When Setsuna walked up to Ranma the next morning, she looked like she wanted to club him with the pot he was cooking over. Konoka greeted him cheerfully, Yue was as dismissive as ever, and Nodoka hid behind Konoka. The girls even got up at sunrise without him fetching the hatchet. Ranma felt last night had worked out rather well.
Too bad he had to show a bit of his fighting skill, but it was nothing noteworthy. Most martial artists liked to advertise their prowess by challenging others. Even those who didn't do it for the sheer fame—or the fun of grinding others into the dirt—did so to establish a reputation that might attract clients or students. Pops fought often to support their errant lifestyle. Ranma himself liked showing off, but he tried to avoid spectacles. He had no reason to display any of the flashy techniques of the Silver Tribute to Setsuna and the others. The style was his oldest, and he always enjoyed using it, but playing with someone as serious as Setsuna would just make her bitter. He needed her morale high and her cooperation steady more than he needed to amuse himself or satisfy her urge for a fight.
He also felt that Setsuna was holding back too. Fighters rarely refined their control of chi, then fought as plainly as Setsuna did—not without a resistance to spectacle much like his own. He was sure that the Gods Cry trained their initiates more martially than that, what with their demon-hunting practices. Setsuna didn't look like she was giving him her all, so he didn't either.
After eating breakfast and gathering up the supplies, the party continued their hike down the mountain. The terrain started to change from forest to partly marsh. A whiff of wet grasses hung cloyingly in the humid air, and after the wet weather in the last few days, the soggy ground clung to their feet. That wasn't a problem for Ranma's boots but just a little too messy for the girls in their walking shoes. Apparently dirty feet was a major concern for Yue, because he couldn't remember hearing so many complaints before. The rest of the girls were no better, and slogging through dirt made Nodoka, already the slowest walker among them, delay the group even more.
Towards midday, they came across a small but fast river that might as well have been a moat in their path. "Finally," Yue said as she walked up close enough to see the water. "Somewhere we can wash all this gunk off."
Ranma had to kill that enthusiasm quickly. "So you'll be sparkly clean when you trudge up the other side?"
Yue looked daggers at him, but Ranma knew that she'd whine even more when she found out first-hand, and he didn't need that.
"So how will we cross?" Setsuna asked while studiously avoiding contact with Konoka, who was walking behind her.
"Let's see." Ranma approached the edge of the river to stare at its depths. The river was ten meters wide where he stood, and he estimated it was no less than waist deep, but the river's current gave the greenish waters a bit of white foam. With his enhanced sight, Ranma looked to the left and right, but he didn't find any easy crossings hidden among the reed beds no matter how far along the river he gazed.
Maybe he should just jump over the river while carrying each girl one by one? He didn't want to use such a tawdry trick for something this mundane, and from Setsuna's silence when Konoka and Yue were grilling her after the fight last night, she didn't want to reveal her powers either.
No, Ranma wanted a solution that raised the least questions.
He turned back to the girls. "I don't think you'll like the answer I'm about to give."
Setsuna said instantly, "We have to wade across, don't we?"
"Yep."
The other three stared back and forth at Ranma and Setsuna. "We have to cross that water?" Yue yelled. "You expect us to walk through the river? Are you insane? We can't go in there!"
Ranma walked up the bank and picked up the hatchet from his pack of tools. Yue started backpedaling, which Ranma chuckled at, but intimidation wasn't his intent. He approached the nearest tree and cut off a stout and tall branch. With a few strong chops, he cut it into a firm but misshapen pole about half again as tall as he was.
Then he strode down to the river and began taking off his clothes.
"Oh god," Yue asked, "what is he doing now?"
"Something you'll be doing too," Ranma said as he stripped down to his black inner shirt and shorts. He could feel the stares on his back, and admittedly it made him a bit self-conscious, but self-consciousness never stopped him. He set the hatchet aside along with his hunting outfit and boots, and picking up the pole, he waded out into the moving waters.
They were freezing.
But so what? Ranma deemed the water not freezing enough to stop the girls from crossing. He walked the width of the river with the pole held upstream to break the current. The current was brisk, but regular enough that no one would get towed away if he was careful. He felt the dirt and rocks under his bare feet—not sharp, but for safety the girls should keep their shoes on. All in all, the crossing was unpleasant, but not dangerous.
He made the trip across and found a good landing site on firm earth, then waded back to where Setsuna was arguing with the other girls.
"I am not getting into that water," Yue was saying. Konoka and Nodoka looked like they agreed, while Setsuna was showing them the map and its lack of any better crossing points.
"You got three choices," Ranma said to Yue as he came back up the bank. "One, you can come across without all that complaining. Two, you be get dragged across, but I'll let you bitch as much as you want. Three, your friend can beat you unconscious first, and then... well, what happens after that won't matter much in comparison."
Yue's mouth opened and closed a few times. "Setsuna's not going to beat me up."
Ranma looked at Setsuna, who was standing there rigidly, then back at Yue. "She will if it means I won't."
Setsuna frowned, but she didn't disagree.
"So which is it?" Ranma asked as he walked closer to pick up his tools. "Don't make me decide for you."
Yue looked at Konoka and Nodoka, but Ranma saw no help for her there. "Alright, fine. What do we have to do?"
Ranma picked up the small fire-starting kit. "First, you girls need to strip." Everyone except Setsuna began to protest, but Ranma kept right on talking. "Yes, you have to take off your clothes. At the very least, get rid of the jackets and the pants, and the socks but keep your shoes." Ranma pointed at Konoka in particular, with her hooded jacket. "I don't need you dragged down by wet clothes when we're crossing. Gathering it all into a bundle."
Ranma heard a lot of grumbling as he turned his back to give the girls a bit of privacy. Not that he particularly wanted to watch a bunch of middle-school girls undress. He busied himself with tying together the fire-starting kit with a clean towel and securing it onto the top of his pole. Then, he carried the hatchet to the river, cloth sheathe and all, and hurled it all the way to the other side. It landed on the opposite bank nicely, though treating his faithful tool that way pained him.
He turned back to the girls, and couldn't stop himself from saying, "Wow, you're all so... bony." The glares he got from the four girls in flimsy shirts and underwear could've scorched off his eyebrows.
"Alright, you first." Ranma pointed to Yue, who snarled but came forward anyway. "The rest of you will wait to cross until we've got a fire going. I'll bring the pole back across. Don't worry about the gear for now."
With that simple command, he added Yue's clothes to his pole bundle and pulled Yue down to the water. She didn't resist until water came above her ankles, at which point her shout of "It's freezing!" resounded along the riverside.
"Suck it up." Ranma didn't punctuate his response by dragging her face-first into the current, but his pull was insistent, and soon Yue was submerged and shaking in the ice cold river with her long hair trailing in the water behind her.
"Why did I have to be first?" Yue asked as they walked past the reeds.
"Because you're the shortest," Ranma answered, to which Yue indignantly clenched his arm. "I'm tall, you're not. You're the most likely to get your head pulled under if something goes wrong, so I'm making sure nothing happens."
Yue was holding herself as close to a fetal position as she could while walking slowly arm in arm. Ranma looked at her shaking. "If you're cold, you can press up against me. I won't say anything."
Yue pinched him hard.
The trip was slow, but no problems arose, and soon enough he and Yue were climbing up the other side. Yue was in no better condition out of the water, with the noon breeze draining her core temperature just as much as the flowing water.
Ranma unwrapped the kit and Yue's clothes, and threw her the towel. "Dry off and change. Quickly."
She needed no encouragement, trembling too hard to even snark in his direction. Ranma quickly picked up the hatchet he threw over, unsheathed it, and split off as much dry plant material he could find close at hand. By the time Yue had successfully dressed herself in dry clothing again, he had already struck some sparks using the kit's flint and steel onto the bit of cotton he placed on the combustibles. A few breaths, and sparks became a flame. A heap of dry sticks from a nearby tree, and they had a campfire able to warm and dry.
Ranma and Yue sat down near the fire. Though he didn't need to heat up the way Yue did, Ranma allowed himself a little bit of rest before crossing the river again.
"I wonder," he said as he watched the three girls on the distant bank, "if all of you would've undressed if I told you it would take this long for one trip."
Yue threw a pebble at him.
After making sure that Yue was warm enough, that her soaked undergarments were drying nicely, and that she knew how to keep the fire going, Ranma made his fourth crossing back to Setsuna, Konoka, and Nodoka. By then, Setsuna had already snapped off her own pole from a tree, but it wasn't long enough. Ranma forced her to exchange with his. Konoka wanted to accompany Setsuna on her trip, which Ranma didn't mind. Setsuna accepted it quietly, though he thought he saw trepidation on her face.
As the two girls strode into the water—and neither liking it much more than Yue did—Ranma turned his head toward Nodoka. He didn't remember her saying a thing to him in this entire outing. "So," he said as he weighed Setsuna's pole in his hands and looked out at the two in the river, "what books do you all like?"
Nodoka didn't respond, and he couldn't see her eyes through that fringe covering her upper face. She seemed to be cowering away from him, if only so far that she could avoid him but not look rude while he's talking at her. Ranma wasn't surprised by her reluctance to chat—he didn't think any girl would want to after being told to take off her clothes and walk into a river. Still, this one couldn't even muster some anger about it.
Anyway, he was never as good at drawing out the shy as he was putting down the brash.
Before Ranma could try to engage Nodoka again, he heard a cry coming from the river, and as he looked up, he saw Konoka, visible by her longer hair, fall under the river's surface. She separated from Setsuna's side in an instant, and to his eyes, her form was quickly carried along with the current.
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(Posted Mon, 13 Sep 2010 06:53)
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