Morning came, and it found Ranma standing in front of a tree, drawing a crude wooden bow.
"This is the training that you do?" Setsuna asked from behind him. "Firing arrows into a target an arm's length away?"
Ranma's brow twitched, but he released the bowstring calmly, and the reinforced plastic arrow sank into the bark of the tree with a thud. He noted the accuracy of his shot with satisfaction before making up a reply. "Distance is an illusion. This kind of practice serves me better."
"I'm unimpressed."
"I can live with that." Ranma turned to look at her, and winced. "You should wash your face."
Setsuna's fists clenched. "Tell me, why would someone from the Gods Cry school know your family name?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"If you're someone I should consider an enemy, I can't let you lead us into danger."
"I think you should be less worried about that, more worried about me being a crazy guy living in the woods."
Setsuna scowled.
"Look," Ranma said. "Do you trust me to help you, or not? Because if you don't, then take your friends and go. I'll let you take some of my food, even."
"I'm still deciding," Setsuna said.
"Then get decisive, because I'm not patient."
Ranma walked back into the cave. The difference in light was minimal, since the sun was just rising, and Ranma could see three lumpy shapes under one of his thick brown blankets.
"Okay girls," Ranma said as he stood over them with his hands on his hips. "Up!"
"Piss off," one of the girls mumbled.
Ranma assumed it was Yue, since he would've been surprised by the alternatives. He sighed, and walked over to his tools pile.
"Get the hell up!" he roared a second later, yanking the blanket off the girls and throwing it to one side.
Konoka, Nodoka, and Yue were all revealed in their flimsy shirts and underwear, but before they could scream about being shocked awake by the morning chill or being stripped of their modesty, they started screaming about the furiously yelling guy standing over them. With a hatchet.
The cave was filled with screams for a long few minutes.
"I don't think that was nice," Konoka said after they shared a very quiet breakfast and Ranma showed the girls the nearby creek where they could wash.
"It got you up," Ranma said as he walked back to camp. He had been the last to splash some water on his face, and Konoka had insisted on waiting for him. He could've told her that the whole thing was a joke, but then he'd have to admit that he wasn't very funny.
"And you," Yue yelled from somewhere ahead of them. "You didn't even try to stop him!"
"He wasn't attacking you," Setsuna voice answered. "There is no need to dwell on the matter. We must hike a good distance today, so save your energy. I'm sure you will have reasons to yell later."
Ranma strode up to the girls in front of the cave with Konoka following behind him. Nodoka flinched, while Setsuna and Yue glowered at him. "Hope you're all ready," he said, "because it's time to divvy the load."
"I still say we should stay here," Yue said. "Make a smoke signal or something to tell the authorities where we are. They might send a helicopter."
"Not an option," Ranma said. "I didn't settle here just so a bunch of lost campers can call in rescue workers or have the Self-Defence Forces swarm the place."
"Seriously, what is your problem?" Yue stomped up to him and pointed a finger onto his chest. "Who knows what could happen during this trek back? Don't you think our safety is a little more important than your dumb lifestyle?"
"In all honesty," Ranma said without emotion, "If I had to let you stay in my camp for another day, I would rather set the place on fire."
"Yue," Konoka said as the shorter girl trembled in useless girly rage, "we already agreed to this. The sooner we get going the faster we'll get home. It's just another few days."
"Anyway, the load." Ranma ignored Yue's dark look. "In order to make this trip with five people, we need to carry supplies. While you were sleeping, I organized them into three piles, and I want you all to decide who carries what."
He pointed to the first pile outside the opening of the cave. It was his large pack, with the hatchet that he had used to menace the girls leaning prominently on it, along with his bow. "These are the tools. There aren't many of them, but the hatchet, the entrenching tool, and in particular the cookware makes them rather heavy. Since you're a bunch of schoolgirls, I figured it's useless asking you to shoulder them, so I'm carrying this."
He pointed to a second pile by the fire pit, a haphazard collection of cans and bottles about knee-high. "This is all the prepackaged food and water I have left. It's not as heavy as the tools, but it's not light. Since there are five of us, there's nothing we can take that'll last for the length of the trip, which means we—and by we I mostly mean myself—will have to forage. This is our emergency food, in case we can't find enough on the way."
Lastly, he pointed to a pile that was still inside the cave. It was hard to see, because it was covered with heavy cloth. "This is everything we need to make shelter. Rope, stakes, blankets, stuff like that. It's not that heavy, but it's bulky, and we'll need at least two people to carry all of it."
He faced the girls again, and noted that they didn't yet seem worried about the burden in front of them. "I don't know how fit you girls are, so I'll give you a few minutes to decide how to distribute the weight among yourself. Keep in mind that you still have to carry the baggage you came with. Also, keep in mind that this is a long hike, and the more days we're out there, the more likely someone will get bitten or lost or something else that's bad. I'll run you ragged in order to make reasonable time, and that means stamina is going to matter. Take a good look through everything and think about what you can handle."
The girls took longer to decide their loads than Ranma liked, but the group finished their preparations and Ranma lead them out of his camp before mid-morning. He left the majority of his gear in the cave, knowing he'd come back in a few days. The girls were less happy to leave, but Ranma was content to ignore all their bitching.
The first few hours of the march passed uneventfully. The girls had surprisingly good stamina for their slim builds, so while they complained about the pace that Ranma chose, they were able to match it even with their loads. The party hiked through many kilometers of forest and wetland, and while the sun didn't shine through the heavy clouds, it wasn't very windy or cold either. Ranma kept an eye out for anything to hunt—the best targets were partridge or deer, but nothing presented itself amidst the trees and grasses. He allowed the girls to take a break and have a packaged snack every four hours.
Maybe the reason for the lack of animals was the incessant talking, Ranma thought. He would've liked the girls to be quiet during the trip, but Konoka, Yue, and Nodoka insisted on conversing. Konoka had tried to cajole Ranma into telling them a story to pass the time, but Ranma didn't like to yap and resisted the idea. Yue complained that he was like Setsuna, all stoic. Both Ranma and Setsuna ignored her.
And so the whining continued about how this trip sucked horribly, and made going back to school next month look good in comparison. As the sun set on the first day of hiking, Yue was asking why somebody named Kaede couldn't be here with them. That was when something attacked.
Ranma slowed to a stop, and looked up into the canopy of oak leaves above and to his right. The girls didn't notice his hesitation, so engrossed were they in complaints about the soft mud that clogged their shoes. Konoka was following Yue's comment with a wish that someone named Asuna was available, when a large black bear scrambled from the branches above, climbed down a nearby tree, and landed on the ground close by.
The bear reared back onto its hind legs, putting it a head above everyone in the party. The thing was all black fur, except for a patch of white on its chest. It gave a few huffs and grunts as it stared at the girls, and Ranma turned his head to see Yue and Konoka clutching some opened energy bars.
Ranma reached one hand toward the back of his pack.
"Don't run away," Yue said with her eyes locked on the bear, now slowly walking on its hind legs toward them. "Bears like to chase when you run away, right?"
Konoka stood near Yue with a pale face, while Setsuna had quietly moved herself from the back of the party to a position between the girls and the approaching animal. Nodoka was flipping through a large survival manual. "By the white mark on its chest, that's an Asian black bear. Ursus thibetanus. Umm, can be aggressive towards humans—"
By then the bear had already stomped within meters of Setsuna, and dropped back to all fours. It was close enough that Ranma could smell damp fur in the slight breeze. Setsuna sported the face of one resigned to necessary violence, a face Ranma could see from his vantage point to the side. Unfortunately, the girl was probably too short to scare off such a large animal just with a glare. All her hostility accomplished was to confuse the bear into emitting a string of hisses, while its muscles roiled beneath its black coat in anticipation.
Setsuna took a stance. Ranma recognized the wide-legged posture as one of the Gods Cry school's unarmed techniques, a blow that might break some bones and wound the bear to fury. The bear's hisses turned to growls, almost like it sensed the challenge.
"Isn't there something we can do to scare it off?" Konoka asked while watching Setsuna with worry.
Yue looked toward Ranma as if for an answer to Konoka's question, and her eyes widened in the same instant that Ranma said, "May this blade extend my hand."
He released the bowstring without hurry, and the four-bladed steel broadhead shot five meters to land square inside the bear's momentarily open mouth, spearing out of its cheek. The growls turned into a high pitched squeal, and all the girls turned to stared at him slacked-jawed.
The bear charged forward faster than any normal human could run, but Ranma was no more hurried than before as he sent an arrow through one of the bear's paws, then another into a leg.
It had enough, and turned to lumber away. Blood trickled from the bear's limbs and face. Ranma watched the creature flee into the trees, and he pulled out one last arrow. The act of drawing the twenty-five kilo hunting bow that he personally carved was as much ritual as anything else, done with solemnity and the grace of a thousand hours of practice. To his eyes, the distance between him and the target shrank until he stood close enough behind the fleeing animal to touch it with the tip of the arrowhead.
Ranma said, "And may this blade follow my eye."
He released the bowstring, and the intervening space returned, but regardless of the distance, or the wind, or the pull of gravity that should've mattered to an arrow's flight, his arrow had already lanced through the bear's neck by the time the string snapped back to its taut position.
As the wounded animal disappeared into the distant forest, Ranma put his bow down next to his pack, turned to the stunned girls, and said, "This looks like a fine place to camp, don't you think?"
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(Posted Fri, 27 Aug 2010 01:15)
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