Heyho,

Well, now that I've finally got other things out of the way, I can get back to some much belated C&C.  It's amazing: take a few weeks vacation, and all these series just leap ahead....

Not expecting to find too much to criticize here, though.  Aside from not being all great of a grammatician myself, you're prose is always quite sharp; and I've never considered it my place to comment on style--after all, it's your story.

Well, with that public service announcement out of way, here we go:

While this part carries a LIME tag, please be advised that it is lime with
yellow edges, ie, the passages making a LIME tag necessary,  push the limits

Heh.  No worries.  I'm not a big fan of tagging, period, so no protest from me on this point.

I expect to ship Part 9 out to Pre-Readers tomorrow, possibly as late as
Wednesday. I know I promised it a day earlier, but I am still having a few
problems dealing with Kodachi.

<grin>  Don't we all?  I've never written her.  Not sure that I can....

       No insult of Koyama-sensei or the Toshin-ryuu is
intended by mentioning them in this story.

I'll pretend I know what that is, and nod sagely. ^_-

This is good for it allows us to ignore the distant boom-box
or the smell of automobile exhaust until they present an
actual hazard to our well-being. It is bad because we fail to

Maybe a comma after 'good'; it's a bit combersome otherwise, IMO.

hear all of the music having become inured to noise. We fail

Loose suggestion: maybe flipping that around, 'It is bad because, having become inured to the noise, we fail to hear all the music,' might sound better.  Not sure, really....

       Ranma Saotome's senses did not become much sharper
because he was now a dragon part of the time. What had

Um... Ranma's a dragon part of the time?  Gosh, I guess I _did_ miss a lot.  Last I remember, he was eating lots of tofu and Shampoo had a new bike!

Retired ambulances could always be
had for bargain prices in Japan. Virtually no one wanted
anything to do with something a person might have died in.
Elderly Japanese would often refuse to even ride to a
hospital in one.

I think somebody commented on this.  It might not be a necessary aside.  A little overly-informative past the first sentence.  Then again, Crighton doesn't mind stopping a story for huge lengths of exposition, and he sells more than I can even dream of, so what do I know?

place was spacious and relaxing. There was a pine near the

Maybe place 'tree' after pine.

[...]

       Onna-Ranma chuckled at her, then wobbled out of the
room in search of the furo. He had to use the wall for
support more than once.

Nice scene between Ranma and Akane.  I'm not a big fan of using the 'onna', but different people abide by different conventions; I'm just being nitpicky.  The description of the house was evocative, too.

supervisor once she got back. Probably even more fun than
tormenting the Happosai.

'the' Happosai?  <grin>  Sounds like a slightly dodgy title!

searching. It was hidden from easy view, being hidden in a
closet. It was one of the old-fashioned gas heaters with a

Bit of a repetition there (of hidden).  Maybe 'being placed in a closet', or buried, or concealed, or... well, you know.

       "Shit!" Onna-Ranma whispered to himself. "It's gonna
take this thing an hour or more to heat up that much water. I
may as well make tea and get breakfast started."

'I may as well' sounds a bit elevated or polite for Ranma.  Unless he's changed in the chapters I've missed....

       He rummaged around until he found a small saucepan,
ran about a cup of water into it at the sink, then set it
onto the stove to heat.

[...]

Once the soup was started, he put a block of
tofu out on the counter so that it could warm up a bit.

[...]

       The water in the large kettle was finally hot enough

[...]

without quickly boiling away, and made his way back to his
and Akane's room.

A very long and detailed passage.  This isn't necessarily a criticsm--it reminds me of similar scenes by, say, Hemmingway--and no one's made me crave a in-the-rough cooked blueberry pancake than he has.  But I also know it's not everybody's cup of tea; the elaborate details of how Ranma turns on a heater or boils some tea, might put some readers off.

       "Oh, come on, Akane," Onna-Ranma said, not believing
Ryouga could think of such a thing on his own. "Ryouga
wouldn't up make something like that!"

You know, that's actually a good suggestion.  Never occured to me for some reason.  Well, the flashbacks in the manga in anime make it a pretty sure think, but it _could_ all be a lie--assuming Ryouga was actually bright enough to think of something like that.

"Trouble he could never have started because he
couldn't have found out how without listening to me while I
talked to my cute little pet pig."

This sentence is a little awkward.  I'd say that's fine--Akane is upset, so stumbling on her words--but the previous and preceeding sentence are normal.

       "I suppose we did," Akane said. "I should have seen
through him and it's not like either of us went out of our
way to get along."

Maybe a comma after 'him'.  Er, maybe....

       "Okay, I promise, but I will never forgive him, Ranma.
Think of him as your friend if you want, but I'll never trust
him or like him ever again. He was always acting oh-so-very-
noble and superior to you, yet he was deceiving me about
being P-chan all that time. He was taking advantage of both
of us. Neither of us deserved that kind of treatment from
him, the bastard!"

Well, fair enough, and maybe she's not telling every reason she now hates the guy--but Akane has to be about the most forgiving person in the series.  I just can't see her maintaining this anger for more than... well, ten minutes, really.  She rarely even stayed angry with Ranma for very long, before.

       Akane's eyes remained very hard as she stared at Onna-
Ranma. Then slowly, as seconds seemed to tick by at the rate
of one per millennium, they began to soften a little. Not
much, but enough to make Onna-Ranma breathe a sigh of relief.

Aw, see!  I knew she couldn't stay mad! <grin>

       "Is that a proposal?"
       Ranma froze in his tracks.
       "I love you, Akane. Would you marry me, scales, claws,
chaos, curse and all?" he asked, staring into her eyes.

[...]

       "Where is what? My scales?"
       "The ring, silly!"

It's a nice scene, and cute--but this kinda sticks out as a bit odd.  I mean, it's a pretty major thing, right?  If he's serious (and it doesn't seem like something they'd joke about), it just seems like it deserves a little more focus than this--and shouldn't go away with a little joke.  Well, just my opinion, anyway.  But it does add a major element to an otherwise fairly light-hearted scene (after they got over the Ryouga stuff, anyway).

       "How can you ask that?" Akane said, sounding a bit
frustrated. "After we ... after we ... "

"after we... after we..." What?  Played tick-tac-toe together?  Baked a cake?  WHAT? ;)

       They both fell fast asleep within in minutes.

Either 'within' or 'in'.  <grin>  Guess you were distracted by the sordidness of the scene... <grin>

       "No," Nodoka said, sounding puzzled. "I thought you
had done all this. I just walked in here."

Maybe just 'puzzled' (dropping the 'sounding'.)  It's thusfar from Nodoka's POV, so she ought to know whether she's puzzled or not.

       Nodoka closed her eyes in relief as all her internal
alarms suddenly went silent. Ranma's behavior was perfectly
acceptable if he were simply taking care of his fiancee. That
was VERY MANLY of him, even if doing all the other work he
had done the kitchen was going a bit overboard. As her blood
pressure dropped back down to normal levels....

Very intense woman, isn't she?  I agree with this take on her (though I write her somewhat differently myself).  She's just this side of being a right nutter.

       "Oh, well that's no problem, dear," Nodoka said
relieved to have something other than her son's manliness to

Commas a bit odd here.  Maybe one after 'Oh, well'; certainly one after 'Nodoka said'.

       Nodoka nodded her head at Kasumi and the pair of the
wandered about the grand old house together, looking for the

'and the pair of the' is odd....

       "Just tell them to prepare to for a student beginning

'prepare to for a student....'  Something got letf behind....

       "I'm home!" Nabiki called out as she changed from
shoes to slippers in the foyer.
       "Welcome back, Nabiki!" Soun Tendo called back.

See, for instance, here you avoid the convention of using the whole 'taidama!' routine (which, in my opinion, is good).  That's why I can't understand why you use other spot usages as 'onna' (which I can still kinda understand) or 'ke'--as in Tendo-ke.

       "No, nothing like that, Nabiki-kun," Genma said in his
rumbling voice. "This is will be a much more important
ceremony than a wedding."

'This is will be'--something left over.

       [Think of the naginata as a full-length sword on the
end of a wooden shaft some two meters long. Neither the
naginata nor the yari is ordinarily thrown at an opponent
during battle.]

I dunno.  An aside like this really throws the reader out of the story.  Certainly, not everybody's going to know what a naginata is, but being in the middle of dialogue, it's hard to slip in a description.  Not sure how to adjust it, but I think the aside is probably better left out....

       "Just a hundred meters or so," Ranma said with a grin.
"My legs were shorter then. People in Hiroshima understand.
They just kind of grin at you when you run by 'em naked."

<grin>  Nice.  I can understand--a buddy once used some of that Deep Ice muscle soothing stuff after a workout, and still had some on his hands when he scratched the wrong place.  He spent the next ten minutes rolling around on the ground in pain, crying and laughing at his own stupidity.

       "Eeeyaah!" Akane shouted. "I'll bet you are really
enjoying this, aren't you?"

I'd contract the 'you are'--if she's in the throes of a massage, you are is a bit elevated....

she wanted him! Oh, God! She wanted to spread her legs and
pull him down between them and feel that hard, rippling belly
of his pressed up against her own.

Woah!  Down Akane!  Down!  <grin>

       Ranma grinned evilly then plucked Akane's left breast
with his lips.

Oh oh!  Careful-He'd hate to get some of that oil in his mouth!

her voice. "I can't stay up with him anymore. I'm getting

Maybe 'keep up with him'

on for much longer, provided you don't lose your head and so
something stupidly heroic."

'lose your head and do'?

       "I'm fine, Ranma," Akane said, doing her best to get
her breath back under control. "I was having a weird dream
and I sort of got scared when I woke up and you weren't
here."

It was all just a dream?  I dunno--I figured that, since I missed a few previous chapters, that this was a recurring flash-forward technique being used.  It was nice, but a little... long, maybe.  Or detailed, for just a dream.

       It's karma! Akane thought to herself. This letter is
what the dream was about! If I don't train hard enough, I'll
be left behind. Neither Ranma nor I will have a choice. Ranma
is destined to live a hard, adventurous life and if I am to
be part of it, I have to be as good as he is! I must be able
to follow him move for move! Otherwise, he will  have to
leave me behind and I'll have to let him go.

Ah, gotcha.  Details make a bit more sense, now.

       "I sure hope the kami watch over us, Akane, 'cause
we're gonna need all the help we can possibly get."

       "That's not a problem, Ranma," Akane murmured into his
shoulder. "They already watch us like hawks."

Heh.  Nice line--good chapter!  And, gosh, long--took me longer than I expected to C&C.  Hope this helps somewhat!

-Mike Noakes

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