On The Road Again


Genma growfed as he pulled his pack from where it had caught on a
branch. Another gi, ruined by his sudden size increase. He slashed the
tree, gouging its bark in irritation. If that stupid branch had not
caught on his pack, he would not have been doused by the water lurking
on its leaves. As if the rain was not bad enough, he finally got back to
human after it stopped and splash, he was a panda again.

He shook a furry paw at the sky, cursing vociferously--if
incomprehensibly given a panda's vocal apparatus--at whatever gods had
chosen to make him their plaything. 

It did not help that the branch had pulled the pack off his arm. He
could not get the pack back on both shoulders in this form, though if it
was already on when he changed, it would stay. Of course it was then
quite a challenge to get it off again, but it made traveling easier.
With his sloped shoulders, when his pack was only on one arm, it had a
tendency to slide down his fur and fall constantly. Having wet fur
certainly did not help that in the least, either.

He was only five paces further on when he suddenly stopped, and turned
back to look at the gashes he had left on the tree. Why did that seem
familiar to him? He stared at it with bleary eyes for several long
minutes, but nothing further came to him, and eventually he moved on.

"Damn that ungrateful wretch of mine. Why the devil did he pick now to
grow a spine? And how the bloody devil did he avoid leaving tracks?"

The lack of tracks had not stymied Genma for long, after he found again
the clearing where he had fought his son. He had not even looked for
them until after he had gone over the traces left by the fight, looking
for clues to the changes in his son, but he had been quite startled when
he realized that there were no apparent signs that his son had ever left
the clearing, aside from his obvious absence.

Then he had gone back and examined the signs in more detail, and
confirmed that the wolf-tracks were indeed made at the same time that
some of his son's tracks were laid down. Putting that together with the
apparent presence of the single wolf, with no sign of any of its
packmates, and the earlier indications that he had been trailed by a
wolf for a short time before reaching Ranma, and most of all, being hit
from behind by a sneak attack while facing Ranma, he reached some
interesting but not entirely accurate conclusions.

He had momentarily believed that Ranma had succeeded in moving fast
enough to leave behind an image of himself, and that he had been the one
to make the strike from behind. Finding the wolf's tracks and
recognizing the timing told him otherwise. Ranma had a partner. Genma
wondered if it was that same man, the one Ranma claimed had been a kami,
but he did not think it likely. That man had possessed too great a power
to conceal it so easily. No, Ranma had acquired a new partner somehow.

So now he was following the wolf's tracks, and for some reason the cuts
he had scored into that tree kept popping into his mind. He growfed
angrily and moved to slash another tree to work out his frustration. He
stopped, staring with his mouth wide open. The tree was already scored
twice over, a little above the highest his panda form could reach, with
four parallel grooves, already darkened, weeping long, sticky trails of
sap.

"He's in the trees," Genma said, reaching as high as he could. He could
not touch them, and did not know why he thought they indicated his son's
presence, but he felt sure of it now. His son was traveling through the
trees, which meant that Genma had been right to follow the wolf tracks,
and that he was on the right trail.

---

Ukyou carefully concealed her spatula, and her mini-spatulas. Tools of
her trade they might be, they would still not be accepted where she was
going. Looking around herself to be sure no-one was watching, she
quickly rose and walked away, trying to seem as if she were merely
passing through.

Wishing she looked like she belonged, but knowing that her garb, even
for a man, was anything but appropriate to the doors she intended to
pass through, she worked on psyching herself up as best she could as she
approached the stone stairs. Unfortunately, she was concentrating too
hard, and she bumped into someone who was as engrossed in the book she
was reading as Ukyou was in her mental preparations.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Ukyou apologized, bending over and grabbing the book
the girl had dropped, and then offering her hand to lift the other girl
up.

The other girl, a short, and short-haired, girl with glasses and a
thoughtful expression, accepted her help and apologized for not watching
where she was walking. A warm blush lit her cheeks and nose, and Ukyou
could not help but smile at her, recognizing the signs of a girl
entranced by Ukyou's apparent bishonen good looks.

"I'm sorry. I was just going in . . ."

"So was I," Ukyou interrupted her. "And I was not watching where I was
walking either. May I escort you?" She offered, and the shorter girl
blushed deeper, but linked her arm with that of the, to her, handsome
guy.

Ukyou definitely did not like leading girls on, though it often seemed
to happen in spite of her best efforts, but she rather enjoyed giving
the shy girls a boost to their self-esteem. Her own picture of her
femininity was so shot that helping uncertain girls feel better about
themselves sometimes made her feel like she was helping herself; or at
least, doing for others what she wished someone would do for her.

"So," asked the short-haired girl as they passed through the scanners,
"what are you looking for?"

"I need to find someone. A friend of mine has not seen his mother in
many years. I have to find her, prepare her. He's coming back, and well,
it would really suck if she had a heart attack because he popped up out
of the blue."

"Wow! That's very nice of you," she commented. "You know her name?"

"Yep. Saotome Nodoka, wife of Genma, mother of Ranma. Hopefully that'll
be enough to find her. It's about all I know."

"Oh, I'm sure it will be, I . . . oh, I'm sorry. I forgot to give you my
name. My name is Mizuno Ami."

"A pleasure, Ami-chan, I'm sure. Kuonji Ukyou is my name."

Ami led Ukyou to a bank of computers and very quickly had multiple
searches running. "Wow, you really know your way around these,"
commented Ukyou. "I was expecting to have to flip through piles of
folders." She did not mention that she had done exactly that to find
what schools had a Saotome Ranma registered.

"Aha!" Ami exclaimed, pointing happily to the screen. "Here we go, let
me just print this off for you."

"That was quick," Ukyou blurted, staring at the screen in disbelief. "I
was expecting to spend hours here." She looked at Ami, noting her blush
and the slight disappointment in her eyes. "You saved me a lot of time.
Will you . . . will you let me buy you dinner, as a thank you?"

---

"You think we'll see them again?" Ranma was looking over the clearing
where the villagers had been encamped, but both of his companions knew
he was speaking of the deities they had just visited.

Ranko nodded as she finished placing everything back in her pack, having
hidden the bag of seeds in the lining on the bottom. "I think so. After
all, if you knew something terrible was going to happen, and you also
knew that there was absolutely nothing you could do about it, then
suddenly you got the opportunity you were told you could never have,
would you take it?" 

"Hell, yeah."

"Well, Bastet has not yet actually done anything. I don't know if we'll
see Shen Long again, but I have a feeling we'll be seeing her."

"Great. So, we good to go?" Ryouga's affirmation was less than
enthusiastic. He was not on the cat-goddess's list, after all. He was a
wolf, not a cat.

"Not yet. I still want to expend a hefty dose of magical energy here,
to draw off any consequences from that blast back at the village."

"Draw them to the temple instead?" Ranma asked, turning to look up at
the stone structure, wondering how Shen Long would react to having
enemies drawn to his temple.

"Why not? There's nothing here for them to kill."

"Maybe not, but there is a nicely trampled line of grass leading right
back to the village!" Ryouga pointed out.

Ranko frowned as Ranma looked about them. "There's actually a lot of
evidence that people were here," Ranma commented, "and it does lead back
to the village. So . . ."

"We cast a spell to clean it up?"

"Exactly."

Ryouga shook his head nervously, and glanced at the doors to the temple.
"We? Ehrm, shouldn't Ranko do this by herself?"

Ranma and Ranko laughed at Ryouga's nervous behavior. Clearly he was
remembering what his pack had gone through when Ranma summoned it. "Not
to worry, Ryouga. When Ranko guides my visualization, my spells work
just fine."

Ryouga just shook his head, picking up their packs, his own already on
his back, and loped over to stand beneath the overhang of the temple
door. "Why don't you guys cast from in front of me, that way," he
suggested, pointing ahead of him at the trampled ground.

"Yeah, sure, Ryouga. That'll do fine, I think," agreed Ranma, looking to
Ranko with a grin.

She laughed softly. "Why not, come on, Ranma." Taking Ranma's hand, she
drew him up the steps to stand in front of Ryouga. Turning slightly, she
cast a coy gaze behind her. "You sure you want to stand there? We'll be
blocking all the action. You won't get a good view."

"That's alright," Ryouga demurred, laughing nervously, "I'm fine right
here."

"Okay, Ranma. I would have us visualize this area the way it was before
they came and use some sort of restoration concept, but since we never
got a chance to see it unspoiled, we're going to use nature instead. We
need to picture the jungle moving in, growing over all the signs of
human presence, taking it back, but," she turned and put her hand on his
face, looking into his eyes, "you must be very clear in your mental
image, that the sun is staying where it is in the sky, that the bamboo
they left behind is staying just as it is, aside from what the plants do
to it. 

"I don't want to take any chance of the spell messing with time. That
would be a very different sort of magic, and might not have at all the
same signature. If we focus on plant growth, I think we can accomplish
much the same thing, but it should have a signature very similar to the
healing magic I used earlier.

"I also want you to remember the feel of Bastet, how it felt to be near
her, and how it felt when Fey showed up unexpectedly, and took his tiger
form for us for the first time. That should help ensure that you call
upon divine magic, and not demonic."

"Right, gotcha. Plants growing, jungle moving in, big, scary cats.
Uhmmm... heck. We gotta go cat for this, Ranko, if I'm gonna be
picturing them in my head."

Ranko mewed at him and grinned at noting the hairs on the back of his
neck stand up. "You ready?"

"I guess so. First time to cast together. You sure we can do this?"

"If we can't, it'll just be two spells overlapping. Shouldn't be a
problem."

Ryouga pressed back against the door, especially nervous now that Ranko
had given him an image for the worst case scenario. If he was out there,
he would be swallowed up by the jungle at the least, but if Ranma
screwed up and let the idea of time passing get in there, he might die
of old age before he ever . . . Well, best not to think of that.

A flush burned across Ryouga's cheeks as Ranko began guiding Ranma
through the visualizations, drawing up as it did images and feelings of
Ranko, resting in his lap as she tried to guide him through casting a
spell, and then the sweet feel of her lips on his neck and the ecstatic
pleasure that followed swift on the heels of the minor pain of her teeth
entering his skin.

His fingers felt moisture, and he realized that he had driven his claws
into his palms when he had clenched his fists in a vain attempt to drive
off the memories.

Desperately he wrenched his vision forward again, only to shrink back
against the door as the forest seemed to rise up before them, vines
shooting through the air like the tentacles of some monster of the
ocean's depths, while trees shot upward, cracking the ground with the
growth of their roots, burrowing out from their center.

Grasses burst from the ground, turning as they rose as if to follow the
movements of an unseen sun, but they quickly turned brown and withered
away, as smaller, bright green shoots appeared. Swiftly they twirled and
rose, splitting now and again, lashing out and sinking sudden growths of
thorns into the trees that as quickly swallowed the clinging vines in a
rush of bark.

The speedy and competing growth led to some startling results, as
several trees interfered with each other, swallowing each the other's
branches and looking as though they had stabbed each other through the
heart, while many of the trees had in their swift rise drawn the bulbous
roots of the vines that foolishly ensnared them up through the earth,
even as the growth of the vine reached back for the soil, leading to
chains of fat roots, in appearance like unto a mad artist's rendition of
the abdomen of an ant queen full with eggs, while higher up thin shafts
of green speared out from bark, from bole and branch, to spin rampant
swirls of emerald leaves around and occasionally through the branches,
reaching towards the sun.

An almost constant rain of leaves fell from the deciduous trees as they
passed seasons uncountable. The swift decomposition of the leaves upon the
floor, as they choked out the last of the grasses and smothered the
short-lived growths of bushes, was most disturbing to look upon,
especially as the growth and movement of the tree roots beneath the soil
gave the decomposing mounds the appearance of an unwholesome life.

Ranma and Ranko stood together before him, arm's out, chanting, until
the trees reached the height of the surrounding forest, then finally
they stilled. "That . . . was amazing," breathed Ranko.

"Those leaves were disgusting," Ryouga responded, "and it stinks."

Ranma laughed, and grinning at Ranko, he chanted loudly, a look of
concentration on his face that put Ryouga in the mind of his look when
he fought Ranko. He was obviously giving equal thought to what he was
doing and to the reaction he expected from Ranko when he was done,
Ryouga decided. Though his chant was crude, the effect was anything but.

First arose a soft breeze that whispered past their faces, lifting
Ranko's hair teasingly into her face. A change in the air was felt, as
if a heaviness were dissipating. The air shifted, coming now more from
the north and west, a light feel to it, though it was stronger, moving
their clothes about and wresting leaves free from the trees here and
there.

With it now came a smell of spring and freshness, the soft scent of a
woodfire burning and the slightly sweet scent of rice left to rot in the
fields, that would be overpowering or cloying respectively, were they
but more strongly present. This wind held steady but for slight natural
variances in strength and the miasma of rotten leaves was swept away
before it, leaving the air feeling clean and just lightly moist.

Ranko clapped delightedly, throwing her arms around Ranma. "That was
excellent, Ranma," she cried out joyfully, her voice suffused with her
pride in him. "I knew you would get it eventually."

"Well, I guess I've just got a good incentive now," he said softly,
looking into her eyes. A mischievous glint crept into his eyes as he
turned to look at Ryouga. "After all, I can't let my greatest rival have
something to hold over my head, now can I." His gaze rested squarely on
Ryouga's backpack as Ranko and Ryouga burst into laughter.

"We're done here then," pointed out Ranko, as she finally stopped
giggling. "So let's not stick around to see if our magic attracts
anything. We've got some distance to make up, especially," she paused,
looking at Ranma appraisingly, "if we want to stay ahead of your
father?" She made the last a question, and both he and Ryouga recognized
what she was asking. Did he think there was more to learn from his
father? Or, if not, was he ready to take vengeance?

Ranma shook his head. "I'd just as soon avoid him. The more he's near
us, the more chance for him to learn what we're doing. If he realizes
where we're heading, he could get to my mother before us. I'm hoping
that my revealing that I know about the pact will convince him that I
won't dare to go near her."

"Right," Ranko agreed, "best not to give him the opportunity to
interfere."

"Let's go then," Ryouga said, handing his friends their packs, before
turning to bow to the temple. Ranko and Ranma followed his lead, bowing
respectfully to the old stone structure before taking to the trees.
"Just a moment," Ryouga called after them, and they turned to look back
at him.

He pointed at his bare feet, now more human in appearance, though still
clawed and furry. "I'm gonna be leaving kind of distinctive tracks now.
I mean, two-legged wolf tracks are bad of enough, but how hard can it be
to follow a claw-footed man? Can you do something so I don't leave any
tracks?"

Ranma cocked his head to the side, looking at Ranko. "If we can manage
it, that would mean the only two-legged wolf tracks would be those
leading to the village, where they are not trampled by the villagers."

"Right, and they don't leave the village. That would be a nice puzzle to
leave the panda, if he has even recognized the wolf tracks in the first
place."

Ryouga breathed a sigh of relief when Ranko leapt down from the tree. In
spite of Ranma's earlier demonstration, he felt more comfortable having
the unquestionably more skilled and experienced Amazon casting spells on
him. She murmured at his feet and he yelped when he felt himself rise
suddenly. "What?"

"Well, I don't know for sure what it would take to make a spell that
would prevent tracks on different types of terrain without visualizing
each, and I would almost certainly miss one. So I just added a cushion
of air beneath your feet. If you simply don't touch the ground, you
won't make tracks and the terrain won't make any difference."

"Cool," said Ranma, "Better than I would have come up with." He was
rewarded with a bright smile. It was strange, he mused as Ranko jumped
back into the trees and Ryouga started off at a steady lope beneath
them, how much her smiles had come to mean to him. He might have been
tempted to try to prove himself the best to win her, had he not already
known that she had all his memories. Knowing that he already had her,
that she was willing to be with him, left him free to look for the
things that brought smiles to her face, rather than the things that
would impress her the most.

As she ran, Ranko thought about the scroll that Ranma now held. Though
she knew that the gift she had been given would be of grave importance
to their eventual success, she also knew that the effects of that scroll
would be more quickly felt in their lives. He would not pass up the
first opportunity to read it, and start practicing, and doubtless she
would soon be practicing it as well.

Ryouga, having settled into a smooth stride, was thinking about his own
cowardice. His first thought when he had stopped Ranma and Ranko from
taking off had been for him to head off in a different direction, with
his legs back to how they had been at first, so that if Genma was
tracking his movements--he could not see how Genma could track them
otherwise--he would be led off course, then to have Ranko find him with
a spell and bring him to them.

His own fear of being alone again after finally having true friends had
gripped him before he could speak of it, and so he had instead pointed
out the unusual tracks he would leave behind. He simply had not been
able to get past his thoughts of what would happen if they could not
find him again? How would he have reacted to their perceived 'betrayal'
if they had been unable to locate him? His own behavior while under the
influence of depression disgusted him and if it returned, would Ranma
still want anything to do with him?

---

Ukyou smiled nervously at the girl sitting across from her. Even she had
to admit that the girl was rather cute, but how did she get herself into
these things?

For all her bravado about seeking revenge on the Saotome's, the
underlying impetus for her initial desire to have Ranma as her fiance
was her own long-held romanticism. Seeing the barely veiled
disappointment in Ami's eyes when she had realized that her short-lived
connection with the 'hunk' she had encountered was over had simply been
too much for Ukyou's romantic heart. 

She could not bear to callously hurt a girl so obviously starved for
romance; yet at the same time experience told her that nothing good
would come of allowing the girl to feed her crush.

In spite of which, here she sat, offering smiles to a girl she barely
knew. At least, Ukyou mused, she was not the clingy, gushing romance
sort of girl. Romantic at heart she might be, but even she could only
take so much.

"Ukyou-kun?" Ami prodded, and Ukyou started.

"Oh, right, occupation . . . I'm a chef, Ami-san. I cook okynomiyaki.
Now that I know where Saotome-san lives, I will soon be opening a
restaurant nearby. I hope you will be able to come?" Ukyou smiled
softly, even as she crossed her fingers under the table in the hope that
the address Ami had aided her in finding would be too far from Ami's
home to allow her to visit. It was pure luck that Ami's query had given
her the perfect lead-in to revealing that she would not be remaining in
the area.

"Of course, Ukyou-kun, I would be delighted to," Ami responded with a
hesitant smile, though Ukyou detected a tinge of uncertainty in her
voice, as well as a hint of sadness.

Ukyou crowed silently, grateful beyond words that her guess had been
correct. Now she would not have to try to find a way to extricate
herself gracefully from this entanglement, without harming Ami's
self-perception still further.

Now feeling more comfortable, assured that she would not be leading this
girl to a painful heartbreak, Ukyou focused on boosting her confidence,
responding as positively as she could manage to each topic that Ami
brought up.

When Ukyou finally walked Ami home, it was with a much lighter heart, as
she could see the improvement in Ami's confident stride, in the tilt of
her head and the warmth of her smile even in the face of knowing that
Ukyou's presence in her life could only be temporary.

"Thank you," Ami said when they stopped at the steps of her apartment
building. "I had a wonderful time." With a pretty blush, she leaned up
and kissed Ukyou's cheek, then giggled and turning, she ran quickly up
the steps, turning, her face still glowing pink, to wave goodbye before
she slipped inside.

Ukyou grinned as she walked away, her thoughts returning to Ranma, and
his mother, but buoyed now by a strong feeling of hope. Ranma would
return, Fey had promised her that, and even if he was not coming back
for her particularly, he had not forgotten her, and though he had found
a love, it was with a girl that already knew about her, that, if Fey was
right, would be pleased to be her friend. The only dark spot was his
mother and her father. How would they react to the contract Genma had
signed? Would they accept Ranma's freedom from his old man's promises,
or would they try to hold him to them?