I think I C&C'd an earlier draft of this. Let's see what's different.

Jeremy Bennett wrote:

Disclaimer: PoE and its entire associated plot are written by Brian
Randall. All other disclaimers apply to Rumiko Takahashi/Viz with
heartfelt thanks for bringing this world to life.
 

I remember this from the first time. Your disclaimer credits Takahashi 
for the Ranma
characters, but you mention Tenchi characters by name lower down, and 
don't disclaim
THEIR creator. Suggest you try to credit the creators of ALL characters 
you use which
aren't yours.

Process of Elimination: Recovery

	Thirty years of burrowing through ice had lead them to this place. 
The site of the last battle on what was once a green earth had not been
easy to find.  Both secrecy and chaos had ruled the day the earth had
been frozen and the reavers finally defeated.  Information had been
difficult to come by, and it took a team nearly fifteen years to
develop the technology needed to break the -300c ice without cracking
and obliterating the team working on the ice burrower.
 

Absolute zero is only -273 degrees C; this ice is colder than that?

The original draft had the depth and weight of the ice as the main 
technical obstacle. I remember
commenting negatively about the original text's solutions to the 
technical problems involved.
Here you have no mention of the depth and weight, only the temperature. 
I'm not sure
this is an improvement, though: if the ice isn't deep at all, it would 
be fairly easy, I'd think,
to calculate a distance away from the site, say 20 miles, where a single 
nuclear explosion
(or a shot from one of Ami's moon-based weapon arrays) would melt this 
ice while leaving
Ranma and Saffron intact.

My suggestion, I guess, would be to go back to the deep ice, but make it,
say, two miles deep instead of twenty, and add that the bulk of the fifteen
years is spent not in digging, but in shoring up tunnel already dug.

Surrounding him, a patina of
crystal shards, a testament to the last mighty surge of power that had
blown through the atmosphere of the planet and frozen a block of ice
hundreds of kilometers thick, along with the scourge of reavers that
befallen it.  
 

This sentence seems to lack of verb. Also, the last clause, "along with 
the...befallen it",
doesn't seem to make sense.

Now the ice is hundreds of kilometers thick. Actually, if the entire 
atmosphere is frozen,
the ice WOULD be a few miles thick, I believe (not sure how many).

Unlike Saffron, Ranma�s body would not come out of a deep hibernation,
would not recover, and live again.

I commented on this the first time, too. How do they know this? Has 
Washuu told them?

Some had argued against removing Ranma from his tomb, stating that
doing so was to remove something vital from the soul of the sleeping
planet, and to demean Ranma�s sacrifice for it.  The new earth had many
heroes.  Live ones, like Hibki Ryouga and Msu Hsu, Ko Lon, and Xian Pu
 

(sp) Hibiki Ryouga, Mu Tsu. I can see why you'd prefer "Ko Lon" to "Ku 
Lon" (the canonically
correct spelling), but why use "Xian Pu" instead of the correct "Shan Pu"?

had helped tame this new, bitter world.  The new government, the new
people, though needed something tangible to remind them that this was a
second home, and that one day, their real home, earth, would again be
returned to.  It was decided at that point to allow the removal of the
body
 

No period on the end of that last sentence.

The government's logic escapes me, also: a tangible reminder could take 
any form: trees from
Earth, for instance. Moving Ranma's body seems more like the reverse: a 
tacit admission that
humanity is NOT going home again, and had better move its prized 
possessions to this new
world.

Stopping for just a moment in front of three women, the somber
procession held still for a moment and allowed Akane, Xian Pu, and Ukyo
to lay a colored ribbon atop the floating casket of ice.  Akane�s
ribbon was red, the fire of passion and love.  Xian Pu�s, ribbon, a
deep purple, showed the warrior heart, and spirit of the great martial
artist encased in ice.  Ukyo�s rose, yellow, signified the friendship,
the common bond of youth that bound all three to this young man in one
way or another.  As one, the three turned and walked back to their
respective families, forged from the painful loss of their youth.  No
tears would be shed from their eyes.  Only the fond, sad reminder that
a friend was lost this day could be seen in their eyes.
 

This paragraph seems better written than the original (which, if I 
remember correctly, didn't
even name Akane, Ukyou, and Shan Pu). However, now the sentiment you're 
trying for
seems more confusing. Instead of the three bereaved fiancees, you have 
three women with
their own families morning a brief crush of their late teens, and you're 
calling it "friendship".
So why restrict it to the women? Why aren't Ryouga and Mu Tsu participating?

	Washu moved through the darkness at the edge of the Crypt. She had not
arrived with the ship, nor had she wanted to. She had arrived later, on
Ranma�s ship, his friend and companion, Ran Oh Ki.

Ah! I remember the original phrasing here was very confusing; this 
clarifies things considerably!

Washu�s sin was great, a weight that pressed about her every day. 
Without Ran Oh Ki and Atsuko at her side, she felt that the darkness
she felt may consume her,

You use "felt" twice in six words. Suggest a rephrase.

bury her in her lost, angry memories and
destroy. She could not seek forgiveness from anyone, not even her
sisters.

The plural, again (I remember this from the earlier draft). Why does 
Tokimi even occur
to Washuu here? As far as we know from PoE, they're opposed forces.

She was the cause of so much pain, so much death. She was
atoning the only way she knew. Moving from place to place, finding the
darkness that infected worlds, she stamped it out; one black monster at
a time�
 

Okay, and she's STILL opposed...

	She was interrupted by a faint glow near the closed door. The glow
manifested itself into Tsunami, looking older, perhaps twenty, with a
 

Tsunami has always looked twenty-ish. I assume you mean Sasami. Well, 
actually, I know
what you mean, but I think you might want to remove that "looking older, 
perhaps twenty".
What is it adding?

	�Goodbye, Sasami� Tsunami.�

	As Tsunami left the room, Washu walked up to the ice that separated
her and Ranma, and for just a moment touched her forehead to it. A
small flash, perhaps a memory of better times flashed for a moment in
her eyes. Without another word, Washu turned and walked out the door,
without looking back.
 

Hmmm... this does seem much better written and thought out than the 
earlier draft.
However, I'm still not sure where it's going or IF it's going somewhere. 
I think the
earlier draft's intro said that this was the beginning of a long story, 
but I see no
markings to that effect here. However, as a standalone, I'm not sure I 
see the
point. Yes, you can write short pieces based on a funeral (I have), but one
expects a catharsis of some sort, and I don't see one here. All your 
characters
seem to be left exactly where they were when we started.

The earlier draft permitted the interpretation at this point that Washuu 
and Tsunami
are the ones who really loved Ranma, while the other three get all the 
public acknowledgement
for being Ranma's loved ones. In this draft you seem to dispense with 
this in both
places. A/U/S are "just friends", while Washuu seems more burdened by 
her perceived
"sin" of changing Ranma than actual grief. And we don't know what 
Tsunami feels.

Why did any of these people care enough to go retrieve Ranma's body?



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