Pahhur
That evening saw the group gathered at the boats. The Tendo family had come to see us off. Metudo had gone back to base with Zephos and Ukyo had decided to stay behind, mostly to keep an eye on Nabiki, in case Yoko made an appearance. This just amplified the cold wind belting across my face as I looked out at the great blue sea.
A few minutes later the boat shook and capsized almost instantaneously. I just barely managed to find a chunk of driftwood to stand on while the others began paddling along the surface.
Despite my perch I got reasonably drenched, especially during a particularly rough storm. While my suit protected me from most of the damage, I still passed out somewhere in the middle and only woke to someone slapping my face repeatedly. I sputtered awake to see Ranma standing over me, the other cursed people were all nearby, trying to dry off.
"What happened back there?"
"Huh?" I shook a little at the sudden questioning. "Oh. Water... doesn't exactly agree with me. It drains my strength away pretty quickly."
"Sounds like you picked the wrong people to travel with." Ranma said as she finished drying her shirt. Ranma rented a bike and a cart from a nearby shop and we headed out towards Pheonix mountain; stopping only when we came across a hot spring. The cursed obviously wanted to get back their normal forms, so I hung out at the entrance with Plum.
"Pah?" I jumped a little at Tech's voice coming in over the communicator. I pushed down my armband to respond.
"What?"
"What the hell are you doing? Zephos is a wreck and you vanished for a while. Where the hell are you?"
"Somewhere in coastal China... I think."
"Hang on, I think I got a lock... Alright, I'll walk you to the nearest nexus so we can get you out of there."
"I'm not going back."
"... Alright. The nearest nexus is too far for us to send anyone. Good luck, and don't die."
"I don't plan to." With that the channel shut down.
"We have problem." Plum suddenly said running up to me. She pointed out some deep cracks in the ground and an unconscious employee.
"That... Can't be good." There were sounds of fighting coming from the spring, but with all that water moving around I decided to stay back and let Ranma handle it.
Soon enough he emerged with the others, leading a small child by a length of rope.
"So this is the hot spring demon?" Ranma asked as we surrounded the juvenile boy.
"Yeah, he's apparently been causing problems in this area for two or three days." Plum said. Without much thought Ranma tied the kid's foot to a tree branch and motioned for us to leave even as the kid was screaming after us.
"We need to go... I'm worried about Shampoo." Mousse said.
"Not to mention my dad... It'll take us two more days to get to Mount Phoenix at this rate." Plum said.
"Wait a second! You're going to Mount Phoenix?" The kid called after us.
"Yeah, so?" Ranma asked.
"If we use the Kinjakan, we'll be there by evening." Without a second thought Ranma untied the kid, who promptly picked up a weird staff. We tied everything together and piled into the cart and bike as the kid took off at high speed.
Sure enough as the sun began to set we arrived at the foot one of the taller mountains.
"Thanks kid." Ranma said as we started up a set of stairs built into the mountain. But as soon as we were inside the floor began to crumble under us, Mousse quickly threw a claw and gripped a hold of the kid's staff, dragging him down with us. The bird-people appeared suddenly as well and kicked the staff, and us down the hole, leaving the kid above.
Almost as soon as we hit bottom Ryoga started punching holes through the rock, mostly downward. After almost an hour of following him Mousse spoke up.
"This is where we started from!"
"Why are there so many tunnels down here?" Ryoga said, looking for the next place to punch a hole.
"It's because you're making the tunnels idiot!" Ranma yelled.
"We're in luck..." A struggling voice came from beneath us. We saw two of the bird men half-buried by rubble. They recovered quickly and launched an attack, demanding the Kinjakan. Ranma retaliated immediately by swinging the Kinjakan, the head came off and began bouncing off the tunnel walls, knocking out the two bird-men before swinging around back towards us. Everyone bolted, and I quickly fell under foot; thanks to Mousse. There was screaming ahead then silence for a moment.
I got up to see what was going on, Mousse was already investigating a deep hole that Ryoga fell into. Which turned out to be a dry well. Ranma suddenly surfaced from a pile of rubble, as Mousse pulled in the rope that held the pails.
Within a few minutes we were at the peak, in front of what we could only assume to be the bird-people's home. It only took us seconds to begin a full scale assault, the minions were small fries, and easy to knock aside as we stormed the halls searching for Shampoo and Plum's father.
We broke into a long bridge, heavily decorated in reds and golds, at the other end Kiima was waiting for us.
"Didn't we kill you?"
"We got better. Shampoo, and the map, now!" Ranma said.
"You're bravado accomplishes nothing save sparing me the trouble of searching for the Kinjakan!" Kiima yelled as she readied her attack. "Thousand Wing Slice!" She unleashed a wave of air blades, which Ranma promptly blocked with the Kinjakan; before retaliating and sending the top part of the staff through the floor, collapsing the bridge under us. I grabbed hold of the rock face as Ranma dragged the battle to the opposite cliff.
It wasn't long before he took the fight to her, and in the process damaged the rock I was holding onto.
"Gah!" With the rock above me, I hit Kiima and sent both of us tumbling down, where we further collided with the two bird-men that were emerging from the tunnels. Somewhere in the fall Kiima and the other two got out and flew off, leaving me to tumble the rest of the way down the mountain.
I shook myself as I crawled out of the rubble. Only to get a few meters before Ranma landed on top of me.
"uggg.." I woke some time later, as the others began getting up.
"Hey... Wait a sec." Ranma said, rolling off of me. I chose not to move any longer. Even as they broke camp. "If we have to go to the source of Jusenkyo Then we'll be passing by the cursed training grounds... We can go to the Nannichuan and be whole men again!"
"Where's Ryoga?" I asked, as I sat up finally. My back protesting the motion. Genma, in panda form began writing on his signs.
"Oh he... Took the Kinjakan to get some food." There was a deadly silence.
"You just let him go!" Ranma yelled as Genma backed away slowly. Ranma sighed and sat down.
"I guess we're waiting 'till Ryoga gets back." Mousse said.
"Hey, Pah."
"Hmm?"
"About this guy, Avarus. We've got a long time to wait. You might as well tell us what you know. We can fill in Ryoga when he gets back."
"Oh... Okay..." I sat down next to him. "I don't really know much, but I'll tell you what I can."
"You fought with him before right?"
"Just once. He's absurdly strong. I managed to hurt him, but according to the old man, he was only at half strength at the time. And I had a good fifty feet of free fall, plus I was rocketing towards him. He managed to stop me cold. I was just lucky enough to scrape him."
"And that woman. You called her a Shadow?"
"Yoku? Yeah, that was the price we paid to escape... I guess another version of you guys... Well you didn't make it. I'm guessing since Yoku showed up he chose to keep them alive, but I wouldn't call that living."
"So there's another me out there then?"
"Probably. What our sources say is that Avarus pulls out the full potential of his Shadows, so it would be you, but probably much stronger than you are now. Who know what else that process does to the mind... I know they aren't complete slaves, I fought my own shadow a while ago... He chose to let me live, somehow."
"Sounds like a bad situation... Listen. If we get through this mess... I... I dunno."
"It's alright. I'm not expecting anything. I'd rather just be able to live knowing you guys are okay. I don't think I could handle knowing we messed up twice..." He just grinned over to me as Ryoga rolled towards us.