The heat felt different now, lesser. She was moving through the water
again. Hadn't she stopped? Her arms, legs, were limp, but she could
feel water passing over them, over the rest of her body.
She tried to slow her breathing, but it was hard. There was something
across her chest, preventing her from breathing deeply. It was one of
Artena's arms, she realized, and she was being pulled.
The water was cooler. She shivered at the change in temperature,
uncomfortable. But Artena was holding onto her. Artena was warm, too,
she could feel, now that Chloe noticed she was pressed up against the
older woman, being held carefully in place as she was dragged towards
the edge of the spring. But Artena still wasn't as warm as the water
had been.
Chloe felt herself being lifted and was shocked at the sudden coldness.
The abrupt transition caused her to shiver uncontrollably in Artena's
careful grasp. She was out of the pool now and being carried, held
closely against her surrogate mother. Artena was warm where they
touched each other, but Chloe was still freezing, the cool air ripping
away even that comforting heat.
She stared at her fingers in sick fascination. They looked pink, redder
than usual, but she was sure they'd turn blue and black at any moment as
the blood within thickened and slowed and turned to ice. Her toes and
feet would, too. But no matter how closely she looked, they remained
the same.
Chloe wrapped her arms around Artena, clinging to the older woman, who
was trying to put her down. She refused to let go. Artena was warm.
"Artena-sama?" she murmured.
She heard a slight sigh, the exhalation brushing against one of her
ears. A moment later Artena sat down, carefully keeping Chloe in her
lap. Chloe smiled slightly and relaxed her grip, resting her head
against Artena. She felt hands begin to run softly through her hair.
She liked that, it was nice.
"Sleep, Chloe," she heard. "We have plenty of time still."
Ranma lied on his back, chest heaving and limbs stretched out in all
directions. He gulped down great big lungfuls of replenishing oxygen,
his heart slammed in his chest and his blood through the rushing rapids
that were his veins. He was covered in sweat, his eyes stinging
slightly at the saturated moisture, the taste of it upon his lips. The
clothes he wore clung wetly, uncomfortable, heavy with his fluids,
stained through with his salt.
The oh-so-strenuous workout had accomplished nothing. Ranma was no
closer to figuring out what his problem was than before. His throws
were still completely off. His mood was frustrated and irritable; he
was easily distracted and his wandering mind kept returning to the
question of what he was doing wrong rather than simply focusing on
practice as it should. His father had trained him just as hard as this
on previous occasions and Ranma had had no such problems. Usually he'd
already have gotten a solid, sometimes near-perfect grasp on whatever
the technique was by this point--Ranma had been trying to learn knife-
throwing for four days with no significant progress. Why?
His breathing began to slow as his body cooled down, no longer required
to run like an overworked steamboat boiler. The heart slowed, its beats
becoming less the pounding of a fleet of drummers and instead a slow,
easy pace, eventually inaudible. Ranma's muscles, previously masses of
well-done, cooked beef, changed to the sleepy lethargy of a lazy young
calf.
Ranma's eyes glided across the sky until he looked upon the brightly
shining sun. Just a couple of hours after noon. He had plenty of time
before dinner. Plenty of time to get more practicing in, to figure out
what his problem was. Plenty of time.
"Ranma."
He opened his eyes to see that the sun had moved unexpectedly and that
it was now late in the afternoon. Ranma blinked again, but this time it
stayed still. How odd.
"Ranma," said a quiet voice.
He stretched, curling his feet and balling his fists as he pushed them
as far apart as he could. Breathing out in a sleepy sigh, his eyes
clenched shut again. He felt his muscles ripple deliciously as he did
so, bringing a smile to his face. That always felt good. He peeked
upwards to find that nothing had changed. Then he sat up and saw that
Artena was standing in front of him.
Her hair was damp and dark and uncombed, no longer hanging straight at
her back with any available illumination making her light-brown tresses
shine. In Artena's arms Chloe slumbered, her torso wrapped around with
towels, the girl's arms draped over Artena's shoulders and her head
resting against one side of Artena's neck. Chloe's hair, too, was wet,
the normally fluffy reddish-purple substance instead pressed closely to
her scalp.
Ranma stood and yawned, stretching his arms upwards this time as if to
grab at nonexistent clouds. When finished, he looked towards Artena
again. She was still standing there holding Chloe.
"What?" he asked.
Artena leaned backwards, changing the position of Chloe's weight upon
her, and adjusted one of her arms under the girl to better support her
weight. With her other hand, which had been pressed against Chloe's
back, Artena held some clothes out towards him.
"Please carry these," she said, in the same low tone of voice.
Ranma looked at them for a minute, then up at Artena, who simply smiled
at him, holding Chloe's weight steady with no apparent trouble while
using only one arm. He shrugged and took the clothes from her grasp.
"Okay."
"Thank you."
Artena adjusted her grip on Chloe again, this time able to use both
hands to hold the girl up. The position looked more comfortable, but
Ranma couldn't help but wonder if it had been necessary since Artena
hadn't seemed to be having any trouble to begin with.
"If you'll come with me back to the Manor," Artena said, "dinner will be
ready soon."
Ranma yawned again then nodded, and Artena started walking towards the
arena exit. He followed, trudging slowly through the sand. Chloe's
face peeked at him from over Artena's shoulder, but her eyes remained
closed. Her face was flushed and pink, for some reason.
He looked down at the clothes he now held. They were Chloe's, and what
she had been wearing earlier that day. Where had they gone swimming?
He'd have to search the area around the coliseum later on, to see. He
liked swimming.
For now, though, Ranma followed Artena back to the Manor. Swimming
could wait until later.
Dinner was quiet. Ranma, still nappish, ate his food slowly, without
effort. His lack of real hunger or enthusiasm caused the meal to be
bland and tasteless. Picking at it was about the limit of his energy.
He had no doubt that if his father was present he would not be able to
eat even the slightest bit of the food on his plate. Ranma just wasn't
up to holding a defense right now.
Chloe, too, was quiet and subdued. Her face was still pink and her
motions drowsy and slow as she slowly used her fork to break up her food
before sending it to the abyss one tiny load at a time. Even the
clicking of silverware on plate was dull and muted.
Deciding he'd had enough, Ranma push his chair back and rose to leave.
"It's your turn to help with the dishes, Ranma," Artena said.
"...What?"
"Somebody needs to dry and put away the dishes as I clean them."
Ranma stared at her. "Have Chloe do it."
"Chloe has been helping me in the kitchen even though she's injured.
Now it's your turn."
"But you're making me stay here! I shouldn't have to help!"
"That doesn't matter. You should still make yourself of some
assistance. And I'm not forcing you to stay. You can leave at any
time, even if you don't know where to go."
"That's not fair!" he protested. He hated doing dishes!
"I'll do it," Chloe said quietly, speaking for the first time since
dinner began.
Artena frowned and started to speak, but Ranma beat her to it.
"Okay, Chloe will help you! I'mgoingtobednowgoodnight!"
He ran away as quickly as possible.
After he had turned a couple of corners he slowed back down to a
lethargic, dragging walk, once again drained of energy. Even his room
seemed like a long trek. Maybe once he got back to Japan he could make
his father teach him some kinda teleporting technique, like in that
Dragonball manga.
Ranma was sure that'd be easier to learn those stupid knives, too.
He didn't mind doing chores, at least some stuff. Setting and packing
up his and his father's tents, making a fire, scrounging for food and
then helping cook it, those were all things he had to do whenever they
went on the road. He hated the boredom and senselessness of the
repetition but knew it was necessary. And his father always did his
share of those tasks.
Cleaning dishes, though, was a chore Ranma absolutely detested, and one
that he'd always get stuck doing himself. When they were staying
somewhere Ranma would arrive home after school to find a massive amount
of dishes scattered across the kitchen counters and dining room table.
Every day. Even when he washed the dishes before heading to school, and
his father both left for work before Ranma exited the house and arrived
home hours after Ranma himself returned, there would still be dishes
delivered by a mysterious grunge fairy that Ranma could never seem to
spot.
When they were on the road for a training trip Ranma and his father
would end up trying to steal each other's food until it was gone or
scattered about their campgrounds. Afterwards the battle would move on
to a full-fledged sparring session that gave plenty of time for the
leftover bits of food to fuse completely with the plates and cooking
utensils they remained on. Trying to scrub dishes clean in the always-
cold water of a nearby stream or pond, or worse, having to use a canteen
or some other kind of water bottle that made rinsing almost impossible,
was a hell Ranma was quite familiar with.
So no, he wasn't doing dishes. Not a chance in the world.
What he was going to do was sleep. Arriving at last at the room he was
a guest in he collapsed onto the bed, and, ignoring the dirty sheets and
the sand stuck to his clothes and hair and skin, he did just that.
"Wake up."
Ranma eyes opened stickily and he blinked, trying to figure out what the
problem was.
"OW!"
He started rubbing at his eyes carefully, moisture running from them now
after the sand got in. There was gunk all in the corners, stuck to his
eyelashes, rusting his doors to the world shut. Cleaning it out wasn't
pleasant.
"Are you done yet?" Chloe asked quietly.
Ranma finished and looked over at the girl. She was dressed again in
clothes similar to his, but hers were noticeably cleaner, and there was
a distinct lack of sand and dirt stuck to them. Chloe stood patiently,
looking at him calmly, but he was sure there was something dismissive,
condescending, about her deigning to wait for him.
"What?" he asked. This was the first time she'd ever bothered to wake
him up in the morning. "Is it time for breakfast?"
"Yes. Artena-sama is waiting."
Ranma shoved himself out of bed. Sand and dirt fell to the stone
beneath him, grinding painfully under his toes and heel. He ignored it.
Chloe turned away and exited the room, and he followed her.
Breakfast was simple, same as it was every morning. Artena cooked for
the purpose of satisfying stomachs, not greedy taste buds. Even Ranma's
father spent more time than she did in preparing a meal. But it tasted
well enough despite that and it filled him up just as he liked his food
to do, even if he would have liked more than what she gave him.
Once again his plate was clean and his glass empty before Chloe and
Artena were even halfway done with theirs. Today he was going to the
village, though, which meant he couldn't just leave--he didn't know
where to go. So he continued to sit there and watched the two of them
eat. Neither seemed to notice him doing so, or care. They just used
their forks to separate a bit of food and then scooped the stuff up and
lifted it into their mouths. Repeat, repeat, repeat. So slowly.
Ranma wished his father was present. He would have ended up hungrier
for it but at least the meal would have gone faster, taking place during
a chopsticks duel that was the trademark of Saotome eating. He could
try to steal food from Chloe or Artena, but he was sure it wouldn't work
out. Forks just weren't designed properly for the quick, unnoticed
theft that would be required.
The clicking of silverware on china came to an end, the sudden silence
catching his attention. They were done at last.
"Ranma," said Artena, who was looking at him now. He noticed that Chloe
was, too, and that the hint of a smug smile twisted her lips and colored
her eyes.
"What?" he asked, a bit suspicious.
"Chloe will take you to the village to get some new clothes," she
continued. Her face was serious now, none of the friendly warmth she
had looked at him with before present. "Somebody there will give you
some food. After that you are free to go wherever you wish, as long as
you don't return here or bother the people in the village."
Ranma stared at her, his heart thumping audibly in panic. He didn't
know how to get to Japan! She said he'd help him! "You told me I could
stay here until you found my pop! You lied to me!" Ranma yelled at her.
Chloe gripped her knife tightly, glaring at him, the soiled, dull blade
pointed in his direction but her fist surrounding it stayed at table
level, in a neutral position. He ignored her.
Artena didn't deny his words at all. "Yes, I said you could stay here.
But I never invited you to come to this place, never invited you to show
up requiring food and clothing and expecting a made bed and someone to
pick up after you as though it is your right to be here. You are owed
nothing. I have no obligation towards you, to put up with an unruly,
ungrateful houseguest. I have every right to ask you to leave."
Ranma looked from the cold expression on Artena's face over to the
mostly happy, somewhat angered expression on Chloe's, then back again.
"You're going to make me leave because I wouldn't do the dishes?"
"Yes," Artena said.
"Fine, then! I will leave! And I'll leave right now!"
He stood, his knees thrusting backwards and knocking down the heavy
chair. Then he marched to and out the door to the dining room, down the
hallway leading to the front exit, and then outside.
Ranma stopped in front of the opening, the grape fields sprawling out
before him, hills and mountains within his view in all directions, the
sky blue and cloudless and the sun marching across the horizon, and
tried to figure out which way to Japan. No heading seemed obvious.
Chloe's voice came from the dining room, saying something to Artena that
he couldn't make out, and he scowled. Very well. Any direction would
do.
He started walking south.
Then sun was directly above by the time he cleared the hills and started
working his way into the rockier, more jagged upthrusts that lay beyond.
He was glad for it, because it was just a little bit windier out here
with no real shelter. The relatively motionless air inside the coliseum
and Manor had been chilly enough to make his skin feel a touch cold, yet
out in the open the air was constantly in motion, waves of coolness
making the chill a little bit more insistent, a little bit more than
skin-deep.
It made him glad that he wasn't wearing his torn gi anymore, with the
gaping holes leaving large areas of his chest and back and sides and
legs uncovered and exposed to the elements. Girl clothes or not, being
covered with even a small amount of overall insulation really did help.
His feet, however, were nowhere near comfortable. They were colder than
the rest of him, as he stepped over and onto sharp-edged rocks that had
been sitting out in the wind all day, and felt like they'd spent days,
not hours, being ground under a millstone. Each time he put a foot down
a new rock would join its brothers and sisters in the assault, trying to
find another chink in the armor, to work its way in deeper and more
painfully than any had before. Ranma was beginning to hate those rocks,
but stomping on them in revenge was out of the question.
"This sucks," he said to himself, keeping his eyes on the ground
immediately before him. Careful steps seemed to help somewhat, if not
enough. Sometimes he could go a few paces in a row without his feet
have to leave the patches of dark, hard, flat earth that were spread
thinly among the rock fields. But not often.
Was this the way to Japan? He couldn't tell. He could turn around and
see the Manor from where he was, he'd climbed high enough that he cold
peek over the hills between his present location and the place that had
been a temporary home only earlier that morning. The Manor was a tiny
thing from this distance, the coliseum being bigger but not that much.
It was almost a half a day's travel, now.
By the end of the day he should be twice as far. How far was that?
What lay on the other side of the mountains he was trying to pass over?
The village Artena and Chloe had talked about couldn't be too far away-
-maybe he could see it when he got to the top of this peak? That was
just a couple more hours away.
Ranma clenched a fist around the knives in his pocket. He'd tried to
juggle them a little bit earlier, while walking, wanting to keep
handling the things, increasing his familiarity with the tools even
though he'd never see Chloe again to get a chance to beat her. It
hadn't worked, he kept getting too focused on tossing the knives around,
catching and flipping and throwing them back up again, and then he'd
step on a rock and suddenly lose his rhythm, knives falling everywhere,
right by his face, right by his toes. So he'd stopped.
Now the sun was overhead and looking up at the knives, if he tried it
now, would probably cause one to fall into his squinting eyes.
Instead he studied the ground, searching for particularly vicious
looking rocks that would not take being trampled upon lightly. There
were many of those, and he was quite sure that he was finding each one.
Ranma looked south and concluded that maybe this was the wrong way to
go. He'd already been traveling for six hours and the village wasn't
just on the other side of this peak, as he had hoped. The trip was only
supposed to take a bit over half a day, which meant that whichever
direction the village was from the Manor, it wasn't south.
The other directions he couldn't see very far in. East and west both
had treacherous looking mini-mountains of their own to stand against
him. If either of those were the right way to go, he couldn't tell from
here with his view blocked. North lead right back to the Manor, and if
the village was in that direction he didn't want to go there anyway.
Ranma couldn't tell where Japan was, relative to him, but he knew it
wasn't north--it was already colder here than it had been in Japan. No,
north wasn't the way to go.
East or west it was, then. And that meant he was going to have to head
back to the Manor, which he'd been traveling away from for a good six or
seven hours.
"Dammit!"
Ignoring the cold pit in his stomach and the loudly protesting,
slaughtered remains of his feet, he turned around and started retracing
his footsteps. Surely those rocks would be a bit softer this time
around. His feet were.
His feet, formerly cold and abused, were now masses of over-tenderized
meat that had been left in the refrigerator for too long. They weren't
blue, not really, but they definitely weren't the healthy looking color
they had started out being. At least, he didn't think so. It was hard
to tell, when his ability to see color had passed away with the sun who
sponsored that ability.
He couldn't quite tell what color they were, because he couldn't quite
see very well of anything. He'd reached the little hills surrounding
the Manor but they, too, had plenty of rocks strewn about, hiding
beneath the sparse, mostly dead grass. By that time it had gotten
fairly close to being dark. The sun had gone down and the moon was
missing its shift.
Ranma was a couple of hours from the nearest source of food, the grapes
he'd been stuffing himself on so freely over the past few days, he had
nothing to sleep in or on, and his feet were no doubt an ugly color
underneath the monotone shading everything took on at this part of the
evening.
He laid down on the dead grass and tucked his feet as best he could into
the pant legs that they didn't quite fit in, curled himself up into a
ball, and tried not to think about how long it was until morning.
It was a long, long time.
He shivered, the rocks below him digging their way into his flesh like a
fleet of assorted-sized drill bits, spinning madly. His hands were
cold, and his feet, too, the temperature having dropped with the sun
hours and hours ago. The warmth had quickly drained out of him, seeping
into the ground and fading into the needy air, each puff of exhaled heat
abandoning Ranma for greener pastures.
It started at the roof of his ceiling, the black turning to a dark and
then gradually lighter shade of blue. The barely-remembered hills
around him took on definition, separating themselves from the sky as
color began to trickle over the edge of the world in a slow flood. Soon
his existence began taking on a wider range of shades, skin and clothes
becoming more than just dark in imperceptible darker. Faded paints
sprang into existence like the coming of spring, winter's death of color
reversing in a resurrection of light.
And then Ranma could see.
His feet were a pale reflection of the sky that almost, but not quite,
overwhelmed the normally light-brown sun-toned skin that covered them.
His hands were better off, having been held clutched against his chest,
trapped between his torso and his tucked-up legs. Clutched against his
stomach, attempting to succor by osmotic cannibalism. A failure, but
they'd stayed warm.
Ranma stretched, his feet running away from the pants they'd been
trapped in as his legs extended beyond their confining reach. The pants
hadn't been quite big enough and he could feel the buzzing of a thousand
mosquitoes underneath his skin, burrowing through the flesh and bone
that terminated at the end of each leg. Then the stinging began, and
went on and on and on until he had to move, had to make it stop, tucking
his feet back under him in defense. They touched with an orgasmic burst
of sparkles, every deadened nerve celebrating at the renewed stimuli.
He gasped in pain and froze, unwilling to try and stand, to let the
reviving blood flow faster, forcing himself to wait it out.
A few minutes later it was gone. Ranma moved his feet experimentally.
They were tender and very sensitive and still cold, but they were
usable.
He stood, and stretched again, this time his fists thrusting into the
treacherous air and waving about slightly in a vengeful attack. He
sighed, dropping them again.
Ranma looked around. The hills rose to the sides and behind him, and he
could see where he'd walked the previous day. Ahead of him lay the
Manor at another couple of hours travel, a trek made possible only by
his returned sight and the revival of his transportation method. It was
still a rocky voyage that he wanted nothing to do with.
His stomach made a valiant attempt at setting a marching beat which soon
devolved into a noise quite like that of heated shrink-wrap sucking
itself down for long transit times. It went on and on and Ranma could
feel his insides becoming more compact and streamlined starving
Afghanistan with every rock-hitting step that he took towards the
Manor's grape fields.
It was a long few hours.
The ripped earth that was the grape fields had been meticulously cleaned
of stones. It was soft and compressed comfortingly beneath his feet,
the coolness somehow being soothing as it squeezed between his toes.
The gentle massage made his abused feet feel like they might actually be
worth something in a few hours.
Reaching what he deemed an invisible point in the grape fields, Ranma
sat down. Wooden posts wrapped about with green grapevines, splashes of
tasteful purple hanging heavy, surrounded him. If Artena or Chloe
hadn't spotted him approaching they wouldn't have any idea that he was
here, among the grapes, a wolf among sheep.
Only sheep do not die so quickly.
He popped the things into his mouth as quickly as he could, spitting out
the pits and then replacing the remains with a new grape. Several seeds
were swallowed but were quickly dismissed after the sweet flesh of the
next plump fruit washed away the feeling of the previous rough passage.
He had to move three times in order to keep the grapes within easy reach
as he decimated everything his greedy mouth-guided hands could snatch
up.
Ranma collapsed onto his back, bloated belly making him top-heavy enough
to justify the sudden laziness. The sun was making its presence known
and he was warm despite the surrounding vegetation and the cool earth
pillowing his entire body. He glimpsed down and saw that his feet had
regained normal skin tone, although the scratches and generally beaten
appearance was still present. They looked like they could use some
rest, so he gave it to them.
Ranma opened his eyes and winced. The sun was past its equinox and was
in the exact position for over at him from where it was falling to the
earth. It was late afternoon.
The juices on his face had dried and become a sticky mask, its glue
painful as it clung to the skin and tried to prevent the movement that
his yawn entailed. He wiped it off with his hands, using his shirt to
clear away as much of the stuff as he could.
That done, he sat up. Corpses of grape bunches lay everywhere. Here, a
severed stem that looked raw and painful where the flesh of the grapes
had been ripped from its nurturer, there a plundered post that not one
of the grape bunches attached to remained free of rape and slaughter.
Seeds were scattered everywhere, the heat of the sun already causing the
sticky remains to be rotting at a rate that would have required bodies
to immediately be carted off to the morgue. That a killer had been on
the loose could never be more apparent.
Ranma's belly had recovered during his nap and was once again ready to
go to war.
A short time later he was once again sated, though he stopped before the
bursting point. It was time to get moving again, to find out where the
village was, and then from there, which direction to Japan. It couldn't
be as far as Chloe had said. A year's travel? Ha! Ranma doubted it'd
take even half that long.
He stood and then walked to the edge of the row, to the open area at the
edge of the field he'd slaughtered, and looked around. Artena wasn't in
sight. Chloe was right behind him.
Well, not that close, but he could see her about a half-mile off,
heading from the very same set of hills that he'd nearly frozen himself
to death on the night before. She was a tiny splash of dark green
trickling rolling away from the mostly-dead slopes. She probably had
shoes on.
What had she been doing over there?
Ranma turned around and headed back into the field, following the path
between rows until they had curved enough that Chloe wouldn't see him
when she walked by. Then he sat down to wait, munching on a few grapes
as he did so. Not many, since he was still pretty full. Just as a
snack.
Chloe had been headed south, and was now returning. Why? She had shoes
on and could walk faster than he could over all the rocks. Had she had
enough time to go to the village and then come back while he was
sleeping? He hadn't seen anything when he'd gone that way...but what
else could it be?
Ranma scowled at the ground in annoyance. If he was going to go to
Japan he needed to get moving. So which way was it?
Chloe would know. Maybe he could trick her into telling him.
Chloe marched back to the Manor. Ranma hadn't been there, hadn't been
anywhere that she could see when she headed south just like he had.
She'd worked her way up the hills, getting ever higher as she got
further into her pursuit, and when they turned to solid rock jutting
into the air, she had had a view of miles around. Within that view was
a distinct lack of Ranma.
So she turned around and headed back.
After finally getting permission to kill Ranma, he managed to escape her
entirely. The only consolation was that he'd headed in the wrong way
and would probably starve to death before figuring it out. The boy had
all the brains of a boiled turnip.
Chloe rubbed a hand through her hair in irritation. Something bounced
off it again. She stopped and looked down to see a grape seed to the
left of her feet. A couple of paces behind her was another one.
Again, something bounced off her head.
Ranma was at the edge of a row, smiling cheerily at her. He spat
something into his hand, then threw another seed.
She responded by reaching beneath her cloak and stripping her harnesses
as fast as she could manage, emptying their contents in Ranma's
direction. He dodged each one, running back into the field and out of
sight. Chloe followed, hands once again filled with metal death and
itching to make good use of it.
again. Hadn't she stopped? Her arms, legs, were limp, but she could
feel water passing over them, over the rest of her body.
She tried to slow her breathing, but it was hard. There was something
across her chest, preventing her from breathing deeply. It was one of
Artena's arms, she realized, and she was being pulled.
The water was cooler. She shivered at the change in temperature,
uncomfortable. But Artena was holding onto her. Artena was warm, too,
she could feel, now that Chloe noticed she was pressed up against the
older woman, being held carefully in place as she was dragged towards
the edge of the spring. But Artena still wasn't as warm as the water
had been.
Chloe felt herself being lifted and was shocked at the sudden coldness.
The abrupt transition caused her to shiver uncontrollably in Artena's
careful grasp. She was out of the pool now and being carried, held
closely against her surrogate mother. Artena was warm where they
touched each other, but Chloe was still freezing, the cool air ripping
away even that comforting heat.
She stared at her fingers in sick fascination. They looked pink, redder
than usual, but she was sure they'd turn blue and black at any moment as
the blood within thickened and slowed and turned to ice. Her toes and
feet would, too. But no matter how closely she looked, they remained
the same.
Chloe wrapped her arms around Artena, clinging to the older woman, who
was trying to put her down. She refused to let go. Artena was warm.
"Artena-sama?" she murmured.
She heard a slight sigh, the exhalation brushing against one of her
ears. A moment later Artena sat down, carefully keeping Chloe in her
lap. Chloe smiled slightly and relaxed her grip, resting her head
against Artena. She felt hands begin to run softly through her hair.
She liked that, it was nice.
"Sleep, Chloe," she heard. "We have plenty of time still."
Ranma lied on his back, chest heaving and limbs stretched out in all
directions. He gulped down great big lungfuls of replenishing oxygen,
his heart slammed in his chest and his blood through the rushing rapids
that were his veins. He was covered in sweat, his eyes stinging
slightly at the saturated moisture, the taste of it upon his lips. The
clothes he wore clung wetly, uncomfortable, heavy with his fluids,
stained through with his salt.
The oh-so-strenuous workout had accomplished nothing. Ranma was no
closer to figuring out what his problem was than before. His throws
were still completely off. His mood was frustrated and irritable; he
was easily distracted and his wandering mind kept returning to the
question of what he was doing wrong rather than simply focusing on
practice as it should. His father had trained him just as hard as this
on previous occasions and Ranma had had no such problems. Usually he'd
already have gotten a solid, sometimes near-perfect grasp on whatever
the technique was by this point--Ranma had been trying to learn knife-
throwing for four days with no significant progress. Why?
His breathing began to slow as his body cooled down, no longer required
to run like an overworked steamboat boiler. The heart slowed, its beats
becoming less the pounding of a fleet of drummers and instead a slow,
easy pace, eventually inaudible. Ranma's muscles, previously masses of
well-done, cooked beef, changed to the sleepy lethargy of a lazy young
calf.
Ranma's eyes glided across the sky until he looked upon the brightly
shining sun. Just a couple of hours after noon. He had plenty of time
before dinner. Plenty of time to get more practicing in, to figure out
what his problem was. Plenty of time.
"Ranma."
He opened his eyes to see that the sun had moved unexpectedly and that
it was now late in the afternoon. Ranma blinked again, but this time it
stayed still. How odd.
"Ranma," said a quiet voice.
He stretched, curling his feet and balling his fists as he pushed them
as far apart as he could. Breathing out in a sleepy sigh, his eyes
clenched shut again. He felt his muscles ripple deliciously as he did
so, bringing a smile to his face. That always felt good. He peeked
upwards to find that nothing had changed. Then he sat up and saw that
Artena was standing in front of him.
Her hair was damp and dark and uncombed, no longer hanging straight at
her back with any available illumination making her light-brown tresses
shine. In Artena's arms Chloe slumbered, her torso wrapped around with
towels, the girl's arms draped over Artena's shoulders and her head
resting against one side of Artena's neck. Chloe's hair, too, was wet,
the normally fluffy reddish-purple substance instead pressed closely to
her scalp.
Ranma stood and yawned, stretching his arms upwards this time as if to
grab at nonexistent clouds. When finished, he looked towards Artena
again. She was still standing there holding Chloe.
"What?" he asked.
Artena leaned backwards, changing the position of Chloe's weight upon
her, and adjusted one of her arms under the girl to better support her
weight. With her other hand, which had been pressed against Chloe's
back, Artena held some clothes out towards him.
"Please carry these," she said, in the same low tone of voice.
Ranma looked at them for a minute, then up at Artena, who simply smiled
at him, holding Chloe's weight steady with no apparent trouble while
using only one arm. He shrugged and took the clothes from her grasp.
"Okay."
"Thank you."
Artena adjusted her grip on Chloe again, this time able to use both
hands to hold the girl up. The position looked more comfortable, but
Ranma couldn't help but wonder if it had been necessary since Artena
hadn't seemed to be having any trouble to begin with.
"If you'll come with me back to the Manor," Artena said, "dinner will be
ready soon."
Ranma yawned again then nodded, and Artena started walking towards the
arena exit. He followed, trudging slowly through the sand. Chloe's
face peeked at him from over Artena's shoulder, but her eyes remained
closed. Her face was flushed and pink, for some reason.
He looked down at the clothes he now held. They were Chloe's, and what
she had been wearing earlier that day. Where had they gone swimming?
He'd have to search the area around the coliseum later on, to see. He
liked swimming.
For now, though, Ranma followed Artena back to the Manor. Swimming
could wait until later.
Dinner was quiet. Ranma, still nappish, ate his food slowly, without
effort. His lack of real hunger or enthusiasm caused the meal to be
bland and tasteless. Picking at it was about the limit of his energy.
He had no doubt that if his father was present he would not be able to
eat even the slightest bit of the food on his plate. Ranma just wasn't
up to holding a defense right now.
Chloe, too, was quiet and subdued. Her face was still pink and her
motions drowsy and slow as she slowly used her fork to break up her food
before sending it to the abyss one tiny load at a time. Even the
clicking of silverware on plate was dull and muted.
Deciding he'd had enough, Ranma push his chair back and rose to leave.
"It's your turn to help with the dishes, Ranma," Artena said.
"...What?"
"Somebody needs to dry and put away the dishes as I clean them."
Ranma stared at her. "Have Chloe do it."
"Chloe has been helping me in the kitchen even though she's injured.
Now it's your turn."
"But you're making me stay here! I shouldn't have to help!"
"That doesn't matter. You should still make yourself of some
assistance. And I'm not forcing you to stay. You can leave at any
time, even if you don't know where to go."
"That's not fair!" he protested. He hated doing dishes!
"I'll do it," Chloe said quietly, speaking for the first time since
dinner began.
Artena frowned and started to speak, but Ranma beat her to it.
"Okay, Chloe will help you! I'mgoingtobednowgoodnight!"
He ran away as quickly as possible.
After he had turned a couple of corners he slowed back down to a
lethargic, dragging walk, once again drained of energy. Even his room
seemed like a long trek. Maybe once he got back to Japan he could make
his father teach him some kinda teleporting technique, like in that
Dragonball manga.
Ranma was sure that'd be easier to learn those stupid knives, too.
He didn't mind doing chores, at least some stuff. Setting and packing
up his and his father's tents, making a fire, scrounging for food and
then helping cook it, those were all things he had to do whenever they
went on the road. He hated the boredom and senselessness of the
repetition but knew it was necessary. And his father always did his
share of those tasks.
Cleaning dishes, though, was a chore Ranma absolutely detested, and one
that he'd always get stuck doing himself. When they were staying
somewhere Ranma would arrive home after school to find a massive amount
of dishes scattered across the kitchen counters and dining room table.
Every day. Even when he washed the dishes before heading to school, and
his father both left for work before Ranma exited the house and arrived
home hours after Ranma himself returned, there would still be dishes
delivered by a mysterious grunge fairy that Ranma could never seem to
spot.
When they were on the road for a training trip Ranma and his father
would end up trying to steal each other's food until it was gone or
scattered about their campgrounds. Afterwards the battle would move on
to a full-fledged sparring session that gave plenty of time for the
leftover bits of food to fuse completely with the plates and cooking
utensils they remained on. Trying to scrub dishes clean in the always-
cold water of a nearby stream or pond, or worse, having to use a canteen
or some other kind of water bottle that made rinsing almost impossible,
was a hell Ranma was quite familiar with.
So no, he wasn't doing dishes. Not a chance in the world.
What he was going to do was sleep. Arriving at last at the room he was
a guest in he collapsed onto the bed, and, ignoring the dirty sheets and
the sand stuck to his clothes and hair and skin, he did just that.
"Wake up."
Ranma eyes opened stickily and he blinked, trying to figure out what the
problem was.
"OW!"
He started rubbing at his eyes carefully, moisture running from them now
after the sand got in. There was gunk all in the corners, stuck to his
eyelashes, rusting his doors to the world shut. Cleaning it out wasn't
pleasant.
"Are you done yet?" Chloe asked quietly.
Ranma finished and looked over at the girl. She was dressed again in
clothes similar to his, but hers were noticeably cleaner, and there was
a distinct lack of sand and dirt stuck to them. Chloe stood patiently,
looking at him calmly, but he was sure there was something dismissive,
condescending, about her deigning to wait for him.
"What?" he asked. This was the first time she'd ever bothered to wake
him up in the morning. "Is it time for breakfast?"
"Yes. Artena-sama is waiting."
Ranma shoved himself out of bed. Sand and dirt fell to the stone
beneath him, grinding painfully under his toes and heel. He ignored it.
Chloe turned away and exited the room, and he followed her.
Breakfast was simple, same as it was every morning. Artena cooked for
the purpose of satisfying stomachs, not greedy taste buds. Even Ranma's
father spent more time than she did in preparing a meal. But it tasted
well enough despite that and it filled him up just as he liked his food
to do, even if he would have liked more than what she gave him.
Once again his plate was clean and his glass empty before Chloe and
Artena were even halfway done with theirs. Today he was going to the
village, though, which meant he couldn't just leave--he didn't know
where to go. So he continued to sit there and watched the two of them
eat. Neither seemed to notice him doing so, or care. They just used
their forks to separate a bit of food and then scooped the stuff up and
lifted it into their mouths. Repeat, repeat, repeat. So slowly.
Ranma wished his father was present. He would have ended up hungrier
for it but at least the meal would have gone faster, taking place during
a chopsticks duel that was the trademark of Saotome eating. He could
try to steal food from Chloe or Artena, but he was sure it wouldn't work
out. Forks just weren't designed properly for the quick, unnoticed
theft that would be required.
The clicking of silverware on china came to an end, the sudden silence
catching his attention. They were done at last.
"Ranma," said Artena, who was looking at him now. He noticed that Chloe
was, too, and that the hint of a smug smile twisted her lips and colored
her eyes.
"What?" he asked, a bit suspicious.
"Chloe will take you to the village to get some new clothes," she
continued. Her face was serious now, none of the friendly warmth she
had looked at him with before present. "Somebody there will give you
some food. After that you are free to go wherever you wish, as long as
you don't return here or bother the people in the village."
Ranma stared at her, his heart thumping audibly in panic. He didn't
know how to get to Japan! She said he'd help him! "You told me I could
stay here until you found my pop! You lied to me!" Ranma yelled at her.
Chloe gripped her knife tightly, glaring at him, the soiled, dull blade
pointed in his direction but her fist surrounding it stayed at table
level, in a neutral position. He ignored her.
Artena didn't deny his words at all. "Yes, I said you could stay here.
But I never invited you to come to this place, never invited you to show
up requiring food and clothing and expecting a made bed and someone to
pick up after you as though it is your right to be here. You are owed
nothing. I have no obligation towards you, to put up with an unruly,
ungrateful houseguest. I have every right to ask you to leave."
Ranma looked from the cold expression on Artena's face over to the
mostly happy, somewhat angered expression on Chloe's, then back again.
"You're going to make me leave because I wouldn't do the dishes?"
"Yes," Artena said.
"Fine, then! I will leave! And I'll leave right now!"
He stood, his knees thrusting backwards and knocking down the heavy
chair. Then he marched to and out the door to the dining room, down the
hallway leading to the front exit, and then outside.
Ranma stopped in front of the opening, the grape fields sprawling out
before him, hills and mountains within his view in all directions, the
sky blue and cloudless and the sun marching across the horizon, and
tried to figure out which way to Japan. No heading seemed obvious.
Chloe's voice came from the dining room, saying something to Artena that
he couldn't make out, and he scowled. Very well. Any direction would
do.
He started walking south.
Then sun was directly above by the time he cleared the hills and started
working his way into the rockier, more jagged upthrusts that lay beyond.
He was glad for it, because it was just a little bit windier out here
with no real shelter. The relatively motionless air inside the coliseum
and Manor had been chilly enough to make his skin feel a touch cold, yet
out in the open the air was constantly in motion, waves of coolness
making the chill a little bit more insistent, a little bit more than
skin-deep.
It made him glad that he wasn't wearing his torn gi anymore, with the
gaping holes leaving large areas of his chest and back and sides and
legs uncovered and exposed to the elements. Girl clothes or not, being
covered with even a small amount of overall insulation really did help.
His feet, however, were nowhere near comfortable. They were colder than
the rest of him, as he stepped over and onto sharp-edged rocks that had
been sitting out in the wind all day, and felt like they'd spent days,
not hours, being ground under a millstone. Each time he put a foot down
a new rock would join its brothers and sisters in the assault, trying to
find another chink in the armor, to work its way in deeper and more
painfully than any had before. Ranma was beginning to hate those rocks,
but stomping on them in revenge was out of the question.
"This sucks," he said to himself, keeping his eyes on the ground
immediately before him. Careful steps seemed to help somewhat, if not
enough. Sometimes he could go a few paces in a row without his feet
have to leave the patches of dark, hard, flat earth that were spread
thinly among the rock fields. But not often.
Was this the way to Japan? He couldn't tell. He could turn around and
see the Manor from where he was, he'd climbed high enough that he cold
peek over the hills between his present location and the place that had
been a temporary home only earlier that morning. The Manor was a tiny
thing from this distance, the coliseum being bigger but not that much.
It was almost a half a day's travel, now.
By the end of the day he should be twice as far. How far was that?
What lay on the other side of the mountains he was trying to pass over?
The village Artena and Chloe had talked about couldn't be too far away-
-maybe he could see it when he got to the top of this peak? That was
just a couple more hours away.
Ranma clenched a fist around the knives in his pocket. He'd tried to
juggle them a little bit earlier, while walking, wanting to keep
handling the things, increasing his familiarity with the tools even
though he'd never see Chloe again to get a chance to beat her. It
hadn't worked, he kept getting too focused on tossing the knives around,
catching and flipping and throwing them back up again, and then he'd
step on a rock and suddenly lose his rhythm, knives falling everywhere,
right by his face, right by his toes. So he'd stopped.
Now the sun was overhead and looking up at the knives, if he tried it
now, would probably cause one to fall into his squinting eyes.
Instead he studied the ground, searching for particularly vicious
looking rocks that would not take being trampled upon lightly. There
were many of those, and he was quite sure that he was finding each one.
Ranma looked south and concluded that maybe this was the wrong way to
go. He'd already been traveling for six hours and the village wasn't
just on the other side of this peak, as he had hoped. The trip was only
supposed to take a bit over half a day, which meant that whichever
direction the village was from the Manor, it wasn't south.
The other directions he couldn't see very far in. East and west both
had treacherous looking mini-mountains of their own to stand against
him. If either of those were the right way to go, he couldn't tell from
here with his view blocked. North lead right back to the Manor, and if
the village was in that direction he didn't want to go there anyway.
Ranma couldn't tell where Japan was, relative to him, but he knew it
wasn't north--it was already colder here than it had been in Japan. No,
north wasn't the way to go.
East or west it was, then. And that meant he was going to have to head
back to the Manor, which he'd been traveling away from for a good six or
seven hours.
"Dammit!"
Ignoring the cold pit in his stomach and the loudly protesting,
slaughtered remains of his feet, he turned around and started retracing
his footsteps. Surely those rocks would be a bit softer this time
around. His feet were.
His feet, formerly cold and abused, were now masses of over-tenderized
meat that had been left in the refrigerator for too long. They weren't
blue, not really, but they definitely weren't the healthy looking color
they had started out being. At least, he didn't think so. It was hard
to tell, when his ability to see color had passed away with the sun who
sponsored that ability.
He couldn't quite tell what color they were, because he couldn't quite
see very well of anything. He'd reached the little hills surrounding
the Manor but they, too, had plenty of rocks strewn about, hiding
beneath the sparse, mostly dead grass. By that time it had gotten
fairly close to being dark. The sun had gone down and the moon was
missing its shift.
Ranma was a couple of hours from the nearest source of food, the grapes
he'd been stuffing himself on so freely over the past few days, he had
nothing to sleep in or on, and his feet were no doubt an ugly color
underneath the monotone shading everything took on at this part of the
evening.
He laid down on the dead grass and tucked his feet as best he could into
the pant legs that they didn't quite fit in, curled himself up into a
ball, and tried not to think about how long it was until morning.
It was a long, long time.
He shivered, the rocks below him digging their way into his flesh like a
fleet of assorted-sized drill bits, spinning madly. His hands were
cold, and his feet, too, the temperature having dropped with the sun
hours and hours ago. The warmth had quickly drained out of him, seeping
into the ground and fading into the needy air, each puff of exhaled heat
abandoning Ranma for greener pastures.
It started at the roof of his ceiling, the black turning to a dark and
then gradually lighter shade of blue. The barely-remembered hills
around him took on definition, separating themselves from the sky as
color began to trickle over the edge of the world in a slow flood. Soon
his existence began taking on a wider range of shades, skin and clothes
becoming more than just dark in imperceptible darker. Faded paints
sprang into existence like the coming of spring, winter's death of color
reversing in a resurrection of light.
And then Ranma could see.
His feet were a pale reflection of the sky that almost, but not quite,
overwhelmed the normally light-brown sun-toned skin that covered them.
His hands were better off, having been held clutched against his chest,
trapped between his torso and his tucked-up legs. Clutched against his
stomach, attempting to succor by osmotic cannibalism. A failure, but
they'd stayed warm.
Ranma stretched, his feet running away from the pants they'd been
trapped in as his legs extended beyond their confining reach. The pants
hadn't been quite big enough and he could feel the buzzing of a thousand
mosquitoes underneath his skin, burrowing through the flesh and bone
that terminated at the end of each leg. Then the stinging began, and
went on and on and on until he had to move, had to make it stop, tucking
his feet back under him in defense. They touched with an orgasmic burst
of sparkles, every deadened nerve celebrating at the renewed stimuli.
He gasped in pain and froze, unwilling to try and stand, to let the
reviving blood flow faster, forcing himself to wait it out.
A few minutes later it was gone. Ranma moved his feet experimentally.
They were tender and very sensitive and still cold, but they were
usable.
He stood, and stretched again, this time his fists thrusting into the
treacherous air and waving about slightly in a vengeful attack. He
sighed, dropping them again.
Ranma looked around. The hills rose to the sides and behind him, and he
could see where he'd walked the previous day. Ahead of him lay the
Manor at another couple of hours travel, a trek made possible only by
his returned sight and the revival of his transportation method. It was
still a rocky voyage that he wanted nothing to do with.
His stomach made a valiant attempt at setting a marching beat which soon
devolved into a noise quite like that of heated shrink-wrap sucking
itself down for long transit times. It went on and on and Ranma could
feel his insides becoming more compact and streamlined starving
Afghanistan with every rock-hitting step that he took towards the
Manor's grape fields.
It was a long few hours.
The ripped earth that was the grape fields had been meticulously cleaned
of stones. It was soft and compressed comfortingly beneath his feet,
the coolness somehow being soothing as it squeezed between his toes.
The gentle massage made his abused feet feel like they might actually be
worth something in a few hours.
Reaching what he deemed an invisible point in the grape fields, Ranma
sat down. Wooden posts wrapped about with green grapevines, splashes of
tasteful purple hanging heavy, surrounded him. If Artena or Chloe
hadn't spotted him approaching they wouldn't have any idea that he was
here, among the grapes, a wolf among sheep.
Only sheep do not die so quickly.
He popped the things into his mouth as quickly as he could, spitting out
the pits and then replacing the remains with a new grape. Several seeds
were swallowed but were quickly dismissed after the sweet flesh of the
next plump fruit washed away the feeling of the previous rough passage.
He had to move three times in order to keep the grapes within easy reach
as he decimated everything his greedy mouth-guided hands could snatch
up.
Ranma collapsed onto his back, bloated belly making him top-heavy enough
to justify the sudden laziness. The sun was making its presence known
and he was warm despite the surrounding vegetation and the cool earth
pillowing his entire body. He glimpsed down and saw that his feet had
regained normal skin tone, although the scratches and generally beaten
appearance was still present. They looked like they could use some
rest, so he gave it to them.
Ranma opened his eyes and winced. The sun was past its equinox and was
in the exact position for over at him from where it was falling to the
earth. It was late afternoon.
The juices on his face had dried and become a sticky mask, its glue
painful as it clung to the skin and tried to prevent the movement that
his yawn entailed. He wiped it off with his hands, using his shirt to
clear away as much of the stuff as he could.
That done, he sat up. Corpses of grape bunches lay everywhere. Here, a
severed stem that looked raw and painful where the flesh of the grapes
had been ripped from its nurturer, there a plundered post that not one
of the grape bunches attached to remained free of rape and slaughter.
Seeds were scattered everywhere, the heat of the sun already causing the
sticky remains to be rotting at a rate that would have required bodies
to immediately be carted off to the morgue. That a killer had been on
the loose could never be more apparent.
Ranma's belly had recovered during his nap and was once again ready to
go to war.
A short time later he was once again sated, though he stopped before the
bursting point. It was time to get moving again, to find out where the
village was, and then from there, which direction to Japan. It couldn't
be as far as Chloe had said. A year's travel? Ha! Ranma doubted it'd
take even half that long.
He stood and then walked to the edge of the row, to the open area at the
edge of the field he'd slaughtered, and looked around. Artena wasn't in
sight. Chloe was right behind him.
Well, not that close, but he could see her about a half-mile off,
heading from the very same set of hills that he'd nearly frozen himself
to death on the night before. She was a tiny splash of dark green
trickling rolling away from the mostly-dead slopes. She probably had
shoes on.
What had she been doing over there?
Ranma turned around and headed back into the field, following the path
between rows until they had curved enough that Chloe wouldn't see him
when she walked by. Then he sat down to wait, munching on a few grapes
as he did so. Not many, since he was still pretty full. Just as a
snack.
Chloe had been headed south, and was now returning. Why? She had shoes
on and could walk faster than he could over all the rocks. Had she had
enough time to go to the village and then come back while he was
sleeping? He hadn't seen anything when he'd gone that way...but what
else could it be?
Ranma scowled at the ground in annoyance. If he was going to go to
Japan he needed to get moving. So which way was it?
Chloe would know. Maybe he could trick her into telling him.
Chloe marched back to the Manor. Ranma hadn't been there, hadn't been
anywhere that she could see when she headed south just like he had.
She'd worked her way up the hills, getting ever higher as she got
further into her pursuit, and when they turned to solid rock jutting
into the air, she had had a view of miles around. Within that view was
a distinct lack of Ranma.
So she turned around and headed back.
After finally getting permission to kill Ranma, he managed to escape her
entirely. The only consolation was that he'd headed in the wrong way
and would probably starve to death before figuring it out. The boy had
all the brains of a boiled turnip.
Chloe rubbed a hand through her hair in irritation. Something bounced
off it again. She stopped and looked down to see a grape seed to the
left of her feet. A couple of paces behind her was another one.
Again, something bounced off her head.
Ranma was at the edge of a row, smiling cheerily at her. He spat
something into his hand, then threw another seed.
She responded by reaching beneath her cloak and stripping her harnesses
as fast as she could manage, emptying their contents in Ranma's
direction. He dodged each one, running back into the field and out of
sight. Chloe followed, hands once again filled with metal death and
itching to make good use of it.