Hmm... Characters you've not done justice to? If I had to pick one, I'd probably have to say Nanami. She seems to be constantly offering up suspicion and mistrust toward the newcomers. While she IS pretty smart and might pick up on some of the half-truths Kyon and Itsuki have been showing, canon Nanami tends to be more the trusting sort.Nanami is first and foremost an optimist. When she saw Kiriya approaching Makoto with a dagger, she was merely curious, not afraid. When she first saw Nahato, she thought he was adorable in spite of the fact that she knew the Phantom Tribe was antagonistic. She was also thrilled to learn of the political marriage between Roshtaria and the Phantom Tribe. While she has her off moments (mostly related to women who want to warm up to Makoto), Nanami just about always meets new faces with warmth and friendship, and only becomes antagonistic when they prove themselves to be enemies.Your Operation: Permanent Vacation rap was cute. You're probably right, though: it doesn't really fit with the tone of your story as a whole. (Heck, even in "The Wanderers", it was more an omake than an actual part of the story.)Now, Chapter Eleven. This was a filler chapter with not much plot progression or action. It was mostly about people finding out stuff. The Roshtarians found out about Haruhi's and Mikaru's involvement with the Bugrom. Haruhi found out about Itsuki's "torture" at the hands of the Roshtarians. Yuki found out about her former friendships with the SOS Brigadiers. Haruhi and Jinnai found out about their mutual attraction. It's not a bad thing for all this to be happening, but it doesn't leave me much to comment on.Gannan's indoctrination into the SOS Brigade was amusing and interesting.It was fun to see Yuki figure things out a bit, though I'm not sure that Yuki would be the sort to express her emotions to the point where she would glare at Galus as she did. At any rate, I look forward to seeing how she confronts the problem of being an unwilling servant rather than a willing one.There was a little more recycled material here, with Haruhi's reenactment of the "Big Raid Medal" presentation.Nanami's pouncing on Kyon after finding out about Haruhi and Mikuru seemed a bit excessive, but I think I covered that well enough above.And that's about it! The story has moved forward, or at least sideways. I look forward to reading more!
Well, I thought it would be a good idea to get a lot of the "bringing people up to speed" elements dealt with in one chapter. I also wanted my main focus, for this chapter, to be on getting the Haruhi/Jinnai romance done right. What did you think of that in particular, by the way? Was the dialogue believable/in-character there?
With maybe one small exception in the very last chapter, this is the last recycled material that you'll see in this fanfic.Good points on Nanami. I was planning to have a bit of a heated confrontation between Haruhi and Nanami at a later juncture, but I might scrap that now, given what you said about Nanami. I guess I kind of liked to have somebody be the bad cop to Makoto's good cop (because Makoto certainly can't be the bad cop  ). Somebody to really push some buttons. Still, I'll try to soften up Nanami a bit.
Is it fair to say that you prefer less talking/more action?
Yup, this was a good chapter. In this chapter, Jinnai prepares to walk into a trap, and Kyon unknowingly walks into a trap.I was kind of expecting that Jinnai would attempt to hide the fact that he knew that the Alliance would never stoop to meaningless torture in order to help turn Haruhi against them, but instead it seems that he's actually decided to give credit where it is due. Too bad none of his allies were actually able to believe him.
Still, it's nice to see that he can recognize the obvious trap. And it's a good excuse for everyone to cosplay! Haruhi and Mikuru (or, rather, Ryoko and Mikuru) get to dress up in those palace attendant outfits, and Jinnai... well, we've witnessed the return of Groundskeeper Fred! I do enjoy these occasional homages to The Wanderers, I must admit. Kyon's powers are seeming more and more Magneto-like every time he uses them. That's not a criticism, just an observation.
And, Nanoha returns to action! I find Galus's interactions with her to be somewhat intriguing... While he seems to have a kind of soft spot for her, it seems that he also has absolutely no problem using her as a disposable tool. It's almost like, "In respect to my daughter, I won't kill or severely punish Nanoha for her failures, but if she dies on a dangerous mission I won't lose any sleep over it." Admittedly, this sort of callous almost-affection is something that I could see from a ruthless character like Galus.
And, at the very end of the chapter, Ifurita Eleven! Honestly, I think she's going to exist for about as long as it takes for Nanami to reveal that she's actually Nanoha under a Shadow Tribe illusion, but if it really is a new Ifurita model then it'll be fun to see how Kyon and his friends deal with her.
This chapter was mostly solid, but it does have something of a weak spot in Ura's introduction. Reading the passage almost made me feel like the author suddenly thought, "Oh, crap! I completely forgot about Ura! I gotta make up an excuse as to why she wasn't around!" Admittedly, this deeply into the story it would have been difficult to mix Ura back in without it coming off as awkward, so I'm not sure what could make this passage better. Probably the best solution would have been to have returned to earlier sections of the work and added new content to support the sudden reintroduction of Ura later.
Anyway, good job, and keep writing! I was a bit confused when you mentioned that "I wouldn't like the chapters after this". Honestly, you'd have to work VERY hard to drive this story into the dirt before I'd actually start disliking it. I presume by your apprehension that you plan on going ahead with your plans to add Nanoha as an extra crossover element, as that's really the only part of the story that I might have come across as dead-set against. I'd like to assure you that even that wouldn't be enough to turn me off. I think it's a questionable direction to take the story in, but there's still plenty of good stuff here.If that's NOT what you meant... well, I guess I honestly can't think of what you might have in mind.
I can explain what I meant in a PM to you if you'd like. I'd rather not spell it out here, though, because it might spoil Rowan (and anybody else following the story).
(Yuki/Kyon is a distant second; I see some potential there, but I've yet to read a fanfic that attempts it without unforgivably mauling Yuki's character.)
If you ever do find a good in-character one, please tell me.  I like Haruhi and Kyon as a couple and pretty much accept that they'll end up together (Haruhi's pretty hard to say no to, after all ), but a good read featuring the Yuki/Kyon pairing could be pretty nice.  Anyway, I mostly agree with Spanner about characterizations.  Nanami's the only one who's stood out as somewhat consistently out of character with her suspiciousness, and you addressed that in recent updates.  Otherwise, you seem to have a good understanding of the cast in general, although there are occasional cases where actions and dialogues feel slightly off to me.  I think what really helps you is that you appear to like and respect all of the characters, so even though you don't always necessarily nail them head on you don't bash them either and they at least act with reasonable intelligence.  I will add here that Haruhi's confession of her feelings to Jinnai didn't really strike me as in-character for her, though.  She has enough trouble admitting that she likes Kyon and is as vulnerable to the love bug as anyone else, and now all of a sudden she's opening herself up?  This declaration might have worked better doing a moment of crisis, as clichéd as that sounds.  I do like how neither Jinnai nor Haruhi have suddenly gone all mushy-mushy and are still acting as megalomaniacal and imperious as ever, though.  Despite the change in their relationship, they still feel like the same characters.Anyway, good job with these two chapters.  The overview of Gannon's "conversion" was amusing though not as hilarious as Haruhi forcing Mikuru into becoming the moe mascot of the Bugrom Empire.  I half expected her to include the usual risqué photos of Mikuru in the promotional boxes, though Jinnai's arguably decent enough that he might quietly remove such items before handing out the packages.  The scenes with the other protagonists were reasonably good too, though it seemed almost too convenient how everything fell into place perfectly for Nahato.  Still, not bad for a filler chapter.As for Chapter 12, I think by now it's pretty clear that I'm a Jinnai fan and I really liked that you had him realize the set-up was a trap instead of warping it into one of his "Makoto is evil!" delusions.  You're doing some of his incredible deviousness justice, and the allusions to "The Wanderers" are entertaining too.  You'd think the Phantom Tribe would be among his prime suspects, though, considering what he said about scrambled messages.  And Haruhi's Ryoko masquerade is quite the interesting choice and has me wondering if it'll jog any more of Yuki's memories.  The detailed description of the Coruscate Caverns was very nice too and really gave me a strong picture of the place's natural beauty.  I also think that you did a better job with the fight scene between Fatora's rescue squad and the Bugrom than your earlier battle between Kyon, Koizumi, and Fujisawa and Yuki and Nanoha, so congratulations on the improvement.I'm a little bit iffy about Ifurita Eleven (does the story really need another Demon God?) and am not quite certain how to feel about Nanoha at the moment, but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt until I discover how you put these two to use.  Diva's willingness to let Haruhi go with Jinnai into a potentially dangerous situation also struck me as slightly strange considering how protective of the new Bugrom Queen she's been, though I suppose she might be remembering her own youth cooped up by the chains of duty and is trying to give her successor a bit more freedom.  Despite these small criticisms, though, I'm still enjoying the story and am interested in seeing how things go from here.  Thanks for sharing. Â
All right! Chapter thirteen.We start off with the confrontation with Nanoha. It seems that I was correct in my guess about "Ifurita Eleven". Nanoha reveals a bit more of her past, including an allusion to El-Hazard Nazis! Well, Nazi-like fascists, as any rate, but still acceptable shorthand for the kind of Social Evil that would be required to change a good-hearted girl like Nanoha into a cold-blooded assassin. (Damn those Nazis!)Then, Kyon semi-reforms her and she heads off to go find herself, leaving our heroes free to obtain Itsuki's cure and head back.All in all, a decently handled section. The action was good, though it made me kind of wonder just what Galus was thinking sending Nanoha in alone against a set of superpowered humans. They were able to disarm and restrain her pretty easily, with Nanami to counter her illusions and Kyon to nullify her weapons. I was glad to see Kyon had a little trouble pinning her down; one would think that an assassin would be able to handle herself in a fight, even unarmed.
Nothing much to say on the Itsuki premonition scene or Fujisawa's rescue of Fatora.I'm not sure that I was able to buy into the tactical logic presented by Jinnai in splitting up his group so that he could fly with Haruhi into Floristica. Jinnai claimed that it would make the group more difficult to trap... and while it's true that it'd make it tougher to trap the WHOLE group, it pretty much doubles the chance that PART of the group will get caught, which will alert the rest of the city that an infiltration is underway. Probably more than double, actually, since the method Jinnai chose to get in was to change Haruhi into a winged girl with a huge, easy-to-spot 20-foot wingspan and fly into a well-defended city that is doubtless well-prepared to notice invasions by air (Bugrom do have fliers, after all).
On the other hand, a night-time flight with the two of them alone is a heckuva lot more romantic than slogging through the sewers with a slew of Bugrom. Which I'm guessing was the real point here. Still, you gotta admit it was a bit contrived.
 And, at last, we come to the closure of Galus's trap, and Jinnai's noble sacrifice. I found myself a bit confused while reading this as to what, exactly, Galus's plan actually was. It seemed to be his intent to make Haruhi go berserk, and while Jinnai's death may, indeed, cause this, Yuki's actions seem a bit odd.It seems that Yuki was honestly aiming for Haruhi, given the little blurb that mentioned how she couldn't bring herself to take another shot. If she was honestly gunning for Haruhi, then it seems like Galus was expecting Haruhi would be able to survive a direct assault from a Demon God, and still have enough left in her to savage the world. That's an awfully big assumption, considering that the only evidence that Galus has that Haruhi has godlike power is the fact that she was able to restore the Bugrom Empire quickly; what in that implies immortality?
I guess the bulk of the confusion is because Yuki is apparently supposed to keep shooting at Haruhi. If that can be explained away, then that might solve the problem.
It's probably not a stretch to think that a girl with neigh-omnipotent (Galus' own term for it) power readings would be able to protect herself against an El Hazard demon god attack.