Hi!

Good to hear from you!

Very very late C&C, I know...oh well.

Hey, I take whatever I can get. Ask around - I'd rather get it late than not 
at all.

First, I'd just like to say I really like your writing style. Your prose is
very enjoyable to read. ^_^

Gee, thanks. I've been polishing my prose for years - you should see how 
choppy and mangled my first few stories on the list were. I spend my spare 
time tracking down and destroying any copies I run across. ^_^

"You bet, Ami!" Usagi chirped. "All present and accounted for!
Next stop, Yokohama and the best Marine Day ever! I'm going to eat 

cotton

candy and ride roller coasters 'till I'm sick!"
"Oh, THAT will be a fun ride back to the hotel," Rei groused,
covering her eyes with one hand. "Did Makoto have plans before or after
you shared your goals for this trip with her?"

Heh.

I like Usagi. A lot of people may not like Usagi, but I do. She's quirky, 
and fun to write. Crawling inside her head is always a treat. ^_^

"They have a log flume, Ami! If museums want to compete with that,
they need either more logs, or more flumes."

This made me giggle.

Glad to hear it: I was kind of fond of that line, myself.

"Fair enough," Usagi agreed, "but I stand by my right to gorge
myself on sugary treats and go in circles until I get dizzy."
"And how," Rei asked sarcastically, "is that different from every
other day we've known you?"

*SNRK*

"This time," Usagi explained as the train pulled in, "I'm going to
do it in Yokohama."

Great comeback!

Again, thanks. I'm glad that you liked my take on Usagi. I've been told that 
she is a little sharper on the uptake than in canon, but I always found that 
she was pretty good at holding her own against Rei when they were just 
bickering.

You know how it goes - everybody has their own view of a character. 
Determining IC can be a huge pain, sometimes. I just crawl into the mind of 
the character as best I can and try to write actions and dialogue that 
"feel" right from that perspective. So far, it seems to be working for me.

"I guess that'll be okay," Ryo agreed. "I mean, it's not like he's
in the middle of the Evil Dynasty, or anything. What kind of trouble
could a guy like Shin get into in a crowded train station?"

You know, people should learn not to say things like this.

I think part of it is to tempt fate, and part of it is hoping that if you 
say it out loud often enough, you can convince yourself that it is true.  
^_^

"I don't know what you're doing here," Sailor Mars said sternly,
"But I'm not going to let you get away with it. Surrender now, and we
don't have to do this." Standing with her arms crossed over her chest
atop a nearby street sign, the Senshi was silhouetted from behind by the
glaring sun. Her shadow stretched across the empty street to envelop the
form of her enemy as her long cloak of raven hair stirred gently in the
breeze.

Really nice imagery here. :)

Thanks. I was heavily inspired by my old Batman comics. ^_^

I like to make the Senshi as impressive as possible when they are doing 
these introduction scenes. Jupiter gets a pretty good one too, in Chapter 3, 
or so I am told. Part of it is that I want to show what the Senshi look like 
from a youma's perspective. These are not a bunch of girls in frilly skirts 
to them - these are the LAW.

Glass crunched underfoot, and Rei froze. He was near the window,
his helmet moving left to right as he scanned the interior of the shop.
Her chest heaving,

And how!

Rei stared up at the sports page. With a sense of detachment,
she noticed that the Yokohama BayStars were going to be playing the
Hanshin Tigers in the next few days. Shame Makoto couldn't make it: they
might have been able to catch the game. Maybe they would catch it 

anyway,

and bring her back all kinds of souvenirs to make her jealous. That 

would

be awesome...

Good lord, she thinks about the dumbest things in the middle of a fight.
o.o;

Part of it was that she just took a header into a steel mail box, so she's a 
little out of it. Another is that it really did seem like something that 
would go through Rei's mind while she was catching her breath, here. The sad 
thing is that I actually went on-line and checked the game schedule to find 
out exactly who the BayStars were playing on that day. :p

"This is a temporary setback," he moaned, drawing the crystal he
wore around his neck out from under his cuirass and letting it dangle
freely. "I'll be killing you momentarily."

That's what they all say when they're getting their butts kicked...

Yeah, even the villains in these shows are optimistic. After all, it's just 
a flesh wound, right? ^_~

back. "I am Sailor Moon, and in the name of Emperor Meiji, Marine Day,
and the Kanagawa Board of Tourism, I will punish you!"

*laughing his ass off* Good work on Sailor Moon's speech, although she
sounded a bit too stiff in spots.

Yeah, it takes some doing to get that perfect mix of "this is the stupidest 
thing I've ever heard" and "holy CRAP, I think she means it" that only 
Sailor Moon can work into her speeches. ^_^

I've also always found it funny that the supposedly dense Usagi can always 
come up with the strangest trivia when she needs a reason to avenge 
something. In this case, she is avenging Emperor Meiji because Marine Day is 
supposed to be a holiday in honour of his return to Japan after a long sea 
voyage (In reality, Japan just made up the holiday because they had decided 
that they didn't have enough and needed more).

Ami shook her head as she ran through the billowing mist. What was
that Rei had been shouting? Something about there being two of them. 

Well,

the Sailor Senshi had dealt with youma who worked in teams before, and
they could handle another one if they had to. It was no wonder that poor
Sailor Mars had gotten such a pounding, if she had been outnumbered - it
had been a long time since Ami had seen any of them get that badly 

beaten

just from fighting a common youma.

Oh crap. This is not going to go well.

Usagi had been growing weaker again lately, and her
attacks were not exactly as robust as they used to be. With Pegasus 

safely

back in the realm of dreams, his blessings were not reaching her as well
as they used to - she could only remain Sailor Moon for a few minutes at
a time, and transforming was getting more and more difficult as the 

power

inside her waned.

Erm.

You mean *SUPER* Sailormoon, right?

Well, yes. I admit, I was not certain whether any of the characters in the 
anime ever specifically referred to her form as "Super" or not. But they 
are, indeed, referring to her "Super" Sailor Moon transformation at this 
point. It just seemed at the time that the distinction was less broad than 
it has since been made out to me.

Cuz, y'know, the Pegasus has absolutely nothing to do with her regular
ability to transform. Her basic powers as Sailor Moon come from the
Ginzuishou at this point in time,

Man, I get more comments about this.... ^_^

and it'd take a hell of a lot more than a
few months of inactivity for THAT to weaken so drastically that Sailor Moon
couldn't stay transformed AT ALL for more than a few minutes.

True, that. But she has lost her powers before in the past. In fact, she has 
a habit of doing it roughly once a season. In "R", her locket was broken 
while she was fighting one of Ail and Ann's cardians, and that was the first 
time that she recieved the ginzuisho as part of her transformation.
In "S", the ginzuisho got damaged in one of the first episodes and she lost 
her powers again. That was when she got her next power-up. In "SuperS", 
after Pegasus uses his power to change her locket, I don't think we ever see 
"normal" Sailor Moon again.

Without
Chibimoon and the Pegasus, at this stage, she STILL has her S-level
transformation, with the Moon Spiral Heart Attack finisher.

See, I'm still not sure about that. I could *swear* that Pegasus used his 
power to transform her locket so that she only turns into Super Sailor Moon, 
now. Still, I suppose I could be wrong - my memory about some of this stuff 
is a bit fuzzy.

Quickly: to the Internet! ^_^

Just keep in mind that Sailor Moon = Princess Serenity = bonded with the
Ginzuishou, which = ultimate trump card in the SM universe.

In short, you can only *weaken* her with contrived plot devices. :P

So... I should be pulling off that giant tarp that covers my mysterious 
invention around now, right? It's really cool - it's got all kinds of 
blinking lights, and stuff that spins around really fast, and there's these 
tubes full of bubbling liquid wired into it...

I call it my "Deus Ex" machina. I was saving it for later, but I never 
*could* resist a giant lever that made clouds of sparks when you yanked on 
it. Heck, the darn thing comes with its own dramatic lighting! How do you 
say no to that? ^_^

I didn't want to fight a monster today, she thought wistfully, I
wanted to go to the Doll Museum. But the best laid plans of a Sailor
Senshi could always be counted on to go horribly awry...

Ain't that always the case?

It sure is in *my* fics. Half of these people can barely walk down the 
street without some sort of climactic life-or-death struggle for the fate of 
the universe erupting. If I were them, I would spend the whole day locked in 
my bedroom with the sheets over my head. ^_^

*major snippage*

A very promising beginning, complaints about your handling of Sailor Moon
notwithstanding. C&C of other chapters to come later...

Thanks! Like I said, sorry about the Sailor Moon thing. I will definitely go 
back through my notes and double-check that stuff. If enough people are 
having problems with it, then it really isn't a big enough plot point to 
hang onto (I mean, it's important, but it's not like the entire story is 
hinging on it or anything).

Anyway, once again, thanks for taking the time to write. I know how hard it 
can be to find the time to drop a line, so I can appreciate the effort it 
took to let me know you liked my fic, even if you did take a little while to 
get to it. Looking forward to the rest of your C&C!

Later!

-Morgan



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