DB Sommer wrote:

% Here's my little C+C

And thank you for it!

Back when I first came to this place, I was brought in for a similar
interview.  He told me to sit "anywhere I felt comfortable."  Looking
around at the furniture--the old overstuffed sofa by the wall, the high
hardbacked chair near the door, the two folding metal chairs--I decided
I was being tested, that each seat had a list of diagnoses to be applied
if I sat in it.

% Which may very well have been true, given the diversity of the seating
arrangement.

As it happens, it wasn't--he just wanted his patients to feel that they
had a choice.
 

I remember Eriko, and a deep wave of shame breaks over me.  Bully.
Arrogant.  Selfish.  Vain.  I make a motion towards my purse, but
realize I don't have my medication.  It's not time anyway.

% Yes. She must be careful not to use it as too much of a crutch, which
seems to be what's happening in these early stages of the fic.

Hm.  On the one hand, she does tend to want to gulp her pills whenever
she gets scared.  On the other hand, people with mental problems who
neglect their medication tend to get into trouble.

Of course, I'm deliberately being vague on what exactly her disorder is.
. . .

A few more turns, another street.  Must I lie to him?  It seems the
only way.  Perhaps begging might achieve something, but I can thing

% think

<sigh> I caught this and corrected this *immediately* after sending the
message. . . .

of
no other useful alternative.  I turn my attention to what lie I will
use.

% I recommend: Did you know that Akane and the pig-tailed girl have
checked themselves into the mental hospital I was in? If you hurry, they
might admit you too.

<snort> I'm not sure even Tatchi would buy that one.

Silence descends.  Akane smiles again, but there's no charm in it.
It's a dishonest smile, a covering smile.  The other girl stares moodily
at a clump of weeds.

% Nice to see that Kodi's still very aware of people and their behaviors.

I smile back, equally falsely.

% equally falsely sounds awkward. How about: I smile back just as falsely.

How about not.  I'm trying to make Kodachi's narration a little
mannered.  

"Not me."  Girl-Ranma looks away.

"What's going on?  Oh I see."  I guess Ranma--boy-Ranma--was right
after all.  "Does your fianc� know about you two?"

% Hehehehe. What a very logical and incorrect conclusion.

It's fun having Kodachi put two and two together and get three point
eight.
 

"Oh, my," I gasp.  My vision turns dark and I slump forward.

Movement.  I am being cradled, and I feel motion.  My head is resting
against someone.  Someone's shoulder.  Damp.

I raise my eyelids slowly.  Ranma is carrying me.  I nestle closer and
close my eyes again.

% Heh. Kodachi, ever the opportunist.

I've tried to make her sympathetic, but I want to avoid nominating her
for sainthood.  This version is easier to get along with, but she still
looks out for number one.

Ranma is setting me down now.  No, please.  My arms curl around his
neck, but someone pushes them away.  They lay me down on a sleeping mat,
on my side.  I curl up like a child.

I open my eyes.  There's a man playing shogi with a panda.  The panda
is cheating.  I roll the other way.

% Hehehehe. I love that little bit with Genma, too.

Everybody seems to like that one.

Ranma is here, the _real_ Ranma, and Akane, and someone else, a young
woman I do not know.  She has a ponytail and the sort of pleasant,
placid expression used by automatic elevator girls.

% Heh. Interesting comparison, though I think Kasumi showed a little
character in these early days of the series.

You think I should have her show character and then stop?

Actually, I originally had Kodachi speculate about Kasumi's real
feelings,
but I removed it as being insufficiently me-oriented.

I find it
comforting and familiar, and focus on her as she offers me tea.

"Yes please."

% "Yes, please."   I think.

Right.

I must be having a psychotic break.  But it's strange--there are none
of the feelings of fear or pent-up frenzy that I associate with the
disease.  It's a pleasant, drifting feeling.  I thought a break with
reality would be terrifying, but I feel lucid and calm.

% Perhaps that makes it all the worse?

Ever play GURPS?

Delusion:  I am suffering from a delusion (-15)

I keep smiling at Ranma, nodding vaguely. He's talking about Akane now,
how his father and her father forcibly engaged them.  He doesn't want to
marry the "tomboy."

"Oh, and who'd want to marry you, you pathetic shape-shifting pervert!"
Akane interjects.  I hadn't realized she was back, but there she is,
fists set on hips, glaring at him.

"Well, I think he's wonderful," I say, turning my attention back to
Ranma.

% Oh yeah! Stroke that ego and get on his good side. ^_^

Schoolgirl Love.  

"I have to go!" I blurt.

% blurt out,'  sounds better to me.

Wrong. . . .
 

arriving, I head up to my room, swallow the pills, and lie down.
Calm descends, along with the accompanying leadenness and stomach
discomfort.  Why does my madness feel better than my sanity?  It's not
fair.

% It never is. I like that question, BTW.

Rising, I make my

% Needs a word there.'way' perhaps?

Right. 

Head whirling, I sit on the bed.  Two thoughts war in my mind.  The
first is that the other Tendo girl, that Nabiki creature, must have
visited my brother while I was gone.  She certainly is persistent, I'll
say that much for her.  The second is that if this female Ranma is
simply a manifestation of my illness, how is it that my brother has a
picture of her?

% The camera was suffering from the same delusion?

"I'm crazy!  Crazy, I tell you!"
 

I trail off.  It has suddenly struck me that my brother has decorated
his room in early Akane Tendo.

% Hehehehe. There are some really good lines mixed in with this serious,
high quality fic.

Thank you.

"Huh?"  Where did that come from?

"Well, you said . . ."

"Oh, silly me."  I giggle cutely, but it comes out a horrible mad
cackle and rings through my ears.  "I mean she wants you.  To see her, I
mean.  Akane.  Akane wants you to come and look at her because . . .
because she likes that.  When you look at her."

% Nice recovery.

Except that she wasn't recovering. . . . 

Choking down panic, I
press my lips together before I say something even more stupid.

% Nonono. He likes listening to things that he wants to hear. After all,
he's so good at shutting out the things he doesn't.

"Akane likes it when you look at her?"  Yeah, I can see how he'd want to
hear that.  Although perhaps not as much as "Akane wants you."
 

"We don't want to hurt you," says the other, as if that mattered
somehow.

I cast about the room, looking for a weapon,

% A good idea. Kunou should be able to handle to 'normal' people with
little effort.

I had to fudge a little on Kodachi's flashback to her own capture, in
chapter two.  I hope I made up for it here.
 

but the place is nearly
unfurnished.  There are some chairs, two snack machines humming to
themselves,

% a long ribbon, a razor hoop, nothing of any real use.

Oh, behave.

and a row of pay telephones.  I curse my lack of
forethought.

"Please?"  I glance behind his shoulder.  "Akane?" I say.

% Ah, one of the oldest tricks in the books.

He turns to look--

% But it still works.

he can't help it.

If Tenchi can fool Ryoko, Kotchi can certainly fool her brother. <grin>

They prepare papers, which I sign.  As I scrawl "Kuno, Kodachi," the
music changes.  Most would not think anything of it, but I know what the
song is about.  It's about striving, about the beauty of attempting
perfection, even if one fails, and it is sung my

% by

Uh, yeah.
 

a man who is utterly,
utterly mad.  Somehow I

% Somehow, I

I think, but am not absolutely certain.

Mmm.  I think so too.
 

take my leave politely and find my way to the
door.

Farewell, my brother.  Be well.  Perhaps someday, you will emerge
healed, with your spirit straight and fine instead of bent like that old
man.  Perhaps you will find reality as bracing as the samurai past you
are so fond of.  Perhaps you will even win the love of that sweet
Dulcinea you adore so.

Dulcineas.  Well.

I walk.

% As always, too good, too short and too long a wait in-between.

I'll try to write faster and sloppier, then.
 

D.B. Sommer

-- David