He could leave. Staying with the girls would unsettle them, and he couldn't earn cooperation back soon enough to matter. Ranma stepped closer to Setsuna and Konoka. Seeing the two shivering and half-clothed felt kind of pitiful. "My attack," he said to Setsuna instead of answering Yue's question, "is called Flesh-Blackening Palm. It warped the Chi connection between parts of your body, but it's harmless."
Konoka stared at him in disbelief. "Harmless? Look at what you did to her face!"
Indeed, the strike had spread a bruise over the left side of Setsuna's face, as if someone had splashed her with black ink. Flesh-Blackening Palm was called Paralytic Venom Strike in its original style, and the ink-like bruise was the vestigial mark of that style. While he wasn't sure the bruise's darkness and texture were natural, he had never seen lasting effects.
The bruise was easy to remove anyway. Ranma took a deep breath, then with subtle flexing of his muscles, he shaped his Chi along the inner vessels within his body, driving some of the energy into swirls on his hands.
He stood before Setsuna, and as Konoka and Yue watched in tense confusion, he gently touched her blackened skin with his fingertips. Setsuna flinched, but Ranma knew she did so because she could feel a trickle of his spirit flowing across the barriers of their skin. She couldn't feel the physical pressure, because Flesh-Blackening Palm and its precursor both stamped a simple Chi seal into the afflicted flesh that cut all sense of touch.
With practiced ease, Ranma's spirit flow pulled apart that construct, and Setsuna relaxed as feeling and motion returned to her face.
Ranma wordlessly tapped her uncovered belly with his other hand, instantly sending Chi flowing past her organs and into her lower spine. The resulting seal of her waist and legs made Setsuna collapse on the spot.
Her expression of surprise was comical, but then she started flailing and the other two girls began flipping right out.
Ranma walked away merrily.
That merriness was for show. As soon as Ranma left Konoka and Yue huddling over Setsuna, he ran for the river and jumped over it with one bound. After all, without the girls watching, he now had many options.
Not only could he cut loose with physical prowess, he could try more solutions. When the girls stood at his camp, no rescuer could find them quickly, because inaccessibility was a quality he chose for his dwelling. Now the girls stood at a river, and despite Ranma having stabbed cooperation straight in the gut, he felt the situation was much improved.
He didn't deny feeling annoyed by Konoka and Setsuna, but heck, he didn't expect anything else. From the beginning, Ranma laid the matter of the big picture on himself, and he expected a bunch of coddled schoolgirls to do dumb things. Sure, he expected one of them to pet a wild animal instead of faking a fall into a river, but in his eyes it was no different.
Annoyance aside, he still hadn't delivered the girls to safety.
When Ranma ran on the opposite side of river back to the crossing point, Nodoka stood up from her seat at the shore. She had been fretting, he could tell, and she started when she saw his face. Did he have a scary expression? Could be. He was frowning.
Ranma slowed down and wondered what to do about Nodoka. If he left her, the others would cross the river to avoid stranding her on this side, but only Setsuna could cross the river without inviting tragedy. The girls also needed the equipment and supplies, which Ranma hadn't carried over yet.
Nodoka stared unnerved at his steadily deepening scowl and approaching steps. "Wh-what are you doing?" she asked.
Ranma noted that those were the first words she graced him with since their meeting.
He said, "Charity."
Ranma patted Nodoka on the head, and the ripple of Chi that the touch created in her body pulled her to sleep. He caught her falling body and slung her over his shoulder, muttering "Sorry!" under his breath as he did so. Unlike with Setsuna, he felt a bit disgusted. Nodoka didn't call for such abuse, and knocking her out was both lazy and an inelegant solution even if he needed to keep her ignorant of his powers.
But he didn't have time, and that settled the matter. In minutes, Ranma had carried Nodoka over the river, then the needed equipment, then all the girls clothes and books.
Konoka and Yue dragged Setsuna—conscious and feeble—back to the campfire, and as they gawked at Nodoka's sleeping body next to the smouldering wood, Ranma vanished into the trees.
Step one was done. Ranma figured that without Setsuna's physical aid, the girls had neither the guts to leave the river nor the strength to carry all the supplies. At the same time, Setsuna was conscious enough to answer any questions and doubts about what to do.
Step two required Ranma to go the rest of the way down the mountain. The trip with the girls would've taken another two days, maybe one if they pushed hard. Alone and unencumbered and carried by the Silver Wind, Ranma only needed a few hours to run over the ravines and through the woods to reach the road outpost.
He reached the outpost as the sun began to set. The outpost wasn't much to look at, just a tiny green building along the side of the paved two-lane road. It served more as a convenience store and restroom for passing travellers than a resource for outdoorsmen, and it didn't even have dedicated spaces to park a car. He had been there only a few times, but Pops usually came along this way. Ranma heard that the store's owner painted everything green to match the forest ambience, which he always thought was at the ass end of creative effort.
Unlike the last time he was here, the road was clogged with vehicles and with a dozen men dressed in vaguely military uniforms standing around. These were the rescuers, Ranma guessed. Self-Defense Force? He didn't know if wilderness rescue was under SDF jurisdiction. That they were available was good, but as Ranma watched, none of the men appeared to do anything besides stand guard.
It's been two days since the girls went missing, so maybe a detachment was searching. Ranma decided it didn't matter. He needed to get rescuers to the girls, and the quickest way was to act as a mundane hunter with a story about strewn camp material carried downstream by the river. That should be enough to point the rescuers in the right direction.
Ranma walked out of the nearby woods into open sight, wearing his dark hunting outfit and carrying his bow as a prop for his story. A few uniformed men saw his approach, and one stepped forward.
"Ho ho! Is it? Can it really be you, young Ranma!"
Ranma froze, and looked where an elderly man's voice had called his name. What he saw a few steps away was... very wrinkly. He saw a bald scalp, huge white eyebrows and beard, and earlobes stretched below the chin—a plastic surgeon's goldmine of a head. All the exposed skin looked like leather. As if that visual wasn't enough, the man was dressed in old flowing robes, a joke of an outfit in these thick and bush-filled woods.
He felt he should recognize this person. He didn't, but a part of him knew he should be careful. "Who are you?"
The old man raised his big eyebrows. "Do you truly not know? I didn't think I would be so easy to forget! Konoemon Konoe, of course!"
The feeling of wariness increased, and Ranma stayed silent and staring for a few seconds while he followed the threads of memory back a few years.
"Oh," he said as he found the name. "You."
Konoemon. The leader of the Kanto Magic Association that governed the mages in the region. Pops had taken a few jobs from him. They met once in... Ranma didn't remember that detail.
"Indeed so! Why, it must have been two years! Three? I don't think it's been that long, has it? Time goes by so quickly."
Ranma shredded his plans immediately. Konoemon was a mage and was quite influential, and Ranma knew he couldn't fumble with information near such a person. He remained calm. "Only at your age. Why are you here?"
The old man gave no sign he noticed Ranma's ill tone. "A few of my students, four of them, have become lost in the woods. They never returned with their group. It is my responsibility to see to their rescue and safety, so I have come."
Setsuna and the others were his students? Ranma sort of remembered a mention of Konoemon running a school, which seemed a bit petty for what he remembered of Konoemon's importance.
"And you, my boy. Are you camping?"
Ranma didn't want to exchange pleasantries or go into detail, so he only replied, "Sort of. I'm living off the land. It didn't work out well, so I'm coming to restock supplies before heading back."
Konoemon looked at the bow Ranma carried. "Ah, hunting, then. A lovely way to wind down before the next school year starts, I imagine."
Ranma didn't answer. School sounded like a dangerous topic. He remembered Konoemon had a habit of entangling others with such conversations.
Konoemon leaned forward with questioning eyes. "You are attending school, yes?"
"I certainly am," Ranma said, unevasive in his voice or posture.
"Where?"
"How is it your business?"
Konoemon straightened and sighed at Ranma's evasion. "So you're not. I warned your father not to let your schooling lapse, but I see he did not listen."
Why were they having this conversation? Ranma had to deliver his message and get back to the girls. He looked to the uniformed men, but they had already backed off to let Konoemon speak. Were they with him, then?
Ranma said, "I'm gonna go—"
"Oh, so quick to leave," Konoemon said. "Are you so busy you haven't time to chat with an old fellow like me?"
"You're boring," Ranma said without a mote of tact. "Besides, you need to find your students, so I'll get out of your way. There are bad stuff in this forest. If you don't hurry, they might get chased by strange animals. Or something."
Konoemon widened his eyes. "My goodness! I haven't heard of such beasts in these woods."
"Oh, of course. They're there."
The reply seemed to bother Konoemon, but instead of concern and panic, the man showed only in an academic worry. "Pah, I should never have consented to this trip for that library club. Oh, Konoka, my sweet granddaughter. If anything happened to that girl, I could never forgive myself. And then Eishun would kill me."
"K—" Ranma stopped himself from expressing surprise at Konoka's name. "Your granddaughter is there?"
What was Konoka's surname? Was it Konoe? He didn't retain that part of her introduction two days ago because he didn't need the surname to identify her. And he could hardly connect Konoka and Konoemon because they looked nothing alike. He didn't remember the appearance of Konoemon's son Eishun, but he was pretty sure Konoka didn't look like Eishun either.
"And so close to her birthday as well," Konoemon said as Ranma pondered. "The young are always getting into such trouble." He shook his head sadly.
Ranma's head spun at this new information. "So what are you doing here, then? Don't tell me you can't fix this."
"My hands are tied," Konoemon said, "and my people are occupied elsewhere for the next few days. I can offer mundane resources, but it seems the people here, bless them, can only work so quickly."
Busyness sounded like an excuse, but if that was how Konoemon dealt with his own granddaughter, Ranma wouldn't judge. More importantly, Konoemon had called in his mage underlings. Mages complicated Ranma's situation immensely.
Konoemon smiled at him. "But you, Ranma. You are able to help me."
"Not interested," Ranma said instantly. He was absolutely not about to do anything for the man, or else he would get dragged into the affairs of mages, and that was one mess Ranma knew he had to avoid.
The speed of the reply made Konoe's face fall like a very short mudslide of skin. "Even though you know that there are girls nearby who you might save, you haven't the compassion to spare that time?"
Ranma shrugged, and turned away.
Konoemon called at his back, "You've changed since we last met."
The comment stopped Ranma for only a second, just enough for him to say, "You don't know what you're talking about."
Ranma rushed back up the mountain after leaving Konoemon's sight, without trying to talk to the other men. He could've brought the rescuers to the girls, or at least guided them, but with Konoemon there neither plan was possible. His original plan was to disappear after delivering the girls. Too bad, but Konoemon would prevent any of his attempts at sneaking off.
As Ranma ran through the woods with the Silver Wind guiding his path, he realized that when the girls told Konoemon how he treated them, the old man would be pretty pissed. Whatever, he decided a second later. He had no time to rethink his direction, so what point was there in overthinking Konoemon's response? Right now, he was
delivering the girls to safety as best he could. He'd figure out the rest when he got that far.
Ranma returned to the river a few hours later, long after evening had settled in. No girls rested at the campsite.
Perfect. Just super.
Setsuna, Konoka, Yue, and Nodoka were nowhere to be seen, though the campfire was still smouldering. They had left behind a lot of supplies, but Ranma noted that they carried away all of their belongings. Who knows what trouble those idiots could be in? With increasing worry, Ranma applied his months of experience hunting kojukei partridge toward tracking the girls down.
The girls' steps left the river in the general direction of down the mountain. In fact, they ended up not much more than half an hour's walk away from the river. As Ranma stood at the lip of the ravine which he passed twice that day, his sharp eyes looked beyond the jaggedness and spotted the four girls down below on outcroppings of rock, faintly illuminated by the stars.
There they were, banged up and clutching their bags as they tried not to slip off, looking up at him.
Ranma placed his face in both hands, and said, "This is my fault. This is all my fault. I completely underestimated your ability to endanger yourselves."
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(Posted Mon, 01 Nov 2010 05:41)
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