The content is set, with a few exceptions, noted below.  I also note some of the more substantive changes since v.12 of the manuscript; but there are many small changes I haven't noted.

In general, it would be good if you could read the manuscript "fresh" - this will hopefully be the last time we need to do that; a few changes related to the issues listed below, and we should be ready to submit. 

General comments/questions: 

Not enough references (and/or details) in the Intro? 

Use of hyphenated modifiers (consistent and correct?) 

Specific comments/questions:

Sec. 2: 

par. 2: We now infer a rotational velocity and period (from the vsini, i (see Aerts 98; pretty convincing as these things go), and R).

last par.: Last half sentence is new: more detailed about Alcala's findings.

*Eric will have some more substantive changes to this section.

Sec. 3:

Throughout the third and fourth paragraphs we discuss the source extraction -- significance of detections, positional errors -- see the new caption to Tab. 2, too.

We also discuss naming too (please let me know if what I say is OK).

Sec. 4: 

I'm a bit worried about the description of the global fits in the fourth paragraph of 4.1.1.  For example, a red. chi. sq. of 1.09 for ~540 deg. of freedom isn't really "good" ; and what about the discussion of parameter uncertainties near the end of that paragraph?  I'm not that worried, actually.  But let me know if you think we should change any of this. 

Marc, do you want to discuss Zhekov and Palla's beta Cru spectral modeling results (e.g. their T distribution/shock model) more than we already do (there's a mention of their abundance determination in 4.1.1)? 

Fig. 5 is remade: more panels, no "zoom in" panel (can the quality of the continuum fit be well-enough discerned?); I'm going to modify the colors to make them more different from each other

Mike pointed out (so did Eric) the blue shift of the O VII intercombination line in Tab. 4; should we comment on it (maybe in a footnote to Tab. 4)?  I really think there's something fishy going on with this line; if you wanted to take a look at it Marc, I'd appreciate your input.

Sec. 5:

I might need to update Fig. 13 with slightly different best-fit models, pending new developments with the fitting of the companion's spectrum (actually, I don't think the ones plotted there right now are the very most up-to-date; but they'll be basically indistinguishable); while I'm at it, I should check Fig. 4; and while we're thinking about this figure, does anyone have strong feelings about the symbols we're currently using in Fig. 13? 

Marc, let me know if/when you have a better fit to the MEG spectrum of the companion, and whether you think we should include a figure showing the adaptively smoothed spectrum (and best-fit model).

In sec. 5.2, I've included three figures; we could certainly not show all of them.  I'm up in the air about Fig. 15, the EDF.  What are your thoughts?  As Mike pointed out, it does show that the companion is much more variable than beta Cru. Same with the HR vs. time (Fig. 17).  We could just describe this trend (as we already do) and/or we could describe the corresponding trend in the median energy and/or the specbins (I believe) analysis that Marc did.  They all point to the same thing - a mild softening/cooling after the flare-like event.  (Mike - in the context of your trying other things to verify the softening, one crude thing you might try is calculating a HR for early times and another one for late times - they won't be that different from each other, but the error bars will be small; you might find something convincingly statistically significant). 

Sec. 6:

I have mostly done some significant cutting of text in the middle of this section. Though I've also added a couple of short things addressing various points brought up by Marc and Mike in their last set of comments.  Let me know what you think.  And Mike, let me know if you feel I haven't addressed all of your points sufficiently (though, for example, I don't know what else to say about the high X-ray production efficiency...magnetic confinement can do it). 

I've added a short paragraph near the end trying to put beta Cru's line widths in context. 

And I've added a sentence in the next paragraph about using this system to test evolutionary models.