Ranma caught Ranko gently, looking worriedly into her face. Her eyes fluttered open and she yawned widely. "Sorry, Ranma. That did take more out of me than I thought. You go on. Ryouga will protect me until I get my bearings back."
Ranma nodded, then bending slightly, he scooped her up and deposited her in Ryouga's arms, pointing at a building a short distance behind them. "You ought to be able to make it up there in that form," he told Ryouga. "That way you won't have to split your attention between Ranko and these beasts." He handed Ryouga his pack and Ryouga shifted Ranko to one arm long enough to slip a strap of Ranma's pack over his shoulder.
Ryouga nodded, and the two turned away, Ryouga back to the village, Ranma facing the house on the hill. A few bounding strides took Ryouga past the circling but still uncertain animals, and then a single powerful leap took him up over the eaves and onto the roof, where he turned to watch his friend going to face the youma alone. He shifted Ranko so that she was sitting upright in his lap, so that she could watch Ranma. He tried, with little success, to ignore the warm feel of her weight on him, the light scent of her hair as it drifted back in the breeze.
Ranma was just reaching the path that led out from the door of the house. His feet and legs glowed in the afternoon light. Apparently the liquid light Ranko had poured onto the fields was mobile and had caught on his pants. The fields themselves still glowed with a soft light, twinkling brighter here and there, and the animals seemed unwilling to venture into it after Ranma.
During Ranma's passage up the hill the house had remained silent, no reaction to their challenge apparent, but as he reached the door, a loud slam was heard. Wasting no time, Ranma leapt onto the roof of the house and over, seeing a man fleeing. Ranma cursed mentally. Was the man Yao Mo Wen? Or Jiaohou, freed by the distraction? Should he give chase, or?
"Lord Fey," Ranma called out, "Show me Yao Mo Wen!" His voice carried over the wind to the waiting pair and Ranko nodded approval, pleased beyond measure that he had been willing to ask for help when he needed it.
A moment later Ranma leapt from the roof and streaked after the fleeing man as on the very wings of the wind. Ranko sighed and shifted in Ryouga's arms to look up at him.
"I don't know if this falls within the powers Ranma gave you, but please try. Picture in your mind a mirror in front of us, only instead of our reflections, it shows what Ranma is seeing right now. Have you got it?"
Ryouga nodded, his eyes closed. "Alright, now, repeat after me. I call on thee, Lord Fey, from avatar to champion grant us the gift of sight through his sight."
Ryouga repeated the words dutifully. He was chagrined when nothing happened. Ranko growled. "Damnit, I'm too weak to cast it right now!"
Ryouga looked down at her red hair, then off into the distance where Ranma had vanished. "Well, I can't do it, I guess... but I'm not tired. Can't you borrow my strength to do it?"
Ranko's mouth dropped open and she turned in his arms to look up at him. "Are... are you sure?"
"Hey," Ryouga replied, grinning, "I don't want to miss the big fight scene anymore than you do."
Ranko nodded, thinking furiously. How could she accomplish this? How could she draw on his strength? Theoretically there must be some spell that she could cast to do it, but she couldn't imagine what right now, nor did she have the strength for that sort of spellcasting in the first place. Then it came to her.
"Don't take this the wrong way," she said, opening her mouth. Ryouga noted her lengthening fangs and said nothing, merely tilting his neck. The entrance of her fangs was a short, sharp pain, then he felt only the warmth of her lips and tongue against his neck. He groaned involuntarily.
She drank slowly but as she had feared, no strength came to her. So, in spite of the similarities, she and Ranma were not vampires. It was in fact a comforting thought, particularly since she had not expected it to work. She had, in taking this course, a slightly different idea in mind. She pictured the gift and immediately was aware of flames within him. She drew one back, the one he would, in her opinion, be least likely to miss immediately, the gift of immortality, the sundering of the barrier. Since he had not yet approached that barrier himself, he should not miss it much, and it would be returned before too much longer, she hoped.
As she had hoped, when she released her concentration on the gift and pulled away, she felt the flame fill her with new strength as she licked his wound closed.
Turning in Ryouga's arms once more, so that she faced the direction Ranma had left in, she chanted the words she had given to Ryouga, save that where she had told him to say champion, she substituted avatar.
Little time had passed, and when the mirror formed before them, they saw trees whipping past and but a short distance ahead the fleeing form of a man.
"Yao Mo Wen!" they heard Ranma's voice cry out, "Turn and face me, if you be not a coward!"
Ranko shook her head. "Of course he's a coward, Ranma, else why would he have run in the first place?"
They saw a green flash and an actinic flare of light and heard Ranma grumble, "Damn needles."
"He's trying to poison him," said Ryouga, leaning forward in concern.
"Yep," Ranko answered. "That green must have been the spell from before."
"How much will it stand up to?" Ryouga questioned, frowning. He didn't like not being there with his friend.
"Don't worry so much, Ryouga," Ranko answered. "It's just a precaution anyway. He should be fine without it. And he needs this."
Ryouga nodded to himself. He had thought she had some ulterior motive for this. Now he realized it was in connection to Ranma's breakdown the night before. She must be trying to show her... their confidence in him by allowing him to take on this challenge by himself.
Ranma was extremely irritated. He had just about caught up with the fleeing youma when it had suddenly launched a cloud of mist or smoke that had rendered sight useless, and, based on how the green glow that immediately surrounded him, was also either poisonous or diseased.
A powerful upward leap had taken him out of the cloud and into the branches above, but he had still lost ground in his chase. He was just coming up on the man again when he suddenly felt as if he was not alone. He grinned. That must have meant Ranko had recovered and was watching him.
He shouted out a challenge, to which the man responded with a flurry of needles, most of which Ranma managed to avoid, though a few caused his shield to flare. "Damn needles."
He could have easily crossed the gap between them and taken the man down at any time, but the simple fact that the man seemed human was holding him back. It could be that Jiaohou had been possessed by Wen and might still be freed, but that would hardly be possible if his body was cut to shreds by Ranma's claws. How much physical punishment would it take to free a man possessed by a demon?
He was sure Ranko would know what to do with him, he just had to find a way to catch him. At least by leaping from tree to tree he was managing to avoid the occasional thick bushes that were slowing Wen up. Wait, that was it! He was not touching the ground, and Wen was!
"Lord Fey," he cried out, struggling to maintain a proper visualization while keeping up with the fleeing youma, "let this man's path be frozen and slick!"
Yao Mo Wen went into a headlong crash as he lost his footing on the suddenly frozen ground. He flipped over just as Ranma landed beside him. "Good night," Ranma grinned, punching the man hard, square between the eyes. Wen blinked and hissed, lashing out with a hand stretched into talons, raking Ranma's torso, though the green flare implied the poison the talons were coated with had been neutralized.
Ranma roared with anger. "By Fey! I said good night!" he shouted, lashing out again, this time with the power of an inadvertant curse behind him. Wen slumped and lay still. Ranma put a hand to his own chest, feeling the bloody strips of skin where he had been sliced.
Bending down, he heaved the man onto his shoulder then took off into the night.
---
Ryouga looked down at Ranko. "He's heading back, should we go down to meet him?"
Ranko shook her head. "No reason to deal with those animals. We'll just wait here."
"We could go in the house. They seem afraid of the light."
"Yes, but we don't know what else might be in there as well."
Ryouga conceded, unwilling to bring up the real reason he had made the request. He didn't think Ranma would react particularly well to seeing Ranko in his arms, and he was beginning to question his own ability to stay focused now that the excitement was over and there was nothing to distract him from the feel of her in his arms.
Ranko banished the spell, sighing in relief as the strain of holding it left her, then turned her mind to the question of what to do with Yao Mo Wen when Ranma returned with him. She thought as Ranma did, from the human appearance of the youma, that it had possessed Jiaohou when he summoned it.
The concept of banishing the demon seemed simple enough, except how could they ensure that the demon did not manage to take Jiaohou with it when it was banished?
Ryouga breathed a silent sigh of relief when Ranko rose and began pacing in thought, muttering to herself, though he too rose. He stepped past her to stand between her and the roof's edge.
When she stopped and stood looking out over the hill, he turned as well and watched as Ranma came bounding out of the trees, through the now dimly flickering fields, and up onto their rooftop with his unconscious burden.
"So," he said, breathing heavily, as he slid the man from his shoulder to lie on the thatch of the roof, "how are we gonna separate the two, if this is Jiaohou? His gaze and question were directed at Ranko who still looked thoughtful.
"I'm not sure yet. Let me think on it for a few minutes." Ranko resumed her pacing, though Ranma stepped forward and guided her away from the edge, while Ryouga squatted by the apparently possessed man, noting his elongated fingers, that ended now in sharp talons dripping with a black liquid.
He looked up at Ranma, remembering the point just as Ranma had finally taken the fleeing youma down, when it had reached up and lashed out at him. Sure enough, four angry red welts were visible through the rents in Ranma's shirt, with dried blood caked below them. He felt a momentary surge of anger at the unconscious man lying beside him, and then a strange sense of the unreality of it, that he was feeling angry about a threat to someone to whom, just a short time before, he would have been the one making threats.
Finally Ranko looked up and nodded decisively. "The safest thing is to stick with what we know. Ranma, summon him. It'll either do nothing, bring both of them, or separate him. If it does nothing, we try something else, if it brings both, then at least they didn't both end up banished to wherever Yao Mo Wen came from, and if it separates them, we'll take Yao Mo Wen out after forcing him to remove all the disease he's been plaguing this village with."
Ranma grinned. "I knew you'd figure it out," he said happily.
Striding away from the unconscious body, he took a stance then muttered a low chant, this time naming the being he was summoning, to make sure he got the right one. A shimmering glow lit the downed man and a pale, emaciated and sore-ridden caricature of a man stood before Ranma. It looked down then cackled gleefully.
"You forgot the warding circle," it chortled, "I'm free, now I'll... achhh!"
Ranma interrupted its celebration by lifting it from the ground, his hand firmly about its thin neck. It choked and gargled, grabbing at his hands with thin sharp talons.
"Remove the sickness you laid on this village," ordered Ranma coldly.
The thing boggled at him, eyes wide, then shook its head furiously and bit at him. Ranma smashed it upside the head, ignoring the flickering green glow that lit it when it tried to scratch at him. Visibly steeling himself, Ranma reached out and calmly broke one of its fingers, ignoring its pained screech. It is just a demon, I can't really kill it, it'll just go back to where it came from.
He loosened his hand just slightly. "Alright, alright," it screeched. "I'll do it."
"Now," growled Ranma, glaring at it. The creature sighed then seemed to slump as it nodded. It waved an emaciated hand, the one without a broken finger. Ranma looked at Ranko, who muttered for a moment under her breath before looking about. She turned back and nodded at him. "Very good," he said, grinning at the thing. "Then there's no more reason for you to stay." He released its neck even as he extended his ki claws and drew them across, severing its head before it even realized it had been released. It crumbled into ashes.
"Is Jiaohou still free of it?" he asked, turning to Ranko. She looked at the man, then knelt beside him, putting a finger and his forehead and muttering to herself.
When she stood again she nodded, then folded in on herself. Ryouga caught her. "She needs rest," he told Ranma.
Ranma nodded. "We'll have to watch her. We've got three and a half more days... or rather, they do. Of food, I mean."
"At the least, yeah."
Ranma turned and looked up at the house. "I want to take advantage of what light we have left. I'd rather know there's nothing up there waiting for night." He turned back to Ryouga. "Watch her for me, will you?"
"Of course," Ryouga nodded, "but... you've already fought once today. Are you sure I shouldn't go?"
Ranma shook his head. "The smells around here are still too jumbled. I don't want to take a chance on losing you. Just watch her," he answered, turning and leaping from the building.
Ryouga swallowed the lump in his throat. "Glory-hog," he muttered, but his heart wasn't in it, as his mind replayed Ranma's words.
Ranma pondered the villagers' story as he ran up to the house. It seemed very strange that they should reach that temple just as the villagers came there to ask for help from a dragon. He knew that Fey was real, really existed, did that mean Shen Long did as well?
If so, then where were Shen Long's warriors? Or maybe that Oracle had just seen them arriving near the temple and known that if the villagers went there, they would be attracted by the smells. But if that was the case then surely that food would have been given to them instead of sacrificed to Shen Long.
He wondered, as he opened the door to the house, what the Oracle would say if he asked about Ranko and himself. Would his mother accept them? Would she be more accepting if they were already married? Was he ready for that?
Ranma grew steadily more frustrated as he moved through the house. He had been hoping for something to pound on to take his mind of these persistent questions. It had not been so bad when he had been able to listen to Jun, or when he was focused on chasing down Yao Mo Wen, but now, with nothing immediate to take his mind off his problems, his mind was filled with questions to which he had no answers.
Finally he gave up on finding anything worth fighting in the house and stormed back outside. He began cursing when he realized that the animals that had been clustered between the fields and the village had wandered off, leaving a few dead behind.
Ryouga had looked up when Ranma exited the building, assuming from the lack of loud noise since his entrance meant that there had been nothing of interest inside, and was disturbed to see Ranma stop suddenly and laugh maniacally before raising his hands into the air.
He understood when Ranma's shout reached him.
"Damnit Fey, gimme something to fight!"
Several flares of red and green light around him signaled the arrival of half a dozen demons. Ranma didn't wait for them to reorient themselves, whirling into action immediately.
The sound of breaking bones, curses, and shouts of pain and anger drifted across the evening air as the sun slowly sank down past the nearby hills.
Ryouga split his attention between his charge and watching Ranma fight the demons. He understood better now, as Ranma worked off his frustrations, why Ranma had taken so quickly to demon summoning. Ryouga had a tendency to lash out when he got frustrated, often doing considerable property damage as a result. Fighting someone you could actually go all out against was much more relaxing, but he rarely had the opportunity.
"I'll have to get Ranma to summon some for me sometime," he mused. "I wonder if I could learn to summon them myself?" He considered that thought for a moment. He had not managed the spell Ranko had tried to have him perform, but was that because it wasn't one of the abilities he had received, or because he wasn't skilled enough? Or it might even be simply that he could not cast spells on Ranko or Ranma. That made a certain amount of sense, with them being Fey's avatars and all.
As his eyes turned back once more from Ranma's continuing brawl to look at his charge, they stopped briefly on his hairy paw, resting against the roof as it supported him. "Hmph. In all that, Ranma never used his other form."
The thought reminded him that he hadn't seen either of Fey's avatars' other forms since Ranma's first demonstration. Indeed, if it weren't for his own current lupine form, he would have begun to doubt his own memory. Instead, he progressed to wondering what Ranko's other forms looked like. A moment later he found himself holding his nose. He pulled his paw away and looked at it for a moment.
Despite his expectations, the fur on his palm was neither matted nor wet. Experimentally he remembered what Ranko had looked like when he had burst in on her the night before. He quickly banished the image, ashamed, but not before determining that it had not triggered the usual nasal discharge.
Idly he wondered if it was an attribute of his hybrid form or of the powers Ranma had given him that he no longer got a nosebleed when thinking about a girl's unclothed skin. To be sure, it could not be Ranko, for he found her as attractive as he could ever remember finding a girl, though he would never act on it. She was Ranma's and he had decided to be Ranma's friend. Hadn't he?
Ryouga was still deep in thought, staring at Ranko as she slept, when Ranma leapt onto the roof. Ryouga looked up with a startled cry.
"Hey, yo, calm down wolf-boy, it's just me."
"You finished them off?"
"Yeah."
"You'll have to get me some to play with sometime."
"Sure, if you want. Right now I just want some sleep."
Ranma sat lightly then sighed as he arched his back before flopping back onto the roof, staring up. "I always did like that about this trip," Ranma said after several minutes of silence. Ryouga had joined him in laying back and staring up at the stars.
"The stars?"
"Yeah, there's so many more of them than you can see when you're near a city. I've seen some really neat places, you know. Bet you have too, huh?"
"It doesn't make up for it," Ryouga said, though without irritation.
"I know," sighed Ranma, "but you have'ta find something to be happy about. Kami knows they don't show up if you don't look for them."
"Except one," Ryouga snorted, poking Ranma. "A blessing, didn't you say?"
Ranma laughed softly. "Yeah, except one." He rolled his head to the side to look at her, then turned back and jabbed Ryouga in the ribs. "We'll find you one, don't worry, Fangs."
Ryouga growled softly but said nothing. A girl that would look at him the way Ranko looked at Ranma... that was more than he could hope for, with his life. He sighed.
Ranma jabbed him again. "Come on, don't get all dopey on me again! Bet you didn't think you'd ever find a cure for your direction sense, either, did ya?"
Ryouga snorted. "No, but this isn't exactly a cure, Ranma." He held up a hairy arm. "I still can't go into any cities looking like this."
"Yo, Ryo-man," Ranma shifted to look at his friend. "Me and Ranko go cat without going all the way cat, you know?"
"So?" retorted Ryouga, staring up at the North star. It too had once promised a solution to his problem. Brightest star in the sky. Hmph. Might do some good too, if it would stop moving.
"So, how do you manage to get where you're going, like this?"
"I can follow the scents. I already told you that." Ryouga traced the line of the Milky Way with his eyes. You couldn't even see that in the cities, but it didn't help in the wilderness, either. Everytime he looked at it it ran a different direction.
"Yeah? Well, when we use the Neko-ken, without transforming, we can smell as good as in our cat forms."
Ryouga sat up straight. "Really? But... I don't know the Neko-ken."
"No, but it shouldn't be too hard for you to figure out a Garou-ken or something like that... or heck, maybe we could just get Ranko or even Fey to make a magic item to give you a wolf's senses in your normal form. Bang, instant cure!"
Ryouga lay back down. "That would be cool," he agreed. "But smell may be great for following somebody. Doesn't mean it would do me any good for getting somewhere I haven't been."
Ranma nodded. "True, but it would let you get back. You can tell how old a scent is, right? I can, when I'm in the Neko-ken."
"Yeah, I can tell, mostly."
"So you can backtrack, and you can shorten your journey everywhere you crossed your path by always taking the oldest fork. And you could cut down how long it takes you to get someplace cause you'd always know where you'd already been."
Ryouga nodded thoughtfully. "You know. I think you're right." He looked over at Ranma. "Wait a minute. You, right? The world must be ending," he joked.
Ranma lay back and sighed heavily. "Yep, in just about thirty years if we don't succeed."
"Hey, don't worry about that," joshed Ryouga, hiding his worry over how easily Ranma had become depressed. That was his gig, not ever-cheerful Ranma's. "After all, Saotome Ranma never loses!"
Ranma grunted. "If I'm still a Saotome after Momma meets Ranko."
Ryouga fell silent, out of ideas, and not wanting to make things worse.