Catching up on some backlog... As always, all comments are merely the
opinions of one cranky reader who doesn't like much anyway. :-P

Hey, at least you get points for bravery! Didn't think anyone would touch 
this thing. :)

       "Oh, hello there," the eldest Tendo daughter said to the soaking
wet girl in the red chinese shirt. "Who are you?"

Be on the lookout for repetitive descriptions. You've got the same
phrase "soaking wet" here as well as a couple paragraphs before.

Eh, one or two instances like this always slip by me. Normally I watch for 
that sort of thing. I'll vary up the word use.

        "Wahhh!" Ranma lost her balance as she was pulled foreward, the
other girl falling backwards. Ranma grabbed Kasumi around the waist and
attempted to soften the fall.

       *Whump!* *Goosh!*

IMO, a prose description (even a very abbreviated one) would work better
here than just sound effects.

I'll consider it. I just couldn't think of one good enough, so I wimped out. 
Thought underuse of words was better than overuse.

       "Kasumi, who's at the do-" Akane paused, taking in the scene of
her older sister moaning as she lay on the floor, a topless pig-tailed
girl half-draped over her and feeling her up.  "Oh no! Kasumi's being
molested!" Akane leapt into action. "I'll save you, Kasumi! Hyah!*

While I think the general idea here is a good one, using a humorous
misunderstanding to mislead Akane into violence, I think the jumping to
conclusion here is a bit much. You may want to add some more misleading
evidence, perhaps some conveniently mis-timed lines of dialog.

Sounds good. But I have to wonder what Akane would think to come in and see 
her older sister on the ground and being groped by a stranger. I'll see 
about adding some more "fuel to the fire", or toning the violence down.

       *Wham!*

        The golf swing was perfect, even though Akane did not play
golf. She was proficient with her mallet, however.

The mallet is a sight gag generally equivalent to bapping someone in
anger. I'd recommend you don't use it in a case such as this one where
she's making what's meant to be a serious attack against a (possibly)
dangerous opponent.

I'l consider it. I usually don't like using the mallet(since I feel the 
concept is so overdone it's lost it's humor), but in this case I thought I 
could get away with it. Maybe I could change it to a different object, or 
just have Akane grip and toss Ranma away.

       "Hey, what didja do that for!?" Ranma demanded to know as she
pulled herself out of the wall, scowling at the gi-clad girl who had
knocked her into it. "You psycho or something?"

       "You were molesting my sister, you bimbo!"

And the insult here seems a bit precipitous. In the early manga, Akane
had motivations for being hostile towards Ranma: his beating her in
combat pretending to be a girl, seeing her in the shower, not to mention
the threat of the engagement. None of this applies here.

Hmmm, thought the motivation was good enough, myself, but maybe I'll drop 
the last two words.

        Akane and Kasumi blinked, not prepared for that pronouncement.
They looked the strange girl up and down with identical expressions that
seemed to suggest their guest could use a straight jacket.

strait-jacket.

Easy fix.

       "And put your shirt back on!" came the shouted commanded from

command

Easy fix here, too.

        The boy's punches and kicks cracked like lightening, as he

lightning
("lightening" is the process of becoming less dark)

Argh. Why can't the spellchecker read my mind?

       "Uhh, sorry," Ranma replied, now in boy-form. He spied his pack

boy form.

Looks like I need to brush up on hyphen-use...

        Ranma rubbed the bumps on his head, while adjusting himself on
the pillow to ease the bruises. It's wasn't very easy, with the rope

It wasn't

Easy fix.

        Nabiki turned and smiled at the boy sitting next to her. "I'm
fine, Ranma. You came just in time." She turned back and glared at the
pig-tailed boy. No one had ever seen her nude before, and she was
decidedly unhappy about that.

NABIKI: Yes, I really wish people could've seen me nude long before now.

       "You can't be Ranma," Akane told the cursed boy. "He's Ranma,
Kasumi's fiance. And at least he's not as perverted and rude like you."

Suggest: not perverted and

(Presumably she doesn't think Faux Ranma is perverted at all. ^_^;;)

Well, she didn't think Ryu was a pervert in the manga, and he also doesn't 
turn into a girl. :)

       "Now, now Nabiki, it would seem we have a genuine problem," Soun
informed everyone, then turned to the bound pig-tailed boy. "And if you
really are Ranma Saotome, then you must marry one of my daughters to
inherit the dojo! There's Kasumi, 19, though she's currently engaged to
the other Ranma. Nabiki is 17, and Akane is 16. Pick one of my two
younger daughters, and she'll be your fiancee!"

Suggest writing out the numbers in words, e.g., nineteen rather than 19.

Gotcha.

As this is a bit precipitous of Soun, you may want to have some fun with
it. Maybe a little speech about what a good thing this is because two
engagements are better than one, or some such.

Heh, sounds good to me. I'll see what I can do.

        Akane had never seen Nabiki generate a battle aura before, nor
did she think Nabiki had the strength to pick up and slam the table down
on the bound pig-tailed boy. She shrugged.

       "Now that," the youngest Tendo stated, "he had coming."

He did, but did we? :)  Since this is Nabs rather than Akane, couldn't
she do something different, just for variety?

Probably. And I usually dislike repeating beginning things too much, too. 
Will see what I can come up with.

        Ranma froze. "Urk! Uh, no! I was just thinking about this
Amazon that chased us around China, trying to kill us!"

       "I wonder why," Akane drawled. "So, you do kempo?"

       "A little." A slight feeling of unease appeared in Ranma's
stomach.

        An eager look appeared in Akane's eyes, even while she assumed
a fighting stance. "Let's spar, then! Don't worry, I'll go easy on you."

You might want to develop a better reason why she does this. In the
manga, she felt sorry for Ranma (who she believed to be a girl),
something that seems unlikely to be true given the events we've seen
here so far, or at least needs to be developed more to be plausible.

Hmmm, don't know. Akane always struck me as one who would want to spar with 
guest martial artists, but that could just be that one OAV influencing me. 
Plus, I figured that she'd want to get a handle on how good Ranma is, since 
it looked like he'd be staying. I'll wait and see what others say, before 
deciding if and how I'm going to change this scene.

        Akane paused, surprised at the question. "What? Not really.
He's a nice guy, unlike someone else I could mention. And Kasumi seems
to really like him for some reason." She resumed fighting.

       "Well, you're older sister doesn't seem very bright, ya know?"

your
("you're" means "you are")

I think that's my second most common grammatical mix-up.

The insult here seems a little gratuitous. Ranma's certainly capable of
putting his foot in his mouth, but IMO he could do it in a more natural
way.

We'll see what I can do about this. It did strike me as a litle... off, but 
I couldn't see how else to word it at the time.

Ranam replied, leaning to the side to avoid a straight punch. "He could
be just using her. How much do ya know about him?"

        The pace of Akane's attacks accelerated. "Don't call Kasumi
stupid! And Ranma is very kind and gentle with her." She grit her teeth
as her opponent leapt over her mid-level kick. "And he actually fights
back when we spar! So why aren't you? Afraid you'd lose?"

        Ranma easily danced around a few more aggressive attacks.
"Well, if you even had a chance of actually touching me, I might
consider it."

       "Are you saying I'm slow?" Akane growled, as Ranma flipped over
her body.

       "No, that's not what I'm saying," Ranma countered, causing Akane
to pause. "Wait a minute, yes, that is what I'm saying!"

This bit was better done, IMO.

Good. I'd like to think I got at least some of this right. :)

        At any rate, he figured this other Ranma probably had something
to do with the fact that this family seemed to be a little upset at
himself. It wasn't like he hadn't tried to be nice. Ranma figured he

at him.

(Use "himself" only if he's both the subject and object of the verb,
e.g. Ranma was angry at himself.)

Sounds good, will fix.

just needed to confront this imposter, and then he could force the fraud
to reveal who he really was.

        Ranma was convinced this pretender was up to no good. After
all, if someone didn't have anything to hide, they would use their own

he would just use his own

Again, easy fix.

        Kasumi giggled, then leaned into him, resting her head on his
shoulder. "You are very sweet, Ranma-chan. I guess that's why I care
you, dearly."

why I care for you dearly.

Another easy fix.

        Ranma spit out dirt as stood back up. "What was that?"

as he stood

Fixed.

        Ranma frowned and dropped, sweeping his leg out and taking Ryu
off his feet. Before he could follow up on the advantage, however, his
opponent had kippup'ed back to his feet, now holding something in his

had what?

DAISUKE: I had the kippups yesterday. *kip* *kip* There I go again!

HIROSHI: No, idjit. It's like when you tell your friends to kippup, or
they'll be left behind.

I was never quite sure how to handle that word, so I didn't know whether I 
got it right. Maybe I'll change it a bit, to make it clearer.

        Before the really Ranma had realized what his adversary was up
to, he realized his arms were bound to his sides by thick rope.

Suggest you reword to get rid of one of the repeated "realized"s.

Gotcha.

       He began to chuckle, picturing his defeated foe on the ground,
while the Tendo's apologized for thinking he was the fake. The chuckle

Tendos

        He shakily stood back up. He was still quite sore from his
earlier bout with the fake Ranma, but felt he could still take this
clown. "Alright pal, you asked for it. You're gonna regret messing with

"All right, pal,

Hmmm, have to check the dictionary, but I believe you're right. Especially 
since this is a word I tend to use quite a bit.

        For several long moments, Ranma contemplated the blades of
grass before his eyes, marveling at how different they were close up.
Some had a darker shade of green, while others were different lengths.
There was even a ladybug perched atop one, staring at him. Ranma thought
that it looked it was laughing at him, but that was just on the
principal that it was female.

principle

Damn spellchecker again. ^_^

       "Multiple compound fractures, bruises, contusions, and internal
bleeding," The coroner replied, a small man in his late 30's by the name

30s
(or, preferably)
thirties

Second one sounds good.

of Yoshiro..

        Ohara whistled as he studied the girl. "Wow. She'd be quite a
looker without, without all those injuries. Wonder what got a hold of
her? A wild tiger or bear?" He looked over at the coroner. "So, what was
ultimately the cause of death?"

       "Good question," Yoshiro replied, leafing though a folder. "Took
us awhile to figure it out, but it turns out to be `blunt force trauma
to the head.'" He looked up. "Bascially, she was hit with a large object

Why would that take a while to figure out? ^_^;;;

YOSHIRO: The caved-in skull fooled us at first. We figured, termites.

Chalk it up to watching a lot of "Law & Order." Cause of death is usually 
not very evident sometimes, or is different that what is first suspected; 
that's one of the reasons for the autopsy. In Ranma's case, she's got so 
many injuries, that she could have die of blood loss, internal injuries, 
etc. before the blow to the head.

Then again, I did get this info off TV...

of considerable weight. Well, either that, or the wielder was pretty
strong."

       Ohara shook his head. "Shame. And she was such a looker, too.
Cute pigtail, too."

Hm. Well, I'm not gonna mallet you for it ^_^ but this ending didn't
really work for me. That, IMO, would require enough comic distance to
not feel sorry for Ranma when he essentially gets bumped off by author
fiat -- which in turn would mean either making what happens to him more
his own fault, or simply making the whole story enough of a farce or
spoof that nothing gets taken seriously. In general, I think you've done
a pretty good job of manuevering Ranma's more unappealing qualities into
play in this story, but it's not enough for this, IMO. (And without this
last bit, there isn't much of a sense of closure, as it just kinda
trails off.)

One idea would be to rework it into a "Ranma goes back in time and tries
to start over" story. You might need an alternative explanation of why
Genma is absent (as him being killed due to Ranma altering the timeline
would probably take the story in too angsty a direction and force Ranma
to reconsider what he's doing too soon), but Ranma's advance knowledge
would put him in a more powerful and hence less sympathetic position,
and the chances for humorous misunderstandings would abound as he starts
referring to things that the others don't know about yet.

Just an idea I'm throwing out; if it doesn't grab you, feel free to
likewise throw it out. :)

Well, this story was meant to be just a one-shot, though it could very well 
lend itself to many different directions. If Ranma doesn't die, he's 
essentially been seperated from Genma (who may not have died, but Ranma 
thinks he did; will change, to make more ambigous) the Amazons and Ukyo, and 
he'll probably be laid up for quite awhile. Could be set up for a "Ranma 
goes out and hooks up with another series" type of thing, without the 
overdone "Ranma leaves Genma during training trip, or during/after the 
Nekoken." Technically, he doesn't have any fiancees now, so nothing's 
holding him here except the need to beat Ryu. I won't continue this, but 
anyone is welcome to to do so.

I will rewrite and fix the errors, and try to make it a bit more believable; 
it sometimes takes me a few tries to get something right, anyway. I was 
afraid that it did cross the line slightly between humor and Ranma-bashing. 
I also should have labled it as more of a spamfic, but I don't think the 
humor element was good enough. Ah well, back to the drawing board.

However, I appreciate your time and input, Gary. Thanks!

Kai
www.geocities.com/kaiphantom2000
And like I said before, it was all Rak's idea! ^_^

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