Chapter 16

When Ranma and Kasumi first found the 'Scroll of Yesterday', they thought it would be a short time before they would be returning home. That short time turned out to be another five years of intense study of Amazon magic and Ki manipulation. At this point they both were Ki adepts, able to form weapons and shields of Ki at will. Most of the magical techniques that the Amazons recorded had been mastered by one or both of the young couple.

During this time, no documentation was ever found over how to undo the effects of the scroll that sent them to this version of the world. That was what took them so long to get to this point. Like many of the challenges that Ranma had faced before, this had no direct answer. Instead, he had to adapt and change what was known into something new that could provide him the help he so desperately needed.

The biggest problems they faced was the possible solution that they had both come up with was potentially dangerous, very dangerous.

"Yeah Kas-chan, I know it's risky. The problem is, it's either that, or we stay here, forever. I checked the last book I could find on some of the more esoteric applications of Ki-based magic the Amazons had, and it didn't give me a clue. All we have is that original scroll, and the understanding that it knocked this world out of sync with ours."

"I know Ranma". She never did use the Ran-chan name with Ranma. Ukyo had used it so much with Ranma it just never seemed right. "Unfortunately, I agree with you. I think we've learned as much as we can from the archives. We've gone over things back and forth, and have mastered everything we possible could master. It comes down to a simple question really, do we risk everything we have to get back."

Ranma nodded. "As much as I've enjoyed our wonderful life here. I think I'd like to have that family, to hear birds again, to see some people. I've felt as if I've been on a wonderful long vacation with the best person I could possibly spend it with, but I feel that I should return"

She smiled at her husband. In their many years together, they had helped each other so much, and in helping each other, had grown fantastically close together. Ranma spoke the words that Kasumi felt in her own heart. "So what's the plan?"

"Well, if I understand this whole Magic-Ki thing, what we have to use is Ki to put us back in synchronization to the real world.. As near as I can tell, when this world splintered off, it's passing of time doesn't match that of the real world, so we may come back a day after we left, or a thousand years. Our goal should be to adapt the magic in the scroll with our Ki to try to send us back to the time we left. I have a feeling that's why we've never really aged during our time here, in some ways, we're still linked to our time before we were sent here."

He rolled the Scroll of Yesterday out on the table. "If I'm correct, all I have to do is read the scroll with the changes I've indicated here, add my Ki to the scroll's magic field, and we should be sent back to the time we left from."

Kasumi frowned with a thought. "OK, that sounds good, if it works. What happens if it doesn't?"

He shook his head and smiled at his wife. "I knew you were going to ask that. Unfortunately, I don't have a great answer. Since I don't really understand how this scroll works, heck even the Amazons didn't really understand it either, I'm not sure what might go wrong."

"Fair enough" she simply stated. "I came to the same conclusions. I vote we give it a try. I heard a quote along time ago from a documentary on TV. 'He who will not risk, cannot win.' I figure it applies to us at this point"

"All right, we'll try it tomorrow morning." He stood up and looked out the window of their modest house. "Let's go home."

"Uh...Ranma?"

"Yes Kasumi?"

"I know sometimes that once you set your sites on a goal, you can get a bit of tunnel vision. For as much as I want to go home, there is some risk to this plan. Just in case something goes wrong, I'd like to take the next week or so to kind of say goodbye to this place."

Ranma turned from the window and looked into the dark brown eyes of his wife. His face blushed a bit as he mumbled, "Yeah, I guess that is a good idea. For as much as I'd like to get home, I have really enjoyed this place. Where would you like to start?"

She smiled at his reaction. "To be honest, I'd like to go back to our first house for a few days, but that would mean we'd have to fix up the boat and make that long trip, and somehow that might be pressing our luck. Actually, I'd just like to travel to some of the pretty spots we've come to like around hear, and just spend time with you. You know, no more traveling to the cave and going over scrolls. Just some time with you."

He walked over to Kasumi and put his arms around her. "I think that is an excellent idea, but let's pick a date when we'll try now, otherwise every day we'll have the pressure of deciding when to leave over our head."

Kasumi nodded and replied "Next week then, a week from today, is that all right?"

--

The next week flew by as the two castaways traveled to their favorite spots. Several times Kasumi mentioned how much she missed their first little cabin and the hot springs nearby. That night, Ranma and Kasumi spent a good deal of it in the throws of passion, and yes, Ranma spent that time in both forms as Kasumi had earlier shown him that when she said she really had accepted his condition, that she meant she had really accepted his condition.

--

The next morning, Ranma and Kasumi were out in the clearing in front of their Amazon house. They were both still a bit stiff from last night's activities, but seemed ready to begin the experiment. No bags were present, since they didn't want to push their luck if this worked or not. The few things they really wanted to bring with them, they had placed in stuff-space earlier that morning. Turns out the hidden-weapons techniques of the Amazon's worked well for packing carry-on items as well!

Kasumi was pleased that she was able to take some of her favorite items that she had collected over the years. Some of them were assorted jewelry that Ranma had found for her, many of the items she carried were 'insurance' if they made it back safely, but the most important were some small figures that Ranma had carved for her while they were in the Amazon village. One of the byproducts of his familiarity with carpentry is that he had curved a few beautiful figurines out of the wood of the huge tree in the village. Between his talent with the carving blades he had found, and the massive infusion of his Ki to the figures special wood, the carving literally glowed with life and beauty. Kasumi valued them more than any of the jewelry he had found for her.

Ranma had the scroll in his hand. "Ready Kasumi?"

Kasumi nodded, "I think so Ranma. What do you need me to do?"

"I wish I knew, but since I don't, I just want you to be on your toes just in case anything unexpected comes up."

"Very well." Kasumi looked around the village. "I guess I'll miss this place too. We've been here so long, it's kind of like leaving our first house all over again."

"Yeah, me too." He walked over to Kasumi and held her in his arms "Kasumi, just in case something doesn't work out right..." He kissed her. It wasn't an extremely long kiss, but she felt every bit of passion he had in that kiss. "Just remember, I love you."

"I love you to Ranma."

They separated, and Ranma pulled out the scroll again. "When I do this, I'm gonna have to cut my Ki connection to this world. I'm not sure how accurate our dreams are, or how fast those things may come, but be ready for 'em just in case."

He shut his eyes, and Kasumi could feel the change occur. Their normal bright village now stood dim before them. What surprised Kasumi is how bright Ranma shown. She had no idea how much Ki he had diverted to their world, but now that he had stopped the flow, he was a veritable beacon to her Ki senses.

Ranma began to recite the spell on the scroll. As he went through the words, Kasumi's danger sense kicked in and she could tell something was coming. It was the same feeling of dread she had in her dreams. Hurry Ranma, hurry.

She could see them coming across the farthest mountain, maybe about three miles away. Distant, tiny trees shook and fell, whatever the round creatures of their nightmares were, they were coming...quickly.

As Ranma finished the final words to the spell, he infused every ounce of Ki he could afford into the scroll. The scroll glowed blue, and a blue sphere appeared around the scroll. But it wasn't a large sphere, it only was about three feet in diameter. Kasumi knew something was wrong when Ranma's eyes rolled up and he collapsed on the ground. The scroll glowed blue for a few moments longer, then dimmed, and glowed no more.

"Ranma! Ranma wake up" Kasumi yelled. She could see the trees falling as the creatures came closer. From the hills behind her she could hear the noise of their destruction as well. He didn't have enough Ki to make it work, and now he's unconscious. Those things are coming, what can I do...

Ranma had never showed her how to infuse her Ki into the surroundings like he did, he was always to afraid to stop even for a few seconds. Their dreams had given them a healthy fear of what might happen if they did. Now it looked like they might pay the price of not trying, as Kasumi tried to open herself up like Ranma did. She tried to calm herself, so she could concentrate enough to let her Ki flow outward. It isn't working! She screamed to herself. What would Ranma do? Think...think...come on, Ranma Saotome doesn't lose, and neither does Kasumi Saotome!

She continued concentrating, trying to image her Ki flowing out to the surrounding world. Without any warning, the connection was made. She could feel her Ki seep into the countryside, and she watched as the color returned to the ground, plants and sky in an outwardly growing bubble. As it expanded, she felt the drain on her own reserves. She may be an accomplished Martial Artist, but nobody seemed to have the Ki reserves that Ranma did. She decided that she would keep expanding her output until she started getting light headed, and then hold it there.

In a few moments, the dizziness started to hit her. She sat down on the ground and checked the rate of Ki flowing from her. She was surprised to see that her bubble of Ki extended at least two miles before it seemed to stop.

She glanced over to Ranma, who was beginning to stir. Thank goodness he was already recovering. She had to help him recover, but how could she get his Ki levels up quickly? She had none to spare!

The years of working with Ranma and learning to improvise, to pull a victory out of a seemingly hopeless defeat finally paid off. With a flash of inspiration, she pulled out the figures Ranma

had carved for her and pressed them into his hands. Come on, work! I know this should work!

Ranma's eyes snapped open as the stored Ki flowed back into him. "Kasumi! What's happening? Did we make it?"

It was hard for her to talk, but she concentrated and forced the words out. "Spell didn't work...not enough Ki...those things have come...I'm supplying some Ki...seemed to stop them...don't know how long I can do this..."

With the kick-start from the figures, Ranma's reserves quickly recharged to the point where he could take over from Kasumi. The drain really wasn't too bad now that he was only supplying a small area instead of the entire world around them.

Kasumi had to stay sitting for a while before she caught her breath. Ranma stayed close and held her. "Kasumi, I'm so proud of you. You saved us! I'm not sure how you helped me recover so soon, but without your quick thinking, we'd be gone by now."

"Thank you Ranma. I know it sounds funny, but I just tried to do what I thought you would do."

Ranma got a puzzled look on his face. "Well ya did great, but how in the world did you get my Ki back up so quickly?"

She smiled at her own ingenuity. "Remember what you had in your hands when you woke up?"

He furrowed his brows as he tried to remember. "All I had in my hands were the figures I made for you..."

"Exactly! Remember what you did to those figures?"

"I put a lot of my Ki into them...oh...Wow! Great thinking Kasumi!" He leaned forward and kissed her.

"Well, thanks, I'll have to do that more often!" she smiled.

--

They had finished walking around the perimeter of what was left of the valley where the Amazons village lay. The sphere of Ki charged earth seemed to form an impenetrable barrier which kept the bouncing, gnashing spherical creatures at bay. Beyond the edge of their safe haven lay only blackness. It appeared that the world that Ranma and Kasumi were now living in was a circle of about 4 miles in diameter.

Evidently, when Ranma had let severed his Ki lifeline to the world, the creatures had attacked with a vengeance. Considering how long he and Kasumi had lived here, they 'back pressure' of these things must have been tremendous. When the Ki support failed, they must have swarmed on the world with incredible swiftness. Ranma shuddered when he though of what surely would have happened to them had Kasumi not thought quickly enough.

Kasumi could tell Ranma was blaming himself for the failure. "Ranma, you did everything you could. Nobody could have done any better, stop blaming yourself."

Ranma shook his head in dis-agreement. "Kasumi, look what I've done. We always said that if we couldn't get back we'd at least have the world to explore, now look at what we've got...the small valley and hills around this village and that's it. If I'd only been able to give a little more Ki to the spell. What are we going to do now?"

"Do you think you can you build up your reserves any more?"

"Maybe, but it might take years to get enough. The magic needs a huge immediate discharge of Ki, and I'm not sure I could store up that much. Maybe if we had five or six people we might have a chance, but even if you were at my level helping me, I'm not sure I'd have enough."

They sat in their chairs, and stared at the now black line on the horizon. Kasumi was the one to try to keep them focused on a solution. "Well, can we get more Ki to use in a different way?"

"How would we be able to store more..." Ranma stopped and looked at Kasumi, who was looking at him with the same smile that he wore.

"The tree!" they both shouted at once. If they used the tree to store up Ki, they could use it like a giant booster cable to supply the extra Ki for the spell.

As they walked over to the tree, Ranma grabbed some water out of one of their buckets and splashed himself. "Always works best when I'm a girl" he explained to his wife.

When they got to the tree, they both lay their hands on the bark and forced some of their Ki into the tree. After a few moments, Ranma tapped into the tree's Ki flows and siphoned some of the Ki back out.

"It'll work Kas-chan, it'll work. We'll have to work fast, with only this little bit of land left, I'm not sure if we'll get any more weather or rain, so we might have to be careful with food. The small lake is still intact, so we shouldn't have to worry about water too much. We'll have to store every bit of Ki this tree will hold and use it for the spell."

--

Four months later, they had the tree filled to the limit with Ki. The darn thing almost hummed with the energy that had been deposited by the couple. Each of them tried not to go too near the edge of their safe haven. Seeing those dancing balls pacing back and forth trying to get in was just too unsettling.

When the tree was filled, they once again brought the scroll out to the clearing and prepared to return to the world one more time. During the four months, both of their resolve had grown to the point where this was going to be an all-out attempt to get back, or die trying. They had agreed that living in this small area would have driven them both mad with time, and that the risk would be worth it.

"Okay Kasumi, this time I'm going to put everything I have into it. We'll use the tree, and we'll use what you can give too. I think that will be enough, and if not...well, we won't have to worry about that will we?"

Kasumi squeezed his hand. "No we won't, because this time, it will work." Kasumi had faith in Ranma. Ever since she knew him, he might have lost a first skirmish, but he never lost the final battle.

Ranma reached down, grabbed the cup of water, and splashed herself. She had found that her connection to the tree was far better when she was a girl. "Then let's do this!"

Ranma and Kasumi placed one hand each on the tree, and one hand on the scroll. As they both began to recite the incantation, they channeled all the Ki they could into the scroll, and used the massive reserves in the tree to augment their own talents. As Ranma neared the end of the text on the scroll, Kasumi looked around to see their world gone gray again, and black and red balls with nightmare teeth tearing through the countryside around them. Five or six of the beasts were heading their way when the Scroll erupted in a bright blue glow, which quickly engulfed the young couple.

In the last seconds on this world, Kasumi was the only one to accurately remember their final moments. As Ranma began to collapse next to her, she saw one of the creatures charge straight towards them. Almost right as it got to them, she saw it begin to fade, and then everything went to the bright blue of the scroll. The last thing she remembered was a feeling of such joy and life that she knew something must have gone right.

--

Kasumi awoke with Ranma laying next to her. Ranma's red hair was disheveled and her pig tail lay across her face. Kasumi sat up and quickly felt for Ranma's pulse, which seemed to be shallow but steady. She used some of the techniques Ranma had taught her and explored Ranma's Ki levels. They were unsurprisingly dangerously low. Since they used every ounce of stored Ki they could get to make the spell work, she had no way of kick starting Ranma's levels back to normal, so she had to wait until he woke up naturally.

She looked around, and was somewhat disappointed to see the familiar, but empty village around her. Oh please no, please let it have worked! Something was amiss though. The first thing she noted was that the black horizon was gone! She could see the mountains in the distance again. Somehow they had regenerated their world to where it was before the attack of the beasts.

"Ranma, wake up, we did it!" she whispered to her husband. She wasn't surprised she overdid it when it came to energizing the spell. They both knew it was do or die, and Ranma had once again over-extended herself.

Kasumi was a bit unhappy that hey hadn't returned to their normal world, when the other thing that was nagging the back of her mind hit her. If this is our 'Yesterday' world, why isn't it gray? We aren't feeding it any Ki! She stood up, a bit shakily, and walked around, trying to understand exactly what had happened to them.

She started noticing the differences as she continued to recover from the spell. It smells so clean, so fresh, and it just feels...so alive. She checked on Ranma again, but she was still out. As she walked around the tree, she thought she heard a musical note rising in the background. Is it those creatures again? No, this note wasn't the sound of destruction. It was instead a happy, joyous note that grew in volume and complexity. As Kasumi tried to make out some of the components of the tone, she started to hear voices mixed with the tone. At first, she couldn't understand them, but soon she could hear different women talking, but it sounded like Mandarin!

She ran back over to Ranma and stood next to her, guarding her from whatever was slowly making its appearance. As she stared into the village, she thought she saw some movement! Yes! I did, something over there! As she stared at a wall of a house, a ghostly image seemed to appear. It looked like one of the Amazons that used to live in this village. She looked around and saw more and more of the ghostly images appear and begin to get more and more solid. The original musical note was now a roaring crescendo, with a multitude of voices mixed in.

"Ranma, wake up, I need you! Something is happening!" Kasumi looked up again and saw the ghostly images snap into solidity. She tensed as a small girl stared at them. She sees us!

The girl looked up to her mother and rattled off something in Mandarin. I wish we'd learned been able to learn spoken Chinese as well as written. The mother snapped her head around and also stared at the two women near the large tree. The woman immediately yelled at the top of her lungs something that Kasumi could only imagine was a warning to the village.

Within moments, Ranma and Kasumi were surrounded by a score of Amazon warriors, screaming at the two of them in Mandarin. Kasumi tried to make them understand that they were not enemies, but all she knew was Japanese. She threw her hands up to show she was unarmed, but then changed her mind and grabbed a small stick. She bent over and quickly wrote, 'We are not enemies, does anybody know Japanese?" in the sand.

There was some quick chatter amongst the warriors, and one sprinted away from the group. Within moments, the girl returned with an older Amazon in tow. The new arrival looked at the brown haired girl obviously trying to protect the unconscious redhead and stated "Who are you? Why are you here! Where did you get those clothes, they are from our village, have you stolen things from us?" in acceptable Japanese.

Finally! Kasumi thought Now at least I have a chance to explain! Unfortunately, we do look rather suspicious, what can I say...What would Ranma say?

"Hi" the young brown haired woman said to the surprised faces around her. "I'm Kasumi Saotome, sorry about this..."