screams silenced as they sliced out his tongue.
The dead passed eyes and tongue back and forth among themselves,
fondling them as if they were toys.  Too deep among they dead to
breathe.  Too deep among the dead to move.  Too deep, too deep,
too deep.

Nicely done torture scene; you're a little too good at this kind of
thing. ^_^

    "You ever wake up from a dream you can't remember?"
    
    Silence.
    
    "I think that's what happened to me, sis.  I know I had 
some sort of dream, I just can't remember what was in it.  Kinda
wish I could."
    

"I think it had something to do with Kuno-chan being horribly tortured."

    The vehicle they were riding in went over a bump in the
road, and Nabiki winced as the impact shook through her.  There
was no light anywhere; the windows must be covered.

Suggest 'the windows had to be covered.' (Past tense)

    "Come on, Kasumi, talk to me."
    
    Nabiki had woken up a few minutes ago, and had been making a
futile effort to get Kasumi to talk to her.

May want to reword "talk to her" to avoid the repetition.

    "He came in the house, Nabiki," Kasumi answered.  Her voice
was a whisper flat as a pane of glass.  "He came in the house and
he touched me."

No.. FIRST he touched her, and THEN....

    "Can you move, dad?" she asked at last.
    

Capitalize Dad here.

    "Yeah, dad," Nabiki responded faintly as the van rolled on.

And again here.

    "Who are you guys?  Yakuza, right?"  She knew perfectly well 
that they weren't, but feigning ignorance often got people to 
reveal more than they would have otherwise.

    "We're much older than that," Unagi said conversationally.  

"Yakuza retirees, then?"

    Past the first threshold now.  He knew.  There was little
worse in telling more.  "Remember two years after mom died," she

Capitalize Mom.

    He said nothing more.  A divide, steep-sided and empty, had
opened between them.  Nabiki watched him walk to the chairs and
pull one next to Kasumi.  When he spoke to his oldest daughter,
his voice was pitched too low for Nabiki to hear.  Old wounds, 
the buried pain of never being able to have any real closeness at 
all to her father even as a child, throbbed anew beneath the 
scars lain over them.  Akane had been Dad's student, the follower 
of the Art.  Kasumi had kept his house.  What had she done?  It 
wasn't surprising, in the end, that it had come to this.

    Kasumi never said anything back, but her father kept on

Did you mean Nabiki here rather than Kasumi?

    "Yes, of course he is," Yoko said, cutting her off.  "It
would not do to have him be anything but."  The way she said it 
made Nodoka realize for the first time how truly dangerous Yoko
was; the coldness of her tone left no doubt that she felt Ranma
lived only because she had chosen to let him.  An utter
ruthlessness was in her voice, though nothing but that.

Don't understand the meaning of that last phrase.

    "Again I am to be used as a pawn against my son, then?"

    Yoko said nothing in reply.  The question had not truly
needed to be answered anyway.          
    
    "You said at the house that you were a mother like me," 
Nodoka said softly.  "Can you not understand my grief, then?  
For your own children, would you not--"

    She trailed away.  Somehow, she had hit some nerve.  The
tight rage in the lines around Yoko's mouth choked off the rest
of her words.

"How dare you speak of killing my son Ranma? That's MY job!"

    Tofu didn't say anything back, but he raised his head and
gazed back, and the hatred between the two men was clear as 
glass.  It went deeper than the purely political manoeuvrers

manoeuvres

    Hours from sunrise, the hostages were taken back to the
field, and loaded into the back of van.  A certain mentality
falls upon prisoners who believe they have no hope of escape that
lets them survive.

This sentence seems disjointed from the rest of the paragraph.

    Kasumi was taken into the circle, the women parting for a
moment to admit her.  As if upon impulse, Nabiki stepped forward.

    "Take me instead."
  

Cool... Nabby's trying to make up for last time.
  

    Yoko's head turned.  The black-glass gaze swept over Nabiki.
"No.  You are not fit.  She will not be harmed badly."

"In fact, she will be harmed extremely skillfully!"

    Soun raised his head from the ground to see the women
walking in an arrow shape towards the stream, his wounded 
daughter pulled along by the leaders.  Handcuffed or not, he was
going too--

to--

    Yoko saw Kuronuma, the most potent of Fuhaiko's warped 
little creations, flow in a seething and monstrous mass from his
mistress's arm.  The command had already been sent, though.  

Mistress'

Halfway to her, Kuronuma was intercepted by the grim, silent
figure of Tatewaki Kuno.  

    The binding had been difficult.  Terribly difficult.  To
Yamiko, and to her.  He had fought hard.  But now he was theirs;
what she held within her robes guaranteed that.

*Ahem* But we won't go into what *that* is.... :)

    As Fuhaiko came down, Yoko threw her arms up.  A towering
pillar of black flame exploded around her, narrowly missing the 
gaunt woman.  Fuhaiko's hands were wreathed in light the sickly 

light, the

yellow-green of a festered wound.  She lashed out, and
Yoko stepped back.  Perhaps she'd be able to fight off the
effects of the carrion-mistress's touch, but she wasn't going to

carrion-mistress'

    "Mother's calling, Nabiki," Kasumi said.  Her smile was
beautiful in the darkness.  "We have to her.

Missing word.

    "When I was a child," he said softly.  "I used to think it
was him.  I called him Kufuku.  When Father caught me with my
sister, I told him Kufuku made me do it.  He didn't believe me, 
of course."  There was a distance in his voice.  "The first one I
killed use to count the scars on my back.

used

    He broke her arm at the elbow.  The sound was sickening.
Nabiki screamed, piercingly, and then she was down on the ground
and one of his hand were still upon her throat.  The pain in her 

and one of his hands was
or
and his hands were

    In her hand, she held the embodiment of that.  A focus of
will, of hundreds of years of codified laws.  In the minds of 
tens of millions of people, she did own this land.  It was hers 
to do with as she wanted.

Clever way for her to go about this....

    Yoko clenched her fist around the papers.  The burst into

They

Nicely done, with some good character development. This series is
getting more suspenseful by the chapter; can't wait to see what happens
next.


Gary Kleppe
http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics