Interesting...
This revision is, IMO, much improved over the
first in showing us more of how Mirai's
character has changed.
And this seems shorter than the first version,
meatier; it gets going faster, it seems.
OTOH, some of what I felt were shortcomings
in the original are still present. Given that
these most concern information you're not
giving to the reader, but need to, I really
don't understand why. (I wasn't the only
reviewer to point these out in draft one,
and Jim Miller has already pointed these out
in this draft.)
For those curious, Chapter 2 is alive, well, and
being written at a snail's pace.
Despite how you might understandably react to
my comments, I _AM_ interested in seeing more.
Like with your "The Princess and the Pirate",
you show a vigorish ability to come up with
very powerful, interesting stories.
"The Moldiver Mark Two? You made another?"
"Yeah. What? I thought you'd be pleased."
"Well duh. Thank you, big brother."
"You're welcome. Um...Mirai, are you sure you want to do this?"
"Are you kidding? This is gonna be great!"
Faster start than I remember of the original.
Two years later...
"Son of a bitch..."
<clip>
"Horse raping..."
When recently told this, Mirai Oroza's response peeled the
paint off the wall, blew the speaker's hair back and left
You underline very early for us that Mirai is undergoing
some very dramatic personality changes. This also explains
why the two-year delay between the end of the series and
your story, which was kind of mysterious in your first
draft.
Roughly about three months after the launch of the Sakigake,
Machinegal's Superdolls had attacked an office building.
After systematically killing each and every person inside,
they had then leveled it before erecting a banner
which ordered Tokyo to hail Emperor Machinegal.
Explains Mirai's later comment about Machinegal as "one of
the most evil persons" in a way the first draft didn't.
Are you ever planning on explaining why Machinegal
changed so dramatically, btw?
Also might be an effective addition if somebody Mirai knew,
say Mao (if you're not planning to use her), was one of
the people killed.
No sonic booms marked her passage, no noise of any
kind. There was only the subtle red glow of her flight
field, nearly invisible against the bright light of the
noontime sky.
and this point explicated early in this draft.
""I swear, if one more fat woman puts on a spandex costume
and tries to help or hinder me..." Mirai replied
Heh.
For a moment, just a moment, the temptation to use the
mol-unit and just take what she wanted reared its head.
Her hands began shaking and moved to her pocket when she
had another vision, this one of a little girl whom she had
saved from being crushed from debris some months back. The
kid's face was one of wide-eyed adoration
Nice touch here, I thought.
importantly, her soulmate.
Something about this line just made me flinch, not sure
why. Maybe that it seems presumptuous of Mirai? She
doesn't really know that much about Misaki's feelings.
which should render you completly invisible!" He cackled
completely
Mirai stared at him blankly and Hiroshi sighed. Mirai
was very bright, but she had no aptitude for technology.
Most things silicon were beyond her grasp
and anything more complicated then algebra made her eyes
glaze over.
Well, it's your fic, and I know I commented on this in
the first draft, but I really don't see why you want to
make of point of this in your characterization of Mirai.
My interpretation of the OAVs is that she's genius-level
in the sense of "top 2% of the population" or better,
though admittedly not in a class with either brother (who
may be the top 2 in the world).
Don't you think Mirai would be a more interesting
character if she's at least competent in technology?
"Huh? Oh...er...yes, um, you can only leave the suite on for
suit
"Changing subjects," Hiroshi said. Mirai had definetly
definitely
changed in two years.
Gazing daily into the dark shadows of human behavior had,
psychologically speaking, altered Mirai in ways that Hiroshi
didn't want to think about.
While good in one way, this is a "tell" rather than a "show".
For "show", you've given us one instance of a Machinegal
atrocity, and multiple allusions to actually-rather-amusing
situations (fat ladies in spandex).
The paragraph above suggests, to me, that maybe you want
to not confine Moldiver to Tokyo. Calming food riots in
Bangladesh, stopping wars in sub-Saharan Africa, etc, might
be a much more effective way to show us where this Mirai
is coming from. (Rich merchants hordeing food during a
famine? Imagine what she might see people do if she were
in Bangladesh when global warming submerged the entire
country.)
their mother had packed the young genius off to M.I.T.'
youth scientists program, an international effort to find
and develop the talent of young Technologists.
Strikes me as unnecessary; Nozomu is bright enough to get
regular entry into MIT even at his age.
If you really want to embitter Mirai and not use Nozomu,
however, how about having Nozomu also go crazy, commit an
atrocity as Moldiver III, and have Mirai forced to kill him
in order to stop him? (I didn't think of this last time,
as you weren't making such an obvious effort to give us
an embittered Mirai.)
"How is he?" Mirai asked.
"Hard to say," Hiroshi said. "It was a short note. Sounds
like they're keeping him pretty busy."
In other words, he's busy building an interstellar
spaceship during his spare time...
ago. Her gaze fell on her clock. It had been only ten
minutes ago. 'I'll kill him,' she thought. 'Where's my
bokken?'
Nice touch, I thought.
All we know at this point is that message contains
audio and video elements and is on the same hyper-
wavelength radio frequency used to communicate with
the Sakigake during the launch sequence."
Okay, this tells us that the message came in faster
than light, which (if memory serves) draft 1 did not
do at this point. Good.
The newscaster vanished to be replaced by the image
of a man. He was tall and broad-shouldered. His black
hair was cut in a military style. The picture, part of
ZIC's press kit from the Sakigake launch, was a good
three years out of date
Suggest rewording to get what I think you mean out
faster: "The image of the newscaster shrank to the
left side of the screen. On the right, an old still
image from the Sakigake launch press-kit showed Misaki
as he looked three years previously. A burst of static
began the voice-over."
"This is Pilot Kenchi Misaki of the Dimension Jump
Project >SZZZZZKK< ontact, repeat, First Contact
FSHHHHKKKK< Heavy Damage. I-" There was the
sound of an explosion and a tortured, animalistic howl.
">PSHHHHNNNKT< gake completly destroyed >RRRSKKKK<
requesting assistance. >FSHHHHKKKK< Moldiver
SKZZZZNIKT< " There was another explosion and the
sound of someone shouting in an unknown language. The
picture vanished to be replaced by the newscaster,
her face completly pale. "I'm...I'm told that the
message repeats after that...second explosion.
To repeat my comments from draft one: this is not
enough information for your characters to come to
the conclusions they do. All we can reasonably
deduce from this is that Misaki met some intelligent
aliens ("First Contact") and that the Sakigake was
destroyed. We don't know if it was by accident or
malicious. We can surmise that Misaki was requesting
assistance from Moldiver, but can't be completely
certain that that was his intent.
All over the world, most people were in a state of
shock, prompting one journalist to note the similarity
to nearly fifty years ago when terrorists had flown
two jetliners into the World Trade Center in New
York, and a third into the Pentagon, killing thousands
of people. For several days afterwards, people, both
back then, and now, had only gone through the
motions of their daily business as they tried to cope.
Repeating my earlier comment, I just don't find it
believable that a journalist in 2048 would make this
particular comparison. (Obviously you do.)
One of my problems is that I don't understand why people
in 2048 would react like this to "first contact" or to
the destruction of the Sakigake way out in space. They
don't even know that Misaki is dead (though that might
be a reasonable conclusion given what we know right now).
The whole situation seems much more comparable to the
Apollo fire which cost three astronauts their lives in
1967, or the Challenger space shuttle explosion in 1986.
the transmission came from the star Altais, a star of
medium brightness a hundred point twenty-three
light years from Earth
Good; a concrete distance. I think this was missing the
first time. Presumably our scientists know how fast
"hyperwave" travels, so they know how long ago the
transmission was sent. So why don't you tell us?
However, they had discovered a series of mathematical
symbols encoded directly into the transmission itself.
When decoded, the symbols spelled out a date, time and
the coordinates for the crossover point where Pluto crossed
Neptune's orbit to once more become the outermost planet.
The date was for two months after the arrival of the
transmission.
Still don't understand why you couldn't have simply
had an obviously-alive Misaki give this rendezvous (and
maybe explain that the aliens he met are at war...)
As it is, it's not even clear why humanity would try
to meet this rendezvous. What do the decision-makers
know that you haven't told us, that leads them to their
decision(s) below?
In all likelihood, a roundevouz meant that the Christopher
rendezvous
would be meeting up with an interstellar capable craft
that would take them to where, if the background
noise in the transmission was any indication, a war was being
fought. Was humanity really ready to get caught up in an
interstellar war?
I made this point in draft one. I'll repeat it.
HOW DID ANYBODY REACH THAT CONCLUSION? Maybe they're
supposed to be meeting refugees and taking them back to Earth.
Maybe they're just meeting a simple second contact mission
and there is no war. Maybe it's a trap by hostile aliens.
Maybe it's an invitation to be collected as specimens by
very advanced aliens. Maybe it's an invitation to a sporting
event with the fate of Earth at stake (tag; an Olympics;
your choice). I'm not trying to be silly here, but
you really didn't give us the info we need to understand
the choices people are making.
The answer was simple. If Misaki was, then ready or not, so
was humanity.
??? Very, VERY few political leaders would launch into
an uncertain war over the fate of a single individual
who volunteered for hazardous duty. (A certain war is
a different matter.)
"Think, Mirai," Hiroshi said. "You gave Misaki a
mol-unit. An extremely powerful mol-unit and he
encountered something that made him call
home for help."
From, as far as they know, Moldiver. The most likely
conclusion is that Misaki lost the unit or ran out
of power. Granted, Hiroshi is being prudent here, but
both of them should consider it to be ONLY prudence,
not a necessity.
"Gave you a fighting chance, I hope. Look, Mirai, I know you,
you're going to try everything you can to be on the Saint
Christopher when it sets out for the Pluto-Neptune Junction
"What are you talking about, Hiroshi? Why wouldn't I
just fly straight to the junction myself? Oh, that's
right; that convenient eleven minute time limit."
(Must have been pretty important to you to keep Mirai on
the Christopher if you were willing to impose an eleven
minute time limit, given the inconveniences this will
impose on you in later chapters.)
pretty. "If you would excuse me, I'm not feeling very well
all of a sudden."
"Yes, you are a bit pale," Amagi said, peering at her.
"Here." he fumbled in
his pocket and came up with a small package. "Take these."
"Thank you," Mirai said. "I should go get some water." and
she ran off.
Didn't understand the point of this scene. Presumably
Amagi, knowing that Mirai is Moldiver, is slipping her
a tracking device disguised as a pill? Or just poison?
Otherwise, why have this scene at all?
and then back down at the communicator. "You might as well
get rid of the Christopher while you're at it. I doubt
our friend the Chief wants to take the chance of anyone
getting back with a warning about the Prides."
Ah, another change from draft one. So Amagi is in with
the enemy? Might explain how he turned into a sociopath,
too. And hints as to the enemy: Kzinti would be my
guess, based on this (though it would have to be a much
powered-up Kzinti).
some sort of gun and pointed it at Moldiver. She was tall
and slender, dark-skinned and blonde haired. An eye patch
covered her right eye and her face was expressionless. The
other was seated in some sort of hovering chair,
her teal-green hair braided and falling over one shoulder.
As before, having Mihoshi and Kiyone change this much
is possibly the best hook in your story. Nice.
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