[FFML] [Mai Hime, Future] Road Trip Revision Effort Two

[Bert Miller]

Right.  Let's get started...

John Biles wrote:
> This is a huge revision of this and Crystal's following scene.
Yes, it certainly is.

>   I'm a lot
> happier with this version as it covers some ground I'd need to cover later
> and sets up some stuff for me for later well and avoids people finding out
> things I don't want them to find out yet. :)
>   
I take this to mean that we're not supposed to find out 1) whether the 
next-generation Battle
Princesses retain their powers more widely than their mothers do, and 2) 
whether this fact
makes up part of the price Kasumi will end up paying.  I don't recall 
any scenes in the original
"Road Trip" outside the Shun-Kagami fight which gave us a definitive 
answer to 1), so now
we don't know; you may have changed your mind completely.

How frustrating.

>     I froze up; a second later, Kagami froze up as well with one of my hands
> on her back and the other on her butt.  She had one of her hands on my chest
> and the other on my back.
>
>     "Who?" a guy's voice asked.  "I told you someone else would already be
> here, plus I think they're having a party."
>
>     "Shun?" the woman asked again.  I know this woman;
"knew" (past tense)

>     April and I had dated for several months; we'd slept together, in fact.
>   
That's pretty good going for sixteen year olds.  Although I suppose, 
given that this is 2028, we
readers shouldn't make presuppositions about norms.

>     Which it suddenly struck me was the kind of thing I could easily see
> Kagami's parents doing if they found out about us.
More emphasis on this element in this version.  Nice ratchet up here.

>   I don't want to go
> through that again; April and I broke up because we knew we'd probably never
> see each other again at least until college, but it hurt a lot.
>   
So Shun is strongly motivated to go along with secrecy w.r.t. Kagami's 
parents.

>     I could tell he was trying to assess my threat level as well;
Odd reaction on the part of a sixteen year old jock to the 
androgynous-looking Shun.  I'd have
more expected a bit of incredulity that April ever went out with Shun.  
The various reasons why
a girl might like Shun ("he makes me laugh", or "Duh!  He asked me 
out?") tend to escape many
teenage boys.

>     I'm kind of surprised myself. On the other hand, we've never been
> attacked by monsters at Rosewood, so I have a feeling that's why.
>
>     "Our family wanted us closer to home.  We're a good ways away at
> Rosewood, but not hours away like we'd be here," I said.
>   
BINGO!  One of the kids gets calls it correctly!

>     "I am going to be training Kagami to fight," Mother said.  "And working
> on your training, too, as best I can with you being grounded to the school.
> And as best I can since I still have my own students to teach who I don't
> want to leave high and dry.  Which means you're both going to have to work
> with Akane most of the time."  She sounded frustrated by this.
>   
?? Are you going to cut the Akira-and-Fumi-underground scene as well, if 
Akira is announcing this
now, before that scene?  Originally, I thought it was that scene which 
caused Akira to decide to do
this.

>     "I'm sure she will teach us well," Kagami said very seriously.
>
>     Taught by Aunt Akane?  Well, she has been teaching Kasumi and Kasumi
> totally tore the hell out of those snake monsters and...Aunt Akane has 23
> years of experience on Kasumi.  Holy shit, she must be death on a stick...
Heh.


No fighting at all.  I suppose, given Akira's announcement, that there 
is no particular need to
demonstrate that Kagami really, really needs the training; she's going 
to get it whether she
needs it or not.  And I suppose it's possible that Akira decides as she 
does solely on the basis
of 1) knowing that Kagami is a BPNG and 2) hearing Kasumi's report on 
Kagami's performance
in battle ("Less effective than YOU?!  She must really suck!").

It still wouldn't hurt to have either Shun or Akira, during their 
respective POV scenes,
take note of Kagami's utter lack of training, perhaps simply from the 
way she moves.

> Crystal's Tale:
>
>     "Maybe we should check on Mitsu-san and Shun," I said to the others as
> we hung out on the porch listening to music.  "They've been gone a long
> time."
>
>     "They're probably doing it like weasels," Natasha said.  "Mad weasels."
>
>     "You always think that," Dan said dismissively.
>
>     "I don't think Mitsu-san would jump right into bed with Shun," Kasumi
> said.  "She has more sense than that."
>   
Might consider replacing Kasumi's "said" with "objected", just for 
variety.  You use "said" four
consecutive times.

>     "I was a little more worried about black oily snakes," I confessed.
> Those things had scared the hell out of me yesterday.
>
>     "Surely Aunt Fumi would not have snake monsters attacking people in her
> gardens," Erica said.
>   
Might consider having Crystal rejoin that they're not sure they 
themselves didn't somehow release
the snakes, and that therefore Fumi might not know if she did have 
some.  Erica, I think, is more
certain-sounding than any of the kids ought to be, based on what they 
know (at least, based on
what the other five know; after a few re-readings I find myself inclined 
to reserve judgement on
how much Erica's been told by her mothers.  If nothing else, Chie and 
Aoi may have let a few
things slip before themselves becoming privy to the secret.).

>     I was just a touch jealous.  I don't want to kiss either of them, though
> I have kissed both boys and girls in the past.  Mostly boys, though.  I've
> never actually dated a girl, but I have kissed at parties and kind of liked
> it.  But then, so does Mom.
>   
Right; good point.  It had struck me as perhaps comment-worthy that 
Crystal's thoughts were, up
until this point, so uniformly hetero despite the environment of her 
upbringing.  One might think a
sixteen year old would be wondering and perhaps uncertain, rather than 
either naively unquestioning,
one the one hand, or at ease and certain in her own mind, on the other, 
or possibly Politically
Correctly bi, on the third hand.

>     But I am starting to feel the lack of a boyfriend.
And here she's back to being unquestioningly certain again.

>     "Kagami-san and I are dating now," I said.
>   
I see this has already been caught:  "I" should be "Shun".

>     "Hah!  That's an easy promise to keep, given none of us have ever met
> your parents and aren't likely to any time soon," Natasha said.
Oops!  This makes it almost certain that Natasha will blab to her 
parents in the very next story!

>     I bowed back, as did the others, then came over and took her other
> hand.  "Welcome aboard, Kagami-san," I told her.  "And good luck to both of
> you." I squeezed her hand and released it.
>
>     We all then hung out and chatted about school stuff until it was time to
> go back to the shrine and sleep.
>   
This scene is a nice addition, I think, in cementing Kagami's 
relationship with the other kids.  The
original draft was trending towards isolating Kagami as a disliked pet 
of the parents; this makes it
more likely that she will eventually integrate well with her future 
teammates.