As soon as he made it over the final rise, Ranma could see that something was terribly wrong with the area. Although he had left the area flooded about three years ago after the whole Saffron incident, Ranma had heard from various sources that the flooding had eventually gone down and the valley had returned to its relative normalcy.
That was no longer the case. Even from the place he was standing on over a mile away, the destruction was evident to Ranma. Instead of the 100+ lakes with bamboo poles sticking out of them, there was just one gigantic crater that lacked a single ounce of vegetation.
“Well… this is new,” he muttered. He reached up to shield his eyes from the sun’s glare and tried to come up with some sort of theory. “Did a bomb go off or something?”
Taking her place beside Ranma, Miu studied the scene for a moment, and shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she told him before pointing to the outer rim of the crater. “Look, it’s all too… even. If there had been an explosion this huge, there’d be debris the size of houses everywhere. I’m not sure about how long it’s been, but the grass around the crater looks in about the same condition as the stuff closer to the mountain’s base. So it could have either re-grown since then, or whatever happened was very precise.”
Ranma looked at Miu out of the corner of his eye. “You can actually tell all that from here?”
“Well… yeah,” Miu replied with a confused look on her face. Then she looked back to the base of the valley. It was only about a mile away. Ki enhanced senses picked that kind of stuff up easily.
Putting yet another reminder of just how different their skill sets had developed despite having the same teacher, Ranma shook his head and jumped off the edge to ride the slope of the mountain down to its bottom in the valley. Miu landed on the ground in front of him a minute later with a quick flare of ki to break her fall.
“So, what do you want to do now?” Miu asked before picking herself out of the small crater formed by her landing.
Ranma took a moment to look at the small hole Miu made, and then turned his attention to where Jusenkyo used to be. Then he looked over to were the Amazon village was supposed to be, and scanned the mountain range. Ranma couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something just seemed off; and it was more than the ‘missing’ springs. “Let’s go check it out at least.” If the Jusenkyo guide was there, he might have at least been able to tell Ranma what happened.
When they got to the crater, any hopes of an explanation were gone. Although he couldn’t be sure, Ranma thought that the far edge of the blast radius would have included the man’s hut. Even if he hadn’t been home when whatever it was happened, a quick search of the area told them that no one had been around in a long time. “So much for the easy way.”
“Do you want to go to plan B then?” Miu asked.
“… do you?” Ranma asked after a moment. He took in a deep breath, and let out a long sigh. “If this doesn’t work… hell, even if everything goes just like I want, this will be putting you in more danger than me long-term. That’s even if Shampoo went home to begin with.” Ukyo had chased him for ten years after all. It seemed angry women didn’t tend to give up without a decade or so of vengeance seeking.
Then there was the latest development right at his feet. The giant pit had Ranma worried that he’d missed something really important in his three-year absence.
Miu blinked, then moved up behind Ranma to wrap her arms around him and laid her chin on his shoulder. “You know I really don’t care about you turning into a girl. If that’s what your asking I mean. If you want, we could go home right now and I’d be happy just as happy married to you even if you got splashed every day of the week. I told you I’d do everything I can to help you with your curse. That didn’t mean until things got a little dangerous, or even a lot dangerous.”
“Miu-”
The blonde cut Ranma and his hesitant tone that said they might be giving up off immediately by grabbing the back of his shirt and spinning him around to face her. The frown on Miu‘s face quickly shut him up. Well, that and her aura. “If you want to go back because you don’t want to risk your life, we’ll go and I’ll never mention it again. But if you think I’ll let us turn around because you’re worried about me, or that I’ll just go back to Japan if you ask me… I’ll toss you across the ocean right now and go on myself. Then you can worry while someone you love is risking her life when she’s all alone.”
“Okay,” Ranma squeaked out.
With her husband taken care of, Miu let her anger quickly dissipate. She hated having to get rough with him from time to time, but it was the only way for her to get Ranma to listen when he didn’t want to. Which was most of the time.
As they headed out for Joketsuzoku, Ranma tried to keep his mind distracted by trying to think of things other than what’d he’d just seen. Memories of him and Miu together the past few nights were too distracting though, and he had to focus on something else after tripping over his own feet multiple times.
In the end, Ranma just focused on reviewing his plan involving the Amazon and trying to think if there were any holes. If living with Genma had taught him anything, it was that the stuff you don’t plan for always comes back to bite you in the ass very hard.
The trip to the Amazon village took a day and a half. This time, the sight that greeted Ranma was a much more familiar one. Everything looked like Ranma vaguely remembered it from the few times he’d seen it before. The tops of some buildings could be seen over the walls, and the only way in or out of the village was the large gate in the center of the wall.
“So, this is the Chinese version of a hidden village huh?” Miu asked as she studied the place’s outer perimeter.
Ranma looked over to her and blinked. Now that he thought about it, there were a few similarities. The isolated locations and adherence to marital arts being the obvious ones. However… “Not exactly,” Ranma corrected her. “They’re not near any major urban areas, and they’re both really old fashioned, but I’d say that’s about it.”
“What do you mean?”
After setting his packs and bags down, Ranma began looking through their stuff while answering the question. “Hidden villages exist to breed superior types of fighters. I guess you could say that this is the same in a way. But the big difference is: hidden villages work, these guys don’t.”
Miu raised an eyebrow. “And your saying this after seeing, what? Half a dozen?”
“Their number one fighter couldn’t even begin to compare to Sho,” Ranma said. There was some other stuff too, but he’d seen the end product of both places and knew which was better hands down.
The answer could only make Miu shake her head. It was an… odd relationship that Ranma seemed to have with the former YOMI leader’s memory. She didn’t know if it was out of gratitude for saving her life, or some form of respect that Ranma hadn’t shown to any of his opponents in the past. Maybe it was just that he saw too much of himself in the other man.
“Well let’s hurry up and get started,” he mumbled.
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Fri, 14 Aug 2009 03:47)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.