Taig - which was near but most definitely not the old village of Taip.
Ranma cursing because he ended up on the wrong boat quickly gave way to disgruntled stalking in the indicated direction.
He saw the statue while there. Big old bronze statue, corroded and looking like it would fall over at any moment. A big green sagging pig with a faded collar of some kind. Bleah.
Absolutely no fun at all to be had in Taig. Even the dog-monsters weren't playing. Pfeh.
"I'm sorry, you can't leave town without a monster," said an officious looking guard at the gate.
Ranma leapt, grabbed the top of the gate, swung over and kept walking. "Lemmee guess. Wild monsters?"
"Well, yes," said the guard to the boy who'd gotten past him, wondering how the teenager had done that.
"I'll manage," said Ranma.
Sure enough, he hadn't gone twenty yards when rustling indicated something about to drop on him from the trees.
When he saw it was a suezo he couldn't help but put an extra snap in his kick. What kind of critter had one eye, a mouth, and a tail and damn little else? Damn heavy ones for one thing.
It wasn't another mile before he began noticing a couple of things.
One being that the ground was shaped funny. The path was well worn and had wagon or cart tracks, but go off the shoulders and you had dirt mounds. Examining these led to the discovery of old broken bricks and stuff poking out of the dirt.
Ranma shrugged. The sun was yellow today, it was frequently red but apparently there was a lot of dust in the air that frequently gave it a reddish look. Because it was a normal color, it was brighter than usual. Because it was brighter than usual he was noticing the shadows and colors more than he had been. Which gave the mounds more attention than the usually would have been.
He'd seen something like this in China. In some cases the old buildings had fallen into disrepair, the people had moved a little ways off and then scavenged the old for building materials to build a new village. Leaving ruins to accumulate dirt and dust until mounds like this were left behind. Sometimes they just kept building on top of the old, which eventually gave the village a hill they were atop.
The other thing he noticed was that he was being followed. Not human.
Ranma deliberately slowed and started inspecting one of the mounds, but actually keeping an eye out for his stalker.
Finally he saw some movement and got a good look while he was trying to act like he was studying some pottery. Cautiously watching him from the woods was:
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(Posted Sun, 07 Dec 2003 11:11)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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