Wow. This one was a lot harder to write than any of the others.
Disclaimer: Other than the ridiculous number of OCs and the dinosaurs, nothing in this fic belongs to me.
Even carrying Kasumi and moving fairly slowly, they reached one of the shrines Ranma had left people at within a day. It was the largest group of people he had directed to a shrine—six adults and two children, most of them not related to each other in any way. Ranma immediately started to organize a night watch schedule so that the group wouldn't be taken by surprise by anything. While he slept fairly lightly and had relied on his own danger sense on the trip out of the Estate there was a lot more risk traveling in a group. The people there were scared and confused. He had explained a little bit of what was going on (as he understood it anyways) when he originally found them and brought them to the shrines, but now they needed more. They needed someone to lead, to reassure them, and to keep them safe from the vagaries of the Time-riven world. He pushed his own pain and grief about his friends down and concentrated on taking care of the people in front of him.
Kasumi, lost in her own terror and grief, was quiet and easy for him to forget about as they moved on.
When he found her huddled up in her sleeping bag like a wounded animal at the third stop they made, he collapsed to his knees beside her. He had abandoned her to her pain. Thinking about how much she must miss her family had only made him think too much about how much he missed them himself. Being around her was like ripping pieces of tape off his skin one by one. It was so much easier to ignore her and focus on getting everyone to the Estate safely. How could he have been so selfish? Memories of her taking care of him--of everyone really--swamped him: Kasumi, the homemaker, the best cook in the world, the woman who bandaged his wounds, who encouraged him and Akane to spend time together. Kasumi, who had always had time to comfort everyone else's hurts and tears, was crying silently into her bedding and It. Was. All. His. Fault.
If this had happened before he found the Estate, Ranma would've panicked, unsure of how to respond. It's possible that he might have searched for her sisters to come take care of her--although he had been taught that showing weakness to others was unthinkable and so he might have simply left her alone to take of herself. Now though, Ranma had two female friends who had each taught him something about taking care of other people: Usagi, who knew more about him than anyone else, and Hitomi, who had quickly become like an older sister to him. Usagi seemed sweet and fragile, like a princess to be protected, but she had provided him with more comfort and support than he had known since he had first been taken away from his mother as a small child. Hitomi, on the other hand, was generally a very strong and rather brusque person and yet she needed comfort sometimes and she had turned to Ranma for it. He wasn't sure why, since he wasn't very good at it, but he supposed that it was simply because he was the only person there, at first.
The first time she had broken done in front of him, it was only a few days after she had wandered into the Estate. She had been a little wary of him and very take charge--in fact, she reminded him a bit of Nabiki without the most mercenary bits--so he had been surprised when she burst into tears in front of him over a somewhat burned dinner. He hadn't known what to do and he had retreated into his usual panicked attempts to distract her by telling her how cute she was, fluttering over her like a wounded bird trying to reach the safety of its nest. She had ignored his gibbering and grabbed him in a fierce bear hug that hadn't relaxed until she finally slipped into an exhausted sleep in his lap. When she woke up, still in his arms, she had gotten up and went to work cleaning up the remains of the meal as if nothing had happened. It confused Ranma, but, from then on, anytime she was overstressed, she had hunted him down and forced him to hold her until she was calm again. Eventually he had learned to accept the sudden attacks more or less gracefully and even figured out some techniques to help her calm down faster. Somehow, her glomps felt comfortable and safe--the exact opposite of how Sham Pu's clinging had always made him feel.
Spending time with Usagi and Hitomi had taught him a little bit about when people needed companionship instead of solitude. So when he found Kasumi alone in her house he hadn't abandoned her to her pain and he didn't when he found her crying into her bedding at the small shrine either. Instead, he cautiously pulled her up out of her fetal position and into his arms. He rocked her and tried to murmur soothing things to her—"It'll be alright. I promise I'll take care of you. Don't cry, you're safe, everything's fine. We'll be home soon."
It was only later that he realized he had thought of the Estate as home.
Kasumi fell asleep in his arms and he held her safe through the night. He didn't sleep much himself, spending most of the night berating himself and the rest plotting. After that, he didn't leave her alone. He kept watch over her when she was asleep and when the group was moving during the "day", he worked to keep her busy and distracted. He asked her to help him keep an eye on the others--especially the few children. He put her in charge of some of the food gathering. Mostly they were just getting enough to feed themselves on the journey to the Estate, but Ranma encouraged them to take as much as they could carry. A few resourceful people found shopping carts that weren't rusted beyond recognition and they took charge of those.
At first, Kasumi moved like some kind of robot, only doing what he told her to and not taking any initiative. Slowly though, as she started interacting with the others and falling into her old motherly role, he started to see glimpses of the Kasumi he had known.
Kasumi was good at taking care of people. She organized the best cooks in the group to take turns making meals out of the foraged food and she made sure everyone got their share. When one of the children refused to eat, crying for her mother, Kasumi sat with the girl, speaking softly to her, until the child finally picked up her spoon and slowly sipped at her soup. Ranma wasn't sure what she had said. He was too busy breaking up a fight when an old man insulted that day's cook to eavesdrop on her conversation with the girl. Whatever it was, the child clung to Kasumi from then on, clutching at her skirts as they walked the streets, helping her find bedding and spread it out at each sleeping stop and so on.
Ranma was surprised when he compared the Kasumi he saw taking care of people to the Kasumi he had seen in the first days after leaving the Tendo house. She hadn't been involved in the group at all then. She hadn't put any effort in to taking care of the people around her even though it seemed like such a Kasumi thing to do. She was certainly very good at it and seemed to enjoy it in her own way. But somehow, she had needed him to direct her to do it. It made him feel even guiltier to think that he hadn't even noticed how unlike herself she had been acting. He redoubled his efforts to spend time with her, sitting next to her at meals and talking about the day's events and the people traveling with her, working hard to coax a small laugh or a brighter smile out of her. Her regular cheerful mask was firmly back in place, but Ranma learned to tell the difference between her comforting smiles and her real ones.
--kkkkk--
The trip was fairly slow-going. They had a fair-sized group of people with four or five kids along, none of whom could keep up with Ranma's accustomed speed. Plus, they couldn't travel in a straight line, detouring to various shrines and away from the more unstable neighborhoods. Luckily, no one challenged Ranma's authority. Everyone was frightened and shocked and, for the moment at least, it was making them fairly docile. They were more than willing to listen to the only person around who seemed to know what was going on and how to keep them safe.
Everything else was quiet too--Ranma had deliberately taken them a way that he knew was relatively safe and free of obstacles like swathes of jungle or sinkholes of slow time even though it took longer. A few times, he even had to make the group turn back and find a way around someplace that looked a little too dangerous--a patch of dense forest or a group of buildings that looked about ready to collapse. By pure luck, they hadn't even run into any bandits or wandering samurai or dangerous animals. Most of the "ghosts" they saw were the most distant kind, the ones who didn't realize that they weren't in their own time and didn't notice the group at all. The people Ranma had picked up had mostly been Sleepers who had woken up at least a few days before Ranma had found them so they weren't quite as shocked as they might have been to see samurai walking down the street or a small dinosaur grazing in one of the overgrown lots. Most of them were quietly freaked out of course, but as long as they kept quiet about it and the ghosts didn't notice the group, there weren't any problems.
The nights, pulling his own bedding next to Kasumi's and sleeping lightly enough that any movement on her part would awaken him, should have been more stressful. Instead, they felt peaceful and it reminded him of his vigils over the sleeping Usagi. Even when Hitomi was watching her, he had always felt the need to be near her when she was so vulnerable. To protect her, of course, but also to remind himself that she was human and truly did need him there. Watching over Kasumi gave him the same feeling of being grounded by someone else's need. Surprisingly, it didn't make him feel trapped. It felt right--and it made him realize how much he missed Usagi. Hitomi as well--he was taken aback to realize that he missed holding her through her break-downs as much as he missed having her take charge of some of the organizational responsibilities of keeping a group of people working together.
Dragooned into taking care of all of the problems of the Estate, Ranma had felt like bits of himself were disappearing and he had struggled against the sensation of being more and more tied down. He had felt stressed and confused and not entirely like himself. He had begun to resent the Estate and even the people closest to him like Usagi and Hitomi. They all depended on him too much. He wasn't some mystical knight; just a teenaged martial artist, as lost and confused and grieving as any of them.
Given the freedom to wander through the Time alone, he had lost himself in his past, in being completely free and responsible only for his own self. Even when he had taken charge of some of the people he had found, Ranma hadn't spent much time with them. It was easy to reassure them a bit, guide them to a shrine to wait, and then move on. It wasn't entirely like moving around with his pop had been, but it felt good to be without real responsibilities. Getting to Nerima had been a return to his new role as support and leader for everyone else. He hadn't expected it--Nerima had always been the place where he was the least in charge of his own life. In Nerima, things happened to him and people bossed him around and Ranma Saotome just went with the flow and did what was expected of him. It was strange to have Kasumi depend on him. Strange to once again be the person others wanted to tell them what to do.
Now, as the group moved closer to the Estate and as Ranma got more and more involved in their problems, he felt himself relax into the position of leader. It felt right to keep his people safe. It felt good to be moving back towards the Estate--towards home and people who trusted him. As the group made their way through the city, he kept an eye out for danger and his other eye on Kasumi. She was doing better everyday, he thought. He hoped. He had to divide his attention among the rest of the group as well, talking to each individual one by one.
Partly he was talking to people to tell them about the Estate--reassuring them that they'd be alright there--and partly he was learning more about them and trying to catch out any potential trouble-makers.
He was a little worried about one of the men from the third shrine on the way home, a few days out from Nerima. There were a lot of shrines clustered around that small town.
The man's name was Kazaki and he was a crotchety old jerk who had trouble getting along with anyone. Ranma had to break up at least one argument a day between the old man and another member of the group. After the first few times, Ranma asked Kasumi to take care of whoever Kazaki had been picking on. She was better at soothing ruffled feathers than Ranma, who was very grateful not to be in charge of calming them down. Instead, he would pull Kazaki to help him reconnoiter in front or back of the group. The man was old but he was exceptionally fit and he made a good scout. Besides, it kept him occupied and away from the others. Ranma might have had him do it even if he hadn't been up to it, just to get him out of everyone else's hair.
It was after one of these incidents, which left a woman crying into Kasumi's shoulder, that Ranma found out that Kazaki was one of the rare people who could sense the eddies and flows of the Time.
"Hey, boy!" Ranma ignored the old man. He was still annoyed with Kazaki for causing trouble. "Kid with ego the size of Tokyo! Boy with fewer brains than muscles! Idiot we're all following around for some reason!" Experience suggested the old fart would continue on like this until Ranma gave in.
"What the hell do ya want now old man?" He glared as he moved over to where the old man was standing. The street they were on was fairly quiet. A few houses had been taken over by vegetation and some others had collapsed and were hemorrhaging bricks onto the sidewalk. Nothing seemed dangerous enough to attract the old man's attention.
"Something's up, boy. I can feel it in the air." Ranma frowned. He had spent his entire life around martial artists and priests and so he knew not to ignore warnings like that. He nodded at Kazaki and concentrated his own senses more thoroughly, first marking then blocking out the sounds of the group behind them: the woman still crying, Kasumi's comforting murmurs, the complaints from one old woman hobbling near the back, the rustle of clothing and the shuffle of feet. He brushed past the sounds of birds and leaves rustling in a light breeze, past the unnatural ki spots of people frozen in time, past the feral dogs shadowing the group. He concentrated on following the eddies of life and spirit surrounding them, searching for a break in the normal patterns, and trying to find what was bothering Kazaki.
A hundred or so meters west of the small group, Ranma found a distortion. It felt a little like the places where time warped and formed sinkholes that could trap travelers in slow or fast time. There was something different about it though--something he hadn't felt before. He pulled back his senses to find that the rest of the group had caught up to him and Kazaki. They looked worried; they hadn't been attacked by anything or anyone, so far, but the strangeness and chaos of the world kept everyone tense and wary.
Ranma wondered if he should go investigate the area. It was far enough away and unobtrusive enough that he wouldn't have noticed it if Kazaki hadn't called his attention to it. It likely wasn't a threat to his group. Plus, he wanted to keep them on track and get to the Estate soon. Investigating might not be worth the risk. Then again, it could be something important. The foraging crews weren't coming out this far yet--but eventually they might have to.
With that thought in mind, Mako, who was in charge of one of the two crews, had asked Ranma to keep a record of any strange areas he came across before he left. On his way to Nerima, he had marked three places where time had slowed on the map that had been prepared for him, as well as the shrines he had found. There were probably more places worth keeping track of around, but on the way to Nerima he had reveled in not being responsible and on the way back he was tied to the group and not as free to go off exploring.
Still, something about this thing felt stranger than usual. Plus, Ranma was interested in the fact that Kazaki had noticed it so easily. The old man hadn't mentioned the spot of slow time that they had passed a few days earlier. This thing seemed to call to him more. Ranma wanted to know how good the old man's senses were.
In the end, Ranma decided it was worth it to investigate the strangeness. Knowledge could mean the difference between life and death for the foraging crews and for the Estate itself. It was a lesson that had started with meeting Nabiki and continued on through taking charge of the Estate: knowledge was always power.
He left his map with Kasumi and a man named Kenji, who he vaguely thought he recognized from Nerima. Kasumi was upset--though she didn't let it show on her face. He could see it in the way she twisted her hands in her clothes, leaving her knuckles bloodless, but her face stayed cheerful. She wouldn't let her own worries scare the other members of her group. Ranma wondered how often she had protected her sisters with that blank smile.
Kenji was also concerned and much more open about expressing it. He had some experience taking charge of people--he had been a manager or something before, he had told Ranma a little bit about it as they moved through the devastated city. Still, while he had a fairly calm personality, he was as lost as anyone else in the aftermath of the Time. Ranma would really have preferred to leave the map with Kazaki--he was the man most likely to be able to keep his head and get everyone to the Estate. Plus, if he really had some sense of the Time, he could protect them better than anyone else especially since he had enough training in some kind of physical exercise to still be really fit. Unfortunately, the old geezer had managed to alienate almost everyone else in the group. It was unlikely that any of them would willingly follow him anywhere.
If Ranma didn't come back, it would have to be up to Kasumi and Kenji to keep moving on. He couldn't afford to be reckless and backup could be helpful. So he decided to take the old man with him and directed the group to continue on to a shrine that was a few miles down the road. It was the first shrine he had left people at on the way to Nerima. He figured it was about 10 or so days travel from there to the Estate at the speed they were moving.
"If we don't catch up to you there, keep going on. The map should take you right to the Estate--it's safe there, I promise." Kenji nodded and focused on the map, memorizing the route and the way Ranma had marked dangerous spots on it. Ranma's handwriting was still pretty terrible and it would take some effort and practice for the man to figure out his symbols. While Kenji pored over the fragile piece of paper, Ranma pulled Kasumi aside.
They stood apart from the group, under the shade of a large tree that was growing out of some ruins. He kept his hand resting lightly on her shoulder, trying to give her some measure of comfort. "If ya get there before me, help take care of Usagi, okay? She's the Queen and all, sure, but she really needs someone watching out for her. An' tell her and Hitomi that I'm sorry and I'll get back as soon as I can."
Kasumi's smile crumpled a bit. "Oh Ranma, are you certain you should do this? Will you really be alright?" He looked at her, her happy mask fraying at the edges and her hands twisting into the dusty cloth of her skirt. He was surprised to realize he was looking down at the top of her head. Somehow he had never noticed how much taller he had grown, even though he had been traveling with her for days. Guiltily, he wondered if he had managed to continue avoiding her even as he tried to stay focused on taking care of her. The sight of water starting to gather in her eyes pulled him back to the present moment. He grabbed her hands, pulling them away from their stressed fidgeting.
"I'll be alright, I promise. I might get slowed down a little but Ranma Saotome doesn't lose. You know that." Her smile brightened though he could still see fear in her eyes. "Look, I'm trusting you to take care of everyone till I get back. I can't think of anyone better than you, 'kay?" Her need had helped to ground him--he wondered if his need could help her. Maybe that's why she had dedicated her entire life to taking care of her family: so she didn't get lost in her own pain.
"I will, Ranma. Everyone will be fine until you get back." Her hands relaxed into his grip and she blinked away the tears that had been threatening.
"Hey, Ranma! What's this squiggly thing with the pointed tail mean?" Kenji hovered a few feet away, oblivious to his effect on the moment. It was like a bubble that had been separating them from the rest of the world had suddenly popped. Sounds rushed in, distracting Ranma from Kasumi. He heard a child crying in the group and some of the women trying to comfort it while berating Kazaki for something. Kasumi smiled at him and moved over to calm the situation down. Ranma grinned and turned to Kenji, helping him to decipher the scrawling scribbles he had made across the map.
Finally, Ranma and Kazaki left the group, angling off down a small alleyway to the west of the main street. Ranma let his concern for the group, for Kasumi, and for Usagi and Hitomi back at the Estate, fall away behind him. He opened his senses to the world and slipped himself into the mindset of a wandering martial artist, alert and ready for danger. He moved quickly, jumping over the debris and dodging through the plants that filled the streets with ease. Part of him noted with surprise that Kazaki was keeping up with him fairly well. He had known the old man had some kind of training, to be that fit and alert, but he hadn't realized how much until they were moving unencumbered by a group of civilians.
As they got closer to the strangeness, Ranma slowed down and tried to analyze it. On rare occasions in his journeys before he found the Estate and then later with the monk he had run into small pockets of time that moved faster than everything else around them. He had only realized what those areas were when he saw a newspaper blow into one of the smaller spots--and then rot away in front of his eyes. He had been tempted to see if he would age just as quickly by standing in it but he had no interest in dying of old age in the span of a few moments. Still, being a fairly reckless teenager, he walked through the some of the spots that felt less strong. He wasn't sure how much affect it had. The sun was so unreliable that the only way to really test the speed of the area was to have someone stand outside it and compare the way the two people moved and how much time they thought had passed. He had found that the smaller the area of the fast time, the stronger the effect was, figuring that out as much from the feel of those areas as any experimenting.
This disturbance reminded Ranma of those pockets of fast time more than of the more common slow time areas but there was something very different about it. Something he had never felt before. He considered walking into it. With Kazaki standing on the edges watching what happened, that could be the fastest way to figure out what was going on. But...he had promised Kasumi that he would come back. Could he really risk entering the strange distortion just like that?
Kazaki had stopped a few feet away from the edge of the thing. His worn face was twisted into a scowl; Ranma was pretty sure that was a permanent condition. The street they were on didn't look any different than any other one they had moved down recently. A few collapsed buildings, some with plants overtaking them, a corner store that looked fairly intact. The teen was trying to think of ways to make investigating safer--maybe if he tied a rope to himself and Kazaki?--when he noticed the old man pulling an apple and a pocketknife out. Slicing off a piece, he tossed the bit of fruit into the distortion. It landed a few yards away, just far enough that it was hard to see what was happening to it. He tossed another slice, a bit more gently this time. This one only flew a few feet before hitting the ground. The two men watched it cautiously.
The bit of apple sat on the ground. Nothing happened. Ranma peered at it, waiting. Still, nothing happened. He started to get restless. It seemed safe enough; nothing had hurt the apple, yet. Maybe it was time to go in himself. As he started to move forward, Kazaki grabbed his arm. He had a strong grip and Ranma paused, looking at him questioningly. "What, old man? The apple's fine, I want to go see what's going on."
"Shut up. Something's not right. Try and use some patience, idiot boy." Kazaki let go of Ranma and cut off another slice of apple. "See that toy truck on the ground over there? I'm going to try and hit it."
The toy was rusted and dirty, lying on its side in the middle of the street a foot or two past the second apple. Ranma wondered what the point was. It was still close enough to be pretty easy to hit even for an old fart like Kazaki.
Kazaki's throw missed the truck, landing more than a yard past it. Ranma grinned. "Don't know your own strength, huh, old man?"
The answering grunt communicated annoyance and impatience. "It should not have done that. You try it."
Ranma reached for the apple, but the old man pulled it away. The teen glared at him, then grabbed a pebble off of the ground. "Too easy, old man."
He ignored Kazaki's muttered "Cocky brat."
The pebble flew past the truck and hit a mailbox nearly ten feet beyond it. Ranma frowned and grabbed another pebble. He threw it more gently this time; it still landed three feet past his target. He grabbed another pebble and tossed it even more gently. His instincts told him it should fall short of the truck by quite a bit. Instead, there was a sharp ding as the pebble hit the rusting metal.
"Huh." He continued to ignore Kazaki, who was smirking at him, and grabbed more pebbles to try on different targets. All of them went further than they should have. Finally, he moved closer and stuck his hand past the edge of the distortion, dropping a pebble straight down. As if it was a bit of grass caught in a gust of wind, it landed almost a foot away from his outstretched hand.
"Fucking weird." Ranma muttered, flexing his arm from the elbow and rhythmically clenching his fist. He could feel the disturbance on his skin, as if someone had pulled at his hand, trying to tear it away from his body. Kazaki hadn't let up with his muttered comments while Ranma was experimenting and they were really getting on Ranma's nerves. "Just shut up, old man. And stay here. I'm going to see what's going on."
Kazaki snorted. "Still impatient, idiot. There's no telling what's happening here. Are you that eager to get yourself killed? It might not be much of a loss…but it sure will be disappointing to all those people back there. Hmmph. Might be what they deserve for trusting a brat like you to take care of them."
Ranma scowled and loomed over the old man. His eyes flashed with anger and his toned and trained body threatened barely contained violence. "I said shut up. This isn't a game—isn't some stupid little challenge. I'm not playing around and I'm not doing this because its fun. That thing could be trouble for my people. Or it could help them. Whatever it is, I sure as HELL am not gonna just leave it alone and let one of my foraging crews run into it while looking for food to keep your sorry ass going. You want to run back and keep getting on everyone's nerves 'til they throw you out? Fine. But get the hell out of my way and let me take care of what's mine."
He stormed off, moving away from the old man to the edge of the disturbance. Angrily, he poked his hand at the boundary, trying to analyze the pulling sensation. He felt it more when he was moving fast. As if his own momentum was adding to the effect of the strangeness. He was almost tempted to try a Roasting Chestnuts punch, but he was afraid that level of speed might actually succeed in pulling his hand off of his body.
It didn't seem to effect time as much as distance. Ranma vaguely remembered something from Science class about the earth spinning all the time. It was as if that part of the earth was spinning faster than the rest of it. But that shouldn't be possible—or if it was, wouldn't it tear buildings apart or cause big cracks in the ground or something? It didn't make any sense. Not that time moving faster or slower in one place or dinosaurs showing up in downtown Tokyo made any sense either. Sense didn't seem to much a part of this new world. Fine, so if things were messing around with distance but not messing around with time, what did that mean?
Ranma was getting tired of just pushing his hand into the disturbance. It was time to do something more. It didn't seem likely to kill him or anything, so might as well walk into it, right? He continued ignoring Kazaki, who had started poking a branch into the disturbance. Cranky old bastard still wasn't willing to risk it, huh?
As Ranma walked past the edge, he felt that pulling sensation tug at his entire body. His clothes yanked against him as if he was walking in line with a strong wind. Then, as if he had been walking through a barrier and suddenly emerged on the other side, the pulling sensation stopped. He kept walking forward, expanding his sense carefully. The area he was in still felt weird to his ki senses, but it didn't seem to be having much of an effect on the rest of him. He tried speeding up, just a little bit. Nothing. A little bit more, and a little bit more. He finally felt a tugging on him when he was running, about at Akane's normal speed, not anywhere near as fast as he could get if he tried. He slowed down, glancing back the way he had come. Kazaki was completely out of sight.
Ranma sighed and turned back around. Kazaki wasn't pleasant, by any means, but he was still Ranma's responsibility. It only took him a few minutes to get back to where the old man stood, scowling furiously at him. "What the hell you doing back, idiot boy?"
Ranma glared at him. "Ah, shut up already. Look, this thing don't seem too dangerous but it does go on for a while. I'm gonna keep walking and see where it stops. Are you going to come with me or just standing around like a useless old fool?"
"Why you! Who's useless around here, boy? I'm not the one risking everything by climbing into something when I don't know what it is or what it does?" Kazaki kept haranguing Ranma, but he did so while walking towards him, clenching his hands nervously as he passed through the edge.
The trip was not a particularly pleasant one. Kazaki calmed down after a while, still responding to anything Ranma said with snipes and sneers, but keeping mostly quiet. Everything looked normal—but it still felt wrong. Plus, everything was too quiet. It was nerve-wracking. It wasn't just that Ranma missed the sounds of the group—the woman and men talking quietly or complaining loudly, the kids playing and laughing and crying. It was something else—something Ranma couldn't quite put his finger on…
There were no ghosts in the area. Ghosts, especially the ones that didn't notice that they were out of time, were fairly regular. The ones who spoke to you or acted like they saw you were a bit rarer. The buildings were still as randomly aged or replaced by meadows as ever, but Ranma didn't see any animals that seemed out of place. Actually, he didn't see many animals at all.
They moved cautiously down the street, ignoring the side streets shooting off. Ranma was pretty sure they were headed towards the Estate. The sun was doing one of its speed races across the sky, edging forward every minute or so. It was nearly sunset already, though Ranma didn't think it was more than an hour or so after lunch. He wasn't even particularly hungry yet.
Whatever this thing was, it stretched for a long ways. Ranma wondered if he should turn back at some time. He had promised Kasumi he would catch up to them—but he wanted to know where the edge of this was, to have some idea of where to mark it on a map. It only seemed to be a couple hundred feet wide, but it was miles long.
As night fell, Ranma noticed a light in the distance ahead. It shone familiarly, a glow on the horizon that tugged at Ranma's memories. He was distracted from it by finally feeling the edge of the disturbance ahead of him. He continued moving, passing through the barrier tugging him forward then turned around to glance at Kazaki again. The old man was muttering again, peering nervously at the edge. Ranma was pretty sure the old fart could sense it again. He resolved to take the old man to the edge of a slow time area to see if he could sense that too.
When Kazaki switched his glare from the street to Ranma, the teenager turned away again with a put-upon sigh. Trying to distract himself, he squinted at the light ahead. It was definitely something familiar.
A few hours ago, Ranma had left his group more than a week's travel from the Estate. Even at Ranma's own top speeds, it would have taken him a few days to get back and he hadn't even been jogging through the disturbance, just walking steadily.
Yet, there it was in front of him. The Estate.