I have to admit, I didn't like this fic. Not because of the unrealistic setting,
although I thought that Trakal in this case thought of a scenario that might work
on the North American continent (especially a regional town that is some distance
from a major population centre), transplanting it to Nerima. It is not often
obvious from the series that Nerima is actually a section of Tokyo (like
Manhattan is of New York).

What I objected to was the sheer choppiness of this fic. Nothing was gone into in
depth, no motivations were explained, and no consequences were dealt with.

Who was Foam? She claimed to be the first leader of the Amazons, but surely there
would be legends told about the First Amazon in the Amazon village? That Mousse
would accept a leader who *claimed* to be an Amazon I can accept, but not
somebody saying: "I'm an Amazon, don't worry that you've never heard of me before
in your life, follow me". And especially not such an legendary leader.

Ranma isn't consistent either. He is determined to get Ryouga well, then he lets
Ryouga go on a suicide mission. He makes no real effort to break Ryouga out of
his depression, and then suddenly he claims to be in love with the man. Ryouga is
convinced of Ranma's love for Akane in the series; it's one of the reasons he
fights him. We are not shown anything that could sway Ryouga's belief in this
during this fic, yet Ryouga simply accepts Ranma's love.

Ryouga's behaviour, if we accept that he's in major shock and depression from his
experiences and the consequences, is believable. People can do anything when they
can't think. But he makes some decisions of his own, which makes his acceptance
of others' decisions less believable.

The effort to give Dr. Toufu a personality is commendable; but I don't think that
a healer could make the decisions that Toufu does here. A healer's first
obligation and most serious vow is to preserve life. For Toufu to propound and
*permit* a suicide plan is directly in contravention of this vow. I cannot see it
happening. Also, he appears to have a time machine; the last I heard, an AIDS
test takes three days to work.

I know very little of the military. I cannot comment on the military aspect of
this fic. But I dislike the *writing* here. It is entirely third-person observer,
and while that style worked in "The Lottery", this story is too long and complex
to work well in it. A lot of the action is happening inside the characters'
heads, so we need to know what the characters are thinking. Also, many aspects
that could have been worked with were not. A nice scene could have been Toufu
completing the blood examination and debating internally whether or not to tell
an already depressed and suicidal Ryouga the bad news.

All in all, I consider this more an *outline* of what could be a deeply moving
and very angsty fic than a fic in itself. If Trakal takes it back, fills out its
bare bones and works on the military aspect, I anticipate a strong and powerful
tale that would really knock us all for six.

Raye