/* CHAPTER ONE */

Nice style in your opening.  The "twice four monks" echoes
Coleridge, giving the scene an exotic aura.

The old woman bowed her head and flashed a toothless smile.

Well, you did an Evil Tofu in WUE; now I suppose the Ladle Lady is
Evil Personified?  ;)

     Ranma blinked.  Best friend?  "What'cha mean, best friend?
Ucchan?"

<clip>

     "Do I have to have one, or something?" Ranma asked.  "I mean, is
it some kinda requirement?  Everybody's gotta have a best friend to be
a member of the human race?"

Seems a touch OOC to me, somehow.  Ranma strikes me as the type
to unthinkingly categorize either Ukyou or Ryouga as his best friend,
regardless of reality.  In fact, this debate would, IMO, have worked better
reversed:  Ranma unthinkingly claiming Ukyou as his best friend, and
Akane deconstructing the claim by lack of evidence.

    The word 'wedding' invoked a silence comparable to that caused by
the mention of privatisation at a meeting of the Chinese economic
council. 

What, a loud argument between vociferous proponents of irreconcilable
positions?  Your simile would have worked better if it had been the
North Korean central planning board.  And "silence" at lack of successes
doesn't work either; the recent forced sale of PLA businesses is reportedly
going well.

Ranma licked his lips, and said, "She went.  Away.  On vacation?"

Heh.  Good fake-out.

Men in yellow robes and shaved heads. 

<clip>

The monks paid him no attention, even when he was close enough
to smell their butter-tea breath.

Tibetan monks wear maroon.  Theraveda monks wear saffron, but don't
drink yak-butter tea.  'Course I'm not completely sure what's going on
here...

fierce dakini who had appeared herself to them in the guise of a shy,
beautiful girl of sign Virgo and blood type A.

Heh.  Identifying Rouge with the throw-away comic intro from the manga
is rather amusing.

She had revealed that the surest path to enlightenment was through
karaoke and shoe-shopping

Oh, that's what's going on here...  

anyone who didn't agree with that would be fried right then and
there by her six-armed conqueror aspect just like she'd fried the
banquet hall when one of the monks had expressed doubts about her
divine nature.

At this point, I assume Rouge is also being afflicted with maddening
mayflies.

     Boredom, maybe.  The insanity that went on here was certainly
more interesting than the generally sedentary life of training and
teaching she'd practiced back home.

I like this.  I think you nailed it on the head;  too many writers
assume that Cologne and/or Shampoo really _want_ to go
home; that a small, isolated farming village is attractive once you've
lived in the big city.  Innumerable real-life examples say this isn't so.

BTW, I like your characterization of Cologne.

poverty and desolation.  Once they had been feard and respected.  Even

Typo:  "feard" in the above line.


/* CHAPTER TWO */

And then speech, a grown woman 
speaking with the uncertain tones of a child, and a lingering
undertone of a bestial growl.

   "Yessssss..."

A bit surprised here, on two counts.  One, supposedly esoteric
means have been employed to generate language understanding
and human speech fully-formed?  And an explanation follows?
    Two, I'd always assumed that the Musk didn't bother with
generating language in their brides.  *Why do women need
language?  What good would it do them?*  But perhaps this is a
one-off, for some to-be-disclosed reason?

     *"I suppose you'd know.  You are his best friend, after all."*
    
    "Huh?"  Ranma blinked.  Him and Ryouga, best friends?  No way.
Too weird.  Although... hmm... 

Again, what evidence you can read into the manga suggests that
Ranma _does_ think of Ryouga as a friend, much more of one
than Ryouga considers Ranma.  Ryouga, on the other hand, seems
to _think_ of Ranma as an enemy but _treat_ him as a friend, after
around midpoint in the series.

And the Asura was fast,
blindingly so, and powerful... that power _would_ be--

You know, I don't think I've ever seen anybody follow Tarou
up after becoming aware of the Spring of Drowned Ashura.  His
second appearance, with the added octopus tentacles, shows
he is willing to go back to Jusenkyo for additional curses to
obtain more power.  Logically, his first move after the Rouge-Tarou
story would have been to go back and jump in the Ashura spring.

     It had really been too long since he'd seen Nerima, thought Herb. 

Talk about unexpected lines...

he was deep into the industrial core and the docks now, and could
smell the sea.

Meaning he's left Nerima, right?

He knows I can beat him if I change.

As I recall, the Vol 18 ep had both Happosai and Cologne as definitely
monster-Tarou's superior, and I'm not sure either 23 or 32 had any
head-to-head definitive confronation.  So why does Tarou think this?
His usual arrogance?


At the end of two chapters:  I'm mildly curious as to what's going on;
and I still don't quite know why this is labeled as a mystery.  Nothing
much seems to be going on with Ranma and Akane yet.

I haven't made up my mind as to the somewhat impressionistic style.
It adds something, certainly, but on the whole, at this point my reaction
is that it is overdone.  I think of it as an obstacle to reading this story,
rather than an intrinsic part of the story.  (Note:  I always skip through
Zelazny's trips-through-the-shadows sequences in his Amber stories,
so possibly I'm not your target reader.)  My suggestion, for what it's
worth, is to scale it back some.