I'd like to thank everyone for the fantastic reviews as well. You've all been very kind. Since this is my first fic I'm definitely a bit...timid about the whole process. This community is great, and you are all very supportive. Thanks again!

Chapter 9

Ranma was tired. That in itself would have surprised him over a week ago, but ever since he'd been wherever they had been sent, he'd had this constant drain on his Ki to deal with. He could keep up with the demand – barely. He'd quickly found that as long as he was supporting the Ki flow to the world around him, he had no energy left for any of his Ki attacks. In many ways, he felt like he was returning back to his first few days of training. Basic katas tired him. He knew he had a lot of work to get back into shape, but without his father egging him on, or for that matter any of his rivals or friends, it was difficult to imagine putting in the time to regain his former energy reserves.

He completed his morning workout and went out into the yard to cool off by the koi pond. Kasumi and he had finished breakfast earlier, and she had insisted that she could do the wash by herself while he worked out Without school, arguments, fights, idiotic fathers, manic mothers, random challengers or other magical interference, Ranma had come to realize that he had a lot more time on his hands than he did before the incident. To his credit, he decided that one of the best things he could do for Kasumi was to keep her company during the day. The excessive quiet was creepy, and she didn't seem to be fazed by the stillness as long as Ranma was at least in the same house as she was.

This morning he had again helped her with breakfast. He was somewhat baffled at what a surreal experience breakfast was turning out to be. For the first time since he could remember he didn't have to fight for his food. The last few mornings, Kasumi had reminded him of just that fact as he was inhaling his food at his normal pace during the meal. Embarrassed, he concentrated on his rather unique situation and each morning forced himself to eat at a greatly reduced rate, which had produced a brilliant smile on Kasumi's face. Instead of the usual morning interrogation by Akane, Nabiki and his father, he was able to make small talk with Kasumi, taking the time to compliment her on her cooking and thanking her for taking such good care of him.

This was the third day of their exile, as he now thought of it. As he was drying the dishes after breakfast, he thought You know, this 'helping out' stuff isn't too bad. The work isn't too hard, and it sure is neat how much Kasumi appreciates my help. She really seems glad that I'm helping. Pops always said that helping out only made people think less of you, that you were weak. Something tells me that once again he was full of it. He thought that it was because she appreciated his help and companionship, without taking offense or deciding he had ulterior motives.

After breakfast, Kasumi insisted that he have some time to work out while she did the laundry. "Ranma, I know how much you enjoy your practicing. I'll be fine while you work out. If I get uncomfortable, I'll give you a call"

That was an hour ago, and he was surprised out how tired he was doing simple exercises. As he finished up, Kasumi entered the dojo. "Are you already finished Ranma?"

Ranma smiled at her as she walked into the room. "Yeah, hate to admit it, but this place sure takes a lot of energy out of me."

Kasumi smiled back a silent greeting then said "What do you suppose we should do today?"

Ranma was dreading this question. For all his bravado, his only plan so far was to wait around for a while and hope the old ghoul could come up with something. Kami knows that he didn't have the best luck with magic. The problem is, he didn't want to admit he had no idea. There wasn't any enemy to fight this time. It wasn't obvious how Martial Arts was going to help them here. This wasn't the type of fight he'd fought before, and he was left with no plan of attack.

It was then that a rather unique event occurred. Normally, Ranma would have been pushed into a false sense of confidence by either Akane, his father, or somebody else who always expecting so much out of him. But since he had no current foe, none of his usual instincts kicked in and consequently he had no answer. As he returned Kasumi's gaze, he occurred to him that she was actually asking his opinion, not demanding an answer out of him. The Ranma thought process version 1.0 was about to make its first upgrade. Nothing huge, but even a 1.1 version is better than 1.0. And all it took was a seemingly small change in his usual response to a simple question.

"I'm not really sure Kasumi, what do you think we should do?"

Kasumi blinked-blinked at the simple question. In all honesty, it had been so long since somebody actually asked her opinion about something that...that she couldn't remember when the last time was. Kasumi was typically surrounded by strong-willed, ego-centric people that were used to her 'taking care of things'. Nobody, but nobody, had ever really asked her what she would do when something new came up. They expected her to quietly fall in place behind whomever decided to play leader and give quiet support. Was he really wondering what she thought they should do. She looked at his face and saw the earnestness there. Yes, he was actually wondering what she would do. She fought her well worn reflex to defer to his judgment and decided to instead, try to at least help come up with a solution. To repay the politeness that Ranma showed, she decided to not jump at a quick answer, but work with him based on the questions she already had thought of earlier this morning.

"Well, I think you idea of remaining around the house for a while is a good one. Hopefully Cologne will be able to think of something. But I was thinking as I was cleaning up this morning, without any people around, how long will we have electricity and water?"

"I'm not sure what you mean? It's working now. Why would it quit?"

"I'm not sure when it will. But without people watching, more and more things will probably quit working as they run out of gas, or something goes wrong. There are many people which take care of things in this town each day, and without them, I think things will start to break down." she finished.

"Oh. I hadn't really thought of that..." He performed the famous Saotome scratch the back of the head move. His face quickly brightened. "Don't worry though, I know how to start a fire and camp, we should be OK."

"I'm not worried about that part of it. I just thought we might try to find a few things now, so that when these things do fail, we'll be ready for it."

"Like what?'

She looked down, and quietly replied "I was thinking of getting some fuel, water and maybe a generator." Oh sure, everyone liked to listen to her calm and soothing words around the house, but when it came time to actually act on something she suggested her track record was far from perfect. Most people just liked to stop and get comfort, but never really listen to her advice. She excepted nothing different now.

"OK"

"OK?" she looked up again.

"Yeah, sounds like a good idea, we could go right now if you wanted to." Ranma was rewarded with a patented Kasumi beam that shamed any he had every witnessed before. "What? What did I do?" he had a panicked look to his face, and his tone showed revealed his rising panic that he had embarrassed himself again somehow.

"Nothing Ranma, you just listened to me. You may not realize it, but not many people do...not really. And it just feels nice. Thank you."

"Oh, sure..." he scratched the back of his head.

"Come on Ranma, let's go shopping..."

Mousse was overjoyed. It had been three days since Saotome had disappeared. During that time the old mummy had feverishly searched through her scrolls, tomes and manuscripts, but had so far found nothing that might help return his banished rival. Everybody else seemed to be upset that Ranma had been whisked off to who-knows-where, but as far as Mousse was concerned, it couldn't have gone any better if he himself had planned it. Ranma seemed to be gone for good, there was nothing anybody could do about it, and Mousse couldn't be blamed for it. Things couldn't be going any better!

Unfortunately, just then Cologne stuck her head in the kitchen door. "Mr. Part-time, stop cleaning the floor and come in with us. We have something to discuss."

Ahhh, this must be it he thought to himself. Now that Saotome is gone, Cologne has decided that I would be the best candidate for my darling Shampoo. He quickly put the broom in the corner and followed her into the main room.

Shampoo was already sitting at one of the tables when Cologne and Mousse joined her. As soon as she sat down, Shampoo immediately asked "What great-grandmother want to talk to us about?"

Cologne was not one to avoid the main topic. "Children, I have decided that there is no longer any reason to remain in Japan any longer. In one weeks time, I want us to be packed up and ready to return to our village."

Shampoo was immediately upset. "But great-grandmother, what about Airen? Aren't we going to help him get back? Why would we leave him?"

Mousse watched Cologne's face as she answered Shampoo. He was surprised at how worn-out she looked. She paused before answering, then looked at both of them. "Because there is nothing we can do for son-in-law. When the incident happened, I feared there would be no way to recover him. I have been double-checking my records for the last few days, and nobody has ever returned from the banishment to Yesterday. The spell was written as a one-way ticket. As near as I can tell, it uses the ambient Ki of a large surrounding region to open the portal to the Yesterday world. Once banished to the prison, there will never be enough Ki to re-open the portal."

"But great-grandmother, isn't Airen very good with Ki?"

"Yes he is child, but we are talking about more Ki than Ranma could ever hope of mastering. Son-in-law may be good, but I think everyone has his limits. Plus, he doesn't even know what really happened to he and the Tendo girl. It is unlikely that he would even know where to begin to look."

Mousse immediately saw a flaw in previous statement. "But didn't you give him the key to the restricted vault in the village?"

"Yes, I did, but the odds of him surviving long enough to get there, figure out where to look, and then understand what happened to him are...astronomical. Even for son-in-law."

"Great-grandmother, you keep saying 'if he survives'. How dangerous is this world."

"Shampoo, that is a good question in many ways. I've already mentioned the beings that inhabit this 'Yesterday' world. It is said by the few Elders who have had visions of this place that these creatures consume everything in the world within a few days. That is one reason why I have waited this long, is to give Ranma some time to escape before it was too late. But even if these beings weren't there, think about how hard it might be to have nobody else left around you...no doctors, no farmers, no tradesman. Son-in-law may be good, but he hasn't struck me as a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to other tasks. He may be able to camp out for a while, but sooner or later, the reality of him having to really take care of himself will take its toll. Something as simple as a bad case of the flu could kill a person in that situation."

Mousse succeeded in keeping his grin to himself. As I said, this couldn't be going any better if I'd planned it myself.

Hikaru was beginning to get worried. He thought that this was the third day in this world, but it was hard to tell since the days seemed to be moving...faster. The first day he thought his watch was off, but he soon realized that the cycle of day and night seemed to be going by quicker and quicker. He had managed to continue to feed himself by letting things "warm up" in his pocket before eating or drinking the item. He had tried to eat things before they had "warmed up", but had to spit them out immediately, just as he had done the first day he arrived.

He couldn't have known that his "warming up process" was in fact letting his own weak Ki field infuse a little life on his pocketed snacks. His excess Ki was so week, that the best he could do was normalize the few morsels he kept each morning.

So far, he hadn't found any sign of anybody in this dull, lifeless world. The abnormal silence was still present, but a few moments ago, he thought he heard a strange low rumble off to the east. Since he was in front of Furinkan High School, he decided to go up to one of the upper floors to see if he could see what was causing the noise. As he got to the roof, he looked out over the houses in front of him and didn't see anything at first. He could still hear the occasional low rumble, but couldn't see anything moving.

He was about to turn around to go downstairs when he saw motion in the distance. At the top of the farthest hill, it looked like the trees were moving.

What the hell is that? He thought. Looks like the trees are...falling.

As he stood and stared, he was convinced that some of the trees were falling down. He couldn't see what was causing them to topple, but they were definitely dropping.

Crazy lumberjacks? He grinned. The grin quickly disappeared when he saw a power line near the trees also fall over. Lumberjacks wouldn't be cutting down power lines...

He watched with growing concern as more trees, and eventually another power line dropped. He became aware of a growing, but muffled noise of breakage and destruction. His concern quickly shifted to outright fear as he saw a taller house disappear as well. Whatever was cutting down the trees didn't seem to be too discriminating. Unfortunately whatever was doing the removal seemed to be moving his way, and it seemed to be coming at a pretty good rate.

He decided to go to the large field behind the school. That way anything falling hopefully wouldn't fall on him. He raced down the stairs and went around to the back of the school. As he was rounding the North wing, he could hear the noise getting louder and louder. Whatever was coming, was coming quickly.

After running to the center of the sports field, he turned to face the oncoming...whatever. Standing in the former silence, hearing tearing, wrenching sounds coming from beyond the school was terrifying. He wasn't sure what could make such noises, but he was pretty sure he wasn't looking forward to finding out.

The first local sign that the destroyers had come to the school was the trees falling down in front of the school. Hikaru could see the trees drop beneath the roof line as whatever was destroying them arrived. Now that they were so close, he could hear some crashing coming within the school. What could be getting into the school so quickly? His question was quickly answered when he caught sight of something large, round and black tearing around the building to his right. Almost immediately, two more appeared to the left of the building, and then one actually crashed through the wall of the science wing.

He wasn't sure what he expected, but it surely wasn't the nightmarish creatures currently zigging and zagging around the school grounds. Some were black and some were red. As they tore along, leaving trails of black behind them, he could almost make out some depressions where eyes might be, and a large mouth with huge buzzing teeth. Looks like they're...eating the ground... Each creature was moving through the field and left behind a trail of...nothingness. He watched with growing horror as more and more of the creatures came into view. Each one consuming more of the surrounding area. Sometimes, the creatures crossed paths and the resulting piece of ground seemed to fall away into the growing emptiness. As Hikaru Gosunkugi turned to run, one of the creatures noticed him and shot toward the fleeing boy. No! This can't be happening, this was supposed to happen to Ranma not him! He ran, but the large black consumer of 'Yesterday' was far faster. He felt something clip his left side. There was no pain, only a cold numbing sensation at his shoulder and his balance was immediately thrown off. He looked down and could hardly process the fact that his left arm was now missing at the shoulder. There was no blood, only a neatly sealed black wound. He stopped, still looking at where his arm used to be, of course standing still in a field full of these creatures wasn't the best move, and when he finally looked back up he could see three of them heading directly toward him. The last thing Gosunkugi thought of before he joined the rest of this quickly diminishing world was quite familiar to another of Ranma's acquaintances, it was curse you Saotome, this is all your fau...