Continuing with the catch-up:
Morgan Hudson wrote:
Hi!
Well, here we go again. As always, C&C is welcome, but this time more than
usual. I am a bit concerned about the formatting on this one - some of my
mails have been coming out with some odd line breaks lately, so if this
looks funny please let me know and I may have to re-post. :p
Looks okay to me.
NEW-AND-IMPROVED LEGAL DISCLAIMER: Legally, the Sailor Senshi belong to
Kodansha, and the Samurai Troopers are the property of Bandai Entertainment.
Creatively, I can't lay claim to them either - that would be Naoko Takeuchi
who made up the Senshi and Hajime Yatate who thought up the Troopers. I am
only borrowing them for a few chapters, and I really do intend no lasting
harm. Despite appearances.
Standard C&C Disclaimer: All the below is my only occasionally useful
humble opinion, my only occasionally correct grammatical and spelling
corrections, and/or my only occasionally funny humor.
The Archer? There had been rumours among some of the new arrivals
that the Prince of the Heavens might have returned from the dead, but
most of the Medeans had ignored them as the panicked ramblings of mindless
rabble. Still, nobody but the Archer wore that style of armour, and only the
Archer could possibly bear the golden bow that floated next to the dormant
warrior inside his glowing bubble. The Sho Ha Kyu had been Prince Klarios'
signature weapon: there had been none save him who could even string so
powerful a bow, let alone dream of firing it. Even if the boy inside the
armour did not look quite the way they had remembered him, it could be
nobody else.
I'm not sure using "they" there is a good idea, given that it's a fiar
distance from the noun it refers to. Suggest either changing it to "the
Medeans had remembered him" or "he had been remembered"
"You wouldn't be lying to the Masho of Cruelty, would you? Because
that would not be a very smart thing to do."
"Wouldn't know," the youma croaked. "Never... heard of you."
"You obviously don't get out much," the robed man replied flatly.
"Perhaps you are more familiar with the name of Sailor Pluto. Would you
like me to take you to *her* for questioning?"
"There is nobody else," the youma said after a brief pause, his
spines drooping. "I am the only other one, I swear."
Hee.
"Glad to see you have the use of your legs back, Tenku no Touma,"
Toshitada said brusquely as he pushed his way between the two teens.
"Feel up to an evening jog? The correct answer is 'yes'."
*snrk*
Toshitada chuckled softly and slipped the hat over his head. He
missed his cannon fodder. They used to come in handy all the time.
*snrk*
I am dead, he told himself. I have no body. I am not here. I am as
immaterial as the thinnest gauze, the haziest of veils fluttering in the
breeze. I have no weight.
However, the ground was saying "I am hard and painful to land on," much,
MUCH louder.
How could she not remember a whole army of people who wanted her
dead? It seemed like the sort of thing that most girls would have no
problem keeping track of.
Well, yes, but she shouldn't be too hard on herself. After all, most
girls only have one to keep track of at most. Depending on how and what
you count, the Senshi are probably up to a good half-dozen or so before
you even count the Medeans and whatever other personal enemies Makoto
might have. :)
"Vengeance is nigh, traitor," the Medean croaked, its voice
cracking dryly as lightning split the sky overhead. "Your thunder shall
not avail you this time!"
I can't read that line without hearing Gandalf shouting "Dark fire shall
not avail you!"
"SUPREME THUNDER DRAGON!" she called out, and a shimmering bolt
of lightning lanced from the sky, striking the ground where she stood and
causing an explosion of crackling electricity. Deep within the heart of
the pulsating dome of energy, a shadowy feminine form hovered in midair,
and the charging youma staggered to a halt as it stared in amazement. She
gestured, and a wave of lightning surged outward, its form changing into
the shape of a massive dragon as it caught the youma in its sizzling jaws
and flew off into the depths of the crowd. Dropping back to her feet,
Makoto flipped her ponytail back over her shoulder and kicked aside
another of the creatures as it tried to lunge at her from behind.
"SPARKLING WIDE PRESSURE!" she cried, and hurled a glowing disc
of lightning into the midst of three more piggish creatures that were
racing towards her with their spears at the ready. The porcine youma
screeched and fell, jittering and shaking as the electricity coursed
through their bodies. Running forward, Makoto vaulted over the fallen
beasts and lashed out at another of the toad creatures, kicking it in the
temple and knocking it to the ground as she turned in search of her next
opponent.
So it seems we're working with movie-scaled versions of the Senshi
attacks as opposed to the much more ineffectual typical episode
versions. :)
"Have the wraiths gotten to him?" Makoto asked, giving Touma a
concerned look.
"No, he just gets cranky when he's losing," Touma reassured her,
as he fired an arrow into the throat of the youma standing on Toshitada's
skull.
Hee.
"No," Shin replied, rising to his feet and folding his arms across
his chest. "I'm staying here with Usagi and Rei. You guys don't need me
there
messing things up any further than I already have."
I see bad word-wrapping here.
"Besides," Ami mentioned thoughtfully," someone really should make
sure that Usagi remembers to get her arm checked out, too."
Need to switch the positions of the space and the quotation mark after
thoughtfully.
"What? No fair!" Touma Objected.
Objected doesn't need to be capitalized.
"I don't know," Touma said, handing her an arrow. "I've never really
used any of this stuff for breaking and entering before."
"That's because you're not very creative," Toshitada commented.
"This doesn't really seem like the sort of thing our spirit guide
should be encouraging," Touma retorted, placing his hands on his hips.
Heh.
Properly garbed, she hauled herself out of the plane and out onto
the icy fields of the Milne Ice Shelf, a miserable expanse of snow whose
only redeeming feature as far as she and Kaori were concerned was its close
proximity to something called 'D Point'. Professor Tomoe had been a little
vague on exactly what it was or how it worked, but all that mattered to them
was that it was supposed to be some kind of portal into the Dark Kingdom.
At one point, as part of the background world-building for one of my own
fics, I tried to come up with a satisfactory explanation for what
precisely "D Point" meant and the origin of the name.
As I recall, I never succeeded.
"It's an aetheral spectrometer," Kaori said, as though telling an
exceptionally slow child what colour the sky was. "It draws in samples of
the electromagnetic and aetheral fields in the surrounding area and allows
for real time sampling of supernatural forces that may be influencing the
turbulence on the astral plane. And we have about six more of them to set
up,
not to mention calibrate."
Another bad word-wrap, at least on my end.
"Fascinating," Kaori said, looking at the screen. "I had no idea
your aura was so strong, Petz. You must have a great deal of power trapped
inside of you. Strongly elemental power, too, I see. No wonder you were able
to harm that dinosaur with your thunderbolts. This could prove useful to us
when we need to locate Sailor Jupiter... were you aware how similar your
signature is to hers?"
"We have a few things in common," Petz admitted. With a final gulp,
she finished her drink and set her cup down on the crumpled wing of the
plane.
There really is a fic waiting to be written on the origins of the
Ayakashi Sisters.
And the Witches Five, for that matter.
"The point is, I can use you as a focus in my tracking spells once
we get to the Dark Kingdom and it should lead us straight to wherever
they're hiding Sailor Jupiter. All we have to do here is get everything
set up, and I'll try to see if I can't convince the universe that you and
I belong somewhere very far away."
...wow, what could _possibly_ go wrong?
:)
"Nah, that was in the sequel," Touma said absentmindedly, as he
crouched next to a shrouded piece of furniture and peeked under the sheet.
"Hey, there's a skeleton in this cage."
"Is it human?" Makoto asked, looking concerned.
"Is it moving?" Toshitada asked, looking disgusted.
Heh.
A dull thumping noise echoed through his chamber, and he frowned. A
door? One of his? How could that be? His doors were all firmly shut and
sealed closed. Nobody should be doing anything with his doors unless they
were in his castle. It was probably nothing. Maybe Xiang Yao had wanted to
stretch her legs. He hovered for a moment on the cusp between dreaming and
wakefulness, teetering on the brink of the familiar abyss with only his
curiosity to keep him from sinking once more into slumber.
Again a door slammed, and the Leviathan awoke.
...that sounds bad. :)