Alan Harnum <harnums@thekeep.org> wrote:

    Thus, she had been freed.  The hurricane of wind and light 

suggest 'had been released' (you use 'free' two other times here).

    She saw Kuno stand and walk unsteadily forward, and hurried
to take his arm.  Suddenly, Akari began to scream at the top of
her lungs.

    "AWAKE!  HE IS AWAKE, I HAVE SEEN HIM, I HAVE FELT HIS HAND
UPON MY FLESH, HIS TOUCH UPON MY BODY, I HAVE GAZED INTO HIS 
FACE, INTO HIS TERRIBLE FACE, THE MOUTH THAT SWALLOWS THE STARS,
THE EYES THAT ARE THE CRUCIBLES OF WORLDS!  AWAKE HE IS, AND WE
ARE DOOMED, DOOMED!"

NABIKI: "Oh, shut up!" *WHAP* "I hate performance art!"

    Nabiki turned to stare at Kasumi and Kodachi.  She could
not, and never would be able to, say who had said what.  

Suggest 'tell who had' to avoid the say/said repetition.

    Slowly, she turned at the familiar voice, and saw Ukyou
running towards them, closely trailed by Konatsu.  Was absolutely
_everybody_ Ranma had every met going to show up?

Yeah, except for Azusa Shiratori, who doesn't appear until the final
scene where she saves everyone. And what about da Principal kahuna?

    "No, no more," Kodachi echoed.
    
    Yamiko ripped her stomach open.

This mention seems oddly quick and matter-of-fact. Seems like it should
be either more detailed, or less direct if Nabiki is suppressing her
perception of it.

    Herb watched the sword descend as if in slow motion, 
well aware his death was in it.  Whoever - or whatever - he was 

Whomever

    Nabiki.  Sardonic, sarcastic, cruel, selfish Nabiki.  Who
she loved, who she had to love, because she was her sister.  

    Dead.

"Now maybe I'll get some of my clothes back!"

    But the fear passed in a moment, because two things occurred 
to her.  The first was that she was already dead, and if she
could face that, she didn't need to be afraid of what was beyond.
The second was that this truly was the way to make it all up.  To
everyone.  Even if they never knew it, the action would be
enough.

Nice to see Nabsy given a chance to make amends -- though if I had the
choice I'd prefer something more concrete and less symbolic. "All I have
to do is blow into a horn when someone tells me to? Wow, if I'd known
redemption was THIS easy...." :-)

This seems pretty typical for WUE, actually... the real battle is
between cosmic superpowers beyond comprehension, and the best our heroes
can do is to facilitate the benevolent ones. Kind of a mixed blessing...
on the one hand, it gives a sense of awe, but on the other, it takes a
good part of the dramatic decision-making away from the main characters.

    I am Nabiki. 
    
    You are loved.
    
    I am.
    
    You are loved.
    
    I.
    
    You are loved.

And there was no more I. Nicely done.

    Nodoka left him crying quietly by his middle daughter's 
still body, and stood up so that she could check on others.  
Ukyou would not survive for long, if she wasn't already dead -
the blow would have severed her spine.  But Akari was all right,
or at least she had been before the fighting had begun.

Did you mean to say 'or at least as all right as she had been....' ?

    It fell, and, as it fell, the rain began to fall.  The touch
of that gentle precipitation had more effect upon the foe than
anything he had done ever had.  A raindrop fell upon the one
closest to him, and it began to dissolve.  Its scaly flesh slid
off its bones like water, and for a second a skeleton and its
malformed, pumping organs stood upright.  Then the bones, and all
else, dissolved into water, and drained away into the earth.

    All around him, he saw it happening, and as it became clear
to him that soon there would be nothing left for him to kill, the
rage gave way at least to grief.  Tears falling down his face, he
turned and walked back past the dying of the enemy towards where
Bai and Shampoo lay.

This feels too abrupt -- the rain comes, and right away the whole
fight's over. IMO, you really need to expand this part and make it more
suspenseful and climactic; first show our heroes about to be
overwhelmed, then the rain starting, and then the monsters start to
smoulder (or whatever) and finally bite the big one.

    "Some die young, and some die old, some die hot, and some
die cold."

    It escaped her lips involuntarily, an old children's rhyme.

A children's rhyme about death? Geez, I guess they don't believe in
letting youth enjoy their innocence. :)

    "Guess so," Ukyou replied, surprised at how weak and thin
her voice sounded.  "Should I not be?"

    A round face harried by exhaustion and an obvious lack of
sleep peered down at her, beneath a brown cap patched darkly by
the rain.  "No pulse, no breath, pale as snow, and now you 
talking to me.  Very strange story."

Fortunately, the Guide had brought a supply of Huoderenniquan water with
him....

    "I would have liked to know you better," he said quietly.  
Another memory about the rain - no one can see you crying in it.

Suggest 'no one could see'

    "Nabiki is not the only one who has died," she said in a low
voice.  "Look down and see how many greave for their dead on that

grieve, I think you mean. A greave is... um... something else.

battlefield."  She pointed at the bodies of the guards from the 
Musk Clan who had accompanied them.  "Look at these men who gave 
their lives in our protection.  Do you see them rising up again?  
And my son - there is still no sign of my son.  We all grieve, 
Soun, but it mustn't consume us."

    He reached up, and touched the red mark her hand had left
upon his cheek.

    "You're right, of course," he replied dully.  "You're
always right."

"Oh, good! Because I've decided that my son isn't manly after all, you
see, and...."

    "The rain must end before the sun comes again, Lord of
Waters," said the Lady of Life.  "These shapes we bear are
borrowed, and you must help them to return once we are done.  You
are blessed in all our names now, and our mark is upon you.  The
rain is yours to end, not ours."

    He closed his eyes.  "And then what?"
    
    A gentle hand touched his brow.  "Bright the duty, dark the
call, towards the oldest one of all."

"Go see Cologne. Right."

    He could not say which hand, that of Life or Death, had
touched him then.  It did not matter, he realized.  He perceived
them as sisters, and they showed themselves as such, because it
was one way that was true.  There were more.

Um... come again? I don't understand those last two lines.

    "You killed my mother," he said, low and cold.  "You tried
to kill my sister, and yet she lived."     

"My name is Kuno Montoya...."

    Night had fallen, and the funeral pyres, so many that they
seemed to mirror the stars, burned as though to drive back the
darkness.  Akane squeezed him, gently, and rested her head
against her father's chest.  "I wish she was here too, daddy."

Daddy (caps)

    She herself wished Ryoga was here, but he'd wanted to be

'Ryoga were here' would be grammatically correct.

    Nearby, Happosai's hands were clenched in fists at his side.
"Stupid old man, damn old man, you could have saved her, you
should have been there, damn fool..."

    And then she was in Nodoka's arms, and Ranma's mother said

Suggest 'in the arms of Nodoka, who said....' Personal preference, I
suppose, but I like to minimize the use of this kind of
referring-to-the-same-character-by-two-different-handles thing.

    "<Journey easy.  The battle is done.>"  A multitude of
torches reflected in the mountain stream, as the ashes of another
Joketsuzoku joined those floating or sinking within the shallow
depths.  The Musk and the Phoenix had gathered their dead - they
had rituals of their own to perform.  This was the Joketsuzoku's,
way the quick flame of the funeral pyre and the offering to the 
water.

Think the comma should be after 'way,' not before.

    Shampoo stepped back from the rocky banks, shaking the last
of Hui Shu's ashes from her fingers and into the water.  The girl
had been two years younger, and she hadn't known her well, but
she had seen her fall and die to an enemy spear.  All along the
dark banks of the river, other Joketsuzoku, at least a hundred 
scattered the ashes of more fallen warriors.  The slow drift of 

Need a comma after hundred, I think.

the stream carried the remains along its flow, towards the
underground, eventually to the sea.

    So many dead, and so many who should have died.  From what
she understood, only the very recently slain - perhaps those who
had been lingering between this world and the next - had risen 
with the rain.  It seemed neither right nor fair that seem would

seem -> some

live who should have died, when so many others lay dead.  But
fairness, rightness... neither of those things were a part of
this world.

    Ceremony done, the Joketsuzoku began to move away from the
river, down the mountain and back towards their temporary camp.
In the morning, they would make the journey back to the village.
There had already been scattered reports from scouts.  Crops
destroyed, livestock slaughtered, homes destroyed.  It would be a
lean, hard winter, that was soon to come.

This sentence reads awkward to me. Maybe if you took out the comma after
winter.

    "<How do you feel?>" Bai asked, after they'd walked together
in silence for a few seconds.  The closest Joketsuzoku were 
beyond the range of hearing any quiet talk.

    "<Guilty,>" Shampoo answered honestly.  "<What made us
worthy, and not them?>"

Being series regulars, of course. ^_^

I'll have to reserve judgement on this until the next part, but my
feeling right now is that if you're gonna kill some of the regulars,
they should stay dead.

    "<The gods only know,>" Bai replied, with a ghost of a 
smile.  "<Perhaps it was merely luck.>"

    A few small pebbles rolled underfoot, and clattered down the
slope to disappear into the encroaching darkness.  They could see
the camp fires now, and the shadowy shapes of tents pitched down

Campfires should be one word, I think.

    He flicked the reins once, and the horse canted into the air
as if ascending a gentle slope.  Its hooves made no sound as it 
left the ground, nor any at is walked upon empty air.

any as it

    Akane cried out.  They merged into one.  The sea rolled over
them.  Salt stung her eyes, and she wept.  He kissed her eyes,
lips brushed lashes damp with tears.  The light filled the room
like gentle rain, like the rain falling on the bloody field...

And Ranma gets some action....

Looking forward to the exciting conclusion!


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

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