Bert Miller wrote:

Another wonderful installment!
 

    Very kind of you to say so, Bert.

Rei, Minako and Usagi enjoyed each other's company
   

Still the master of euphemism, I see
 

    Why, I'm certain I don't know what you mean <innocent>.

"You two?" she spat.  "You scared us out of our wits!"
   

Huh.  You _said_ we'd found out the cause of this
disturbance early in the next chapter, but despite the
fact that I expected a false alarm, I was expecting
more to it than THIS.
 

    Sorry.  I guess it just became more sigfnificant than I intended 
because of the long wait.

They were like some sort of action/adventure shampoo
   

commercial.

Heh.  Nice simile.  No capitalization?  :)
 

    Nope.  But I still give good simile.

   ami?
   I'm here, rei. 
   

I liked this section.  I think the style must have
been a bit of an experiment for you, but if so, I
would consider it a success.
 

    Glad to hear it.  I don't like to do this sort of thing too much, 
because I find it just becomes a distraction, but I thought this scene 
called for something to set Ami and Rei's rapport apart.

"She's talking about the reaction between Jupiter's
lightning and Banri
   

Nice reminder that the fake Banri, made by Wynneth and
presumably expected to be present at the ceremony, opens 
a gate into Shadow when sufficient energy is applied to
it.

Of course, this is purely a coincidence and has NOTHING
to do with Wynneth's plan...  ;)
 

    <innocent> Are you ... insinuating something?  KnowhatImean, squire?

   "Aw, come on," Artemis scoffed.  "The
Inquisition?  That's tinfoil hat stuff."
   "No," Neptune murmured.  "It's not."
   

Heh.  I like it.  Underlining that Alieva, or at least
her followers, can be just as bad as Dasma's.  (And in
the process adding to the probability that my guess for
the voice behind Wynneth is correct...)
 

   I see the temple hierarchy as being a tangle of often conflicting 
interests resulting in alliances of political expediency and a whole lot 
of black bag backstabbing.  All out of the public eye, of course.  
Dasma's bunch mostly reserve their worst for Alieva's, and vice versa.  
Without political clout, though, the Sisterhood can't entice any of the 
other orders to lend them assistance.  It sucks when your patron goddess 
is frozen in crystal ...

  

Nobody expects the Alieva Inquisition, because their
chief weapon is surprise!
 

    Surprise and fear!

    Unfortunately, the luck waiting for 
them was all bad.
   

Not sure what you intended here, but I read this as an
unwelcome authorial intrusion.  Suggest instead just
leaving this sentence out, or something like
"Unfortunately, their luck lately had been all bad."
 

    You're right, looking at it now, that line is stagy and entirely 
unnecessary.  Onto the trash heap with it.

    Tuxedo Mask lay on his back, arms
flung out to the sides.  His
   

<clip>
 

The numbing horror she'd felt at her first
glimpse of this wicked tableau was finally
fading, dissipating quickly in the face of
a rising fury unlike any she'd ever felt.
   

An amazing amount of the Sailor Moon anime consists of
Moon either defending Mamo-chan against competing women
or, more often, regaining his love after a brainwashing.
Given the mores in your world, had your Moon led a less
sheltered life, one might have expected that she'd have
encountered a similar scene in the latter part of her
fight against Beryl, when Beryl, remembering the
infatuation she'd had with him back in the Silver
Millenium, brainwashes him.

Alternatively, you could have Moon recollect that she
DID, in fact, see such a thing back then, and that this
is one reason she wasn't as sheltered and pristine as
Mars had imagined.
 

    As to your first point, it is something of a running joke just how 
easy it is to brainwash Mamoru.  Any half-decent villainess could wave a 
pocket watch and having him eating out of her hand in two shakes.  This 
scene was less about him, though, than it was about her.  I did want to 
show that for all that she is still that slightly bumbling, good-natured 
girl, Usagi is also the White Moon Princess, and she has grit where it 
counts.

    As for Beryl, Usagi never caught her boyfriend in flagrante delicto 
with her.  Although Beryl might have enjoyed rubbing Moon's nose in it, 
getting caught in the act by an angry White Moon Princess is far less 
perilous for a succubus than for a witch like her.  Although, come to 
think of it, the end result was the same.

Punishment from the Crimson Queen, nearly
drove me mad
   

surplus comma there
 

    D'oh.

    One of Maia's dagger-like nails had
cut a line through her fishnet
   

I enjoyed the battle between Moon and Maia.  Nice work.
 

    Thank you.  It was fun to write.  I had one or two people tell me 
they thought that Yoshi would show up and save her, but that was never 
my intention.  I wanted to show that, no matter how much Usagi depends 
on those she loves, she is still worthy of her title.

    As Moon cast about for her next bot of
cover, something thudded
   

Suspect you want "bit" rather than "bot" there.
 

    You heard the man Artoo, Threepio, get lost!

    "I'm not sure," Mars said.  "It could
be some residual Shadow energy from the
last time the gate was used."
   

...by Fenrir and Mara.

For some reason it surprised me that Fenrir needed a
gate, though I guess it shouldn't have.  Chapter 17
informed us that the ability to go back and forth
without these gates is very rare:  Gar, the Warden,
presumably Dragon.  Hild mentioned not needing a gate
personally, I believe, but prefers to as it's harder to
track gate usage than her other technique, whatever it
is.
 

    This will actually be mentioned further in the next chapter, but 
besides the gods, there are few who can move between different layers of 
reality without some sort of gate (like an aethyr port or a Circle of 
Veneration, two examples we've seen).  This isn't to say that Fenrir 
needed the gate so much as that the gate was used, as Hild said, because 
it is far lower profile, with less risk of attracting the wrong sort of 
attention.

Inquisition stuff's just an old wive's tale
   

I think that should be "old wives' tale".  The singular
is wife, the plural wives, the possessive of the plural
wives'.
 

    That makes much sense.  I believe you are right there.

It was the look in the man's eyes.
Yoshi knew that look.
   

I liked this plot twist, and what you've done with it in
this chapter.  It will be hard for Tuxy to get over
this.
 

    Especially as he is loathe to ask for help or admit to any weakness, 
the polar opposite of Usagi.

"That mana generator will overload in
moments," Saekianna called as I lunged.
   

Heh.  Aaannnddd the usual cliffhanger to end on!
Looking eagerly forward to more!
 

    I assume you've read 20 by now.  Hopefully you found it satisfying.

Til next time.

Mark


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