Ranma slowly rubbed his forehead as he rose out bed. Outside, leaves rustled in the wind as a stiff breeze blew through the woods. He had been dreaming of something... oh well, it wasn't important. He never had important dreams. None that he could remember, anyway.
Putting on his clothes, splashing some water on his face and brushing his teeth, Ranma wandered into the kitchen. It was another day on the job. First, breakfast, then going out to rake the newly fallen leaves some more. It was Saturday, so it was time to dust again, making everything presentable for the next day's services. Pantry was starting to get a bit empty, so he needed to run to town and haggle up some groceries. What else, what else....
Ranma nodded to himself as he mechanically went through the morning tasks, fixing himself a simple, bland meal and taking stock of the kitchen to make a grocery list. Needed vegetables, definitely. And some tofu would be reasonable this week, if not all that tasty. Maybe it was time to go and start asking the neighbors some questions? Oh, and can't forget to get some more milk. Teens needed their milk. And it wasn't like there was much in the way of cold beverages around here.
Walking down the pews, wiping away dust, neatly arranging the hymn books, Ranma continued to plan his day. After shopping, which wouldn't take that much time overall, there really wasn't much on his schedule. Too bad he didn't have anything else to do except tend to the church. He could go over the place again and see if there wasn't anything else he could do to restore some of the stonework outside. He spent most of the two weeks he had been here touching up the place, doing some paint work, so on and so on, fixing up the more damaged walls. Two weeks was plenty to get people comfortable enough to dish out rumors, usually. He could go work out some more, but he didn't want to do that in the church, and outside was too exposed. Maybe in the basement he could put out some space....
Outside in the cloudy morning, carefully weeding the gard... wait, why was he weeding the garden again? He sure wasn't growing anything there.
Ranma stopped to consider whether or not he should pay more attention to what he was doing.
...oh, whatever.
Outside in the cloudy September morning, carefully weeding the garden (it needed weeding, and since he was there anyway), Ranma pondered his predicament some more. Sooner or later he'd have to make an out-of-town trip to the Shinto shrine complex and ask some questions over there. Not before gathering some rumors from the locals, but probably sooner rather than later. Waiting for his target to show up on its own and cause an incident would be unwise, to say nothing about unsafe for the people here. Soba! That was what he was forgetting! He had been meaning to get some buckwheat noodles for an entire week and kept forgetting. Hmm... probably need more miso too, while he was at it.
Done with the garden, Ranma went inside, got a sweater (the weather here sure got chilly quickly enough), and strode out the gate, after making sure everything got locked up. Slowly, he ambled down the path to the town. Then he turned around and headed back.
Forgot to rake the leaves.
How could he have forgotten the leaves?
"Whew. Well, that was fun," Ranma said to himself as he carefully set down the bags of groceries he was carrying next to his seat. The small eatery where he had decided to take a break at was bustling with activity and filled with the wonderful smells of food being prepared. All the better since it was lunch time, and he needed to get something to eat.
"And what can I get you?" asked the frosty voice of a young waitress.
Ranma, having never been in this particular establishment, glanced at the menu a bit, before cheerfully ordering a small tempura combo meal. "And could I also have a cup of tea? Thanks!" Smile, smile!
The waitress's demeanor cracked a bit at the bright and guileless response to her own unsubtle hostility, before she smoothed her expression over and left with the order she had been given.
Ranma watched her leave with a puzzled expression on his face, before settling back and flipping open the newspaper he had grabbed earlier in the day. Readjusting his priest's white collar as he did so. A few of the patrons looking his way noticed the motion, and turned as to not look at him.
A few tables away, a ruckus started as one man, seemingly a bit drunk, started ranting. His companions tried to shut him up, and after a bit of time succeeded, for the most part, and continued talking quietly. But it had already attracted the attentions of most of the eatery. Ranma continued to read his paper.
"But I'm sayin' we need to try again! We don't need them priests from the shrine! Come on, guys, whaddya say? All we gotta do is to go inta the forest, find it, and that's it! We don't need ta fight it or nothin'!"
"Yer sloshed Hachiro! We don't need to get anywhere near that thing again! 'Sides, it hasn't shown itself for a few months, so maybe it's gone away already...."
"Yeah Hachi, go dunk your head until you're a little more sober. Or until you drown or somethin'. We ain't got a reason to run around at night again looking for that demon. Just let it lie."
"Hmm," Ranma thought, "The Nippon Ham Fighters beat the Seibu Lions yesterday at Seibu Dome.... I though the Ham were the underdogs? Oh well, I never followed baseball anyway."
"But ya gotta come do this with me! I can't do it on my own! You know what they said about the thing with its teeth and the claws and, er, you know, the rest of that! Come on!"
"Teeth and claws? I thought it was some fire breath or something. Do you even have any idea what you're talking about?"
"I swear it was huge fangs and claws that'll rip your throat out! An' besides, everybody who was there that last time was too busy running away like little girls to get a good look anyway...."
"Apparently," Ranma said to the waitress as she came back with his order, "the yen is dropping in value again. Looks like Takenaka's trying to improve the economy by undercutting the currency some more. Oh, and thanks!" The waitress was too busy watching the table in the corner with a put-upon look on her face to reply.
"Ya mean like what you'd 'a done if you were there with them? Or like you'll do without us? Hah! Don't be talkin' about others, ya fool!"
"Well, I dunno about all that, but I still don't think it's a good idea. I mean, we could, but... nah."
"Ah screw you guys. I knew I couldn't count on you fer nothin'. I'm gettin' outta here and findin' some place with better booze. Hey waitress! These guys'll get my tab, al'ight!?"
Ranma finished his meal as the sounds of protest came and went from the direction of that other table. Well satisfied with his meal, he paid his bill and left for some more grocery shopping.
Ranma stared about him in confusion. His bags were at his feet. His sweater lying in a balled-up heap on the couch next to him.
"Err... how exactly did I end up at the Yamanaka's place again?"
On his lap, young Sachi Yamanaka smiled cutely at him. No help there, apparently.
"I really don't want to impose again," Ranma half-heartedly called toward the kitchen, where the mother of the family was preparing dinner.
"It's no problem, Father," was the reply. "We're happy to be doing this for you."
Ranma looked back down at the girl fiddling with his cross pendant, poking at the chain that secured its place around his neck.
"Sachi-chan, can you tell me how I got here?"
The girl didn't seem too worried about his confusion as she focused on tugging on the shiny cross. Ranma raised his eyes toward the heavens. A blank ceiling was all he got from that direction.
"I'm home! Oh, Father Saotome, I didn't know you were here."
"Good evening, Yamanaka-san. Would you believe I didn't know I was here either?"
The young man of the house laughed good-naturedly at the pleading expression on Ranma's face. "Ah, did my wife drag you in from the street again? You know how she is...." He looked into the kitchen for a moment, before turning back and accepting his daughter's hug around his knees. "At least I knew it when I married her," he finished with an embarrassed smile.
Ranma returned a grin as he and Yamanaka finally exchanged bows. "You're a lucky man."
"What are you two talking about now?" asked a flustered housewife as she herded them all into the small but cozy dining room. A while later, they were all gathered around the table, enjoying a home-cooked meal.
"So how are things Father?" A chuckle. "You know, it's still hard to call you that with you so much younger than us..."
"Now dear, don't say that. It's not nice."
Ranma laughed. "It's okay, I'm pretty used to it by now." He popped some rice into his mouth. "I was sort of a special case. I... well, I figured out what I wanted in life earlier than everybody else I knew, that's all. It got the attention of a few people, and... well, here I am. I guess it all worked out in the end."
Sachi giggled from her seat next to the young priest. Ranma turned and mock-frowned at her. "And what's so funny about that? I bet when you're my age, you'll have found something to spend your life doing too, you know."
The little girl just laughed and shook her head. So did her parents at the petulant look on Ranma's face as his world-view was shaken so badly by a four-year-old. With a muttered "bah" and a sniff of wounded pride, Ranma turned back to his food. Which he knew would never tease him.
The quiet dinner continued with bits of small talk. How was fixing up the church going? Did he have enough fuel to last through the snow season? How was the town's harvest proceeding?
It was as good as time as any, Ranma thought, to bring up that particular issue. He had heard some men talking about some creature that they were looking for in the woods, so was that just some drunken rambling? Or something else? After all, now that he lived by himself away from easily reached help, he should know about that sort of thing. Right?
The Yamanakas became uncomfortably quiet. Ranma once again didn't press, but just watched as Sachi, who didn't notice the tense mood, push her vegetables around in her bowl. When the Yamanakas spoke again it was the father who finally told Ranma the story.
Well, Father, I guess you do need to know about this. Especially since you'll see it yourself sooner or later. There's this... thing that's been hanging around our village for a while now. I think it's been around for about half a year, but it's really hard to say. We've, our villagers, have definitely seen it a few times. Always at night, but one time a kid said he saw it in the day, too. I don't know if that's true or not, but you should know about it.
We don't know what it is, really. It just seems to be wandering the woods. Old Man Itou, yes, the grocer, one time he said that he found it trying to steal some of his wares, and every so often one of the shopkeepers blame the creature for some theft, though I think it's probably the neighborhood boys playing a prank.
A lot of people became afraid. Our local police took a look around and didn't find anything, so they just called it a prank. Then the more upper-crust families, well you know what I mean, started saying they've been seeing it too, so we couldn't just blow it off as some sort of hoax anymore. We got a group of men together, I was with them, and went into the forest and tried to track it down. I'm not much of a hunter myself but we've got a few guys who're experienced at tracking. They didn't find much they could use, and we never found anything during the day. Soon we just started to go at night. I thought trying to track something by torchlight was pretty silly, I mean anyone can see the light and run away, you know? But that's what we did because we were really worried about it. If it was getting close enough to Itou's store to swipe some food all the way in the marketplace, you know it could get close enough to the houses by the forest. Like ours.
Anyway, we did that a few days. Searching, I mean. Maybe a few weeks since we pretty much went out whenever the weather was reasonable. People started getting fed up. We started to go in smaller groups and teams to cover more area a night. That wasn't too smart in hindsight, but we didn't know better then. I wasn't with the right team that one night, but when we all got back a group of guys were yelling and carrying on that they saw the beast. They really used the word "beast" too, so I guess they were either pretty rattled or they had seen something just awful. Ten feet tall, they said. Glowing red eyes. Fast as hell- oops, sorry, um, really fast on its feet. They didn't see much else since it was a pretty foggy night, and we sometimes get that here in the early summers pretty suddenly.
Well, that just fired us all up again. You could tell that they believed what they were saying, at least, even if what they were saying wasn't all that coherent. After calming down a bit I think one of them said that it wasn't really ten feet tall, but just looked like it in the torchlight and the shadows from a distance in the fog. Maybe, I don't know. Anyway, last I heard of it, the officials called in some priests from the Shrine of Divine Light. I don't know what happened with them, but after that, everyone seemed really closed-lipped about it, and I don't really think I need to go around asking. But....
But I just have this feeling that it wasn't completely settled. A lot of people don't think so either, but no one seems to really be talking about it, and I'm uncomfortable just telling you about it. But you should know.
It had been a good and productive day. Ranma carefully walked up the path back to the church with his heavy load of groceries, mindful of the cold night and the darkness. After thanking the Yamanakas for the meal and the story, and helping them put little Sachi to bed, he had left them to their own thoughts.
So, at least he was able to confirm the report for the most part. Not much was said about the creature's abilities, but second-hand accounts weren't worth much anyway. It didn't fit any of the usual signs. Didn't seem like the average vampire (though it could have been a particularly well-behaved one, seeing as there weren't any small bloody chunks of men involved in the story). Didn't seem like a ghoul, for much the same reasons. From what he had heard, it could have been some apparition. But his instincts told him that it was unlikely; ghosts usually fell into two categories: those that were belligerent (which this one didn't seem to be), and those that stayed in a fairly small area moping and bemoaning their existence (which this one did not seem to do). A shapechanger? Possibly, but there was no evidence of any actual changing. A shapechanger might steal for sustenance though, unlike the others. Maybe it was some crazy hermit that had lived in these woods for a long time and only started going into the village recently. In fact he had seen that sort of thing a few times.
Oh well. Ranma unlocked the gate and locked it behind him. Moving his purchases to the door, he entered the church for a long night of moving things around in the basement.
Sitting in a tree, watching the steps up to the church compound, a figure waited. Watching silently as a young priest securely closed the door to the church, the figure's outline seemed to... ripple in agitation... before calming again. It would wait an hour or so, at least until the resident was sound asleep. And then...
Then it could finally go to bed.
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(Posted Sat, 04 Dec 2004 06:22)
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