Balance of Force 1

[MageOhki]

And with this, this is a finished Chapter
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaai
http://setsuna.us/BF01.txt
Andrew Norris

[B'man]

Congratulations, you misspelled "Saotome" eight times out of eight.
I must say I don't really like the whole "battle to fix Ranma's problems" idea, especially when the "fixing" is people (five of the main cast if I recall correctly) getting killed, but this'll be something I probably keep reading regardless, seeing as you've taken the story away from Earth so quickly.

[bissek]

Hate to break this to you, but while tibanna gas is used in spaceship components, it is NOT used in the engine room. It is used in the gunnery posts.
The property of tibanna gas that makes it valuable is that it can amplify the power of a laser beam passed through it. As such, it is valued by weapons manufacturers, who sell sealed canisters of prepared gas to attach to blasters and turbolaser batteries. A VERY specially prepared kind of tibanna gas is used with the Xerrol Nightstinger sniper weapon, which fires invisible blaster bolts. These weapons are extremely rare, as the specially prepared gas cylinder has to be replaced every 3-6 shots, and cost several hundred credits a cylinder, making them too expensive to be practical.
Some time after the battle of Endor, a smuggler named Gamgalon discovered a compound similar to tibanna gas that could be made from aleudrupe berry pits and some legal and ordinarily harmless compounds. It was never said if anyone rediscovered this after Talon Karrde and Mara Jade shut the operation down.
The gas used as engine coolant in the Star Wars universe is called korfaise.
Spaceship fuel can be synthesized. In 'The Bacta War', Gavin Darklighter stops at a marginal colony world that owed the Rogues a favor and got his X-Wing refueled from a chemical synthesizer they had on hand. If a marginal colony could make enough fuel to tank up an X-Wing overnight, the formula can't be too complex. As such, the question is not "can the chemistry club make the fuel?" but "Can they make enough of it in a reasonable amount of time?". A good second question would be "What will they do with the formula after Eilsa leaves?"
Due to Kodachi's interests in pharmaceuticals, it would be plausible for her to develop an interest in bacta. There would be only one real problem with her trying that, which has a plausible workaround. Bacta is a mixture of two compounds: kavam, which is a mixture of various chemicals, and alazhi, which is a plant. Alazhi cannot be grown in Japan due to climate conditions. It would, however, grow on her father's estate in Hawaii or other tropical locations.

[Mitchell]

If the Kuno's are as rich as Fannon sopposes she could just have a climate controled greenhouse. Though I do see your point

[Dragon Man]

Very nice ending. I'm eager to see if the Saotome lightsaber still works. I'm hoping we'll be able to see snippets of the lives of the family Ranma left behind so we know how they're doing over time!

[crystlshake]

Considering the massacre that took place most of the cast dont seem too affected by it. Its most notable with Ranma. Even over the course of a few weeks Id expect some of them to still be affected. I may have missed a time que but it seemed like everything after the confrontation took place in just a few days. As far as the rest of it plot wise it flowed well. I liked the end. The last line puts up a sense of foreboding (though seems a lot like a premonition/ more informed analysis).
Im not sure if it was specified if just the items in the box or the whole box was given to Ranma by his mother. It may be important since the fact that the lower part of it wasnt opened and may contain something important.

[J. St.C. Patrick]

An enjoyable chapter.
here are a few minor G & Sp things I noticed:

Her eyes alight on Cologne who had a mask herself on, and was hiding her emotions behind a primitive shield.

alighted or alit

Eilsa sipped at the tea Kasumi placed by her side, as she watched Cologne touch various places on each of the teenager's backs, to keep them still.

teenagers'

She stopped, taking a deep breath, watching as Cologne and Kasumi nod, and Nodoka stare at Eilsa in shock.

nodded
stared
is Eilsa having an out of body experience? if not then:
her

"All of which, I'll concede are not by themselves viable reasons in separation.

for

Cologne was foolish to think
a apprentice to Happosai would be affected for long by pressure
points.

an

Nodoka's fussing over Ranma awaken the child, and the young martial artist's eyes widened in shock at the battlefield, unable to form coherent words at the sight of carnage that would not normally be
expected by anyone.

awakened
or
wakened

The infamous pervert of Nerima, Happosai, had been destroyed
- but not before killing both his prized students and two of the
larger-than-life youths that had called the ward home.

who

Kasumi had lit Soun?s pyre first; the genuine sadness in
her whispered prayers let Elisa know that this disciple of Sith, at
least, had some good in him. Nodoka?s prayers, by comparison, were a
touch more flippant; Elisa couldn?t make out all of it, but Nodoka
apparently suspected her husband was not going to find the afterlife
pleasant. Kodachi had said nothing while setting her brother?s torch
ablaze, and Cologne had kept her whispered prayers beyond the ears of
anyone mortal.
From there, the congregation began to move forward. The community was as varied as would be expected, and had more than its share of color. Teenaged girls enamored of the ?cute? waiter at the Nekohanten came to urge his soul onward; practitioners of the local school of swordsmanship offered wooden swords and their elegies to their fallen comrade. Some had come if for no other reason than politeness and
curiosity; a hero?s death was no surprise for any of these souls, but so soon in life was. One by one, they paid their respects, occasionally stopping by the families of the slain to offer their
condolences before leaving.
...
She would need to talk
with both of them in the next couple of days; she had her suspicions
as to why, but fear from a Padawan generally wasn?t a good thing.
...
Sensing where her place needed to be, she walked to Cologne?s side.

A formatting error? question marks replacing apostrophe/quotation marks

[Vasey]

A formatting error? question marks replacing apostrophe/quotation marks

Looks to me like character encoding problems. If you set your browser to Western ISO-8859-1 encoding when looking at the file it'll probably fix itself.

[MageOhki]

in order: Spelling, will fix.
How does it solve Ranma's problems. Sure Kuno and Mousse are dead, and Genma as well... but trust me.
All this does is DELAY the problem. Heh, heh, heh...
After all, those shrooms _still_ _exist_ (runs!) Hell, this acutally will make Kodachi WORSE. And so? Genma HAD to die, or be rendered null and void. *shrugs* I didn't plan on the crew suffering that much wreckage, but... happens.
See Wookiepedia, I took the information from there... There's NOT much out there, so... *shrugs* And consdiering at LEAST one Xwing desgin uses Tibanna gas...
Re the fuel formula... that's a intresting question, isn't it? Still pondering that, and since Eilsa was talking to COLOGNE, NOT Nabiki or Akane... Cologne knows OF them, not HOW good they are.
Regarding the fannon estimation of the Kuno's wealth.
It's NOT quite Fannon. You don't own a big estate like they do without being VERY rich, and in comparison a climate controlled greenhouse is trivial.
Kodachi doesn't really know about it, she was out cold for most of it.
Dragon Man: THat's what I'm still debating, mind you, acutally, I DO have plans for the end of Book 1, and the family/friends PLAY DIRECTLY (bwhahahahah! Run, Mace, RUN! You too Ranma!) into it.
JC: Will use your C/C, but not tonight. Trying to finish chatper 2. One! More! Scene!
And thanks all.

[MageOhki]

Crystal: The ONLY time you see the others BESIDES Cologne, is at the Funeral. IT'd be a MAJOR, MAJOR, MAJOR, MAJOR insult (worthy of blood feud!) to show ... displays of emotions there, espically consdiering Kuno and Msu Tsu died WELL.
Kasumi's... a weird one. I have a problem thinking of her charater, so I went with when she watched Ranma leave, she was repressing her greif.
Nodoka? No one died that she really knew. Genma? After being away for 10 years, AND learning the full details Genma pulled, well... I don't think there was much greif there.
Colonge: Her granddaugter and Ranma didn't die, and to be cold... no matter WHAT age she is, she's old enough and lived in a harsh enviroment, death is nothing but a old friend to her.
Eilsa? Sad, but cold, She mediated on it, and didn't know ANYONE who died.
A

[bissek]

Half the point of the Council taking custody of Force-talented children is to separate them from family attachments. It's sort of a more discretely and effectively applied version of "The Corps is mother, the Corps is father" from Babylon 5. As such the Council WILL object to Ranma keeping in touch with his family while a Padawan. It will screw up the standard indoctrination process.

[DCG]

"standard indoctrination process"
Like that crap would work on ranma any way.

[MageOhki]

The concuil's smart enough to know a 17 year old mentally is NOT gonna bite a lot of their ideas. There's a point where you just go with the flow.
A.

[Mitchell]

I have a question, and while its purely accademic for the purposes of the story how are you going to justify Colone's 300 years of life. Will the force do a simmilar thing extending the users life based on their power? Or is the life extension of people such as Colone and Happosoi purly a ki benefit.

[Waruiko]

Yoda was over 300 when he died, and I don't think that is normal for his species, but I could be wrong.