Scrapyard: Ranma

by Krahae

Once more with feeling! False starts and failed ideas that never really caught; here's where I'll be putting the odd bits and pieces that I almost decided to continue, but not quite. Some of these may be revisited, but its unlikely. But not impossible. Mostly Ranma-centric.

4. A Dragon Abroad

Warning: I'm not pulling any punches with these, as they're SCRAP FILES. This is my raw, personal edits and not screened for much other than my own inner grammar nazi. You can expect just about anything, and I know there are a few scenes of mature and violent content. Some of it harsh. So, be warned.

—

Premise: Onmyōdō Ranma stumbles onto the gates of the underworld, and instead goes to Naruto Hell, and finds a ninja-maid. He then takes up farming. Yeah. Just read the damn thing.

—

A Dragon Abroad

Despite being early afternoon, the long train ride that took him to the other side of Japan left Ranma feeling drained and bit off-center. Normally he'd treat such a trip as an exercise in endurance and a good excuse to get in some remedial cross-country work, but at the moment that luxury was denied him. Long bouts of being immobile were tiring, to someone who's life was spent constantly in conflict and motion. "Makes me wonder why I took this job," the martial artist complained, stretching his arms above him, which earned him a round of cracks as his back and shoulders loosened.

"So, this is Yasugi-shi," the cursed figure noted, taking in the difference in architecture, the sparsity of buildings, and the cleaner air with slightly higher spirits as the last few kilometers of his trip sped by. Compared to Tokyo and its ward, Nerima, this place reminded him of the better times on the road with his father, when it was just him, Genma, the art, and the stars above that made anyplace home. Despite having spent nearly three years living in the Tendo home alongside his father and reluctant fiancée Akane, he'd never quite felt the same kind of ease that such places brought. Having spent most of his childhood on the road, he felt it made a reasonable amount of sense. He was looking forward to getting out and getting his shoes dirty with some road dust and grass stains on his pants once more.

Then again, maybe he was just a bit opinionated. Most of his troubles happened to lie in Nerima, and he had grown more than a little weary of putting up with the arguably brilliant training tactics of his father. That keystone snippet of knowledge had come during one of the older man's drinking binges, when he offhandedly mentioned his training journal, and how to make Ranma the best of the best, he'd needed some extraordinary methods. After all, one couldn't train on the road, challenging themselves, nature, and the wisdom of distant masters while settled down in a dojo. No, that would require techniques to come to them, to find Ranma, rather than the other way around. Finding his father's journal had been a real chore, but well worth it. The panda-cursed man had been brilliant in his scheme, using the greatest vices known to man to motivate people that would become lifetime rivals and counters for his son, constantly testing him, constantly being analyzed for their techniques, and then overcome by the brilliant machine for the art he'd crafted in Ranma. Genma had been quite proud of his plot, and, after putting his old man in traction for a month, Ranma had to agree – it was a stroke of genius.

Mad genius, but genius.

As things stood, there really wasn't anything he could do to end the madness his life had become, and if he were to be honest about it, Ranma didn't want to. Sure, the fiancée mess was just that – a mess of unpleasant emotions, tangled webs of honor, duty, and pride. Despite it, his ego wouldn't let him just push the women in his life aside. It was nice being wanted, and he'd become accustomed to that, even if he wasn't sure where he wanted to go with it.

Aware of the game, he'd confronted Genma about it, and they'd had a good old fashioned Saotome brainstorming session, to work things out. Hence, his father's stay in the hospital. Both men always thought better while beating the life out of one another. It was tradition.

The result was the current holding pattern, that Ranma was now actively putting things into. A few dropped words about his female form and some fantasies about a little girl's love to Xian Pu while under the influence of some truth spices, some allusions to considering a franchise of small-scale dojo's to teach young kids basic self defense while offering refreshments to Ukyo, and a redoubled effort to work on his education at Furinkan for the Tendos had things changed just enough to keep everyone off center, but moving in the right direction.

Of course, the truth spices had been avoided, but he knew about the Joketsuzoku's plot thanks to a loose-lipped Mu Tse, who had confronted 'Ku Lon' in a rage for helping the 'enemy of women and Cassanova' Saotome. That he'd used a white wig and a convenient lawn gnome to trick the myopic idiot was just icing on the cake. His choice in using Xian Pu for a possible girl-side match was strategic, in an effort to thwart any more of the Joketsuzoku Elder Ku Lon's tricks in fouling with the Saotome's curses. If the old woman thought that he'd grown accustomed to the curse, and thought of it more an option, Ranma hoped she'd back off the scheming. Plus, watching the other fiancées go into shock seeing his girl-type and Xian Pu kissing a few times was just too much fun to pass up.

He did like the idea of a little teaching while on the road, something his father wasn't wholly against as long as it wasn't the Saotome Musabetsu-kakutō-ryū itself. A little kempo? Sure. Some soft-form tàijíquán? Not a problem. Just nothing that could be tied to the family art directly, since that was to be kept in the school, and the nature of the 'fast food' dojo wasn't the kind of environment one could nurture their particular brand of art in. That was something he'd need long-term students for, and more time learning how to teach, himself. Probably to his own heir first, Genma admitted. He'd considered such an option as well, but knew that Ranma was a better conduit for the art in a less... traumatizing form. Genma would be there, when he wanted advice, but as a primary trainer? Not so much.

The refocusing on his education was a no-brainer, so to speak. It wasn't as if he never studied while on the road, and he had been enrolled in schools for periods of time while in Japan. Most of his pack, before the swim to China at any rate, had been text books Genma had acquired for him to study from. Not having the most standardized education himself, however, the elder Saotome had missed a few key subjects and points. So began his development of the Musabetsu-kakutō-ryū: College Exam Cram branch of the Saotome school.

He was still ironing out the kinks in that one. Interdisciplinary hybridization of the art was never something to approach lightly, and if he could perfect it, well – the possible rewards and profit for teaching that could be astounding. Even Genma agreed there. Still, his feverish cramming was not an unexpected situation. It had been the norm around tests and exams while growing up and mirrored his martial style when put in a critical situation. This incarnation also had multiple purposes.

One, it fulfilled its obvious goal, in getting Ranma into a good college. Dojo instructors were expected to have certifications these days, not just be really awesome at cracking skulls. That he had top honors in already. Reference Jusendo.

The second purpose was pleasing his mother, which kept his head and Genma's firmly attached and functioning. Always a plus, in the Saotome's books. Nodoka had always been a bit worried about his education, based on how rough around the edges he was, but that was mostly due to the Saotome school's tendency to taunt their opponent, and his life on the road. Both were things he was learning to ease up on, now that he'd been spending years amid civilization proper again.

Lastly, it gave the Tendos a solid example of Ranma taking the engagement and his duty to the dojo seriously, as a respectable and accomplished young man with his eye to the future, not just the next technique in the art.

Not that, as shocking as Ranma found it, Genma actually expected his son to marry a Tendo. He shouldn't have been surprised, after speaking with the older man for a while, and figuring out his particular idiosyncrasies. After all, who teaches about honor and duty while openly being a thieving, gluttonous, lazy jerk? Who expects their views on marriage and familial obligation to stick, when they've been put into multiple engagements, have a seppuku contract looming over them, and haven't seen their mother for over a decade?

Genma, as he himself had admitted with some pride from his hospital bed, had been teaching his son by the inverse example principle. And it had worked, in just about every way he'd expected. Almost. The last part of the plan had been spoiled, as Ranma had found out about it all too soon. When the pig-tailed martial artist had inquired about that, Genma had just shaken his head and said, "When it's time, you'll know. Then your training will truly be complete."

Ranma just figured his old man had been watching too many Lucas films. That one stank of some kind of Jedi nonsense.

"Still, it's nice to have the old man on my side, for a change," the gender-cursed martial artist mused as he disembarked from the train amid a small group of other passengers. The Yasugi station she'd arrived at wasn't very large or as heavily trafficked as those he was more familiar with from recent memory, but had a quiet charm of its own. "So far it seems like Shimane is a pretty nice piece of countryside."

Pack of supplies hung over one shoulder, Ranma oriented himself to the highway marked "45" heading southwest, and started on his way.

–

"Wish I'd brought a camera now," Ranma quietly noted after some thirty kilometers of walking the next morning, having camped sometime around nightfall to enjoy the quiet peace and keep his reserves ready for the day ahead. He was currently walking to the west of highway 314 in the shallow valley it followed, just beyond the Izumo-Sakane bus stop and the stop for Miinohara. To the east he could see a long bridge spanning a sharper valley, the red of its weathered iron contrasting strongly with the rich foliage that covered so much of the land. His current destination loomed to the southwest still, easily visible at five kilometers as it rose in a low-slung, brooding profile. "And there's Hiba-yama."

Ranma suppressed a pointless shudder at the sight, snorting afterward. "Not afraid of some stupid mountain. Blown up two already – so keep that in mind," he called out, ducking as he realized the few other travelers nearby were giving him strange looks.

"Right. I'll just be going," he muttered, hopping off the highway's route to make a more direct path. Still, he couldn't quite shake a steadily rising sense of foreboding. The more he noted it, however, the more it irritated the martial artist. "Seriously, it's just a myth."

It just happened to be a myth about the path to the Yomi world – what passed for an underworld in Shinto – and the death of a kami. It was well known to those with even a passing familiarity in Shinto the fate of Izanami, wife of Izanagi, who as a couple were said to have created the islands of Japan. During the birth of her final child, Kagutsuchi, she died due the nature of her fiery offspring. This began the cycle of death, marking the end of the creation of Japan. Having died, Izanami found herself in Yomi, the shadowed underworld which mirrored the world of life, though dimly. Grieving, the dead kami's husband traveled to Yomi to retrieve her, only to find her former beauty gone, replaced by a corpse visage. Frightened, Izanagi fled, enraging the dead Izanami, who sent her handmaidens to harry him.

Izanagi escaped Yomi, sealing the path to the living so that they could not enter – and the dead no longer leave. From that point forward, Izanami claimed dominion over Yomi, claiming 1,000 lives in revenge per day for her husband's insult. Izanagi, despairing over his fate, regardless refused to allow such vengeance to undo what he and his wife had made with their hands, and so caused 1,500 lives to be born, per day to counter her.

And now, Ranma was on his way to the mountain that marked Izanami's burial site, according to that myth. "Just think of the money, Ranma," he muttered through clenched teeth, making his way through lightly forested hills as the mountain grew closer and closer.

It wasn't really helping. In all honesty, he didn't need the money, but it was far from a small sum he'd been offered by one of the government Ministry's shadow departments. Apparently, the history of keeping mystic advisors and Onmyōji on retainer from the Heian period still applied, despite being banned publicly in near modern eras. He'd come under scrutiny thanks to word of his feats in Japan and China being too easily discovered or public, something he'd frankly never considered. Why should he, after all? Almost all the casual human contact he'd had since starting his training with Genma had been with other martial artists. It didn't appear to him, growing up, that anyone hid their abilities. Later, he of course learned of normal people who couldn't strike a wall and topple it, or thrust their fist through it, but part of what made him who he was, had to do with not knowing that, early on.

In Ranma's early world, the fact that someone could do those things was basic. His concept of 'normal' had been set by his father and various eclectic masters. All his early life had been an attempt to become that idea, and so, of course he'd grown into the person he'd become. For Ranma, who he was, was normal.

Apparently, that annoyed this Bureau of Onmyō like a burr in the pants.

The ultimatum he'd been given was pretty simple, and actually wasn't all that bad a deal, galling as it was by nature of being an ultimatum. Work as something of a brute-force exorcist and demon hunter, and they'd help gloss over some of his more bothersome problems on top of the massive paycheck and government references for things like mundane work and school. Genma's legal snarls? Gone. Happosai's presence endangering the Tendos? Handled. Nabiki's few mistakes making her record less than pristine? Erased. Akane's police record from putting the idiots Kuno worked into a rabid mob in the hospital? Redacted. He had a few problems of his own of course, in varying flavors, and the results had been pretty damn impressive.

Of course, the downside was just as dark as the benefits were bright. If he bucked the offer, all those problems the Bureau could fix would suddenly become front page issues. Literally. That kind of thing ruined lives, and for all Ranma could fight dragons and phoenixes and demons, he couldn't fight the state.

So he took the job, and the supplementary training in Onmyōdō which was pretty easy stuff, considering what he already knew and could do. It was all based on Five Elements systems of various flavors, Taoism, and bits and pieces of about a hundred other little things from lore to divination. All told, it was like his family school, only in the flavor of mysticism, rather than martial prowess. Being able to draw on his ki readily took all the really difficult steps out of the process, as for typical onmyōji, that was the real time consuming process. Normally, years of meditation were needed to tap a mystic's ki, or some truly horrendous event that took them to the brink of life or death. In a way, his art mirrored that, but on a smaller, localized scale. Or not so much, when he considered Genma's training methods. Maybe that had been the true purpose of the Neko-ken? Of the near-murderous training? Ranma sighed, passing those thoughts off as pointless. He didn't know when, now, he'd started tapping into his ki, just that he had when much, much younger than was normal. Onmyōdō's methods were never so quick. Doing so in stillness and with various focuses in mind, had instead been his hurdle. A year-long hurdle, in fact.

Considering his usual time-frames for learning new skills – days, if not on the fly during a battle – the process had felt downright grueling. Still, Ranma had to admit, there were quite a few positive points. The money and government backing were serious positives on their own, but add on to those new techniques, increased control over his ki, a greater understanding of the mystical arts, and a pretty much on-demand ability to fight new and interesting foes?

It was like a dream job for someone like him.

Of course, there were those that had been against it. In the beginning Genma had outright boycotted the idea, which took the Tendos along for the ride with Soun playing his usual role as yes-man to the elder Saotome. That changed quick with a visit from some suits sent by the Bureau. The Nǚjié zú – Joketsuzoku or Chinese Amazons as Genma called them when he wasn't in a good mood – were the most displeased by the turn of events. With few exceptions, a sudden disappearance by Ranma would be immediately suspect, and unless masterfully done, easily incriminating. After all, if he disappeared and so did they due to returning to China, the obvious conclusions could be drawn – and the Bureau made it quite clear that while on Japanese soil, the Nǚjié zú contingent were under strict surveillance. Any sudden disappearances – now more than ever – were going to be noted. The fallout of such an action on an international scale would be catastrophic. Added onto Ranma's already perilous status from having bested both the Musk and Phoenix Empires, and the balance between cost-to-reward for pursuing the martial artist had gone far into the red zone.

Xian Pu had been inconsolable, alternately ranting and begging Ranma to reconsider, culminating in a massive brawl that had blown out a wall of the Tendo home after she'd tried to seduce him once more. The result had been less than pleasing, as the Bureau's agents arrived like a black wind, using eclectic arts to bind Mu Tse in spiritual chains, while Xian Pu had been subdued brutally by a trio of three meter tall summoned shikigami.

No one questioned whether the Bureau of Onmyō was serious about their offer or not, after that point. There were remarkably few outcries against it as well from that time forward.

Ranma peered up, breaking from his self-distraction to note that the shadow of Hiba mountain was far too close. "Really let myself get distracted for that long," he mused with a sigh. Considering his closeness to the area he'd be working, Ranma dug into a pocket, pulling out a slim cellphone. Keying in a speed-dial number, he waited for the usual prompt response. "Saotome here. I'm on location."

"Time and position noted," came the dry reply from his mission contact at the Bureau. "And... we have you on imaging... now."

The idea that he could be spotted and tracked via satellite was really strange, but considering his life, definitely not the strangest thing. Taking a small ear-bud style receiver from its place on the back of the phone, Ranma secured it with a little grimace of annoyance. He wasn't quite as comfortable with using a cellphone as many of his peers seemed to be. Another hold over from a life on the road, he knew.

"Well, no reason to worry about that now. Not like anyone else at Furinkan would get hired to check the wards on a kami's grave, after all."

"That's the spirit," came the voice of his unseen watcher, reminding the Saotome youth that his sometimes faulty internal dialog would be monitored and recorded – likely for the amusement of his peers during their occasional meetings at the Bureau. He blamed his father for that one. Genma's random monologuing was something he'd spent years dealing with.

A few minutes later the martial artist came to a halt. "Alright, I'm at the start of the public path," he noted, orienting himself against a nearby torii gate and the statue beside it. The stone fox that was representative of Inari was wearing a slightly faded red fold of cloth as was common around its neck. The shrine for the grave of Izanami open to the general public was along that marked path, but the actual site – what anyone with any spiritual sense at all could tell – was along a different route. Though he doubted there was any real truth to the myth that a kami was actually buried nearby, Ranma couldn't deny the tense knot of chi that sat brooding in the direction he was going. "Hmm. I've got a strange reading here."

"Noted, standby," the Bureau agent sent back, amid a flurry of small clacking sounds Ranma had become accustomed to hearing in these situations. Waiting for the agent to finish his work on the computer that the Bureau used to keep records, Ranma leaned against a nearby tree. Rather than stand by idly, he busied himself setting up a few small personal wards, while keeping half his attention on the knotted, oddly coherent tangle of natural ki – chi, in that form it was called – that rested some small distance away. It didn't take much effort to identify the reason his senses had been reading the mountain oddly, even at a distance, though it did explain why he was here.

That tangle he'd noted looked to be what could only be called a 'cramp' in the natural dragon lines – called ley lines sometimes, depending on who you were talking to – where chi was flowing strangely, but still flowing. The dragon lines were still healthy, and the flow picked up pace quickly outside the tangle, but he knew such a thing wasn't good to leave alone. Similar events had cropped up in more populated areas, causing all sorts of strangeness. In fact, it was due to a collection of such things that Nerima had been such a hotbed of peculiar happenings. It wasn't anything really bad, per se, more a kind of phenomenon that was more immune response, than anything else, much like a fever and inflammation were to a person who was sick. The excess of chi and the heavily skewed energies of those influenced tended to cause pressure, which in turn would sometimes rupture, displace, or otherwise break those tangles, restoring the flow of natural chi. The resulting flood of other energies would purge the imbalance, sometimes with staggering results. Most often, those purges came with tsunamis, earthquakes, massive storms, or other disasters.

Clearly, it was best to do what could be done to minimize such imbalances, before they got out of hand or too large.

On their own, small tangles weren't dangerous, and those were what were encountered most often. In places where humans in number dwelt, the ambient chi and available ki could skyrocket, causing all sorts of problems, however. Spirits were drawn to such nexuses, and if the tangle had an imbalance in its energies – yin or yang for instance – presences aspected to that lack of balance would gravitate to them, to feed or for comfort. Yin imbalance was common in metropolitan areas, due to the nature of that kind of chi, and though popular media liked to oversimplify things for better consumption, yin itself wasn't evil or even malicious. Presences that were attracted to heavy concentrations of yin were no more or less deadly than those that would gravitate toward its counterpart, but the simple fact that such concentrations were attractive caused issues.

Yin chi tended to feel less vital, more languid and reticent. It was slower, softer, more subtle in its motion, rather than the raging torrent one could characterize yang for. Yet, it was no less powerful. Water freezing in cracked rock did more to weather it than a sudden burst of boiling fury against its surface. That it was the chi most present in darkness, declining age, dying, rotting, and dead matter caused most of the issue for those aware of it, or those who were slightly educated. Those things were commonly taboo, and had strict cultural restrictions put on them, due to superstition and fear. Japan's culture had just recently in fact put aside one of their own longstanding biases against people who regularly performed jobs dealing with such things, in the effort to minimize the alienation of the Burakumin.

Heavily metropolitan areas – like Tokyo and Kyoto – tended to be subject to occasional yin imbalance, mostly due to the nature of human expansion. Earth covered in concrete, supporting no growing things, simply left sallow and unproductive and sometimes poisoned were natural cold spots, where chi normally in balance would shift its aspect toward yin. Even those unaware of such imbalance felt the difference, and many programs to add life to such places existed. It wasn't much, but it helped.

Ranma mused on that, while he set up a few ofuda with a bit of yang charged ki to keep on his person. Though he had no problems with imbalanced chi normally, the site of a shine with the amount of emotional and historical load Hiba-yama carried could pose a real threat, in the kinds of spirits it would draw.

"Saotome," his earpiece prompted, pulling him from his preparations. "Previous survey data and status reports show no explicable cause for a disturbance. Do you have anything to add?"

Tying one of the ofuda up in the end of his braided hair, while wearing another on a small red string around his neck, Ranma replied, "Its a pretty heavy chi imbalance. Yin aspect, which is odd – this is a mostly pristine area. Makes me think it wasn't naturally caused."

"You suspect outside interference?"

Ranma hummed as he kicked off the tree he'd been leaning on, swinging his braid and its ward to watch his back. "Dunno. I'll need to scope the area out to tell. Proceeding to the site, and breaking trail now."

The agent made an affirming sound, which Ranma noted distantly. Almost immediately after leaving the trail and the familiar, comforting presence of the torii and guardian statue, Ranma noted the darkening nature of the chi around him. Stifling a shiver, the martial artist chided himself to stop being so jumpy. Yin was also the chi most present in cold water, and after learning to discern the subtle differences better during his onmyōdō training, Ranma finally figured out what it was about the particular feeling of it that bothered him so.

It felt like Jusenkyo.

In a way it made far too much sense. Though he'd not returned to the cursed place, little things started adding up. The need for something to drown in one of the pools, the cold, the water, the magnetic and nearly living presence of the place... It was a very old and very persistent yin reactor, he figured.

As someone who bore one of those curses, Ranma's soul was tattooed with the particular sensation of being wholly altered by such intense and aspected chi. He'd never forget the feel of the pool closing around him, the strange languor that swept across his mind, and the invading, tenacious, inescapable feel of subtle change that it brought with it. That experience more than anything was part of why Ranma very rarely wanted to talk about his curse. Some thought he was just being macho or not giving it any depth of consideration, believing him to be as shallow as the persona he put forward.

The truth was that he didn't like to think about it, because from all that he'd gathered from some casual self-help reading later on, the closest parallel to the feelings he took from the experience were those of someone who'd been raped. The powerlessness, the violation of his essential self, the slow creeping panic and inevitability of being completely at some other force's whim... He stifled another shudder, shoring up his mental walls while roundly cursing whatever had caused the disturbance nearby.

When the trees obscured the sun above, Ranma's earpiece crackled, making him jump. "Visual lost."

"Got it," Ranma replied, knowing that until he could be seen again, he'd need to check in occasionally. The Bureau was nothing if not efficient. "I'm about forty meters from the disruption, and closing at a walk."

"Any outward signs?"

Ranma hummed, taking a moment to check on that very thing. Kneeling down, he ran a finger through the loamy dirt, noting the dampness there. Hiba-yama wasn't an arid location, but this much ambient moisture wasn't normal. "Air's heavy and slow. It's a bit too damp – too humid I mean. Like there's a fog settled here, but visibility is good."

The agent made a few notes, as was clear by the tapping of keys. "Atmospheric bleed-off? That's a powerful disturbance."

"Ground's moist. What's the distance to the water table?" Ranma rose once more, noting the plant life around him. It was thriving, but the prevalence of rotting leaf matter on the ground and mushrooms clearly spoke of the chi in the area being out of balance. Something else nagged at him, and he frowned. It was just on the edge of his awareness...

Static flared but died down just as quickly, as the agent replied. Distracted from his earlier feeling, Ranma spent a moment checking his phone – four of five bars. Odd. "Ground water should be sparse there. Table depth is eight to six meters on that side of Hiba-yama."

That wasn't too deep, but with the kind of soil he was seeing, deep enough. "Spring up on the slope?"

"Far side, but there's good sieving," the voice over his earpiece replied.

Ranma dusted off his hands, shaking his head. "Alright then. Ground moisture is probably due to the disturbance. If anything, it's pulling water up from the aquifers." A yin tangle with water nearby. "Just great."

"Saotome?"

"Just bitching, don't mind me," the martial artist replied tersely. Lips thinned in annoyance, he took back to the faint path leading deeper into the forest. "Closing on the site. Should be coming up on the local... oh that's not good."

"Report," the voice prompted, shaking Ranma from his stupefied staring.

"Right... there's a large bronze torii here as reported, but its completely corroded over, with a heavy patina. It almost looks like its covered in lichen," Ranma noted, warily approaching the massive warding gateway, but stopping at some distance. With some dismay he noted his first impression wasn't exaggerating or mistaken, as the bronze had clearly oxidized heavily, leaving the entire torii's surface a pocked, irregular dull green. Only a few points, heavily inscribed, seemed free of the choking patina. Wound around the gate, a black, leafless, thorny vine was visible, despite the shadowy overgrowth above. Ranma kept his ki tightly wound, letting nothing leak beyond himself, just in case. "I'm not sure what this is, but there's some kind of creeper around the torii as well. Black, no leaves, no tendril runners, thin, sharp thorns about five centimeters long. Vine looks... I can't tell if it has bark at this range or not."

The static rose again, this time remaining as a dull hiss behind the otherwise clear transmission. "That is... unusual. Definitely a change from the report six months previous. Do you think the vine to be a manifestation or spirit?"

Ranma considered that before nodding, regardless of his method of communication. "Uh huh, that's my guess. I don't think this is the cause, but clearly whatever is in action here wanted the warding the torii offered messed up. I don't even feel a thing from it, in fact."

"Not the cause?"

Wincing, Ranma let his senses extend slightly, trying to verify that. As soon as he did, it felt like something huge – massive, absolutely enormous – took note of him. In that moment of staring into an unknown abyss, the martial artist lost his concentration for just a second, nearly missing the thin, sinuous shadow cast across the ground. Nearly, being the key word. He yelped and snapped his ki back under heavy control just after, as he ducked an unseen vine that had swung down and through where his head would have been just a moment before. Nearly snakelike, it remained, swaying in the air almost innocently. "Son of a bitch..."

"Saotome?" The static was gone from the background now, but seemed to have condensed into irregular pulses that only added to the martial artist's sense of unease. "Saotome, report."

"I'm alright," Ranma murmured, watching the vine above him sway in a nonexistant breeze, the missing piece from earlier snapping into place as the adrenaline from the recent scare jacked up his senses. "The vines are... reactive at least. As a side note – no animal sounds, here. Nothing. Birds, insects, ground fauna. I didn't notice it before, but better late than never."

The agent made an unhappy sound. "Alright, that's enough I think. This seems big. I'm thinking a sealing team of at least three and a backup squad from Kyoto just in case."

Ranma processed that and couldn't help but agree, while still feeling slightly affronted that his handler didn't think him capable of dealing with this on his own. However, a few close calls in the last year had taught him that being the best martial artist currently working with the Bureau meant little when the opponent sometimes wasn't something tangible, much less human. He was good at onmyōdō, but far from the best – yet. Still, he didn't quite feel ready to pull out of the area, having just got there.

Besides, he knew what the mention of Kyoto meant. He did not want to deal with that Aoyama woman again for at least a few more weeks. The last time had been strange enough, with her little sister running off after that turtle incident. He still had no idea where that thing had come from, or why the Shinmei-ryū woman was so fixated on him.

Again, he just blamed Genma. It seemed appropriate, considering.

"I'm going to at least scout out the area," he sent back, slowly getting away from the unnaturally mobile vine. That close to the ground, he took note of the small things he'd missed, thanks to the massive shock of the torii's condition, cursing his preoccupation. "Another note; the ground is covered in dead insects, and I'm seeing a few birds under the trees. No larger animals. Lighting is bad due to the canopy, so I can only see them due to the bright feathers."

"Advise an immediate withdrawal, Saotome. There is no backup in that area."

"Noted," Ranma replied absently, staying in a crouch as he crept around the gate. Now that he knew the vines were in the trees, he could see them, like deeper, sharper shadows clinging to the nearby trunks. "Vines are pretty well established here. Possibly poisonous," he noted, inspecting a fallen bird that seemed otherwise unharmed, though he could tell little through the feathers. A nearby squirrel offered him a better opportunity. "Alright, have a small squirrel here. Looks like it wasn't the healthiest thing already, considering," Ranma observed, noting the long-healed scar that had taken an ear and possibly an eye.

Static from his phone was a constant sound, now, resembling the sea at a distance. "Signs?"

Ranma pulled at the dead animals fur, ignoring the smells that were rising from the forest floor around him as he moved. "Discoloration around a series of puncture wounds along the flank. Body isn't decomposing quickly, however. May be due to the lack of insect presence."

"Seems likely. Also implies this is a recent situation."

"Right. Insects are usually the first animals to adapt to this kind of imbalance," Ranma replied, wrinkling his nose as he returned the dead squirrel to its previous resting place. "Alright. Moving forward toward what appears to be a recess in the mountain slope ahead. There are two old, weathered, dome-like stones on either side. How far was it to the grave?"

Silence rang out from the headset, other than the tidal pulse of static for a long moment. "The site should be approximately eleven meters south of the gate," the agent finally replied somewhat faintly.

Ranma processed that, but shook his head as he paused. "Not possible. I'm five meters to the south now, and the only... thing..."

"Saotome? Saotome, respond," the agent called anxiously, his voice blending with the distortion from the phone on more sibilant points. "Ranma—"

"I'm here," the martial artist mumbled, his mind finally putting together just what was wrong with the picture before him. In the myth that drove the interest in Hiba-yama, Izanagi had buried his wife on the mountainside, but the cave he'd entered and later escaped Yomi from after his misguided trip had been sealed with a great boulder. Supposedly, that area was further north, now in the city of Matsue. Again, like the public shine somewhere undoubtedly sunnier than where he was, it was a false location, to keep the actual one hidden and secret.

Izanami's tomb, the place where she retreated from into Yomi to become its ruling divinity, was the true entrance to that shadowed world. Ranma swallowed thickly as he regarded the two halves of a very large stone doorway, now clear with his new perspective. He could see that they were ancient, worn, weathered and nearly smooth now. Regular flaws in that surface told a tale of ancient carvings, however, but even that was obscured.

Like the forest behind him and the torii, those massive slabs of stone were choked by a growth of black vines. "Hey," Ranma murmured, quieter now. "I'm guessing the door isn't supposed to be open, then?"

The reply was succinct and to the point. "No."

"Advice?"

"Get the hell out of there?"

Ranma chuckled, beginning to turn away. This mission was way too big for him to handle alone, and he was not afraid to admit it, "Sounds good," he began, only to pause, his eyes unfocusing for a brief moment. "Huh..."

Static building, his earpiece crackled, "—aotome?"

Blinking his focus back, Ranma opened his mouth to reply, only to fall silent before he could speak. There was a noise. Something familiar. Something... "Hang on, I... there's a voice...?"

Taking a step toward the yawning cavern, now revealed to be much more than a simple shallow dip in the mountain, Ranma focused on his hearing. It was faint, like an echo. A small part of his psyche screamed at him – what was he doing, going toward such a place? – but it was drowned out by a persistent, thrumming buzz that seemed to itch at the cursed young man's skin. His earpiece had picked up a second tone, as well, on top of the now persistent static. It was a near-bass thrum, regular and repetitive. Droning. Rubbing at his chest idly, Ranma took another step, noting that the cavern sloped sharply down from the entrance. He recongnized the itch as something that was caught on a string, and pulled it loose, letting it fall. The faintest hint of stairs could be seen, on the slope that was revealed when his viewpoint crossed the point where his eyes were able to peer into the cavern.

"—ao—me, res—ull back."

Behind him some distance, a similar slip of paper as the one he'd discarded fluttered in a faint wind before being snapped into the darkness by a reaching vine.

Licking his lips to abate the dryness there, Ranma took the last few steps till he could look directly into the deep chasm that the breached tomb consisted of. Light could not penetrate that darkness, with the overhanging stone shelf and the canopy of leaves above. Shaking off a moment's conflicting instinct, the martial artist knelt down so he could run his fingers along the edge of the stone shelf. "It's cold," he noted absently, looking up from where his fingers strayed across well-formed, chiseled basaltic rock. The surrounding walls and archway were equally crafted, the stone a deep gray, smooth, polished to what should have been a mirror's luster.

"S—me, ou—ere!"

The droning in his ears matched the pulse that seemed to be crawling across his skin. It rose and fell to a beat he could almost recognize, that he had carried with him for nearly five years now. He recognized it; at least a small part of him did. That awareness shuddered away from the memory of Jusenkyo, leaving the martial artist to narrow his eyes, concentrating on the echo he could barely here in the darkness. "What are you saying?" he murmured, eyes distant.

Reaching a hand forward, Ranma wondered why he was being so silly. A little bit of ki, and he could see just fine. Summoning the spark of his vitality forward, he held up a hand to the darkness, trying to see what it was that had snared his attention so.

It was right before him. Dead white skin, black, matted, filthy hair that twisted and clung to the achingly thin naked figure that seemed at once too real, and like an image projected on mist. Depthless pits where eyes should be, in an sharp, inhuman, leering face. Limbs thin as willow branches, reaching forward, black nails tangling in his clothing and behind his neck as they pulled him suddenly forward—

"She's waiting for you there."

The words that he saw formed on those lips did not match what he heard, and came through his earpiece in a wash of static and rolling deep tones that only vaguely resembled speech.

The daze lifted from Ranma's mind suddenly. The ki winked out of his hand as it retreated, while behind him the massive booming crash of the doors being slammed back into place washed over him like a physical force. Despite what should have been choking darkness, Ranma found himself face down in a lighted cavern, his weight braced on his hands, eyes wide and staring ahead of him into his own shadow as his heart hammered against his ribs, hard enough to nearly crack them.

Adrenaline slamming into his blood as the last few minutes came back to him in stark relief, Ranma sighted a solid rock wall, and slammed his back into it. Eyes darting around, the martial artist pulled the now silent earpiece from his ear and shoved it in a pocket, head jerking about to try and find some trace of the apparition that had pulled him into—

"Fuck," he breathed, shaking his head hard in denial. "No fucking way. No fucking way did I just..."

Light. Noting for the first time that the cavern was open despite what he'd remembered and felt sure was the closing of the boulder-like doors, the martial artist scrambled to his feet in a rush. Heedless of the noise he made or the rest of the cave at that moment, Ranma rushed to the light that was steaming down from above like a swimmer too long underwater surfacing for air. Breaching the mouth of the cavern, Ranma came to a lurching stop, windmilling his arms as he fought for balance.

The reason was simple. Before him, barely a meter from the mouth of the cavern, the mountain it was punched into fell away in a nearly sheer cliff down into a lush forest. Counter to it, the sky was bright and blue with a few wispy clouds on a strange horizon, the sun painfully bright almost as it sat in a position that he found immediately jarring.

"How long was I... no. Wait a second." Like most that spent their lives living under the sun and stars for years, Ranma was intimately acquainted with the small details of the heavens. The sun, like the moon, appeared differently depending on what position it was in the sky, depending on the time of day and season. Most never noted the subtle differences, as unlike the moon, the sun's radiance made it less obvious until it closed on the horizon. He knew it was due to angles and how much of the atmosphere the sun's light was forced to pass through.

Ranma was not most people.

Shaking his head, Ranma took in the brightness of the sun, how direct it was against the sky, but the strange position it rested in. "That's n... it looks like it should be almost autumn. But it's March." His musings then turned to the horizon that had been itching at his awareness, causing the cursed youth to nearly fall as his legs weakened in shock as he took in what was – and what wasn't there. "Wha-what the hell?"

Aside from the sudden lack of forest and torii before the cavern, the surrounding low mountains around Hiba-yama that he had walked in the valley of were simply gone. In their place, forests and fields stretched for as far as the eye could see, broken by obscured paths cut into the swath, unseen at the height and angle he was at thanks to the thick canopy. Below them, the terrain rolled gently in swells growing like cresting waves to his left, where it seemed the mountain range the cavern he was peering from was a part of, defying his memory. To his right, he could just make out the forest thinning, becoming more regular, where it was clearly being cut for materials then left to regrow over time.

Sliding to his knees, Ranma stared out at the alien world that he knew, deep down and without even needing his ki to confirm, wasn't his own.

–

"Not a trace... what the hell happened?"

Ranma sat down with a huff after his inspection of the shallow cave, having scoured every surface while the sun was shining into it for some hint at what had happened. So far, his efforts were proving fruitless. "I don't get it. I've heard of using dragon lines to move before, but this is ridiculous. There's no way any of the lines here were used like that," frustrated, the martial artist banged his head lightly against the stone behind him a few times, as if it would jog some memory loose.

Using a dragon line to rapidly move wasn't a skill he had, but he didt know a few people who could do so. What he knew of the ability was sparse, as it had been part of a family-only legacy, and due to the rarity, was protected viciously. Viciously enough to provoke assassinations and kidnappings. Regardless, as an accessory to being around those with the skill, he'd learned a few bits of miscellaneous data on how it worked and affected the world. The latter part was what currently kept running over and over in his mind. The one major downside to 'riding the dragon' as they had called the skill, was that the lines were severely taxed along the pathways that were followed. Chi was a natural energy, and using it in a way that countered natural motion taxed the dragon lines immensely.

There was no such wear on the local lines. In fact, Ranma had never in his life seen such strong dragon lines. "Well. Wherever the hell I am, it's probably a nice place," he grumbled, trying to gather his thoughts. "Maybe I'm just not thinking of it the right way..." groaning, he scrubbed his hands through his hair. "But I can't for the life of me remember anything after that... that thing grabbed me. One moment I was in Shimane and the next..." sparing a glance out over the forest, he let the statement trail off. "Damn it."

The only thing he'd ever heard of being able to do something like this was the Nanban Mirror, and even it was questionable. However, that did bring up a valid point. "Time travel. Maybe. Doubt it, but its no more far-fetched than being dragged into Yomi by some shikome in a cave."

A shikome. Ranma shuddered at that thought. One of the handmaidens of Izanami, the dead kami of Yomi. Dragging him into her tomb... and now he was in some unknown place. The notion just seemed too fantastic; too impossible. Even for him, and his utterly peculiar life. Yet, here he was, staring at the far wall of his small cave, trying to deny his predicament out of existence.

So far, his harsh reality seemed too resilient to be banished so easily.

"Alright," Ranma muttered, growing tired of all the circles his mind was running in. "So I'm in some new place. The air is all wrong, the horizon and terrain aren't familiar, and its the wrong time of year. On the other hand, I'm alive – at least I feel alive – I'm not injured, wherever I am seems to be able to sustain life, and I have shelter. Things aren't all bad. Time to take stock, and see what I have to work with."

Emptying his pockets and the pack he'd carried with him, Ranma performed a brief self-inventory. "Utility knife, camp lighter, camp mess pack, thermal blanket, rope, cellphone without any signal with earpiece, tablet computer with universal charger, packet of sealing paper, ink, ten meters of twine, bottled water, two empty thermoses, Bureau handbook and paperwork, wallet."

Taking up the last item and opening it, Ranma sighed. "Two IDs, twenty-five thousand yen, expense card, phone card, rail and bus passes... pictures." Frowning at the last item, Ranma took care to return his small collection of photographs back into the sealed plastic sleeve that would keep them safe, even if his wallet got wet – which thanks to his curse, was often. His electronics were equally hardened, though they weren't nearly as prone to abuse. The phone, perhaps, but his barely-used computer was practically new. It was something he used for reports and tapping into the Bureau database, but little else. Considering his current problems, Ranma didn't see that changing anytime soon.

As he started putting things back in his pack, the martial artist considered his situation with a frown. "Do I stay here and hope that the next group can somehow get me back home, or try and find out a way to get myself back?" Ranma couldn't help but snort at that statement. "Right, like I have any idea about this kind of thing. I'd probably just blow myself into little pieces before I could figure out how to do it.

"Not that it's ever stopped me before," he concluded with a fierce grin.

–

Smoke in the air was a good indication that there were people near the source. True, fires could be caused by lighting, but the weather for the last three days he'd spent examining the cave had been if anything, perfect. The problem was... "That's no camp fire."

The billows weren't huge, nothing like what would happen if a small town or city was on fire, but they were large enough, and a dirty black that spoke of something messy burning. They also seemed to be coming from just beyond a small rise that obscured the source, on the other side of the cultivated tree area he'd noted when scanning the surroundings and horizon. South, Ranma had decided from watching the sun's motion, not that he had a compass.

Sighing, Ranma packed anything not immediately needful into his mission pack, slinging it over a shoulder with a rueful look to his destination. "Well, I could use a break."

That was understatement of a sort, but he was too prideful to admit it. So far, his three days in this world had been spent getting nothing useful done, and he was running low on camp food. The cave seemed absolutely normal – no traces of what brought him there could be found. None of his attempts to coax some hint at what had happened were forthcoming, and if anything, he was wasting supplies by how resistant his efforts were proving. Like it or not, he needed to gather materials, food, provisions, and if possible, information.

With a jaunty step off the ledge, Ranma tucked into a controlled falling sprint against the side of the cliff below the cave, marking points along the way out of memory for his return trip. He had memorized most of them already, on his wary trips beyond the cave, as clearly he'd want to get back to his starting point at some time, regardless of what he found. Hopefully, the marker and message he'd left behind wouldn't be missed, just in case the second team to arrive at Hiba-yama tumbled through too.

Though he was getting more and more desperate to get back as the days started drawing on, the fact remained that he had no idea how to do so. Sure, he had enough control on his ki now to use it for what seemed like magic at times, bending raw power long cultivated by years of grueling work around his will. He had an almost instinctive grasp of onmyōdō – the Way of Yin and Yang – only a lack of practical work and tutoring from long-standing masters keeping him from being a truly frightening user. In his time with the Bureau, short as it had been, he'd seen and picked up ideas for new techniques that would make Saffon and Herb quake in their boots.

This problem, however, was far from his comfort zone. Sure, he made it a habit to throw himself face-first into learning things, going so far as to have bastardized and self-modified many of his rival's and ally's skills, but even his pride let him admit there were limits. Was he as good as Mu Tse at Anki; the Hidden Weapons Style? Of course not, since he didn't make it a backbone of his fighting art. Could he use it, in a limited way? Definitely. Iron Cloth? Easy. The Bakusai Tenketsu? He lacked the body-hardening portion, but understood the principles well enough to use the attack portion, provided he wanted to suffer the repercussions. The list went on, but there were always limits. Limits like trying to mimic a magical artifact like the Nanban Mirror, without understanding the mechanics, using chi and ki to do so, despite their incompatibility so such a possibly unnatural result? "Sure," he muttered to himself. "Right after I single-handedly colonize the moon."

Potentially punching a hole in the fabric of the universe, to blindly throw himself into, in the hopes of getting home from what could be the underworld? Pass. He knew that there were worse places out there, and had no desire to see them. Which left him, for good or ill, stuck in what could very well be Yomi. "Well. Am I part of the Musabetsu-kakutō-ryū or not?" Ranma asked himself as he skidded to the forest below, bleeding off speed. "Nothing to do but get used to it. Adapt, Improve, Overcome."

Even if it did mean doing so while in hell.

–

The farm he found at the source of the smoke wasn't in flames. That honor was held by a small pile of dead livestock, bags of what looked to be some kind of grain, and three human corpses. It took all the self control Ranma had at that moment not to do... something, seeing the flames burning away at what had been a young boy, no older than ten at the most.

Glacial blue eyes snapped to the farm house proper, across from a now empty set of pens. A dispassionate analysis was gathered – there had been a mild struggle, nothing much, in the nearby field. The standing crops there were bent oddly in ways that said something violent had happened amid them, leaving them stained with blood, and in some places cut for no reason he could imagine. There was a lot more blood in the livestock pens, and it was a messy and brutal story written there. Churned earth, splatters of blood, spilled entrails, and muddy swaths kicked up from fleeing, crippled, dying forms. He'd seen cruelty a number of times, at the hands of power-mad or just evil people and beings, but nothing deserved to be tortured to death, for the amusement of their killers. His respect for life didn't make him a vegetarian or anything, but it did make him respectful. One gave thanks for the life they had, by respecting the life they take and find as they pass by without harm. Broken doors and windows, shattered fence gates, tools ruined and left wherever, without care.

"Bandits," Ranma snarled, knowing the signs from his time in China's wilderness, where such things still existed far from civilized eyes. They weren't always the same, sometimes claiming their actions were for some other goal than just doing whatever they wanted, and sometimes never called themselves 'bandits', but the results were almost always similar. Sometimes it was justified by class, or power, sometimes by a lack of those things, and done to spite them. Sometimes, for no reason at all. But, the one thing they always shared, was that need to hide – the put themselves out of the common view. Some basic part of the human psyche, Ranma understood, made those that broke that fine line want to stay out of the light and in view of civilized eyes. Mainly due to the fact that had they happened in view of those eyes, those who lived that life would quickly find themselves lacking it.

Ki senses snapped out, digging into the dragon lines, plucking at them like the strings of a finely tuned instrument. When he was just starting to really use ki, when he was young, he likened this sense to his limited experience in meditation. Opening the mind, extending the ki into the senses, becoming tranquil so that one could hear the world. Later, he learned it was just easier to use what the world was doing naturally, like tapping a phone line. Perhaps it was less peaceful, and to anyone nearby when he did so, it was clear that he was doing something, but there were times for subtlety, and times for getting it the hell done. Ranma figure this easily qualified as the latter. The benefits of age and experience.

"Five men, various ages. Weak. Pathetic, really." Ranma noted to himself quietly. Typical bandit impressions. Without a thought, he snapped the Umisenken's cloaking field of non-ki around himself as he walked purposefully toward the farmhouse, fading from view like a heat-shimmer over desert sand. As he did, he murmured his findings, eyes distant. "One... girl. Age unknown, strange ki in that one. Wounded, but strong."

He was a handful of meters from the front door when Ranma came to a sudden halt, his mind catching up with what his heart was leading him to do. Ki was dangerous that way. It was the energy of life, and it could and would flow with emotions with great ease, feeding them power like fuel to a fire. What was he doing? What was he going to do once he... with a grimace he took a deep breath, pushing his roiling emotions down so his head didn't feel so full of black, raging fog.

"Alight," he considered to himself. "Calm down, Saotome. Yes, bandits... murderers. I have no idea how fighting is going to work in this place, how people heal; if people heal, or even if they're really the ones responsible.

"Deep breath, Saotome. Calm down. Think. I know it's not your specialty, but this isn't home. Shit may be totally different here."

The sound of a young woman begging, finally ending in dull impact and short, pained wail made his decision for him. He couldn't do anything standing outside agonizing on his choices, and knew better than to try. His father had taught him a long time ago in a dirty, dank, hellish little corner of China that sometimes people were really without redemption. It was never right to make that choice easily, and never going to get easier for him to make it. Which was why, when Ranma was first exposed to bandits, it was Genma that walked into the broken, half-burned, derelict farm house to exact a nameless, moral vengeance.

Ranma, for all that he sometimes felt hate for the man, never let that respect that had swelled up in him fade from that day. That was why, when he used the Yamasenken's door-breaching technique to blast the farmhouse's front doorway aside, causing the remnants to slam into and throw one of the flatfooted bandits into the far wall, he didn't agonize on using what was supposed to be a sealed technique. He respected his father enough to take something he made for the wrong reasons, and use them for the right ones, knowing even on the other side of whatever screw-up he'd gotten himself into this time, his pop would be proud.

Musabetsu-kakutō-ryū. Adapt. Improve. Overcome. Yourself, most of all.

All told, the bandits lasted maybe four seconds after the door was kicked in. Ranma didn't bother to recall the actual fight – if it could be called that – focusing his attention on the small, broken-looking woman being menaced by some ratty, filthy, equally young looking teen with a scalp of hair tied to his belt that matched the young girl's. With clinical precision, he noted the nicked and still somewhat bloody knife the boy had in his belt, the fact said belt was not holding up the bandit's pants as they were on the floor, and the leer on his face as he almost comically loomed over the cringing girl, before the shock of his entrance and rapid ambush had registered.

Then he kicked the moron's heart out of his back, the bloody muscle shredding itself through his ribs as he imparted a bit of brutal truth to the former bandit. Crime and murder don't pay. Saffron had been his first kill, but since joining the Bureau, certainly not his last. Ranma learned the hard way that sometimes martial arts was enough, and sometimes you had to fight or people who didn't deserve it died.

Five seconds after the house's front door all but decapitated his first target, said door rattled into the silence that filled the rest of the former home, broken only by the panicked breathing of a young woman and the easy breaths of a very lost young man. Not really knowing what to say in such a situation, Ranma went for the standard, for him; "Ah, yeah. Saotome Ranma. Sorry about this."

When the girl's attention snapped to him and she began pawing at the ground till she found his hem of his pants and shoe, he was confused. When she latched onto him and started shaking silently, he just dropped a hand to her blue-black hair, sighing quietly. "It's alright," he murmured, feeling far too old for his short years. "It'll be alright..."

–

The situation was just strange, but in a way, also very simple. "I don't know anything about farming, though...?"

"That does not matter," Hitomi Asano, last surviving member of her family, argued. She was still painfully skittish around him, which was understandable really, but at the same time, clung to his presence – if not bodily – like a life preserver. Since her rescue, she had refused to be out of line-of-sight of him, which the martial artist understood somewhat. Human nature wasn't that hard to figure out, in the baser concepts anyway. He'd saved her, so she felt safe in his presence, Ranma knew. Until she got over the attack, Hitomi would probably need something like that. It wasn't precisely healthy for her to fixate on him for that, Ranma knew, but though aware of such human quirks, he wasn't able to really do more than be aware of them. He was a martial artist, not a psychotherapist.

That would have been a damn handy skill back in Nerima, really.

She was also clearly not ready to let the point she was trying to make drop. "You said it yourself; you need a place to stay. I need someone... to help with the farm. Please."

"To keep me safe," Ranma corrected, though silently and to himself while he kept the comment to himself. One thing he didn't have much experience from while working with the Bureau was what came after their more damaging operations. The clean up, as it was called often. That involved literal clean up of the sites, disposal of dangerous materials, obscuring the signs that something out of the ordinary happened, and the disposition of those caught in the middle. As Ranma was often reminded by those that handled his deployment, he was a blunt tool, best used when delicacy wasn't required.

A young woman who had just had her family and livelihood destroyed in front of her eyes for the amusement of a bunch of sick excuses for humanity and who had narrowly escaped her own unpleasant fate definitely required a delicate touch.

It was really too bad he sucked at flatly denying cute girls who did the big watery eyes thing. One day that was really going to bite him in the ass. Snorting, Ranma just called to mind a certain Joketsuzoku, firming his resolve. "I understand that, but I can't stay here," he countered. "I'm not from around here. Heck, it's a fluke I even speak the same language!"

A fluke that worried him, a lot. Coincidence was a weird, unpleasant thing in his world. One Ranma usually regarded with equal parts wariness and the dull expectation of past experience. Part of him was glad that they shared a common means of communication. A greater part of him just saw it as more proof that the world he was currently in was just wrong on some fundamental level.

"Your accent is very strange," the young woman agreed quietly, before shaking her head hard. "Please. Just for a while. Just help me... get things back in order."

Ranma's pragmatic nature considered the situation. Brushing aside the knee-jerk reaction to some girl asking him to do something he wasn't prepared to, Hitomi's request wasn't really that bad. Honestly, it was a no-lose sort of thing. He'd have a real place to stay, something to keep him occupied, human company, and someone to teach him about this new world. On the other hand, he'd be away from the cave and any attempts at contact that didn't involve someone coming to this place directly. He could leave a message at the site, of course, but that was an absentee stopgap. And that was all provided the Bureau could try and retrieve him.

There was a very real chance they would write him off as a loss to the disturbance at Hiba-yama. If the situation became too severe, it was very likely to happen, especially if there wasn't any trace left behind of him. That had been Ranma's primary motivation for staying at the cave and desperately trying to find some way to make contact, to breach the path back, or await some kind of message or sign.

Regardless, Hitomi had a point. He did need somewhere other than a cave to stay, and with the farm being so close by... "Alright. I'll stay," Ranma muttered, getting a blinding smile in return, that quickly faded into a nervous glance to the side. "Just for a while. I might have to go at some point, and if I do – that's it. Understood?"

Hitomi sketched a low bow immediately. "Yes, Saotome-dono."

The address and demeanor startled him. Ranma rubbed at his head lightly, praying to what and whoever was listening that the girl wasn't some long-lost sister or relation to Kodachi. Putting those thoughts aside, his expression turned grim; now wasn't the time to get bent out of shape because the girl had latched on to a strange coping mechanism, had odd gratitude reactions, or just had some kind of archaic upbringing. For all he knew, this could be normal for her and how she had behaved earlier, what he would consider normal behavior, the result of shock. It just wasn't his area of expertise. "C'mon, I need you to help me with something, before we do anything else."

Nervously at first, the girl stood nearby. As she did, a detached, cool distance seemed to flicker in her expression. "Saotome-dono?"

Moving to the ruined doorway, Ranma let his eyes rest on the makeshift pyre the bandits had started. He then spared a brief glance to the bodies tucked nearly out of view; the remnants of those five killers. "Your family... did they have a graveyard?"

The strength in Hitomi's stance withered instantly. "...Yes. It is small but... yes. It is to the north of the farmhouse."

"Alright. I'm going to put that fire out, and see what can be... well, done."

Hitomi's eyes never strayed near enough to the pyre to actually see it. "And what would you have me do, Saotome-dono?"

Ranma considered the young woman, and the distance she was putting between herself and the world with a weary moment's attention. He just didn't know how to deal with this sort of thing. People that needed beating down to get a point? Easy. Spirit that needs convincing to move on? Not a problem. Dragon lines tangled up like a preschooler's shoestrings? Just let him at it. But, a girl who was clearly grieving, but didn't know how? For that, he didn't have a damn clue. "Write down their names, and what you want on the memorial," he murmured quietly, walking away.

Hitomi regarded the young man that had saved her with distant eyes that hid a fierce contemplation for a long moment before nodding. "It will be as you say, Saotome-dono."

Shrugging off his discomfort at such an address, Ranma moved to the farm's front lawn. The task before him was grim, dirty, and not one he would have normally taken onto himself. Still, if he was going to help around the farm, help the girl with nothing left keep living, something had to be done. For one, her family needed a proper burial, and there was no way he would make a girl dig through ashes and half-burned bodies to begin the process. The rest of the pyre needed to be torn down and scattered or just buried as well, to erase the memory of what happened. Maybe he'd plant a tree there or something to break the image of the ground there up. That kind of constant reminder wasn't good for anyone.

Occupying himself in such ways, Ranma performed the tasks he'd set for himself. It didn't take him long to extinguish the fire and pull what was left of the bodies out, using a few long curtains from the farm as temporary shrouds. Sounds of motion from within the farmhouse told him that Hitomi was inside, and thankfully for the moment, out of view. The water he'd used had triggered the curse three times in short order, but a few hot rocks and a thermos had undone the change easily. Right now, he didn't have time to go into it, nor the patience. At least this time he wasn't in a position for it to become some massive issue.

With careful hands Ranma took the bodies of the Asano family to the north of the farm, which with some luck, turned out to be the area on the other side of it from him. Sure, the path was a little long, but the obscuring trees made it easier to relax and move, with less worry that the girl he was trying to help would see him. She hadn't burst into tears yet, but he knew it was just a matter of time. It would be easier for them both if she grieved in private.

An hour later found him busy filling five graves – his earlier observations proving wrong. Hitomi's parents, two older brothers, and one younger had died that day. It made sense that the family was larger, considering the size of the farm, looking at it now, not that he really knew much about that kind of life. Sure, he could live off the land, in the wilderness, on the road... but farming? Ranma shook his head with a sigh, as he found a nearby boulder that would suffice for a monument, with a little creative coaxing. Burial practices seemed different here, he noted looking at the other graves, and hoped he wasn't taking too many liberties doing things in a vaguely western style that seemed similar. With the large stone moved where he could work with it, Ranma went back to the farmhouse and Hitomi for what to put on the marker.

The girl in question was sitting on the front deck of the home, which belatedly he noted, was of a strange semi-western style. It had some familiar elements, but the shape, materials, and sturdiness of it reminded him of some of the fusion architecture he'd seen. That was good – he had no idea how to repair rice-paper screens without the materials on hand. With all the trees nearby, however, the farmhouse would be back in shape in a few days.

Hitomi's quiet cough pulled his attention back to his current task. "I have what you asked for, Saotome-dono" the younger girl held out a slip of paper. "I did not know what to say, really. To be honest... I did not know them all that well."

"Huh?"

"I was a court servant until two years ago," she explained, face pensive. Ranma noted the redness in her eyes and how it seemed she'd taken his time working to loosen some of her emotions, with a relieved inner sigh. "After that, I was... I ended up in Akasanki-gai. A trade city a small distance away. The Asano family hired me to help with the youngest son, after Asano-san's wife took ill and ended up bedridden a few months ago." With a small sigh she sat against one of the supports holding up a slanted awning that served to offer shade and cover from the elements. "I was also to marry one of the elder sons. I was... not pleased with the situation. But life is seldom fair."

Ranma nodded slowly, taking a seat across from the girl. If she felt like talking – he didn't want to stop her. It was better than dealing with her crying, which he knew wouldn't go well. He'd picked up a bit more experience in knowing how to deal with those kinds of displays, but it was never quite good enough, really. Too many years having those things mocked, belittled, and cast aside in favor of focus and determination by his father. He could listen, however. All that cost him was some time, something he recently came to be in surplus of.

"They were not bad people, the Asano family. I had no future after arriving in this country, and Akasanki-gai is not a place one such as myself could make one. Still, I was... sometimes, resentful," the young woman admitted, head bowed. "I would wish some nights for something to happen, to get me away from this place. To go back to my home."

Uncomfortable with so much being said, Ranma fidgeted in place a moment. "Ah, was it really so bad? Here?"

Hitomi shook her head without hesitation. "No. I had grown to tolerate it, after my time in Akasanki-gai. I was grateful for the opportunity to join their family, even while resenting it. I just never wanted to leave my home. That resentment, I am ashamed to say, I quietly harbored and aimed at them.

"I was never warm," she admitted, eyes fixed on her knees, where they were drawn up to her chest. "There was no lack in my care or my duties. But I was... as you see me now. Only recently did I begin to understand what it was they were offering me, and now..."

"Now it's all gone," Ranma muttered, sighing afterward. "Well, not completely. The farm is still here, if a big roughed up. I guess that's why you begged me to stay?" Seeing the young woman nod slowly, he loosed a quiet chuckle. "Makes sense. You want to make things right, somehow."

"Well," the martial artist grunted, hopping to his feet. "I don't know much about that. Never did quite pull that kind of thing off myself. I do know you can't dwell in the past, much as I don't take my own advice sometimes. Is this what you really want? To stay here?"

Eyes distant, Hitomi simply shrugged. "I do not know, yet."

His own gaze taking in the farm's expanse, Ranma shook his head slowly. "There's not much way one person can do all that needs to be done, around here. Even lacking the animals. Some things are going to need to be left undone."

"That is fine, Saotome-dono," Hitomi murmured into her knees. "I thank you for any help you can offer."

Waving the girl off, Ranma took the slip of paper with him back around the house. "Never a simple day, huh? Oh well. Best to get this done before it gets much darker out."

–

Used to being woken up early, if not precisely by choice, Ranma snorted and blinked awake at the sounds coming from deeper in the house he had awakened in. For a long moment he stared at the strange and unfamiliar ceiling above him, eyes slowly taking in the vaguely western-styled room before his memory settled and the previous day's events came back to mind. "Ah, right," he murmured, sitting up to thumb away the sand in his eyes. "Bandits..."

He winced at that, shaking his head hard after. "Never get used to it," he quoted his father, holding out a hand flat and parallel to the floor. "Never get used to killing, but at the same time, know that sometimes it's something you have to do." Ranma stared at his hand, waiting till the tremors and shaking eased, breathing in the chi of the house, the tentative peace it still bore in its walls. Like him, it had been shaken, damaged. Like him, it would return to its former peacefulness, if bearing scars. He hadn't been a child in more than a decade, and had taken his first life five years ago, but it still left a wound. It hurt, but he was glad of that hurt. It meant he was still human.

Once he'd regained some semblance of his center, Ranma rose and dressed, easing into a set of clothing that had been set out while he was asleep. Judging by the faint light outside, it was very early morning, around five AM. Verifying approximately with his watch that he'd set over the last few days based on the sun, Ranma nodded and dressed in the simple but sturdy clothing, assuming that Hitomi had taken his previous set to be washed.

Ranma raised a brow at his lightly perused belongings, finding nothing missing, but noting a definite deliberate nature to the disturbance. It seemed Hitomi had been looking for something, and had made no secret of it. "Hm, one more thing to ask about."

Of that list, he had quite a few entries. Right now, she was his best and most available resource for information, and for the low price of helping on a farm for a while, he could probably get all he needed, immediately. More would likely take a city – Hitomi had alluded to one being nearby, luckily. He was no Nabiki Tendo when it came to gathering intel and information, but he wasn't a prodigy martial artist for nothing. He'd picked up enough to more than get by, in his three years living with the Tendos.

It was the lack of proper tools that would handicap him, Ranma knew. Money, contacts, networks, and leverage. Which put him in the lowest rung when it came to the ladder of information, and that would be limiting. Still, it was something. Right now, all he had was a cave, his skills, and time. Anything he could add to that would be progress.

Speaking of, he had a farm to learn how to run, and a maid to talk to.

"Maid. It was honestly the only thing that made sense," the martial artist reasoned to himself. The servile attitude, the job position, the reference to her past... Hitomi had likely been in a similar position all her life, and was just continuing on in that vein now that she was set adrift. Which made their situation rather amusing, Ranma realized – he was working as cheap labor for a maid.

Chuckling to himself, the martial artist walked into the familiar space of a den, and a cup full of cold water. "Well. Took long enough, bu—" she cut off the remainder of her quip as a knife tilted the now-female's chin up. She'd sensed absolutely no ill intent up to that point, and the shift had distracted her – eyes clearing of the water, Ranma looked back into the dark amber, nearly brown eyes of her host, Hitomi. Disarming the maid would have been easy, but for the moment, she wanted to know how this would play out. So, she met the woman's eyes and waited.

–

Kazuno held the knife steady, ready to spend the fraction of a second it would take to perform one of maybe a dozen small motions that would end her target's life. For all her somewhat stoic nature, she had enjoyed her life as Hitomi Asano, and knew what a ninja at the farm meant. Someone had tracked her down, and she was either going to end up back in Wind as a broodmare at the Yondaime Kazekage's pleasure, or in some other thrice-damned Hidden Village for the same reason, or worse. Perhaps one of the slavers in Akasanki-gai knew of the bandits, and had come to collect the wares personally? A nuke-nin, forsaking their village joining up with the group, perhaps, here to avenge them or claim their spoils now that his partners were dead?

She didn't know. But she would soon. "Do not move," she ordered seeing the blue-eyed, red-haired girl before her return her gaze languidly, her body relaxed in a way that regardless screamed readiness to her senses, muted as they were. "Do no blink. You will answer my questions, or you will die. Say nothing unless prompted. Do you understand me, yes or no?"

The woman who had been under a Henge to look like her savior spoke quietly, her voice melodious. "Yes."

Kazuno took a moment to consider what about that voice had seemed... off. She would need more information to know – need to hear her speak more. "What is your name, Village, and rank?"

Mild confusion spread over the girl's face, but she understood a prompt answer was expected. "Ah, Saotome Ranma. No village, other than Nerima, Tokyo I guess. And rank? Odd," she seemed to consider that a moment before replying, at length. "I'm the master of the Saotome Musabetsu-kakutō-ryū, and a field agent operative for the Bureau of Onmyō under the Ministry of Japan." Looking back up at her captor's near-brown eyes, a familiar deep blue stared back. "Sorry about this."

Anger simmered there, and confusion. Hearing her speak had been what she needed, to place what was itching at her mind. The girl had the same accent as her savior. The same strange cadence of speech, to the letter, tone, and inflection. Her eyes were the same. Even the warm spark of intelligence and mischief within them was the same. Taking a moment to glance at the slightly shorter girl, she noted her wearing the same clothing that she'd laid out, wearing the odd timepiece Saotome had, and even had hair in the same style. Those things made no sense. Henge could duplicate them easy enough, but why bother, really? That implied the girl was wearing them... but no. Any small impact would disrupt a Henge, and trying to pass herself off as Saotome would have been foolish. Ninja didn't work that way. Rank genin out of Suna didn't work that way.

Her mind whirling, Kazuno let a scowl bend her lips. "Explain."

The petite but very fit young woman before her did so, looking quite vexed in the process. "I'm Ranma Saotome. I have a curse that changes my gender, with water. Cold for female, hot for male."

"Some bloodline?" the woman known recently as Hitomi Asano murmured, eyes narrowing. "Or a genjutsu?" She didn't expect an answer to those musings, merely letting her thoughts flow, hoping for some reaction.

What she got was a blank stare, then an intense focus she'd never experienced before. "'Technique'? Blood line? What are you talking about?"

Kazuno stared at the young woman. No way. She actually expected her to believe that she didn't know what those two words implied? No child in this world didn't know the word 'bloodline' or 'jutsu', and one from Konoha? Then again... there was the accent. An accent she'd never in all the time she spent in the Kage's service as a servant heard, from ninja from around the known world. This was getting her nowhere – and Saotome had yet to show up, despite the noise. The middle Asano brother had been a very deep sleeper, and with all the noise they'd made, even he would have been up by now. Perhaps that was a question she could get an answer, or at least a reasonable and logical reaction to? "Where is Saotome-dono?"

Exasperated annoyance met her question. "I'm standing right here. Seriously, just get some water—"

"I will not turn by back to a ninja – what kind of fool do you take me for?"

The blue-eyed girl blinked twice, slowly. "Ninja? I'm not a ninja. Heck, I mean, I'm good but me and Konatsu-chan are totally different types of artist."

"Your partner, this Konatsu, where is she?"

Another blink. "Back in Nerima, maybe down in Osaka, following Ucchan. It's been a while since I talked to him. And he's partners with Ucchan, not me."

Kazuno wanted to pull at her hair. "Fine," she ground out between clenched teeth. "Where is this Ucchan, then?"

"Nerima," the red-head drawled, as if speaking to an exceptionally slow child. "Look, I, oh for kami's sake—"

With a muffled cry, Kazuno found herself tangled up in her own yukata, as the red blur that had been her prisoner suddenly seemed to be everywhere, except where she'd had her. With little more to consider than why her clothes were suddenly on all wrong, the maid found herself sitting rather uncomfortably on the wide couch in the farm's main room. Shaking off her dizziness, she watched as the red-haired stranger went quickly into the farmhouse's kitchen, leaving her alone.

Bogging, the former Suna maidservant struggled against her bonds, making no headway at all before the impersonator returned, two large pitchers of water in hand. "Alright, Hitomi. I'm going to demonstrate this."

What followed had the woman on the couch blinking stupidly for a long moment. "Genjutsu? But," wincing, she shook that motion off. Her shoulder was at the point where it was nearly dislocated the night before, and though she didn't show it, the joint was paining her terribly at that moment. Had this been a complex illusion, those pulses of pain would have broken the hold on her such a technique could have. Unless... it was truly powerful, but then she'd never escape. Kazuno shook her head hard at that – such thinking was beyond her experience, and the panic it might bring would do nothing to help her.

Of course, that left this person before her, and the only explanation they'd offered. A curse, not a bloodline. A curse that changed the gender of the afflicted with water... it was like a story out of fairytale. Yet, here proof stood, with no other explanation. With that thought, the tension left Kazuno's body, leaving her slumped against the couch and staring down at the ground. "...who are you, then? You don't have a Village symbol in any of your things – I checked to put it out for you. The clothes you wear don't resemble anything I've ever seen, and some of those things in your pack are just so strange... but ninja have strange things, sometimes," she rambled on, shaking her head as her mind tried to reconcile what she knew, against what she'd seen. "But if you're not a ninja, then what are you?"

Ranma slumped down to sit beside the lost-looking young woman, resting his elbows on his knees. "Honestly, I'm just someone who got really, really lost. If the curse has you this confused, then hearing about how I got here would just be worse. Just... for now I guess, think of me like a really good fighter from someplace really far away. A place so far away that you've never heard of it, in fact."

Kazuno shifted, pulling herself back upright despite the throbbing ache in her shoulder that roared into full agony due to the unkind angle it was bound in. Regardless, she showed nothing on her face from that pain. It was pushed down into the cold void she felt within, where a seal left a vital part of her feeling empty and wasted. A small, private part of her laughed – here she was, two years away from her service to a Kage, and still relying on those old mental tricks. Oh well. They served. "That is... a difficult thing to do. But I will try. Will you explain, Saotome-dono? If you are not a ninja, then how...?"

Ranma scratched at his now-damp hair for a moment before seeming to come to a decision. "I'll try and explain things, but we have some work to do, today. Stuff that won't wait."

A tiny twitch of her lips was the only indication of the woman's amusement. With the crisis averted, she let Kazuno the Kage's maidservant fade back into Asano Hitomi the farm maid. As expected, that also brought back a significantly increase in the pain of her shoulder. With a groan she bowed her head, shaking slowly. Ranma, of course, panicked. "Oh, crap – I'm sorry!"

–

"Next time, say something if you're hurt," Ranma chided, tying off the sling that would keep Hitomi's arm from moving too much, thereby aggravating her shoulder injury. I wouldn't need to be on for too long, as long as he kept up the pressure-point treatment and ki infusions, but joint damage was tricky business. "Though, I should have asked after... eh. Suppose I was distracted."

"It is fine, Saotome-dono," the young woman assured him, shaking her head. "I was honestly not thinking about it either. I just avoided doing anything to aggravate it, but the... interesting bind you put me in just happened to make it hard to ignore."

Ranma winced at that reminder. Using Happosai's more creative clothing-manipulation techniques wasn't something he'd really practiced much, given their nature. Of course, even using it in non-perverse ways had the potential to bring all kinds of attention he didn't want, so it wasn't something he considered mastered by any degree. Then again, other than a lack of observational skill, he couldn't have known about Hitomi's shoulder. "Eh, well. Disarming you any other way could have been painful, and I really didn't want to hurt you, just to prove I wasn't some psycho sneaking around as myself... not that I understand that very well."

The maid blinked at him slowly, once. "You really don't know." It was more statement than question.

"No, I really don't," Ranma groused, rising to his feet as he finished the last of the sling's adjustments. It was crude, but it would do. "Like I said, just assume I'm new here, like I fell out of the sky or something."

Hitomi blinked up at the young man and nodded. "Well. There is much to explain, then, Saotome-dono."

"I was going to have you make a list of things that need to be done, maybe a few things inside while I take care of a few loose ends, but... eh. I'm getting the feeling I should learn about this sooner, rather than later." So saying, Ranma helped the young woman to her feet. "Come with me, we can talk while I work."

"Work on what, Saotome-dono?"

"Burying the dead."

Ranma was placing the last of the dead bandits onto a tarp he'd used the night before when Hitomi finally found the nerve to speak. "I... I am sorry for making you do all this alone."

Grunting slightly as he dusted off his hands, Ranma shrugged. The smell was foul, but the bandits were clothed – there were plenty of handholds that he could use to avoid the mess. "It's fine. I didn't really want you to help with this part." Waving his hand down at the five corpses, the pig-tailed man grimaced. "This is my fault. My job to sort it out."

Regardless of his words, Hitomi swallowed thickly and moved to take up a corner of the tarp before he had, with her good hand. For a long minute Ranma stared at the woman, before nodding once, slowly. Together, they dragged the makeshift sled where he indicated, near one of the fallow fields that had been set aside for the next planting.

"This field, this should do."

For a few seconds the maid looked between him and field before greening slightly. "You are... going to bury them. Here?"

Ranma snorted a quiet laugh. "Something like that. While I work, why don't I explain a bit about myself, since I get the feeling your side of things is going to take a lot longer."

Off-center, Hitomi simply nodded as Ranma moved out into the untilled field, dragging the tarpaulin behind him. "For most of my life, I was trained as a martial artist."

Following behind a few steps, the woman furrowed her brow slightly. "A... you mean a taijutsu specialist, Saotome-dono?"

"'Body technique'? That what you call it around here?" Ranma shrugged. "Maybe, if you have something like that here, yeah. I started learning about the time I could walk, and have been most of my life, in one way or another. Till about... say a little more than a year ago, when my focus shifted. About five years ago, I picked up my curse," he added, figuring that would come up at some point, anyway.

Hitomi listened intently, though she frowned slightly at the lack of details. "So you trained just in taijutsu? What about ninjutsu? Genjutsu?"

Sending her a puzzled look, Ranma shook his head. "Like I said, I'm not a ninja. I'm a martial artist. Why would I have learned those things?" The blank stare he got in return had Ranma fidgeting slightly. "Er, what?"

"So... you do not know how to use chakra, then?"

It was Ranma's turn to affect a blank look, dropping the bandit he was moving atop the ground, some distance from the others he was spreading around the field. "Use... chakra? You don't use chakras, you just, well, have them."

The maid rubbed at her forehead lightly. "I believe we have encountered our first linguistic barrier. By chakra I mean the energies of the body and spirit, or more specifically, their combination, Saotome-dono."

Ranma was silent for many moments as he stood back, folding the tarp slightly to make it easier to carry once more. "I think I know what you're talking about. When I heard you mention chakra, I was thinking about something I've learned about a while back when I was just starting meditation. It was about seven spiritual nodes, that the body's ki travels through. Now, what you described to me sounds more like ki, than what I call chakra."

"And what is ki?"

With a slight smirk, Ranma held up his hand, palm to the sky, summoning a small blue-gold sphere of faintly luminescent ki. "This."

Hitomi stumbled backwards, tripping over the loose soil. "W-what? That's not possible!"

"Hey, you were the one talking abou—"

"That is pure chakra!" the young woman nearly shrieked. "You said you weren't a ninja, then how are you doing that?!"

Ranma released the small spark of ki and held his now-empty hands up, in a placating gesture. "Whoa, hey. Calm down, Hitomi-chan. I told you before – I don't know this stuff you're used to, alright? Explain to me why that's so weird for you."

Brown eyes wide, the maid worked to catch her breath. She'd been startled to feel the sudden spike in chakra from the young man, but to see him so casually call it up in a pure, non-elemental form, and then just hold it above his hand... she'd never seen such a thing. "Chakra does not work like that. Chakra is mixed inside the body, then used for techniques. You cannot just..."

For a silent moment, Ranma considered the woman's words. Finally, he nodded and seemed to come to a conclusion. "I see. It seems you're used to pulling on ki differently. You keep referring to these jutsu – techniques though. Do people use this chakra just to reinforce or supplement their bodies?"

"That is what taijutsu is," Hitomi stated blankly, before realizing her mistake. "Oh, I see..."

"Right. I don't know any of your terms or anything, or I guess more what you mean by them, and I didn't learn how you expect me to have. Now, I have a question... what is a ninja?"

Hitomi managed to hide her incredulity. "That... a ninja is..." shaking her head hard, she tried again. "Ninja are trained mercenaries who have access to chakra, and use various chakra skills to perform tasks, and serve as a supplement to the armed power of the Element Nations and their allies."

Ranma loosed a quiet whistle. "That come out of a textbook?"

The maid flushed and looked away. "Y-yes."

Chuckling, Ranma nodded as he knelt down by the edge of the field. "So. Your version of chakra is different, and I think your version of ninja is too. Where I'm from, ninja are pretty much nonexistent. Maybe a handful in all of... well where I come from. They're more like assassins than military though. Shadows and traps and that kind of thing."

"The ninja of the Hidden Villages are much the same, Saotome-dono. Do your ninja not use jutsu?"

"Not like you're thinking," Ranma murmured. "Least I'm fairly sure not. Let me guess, your ninja are defined more in their ability to use ninjutsu, than their aptitude as silent killers?"

Hitomi's mouth worked for a moment before she nodded somewhat unsurely. "Sometimes. Some Villages rank certain things higher than others, I'm sure. Hidden Mist is very renowned for their assassins, but they are weak, in most estimates, in their ninjutsu for instance."

Picking up a nearby stick, Ranma used it to scratch out a symbol in the loose dirt. "This, is this how you write 'nin'?"

The young woman nodded. "Yes. Well, it looks a little different, but I can tell what you meant."

Ranma nodded, considering that a moment. "Strange. I'd almost think that here, what you call ninjutsu came first, then ninja. Just because of how much you seem to suggest ninja use these jutsu for just about everything, and how you described them, I mean. How many ninja are there, anyway?"

He'd intended on it being a trick question, really. A visible ninja wasn't a ninja, after all. When he got an answer that numbered in the thousands, the branch fell from his hands. "What? Are you kidding?" Seeing the maid confirm her statement, Ranma fell backwards to sit in on the ground as his mind chewed on that for a few minutes.

Thousands of ninja. Thousands of martial artists – career killers – who could use ki, or something similar enough to count, who acted like military to their countries. Ninja that apparently had techniques for illusions, whatever ninjutsu qualified as, and augmenting their physical skills. The fact he'd fallen into a different place had shaken him, but this? This was unreal. Maybe a handful and a half of people he'd run into his entire life could use ki as blatantly as he could, and of that handful, only three were his age. Of all the people he'd met, period. Clearly, Hitomi had no problems assuming he was a ninja, which meant that his age wasn't even an issue.

What the hell was with this world?

His focus returned after a moment, and he noted the churning clouds overhead, and the bodies remaining on the ground of the field. Taking out a clean cloth, he rubbed his face for a moment, needing that time to get his thoughts back on track. "Huh. Well, this certainly is nothing like home," he commented with a sigh. "I get the feeling I'm going to be spending a while figuring out what all is different, while we get this place back up to running condition.

"Anyway, you saw me fight the other day. I don't really know what qualifies as what you think of as jutsu, but what I know was called martial arts and onmyōdō. You've seen the martial arts part," holding his hands down, palms flat to the earth of the untilled field, Ranma continued, "and this would be onmyōdō."

A pale blue limning of light washed down off Ranma's arms, pouring into the soil. He ignored Hitomi's gasp, and worked his ki into the ambient chi of the area, twisting lightly at the dragon lines that fed the field. With a push, he set the chi to cycling very closely to the ground, closing it off for a brief time from the rest of the nearby land. A little effort kept the outer lines from correcting the flow, as he set up a concentration of very heavy, very potent yin chi in the field. His vision being focused on the ground in front of him and his perception of natural energies, Ranma didn't see as the ground of the field darkened, becoming loamy and rich and damp. Nor did he note the bodies sinking rapidly into the ground, decaying at a speed that was frankly horrifying to witness, but that passed in moments, like a brief nightmare. In less than ten seconds, the entire process was finished, and with a deep breath, Ranma released his manipulation of the bounded field of chi, letting nature return its flows to normal. A glance to the field showed it undisturbed, looking quite rich, and ready for being tilled and planted.

His awareness returned fully to catch his companion muttering to herself, wide-eyed. "No hand seals. Never have I seen chakra like that before... and it did not feel the same." Shaking off her own fugue, Hitomi looked up at him, her eyes sharp and focused once more. "Yes," she murmured, "I think we have a great deal to talk about."

–

Tea steamed in the cups the two held, as the rain washed down outside the farm. It had began the previous afternoon around sunset, and had continued without pause for around an entire day. The memories of what had happened were fading quickly, along with the traces, thanks to the gentle storm that had settled over the area. Tomorrow, Ranma felt like he wouldn't be able to tell there had been so much death at the farm, if not for his own recollections.

Today, he had enjoyed putting such things out of his mind. Sure, the rain had played merry hell with his curse, but that wasn't a concern these days. It hadn't been, since nearly Jusendo in fact. Without all the misunderstandings about random accidents, shifting in uncomfortable situations, or worrying about embarrassment, the curse had become just a mild nuisance point. Not because of the gender issue, but more because it tended to be rather random and unpredictable. Sometimes he didn't notice the change until someone else brought it up, in fact.

Due to the rain, the two of them had focused where they could on repairing the inside of the farmhouse itself, and the nearby barn. They still got wet here and there, but it wasn't the potential bone-deep drenching it could have been. At the end of the day, it seemed natural to sit and talk, and over tea, the two discussed their worlds a bit more in depth. "So, unlike our chakra system of elements, your onmyōton—"

"Not release, way," Ranma corrected.

"Onmyōdō, then," Hitomi stated, before continuing. "This onmyōdō works with the yin and yang... aspects, of ki and chi?"

Ranma nodded, pleased he'd explained things well enough to start. "Yes, though I'm familiar with a five-elements system or two, they're mostly philosophical, rather than practical like you've said. And as for ki... I think I see what the difference is – or isn't – between it and chakra."

"I do not understand. They sound so different, to me."

"It is and isn't," Ranma explained, years of working with his own ki and then his onmyōdō studies lending him a easy understanding and unique perspective to the topic. "You refer to will as spiritual energy, and raw, unfocused ki as physical energy. You use will to focus the ki. In this way, you combine the two components, and get what you call chakra. In my understanding, what I call ki is the same. I don't think of it as needing to be mixed, just focused."

Hitomi mulled that over, recalling her memories of the Suna ninja academy she'd briefly attended. She'd shown no aptitude for what Ranma had called the 'ninja arts', but had been an excellent academic. She understood the method of calling up and mixing chakra very well, as she'd been sealed sometime after learning it. That sudden and gaping lack in her essential self had been telling and rather disheartening. That was also why she had issues with what Ranma was explaining, and accepting it. If what he had described was correct, then her seal was doing something to her mind, rather than her body, since her physical capabilities had only grown – if marginally – as she aged. She was no brawler or capable fighter, but she was far from a plump example of some housemaids.

There was one test she could do, and it would be a simple thing. Biting her lip, the woman shook her head slightly. Nothing ventured... "I see. I do not think you wholly correct, though. But, as you demonstrated, you have a very good grasp of your art. What can you tell me about myself?"

Ranma blinked in surprise. That was an angle he wasn't expecting. "Um. You mean, your ki?"

"Yes. What can you tell me about it, compared to your own, or rather, someone else like myself?"

Understanding lit in the martial artist's eyes, before dimming in wariness. "Ah, well. There's a problem with that."

Hitomi blinked at the young man and how he suddenly looked away, seeming almost bashful. "Yes?"

Grimacing, Ranma explained, "You see, I can sense sources of ki and chi just fine. It's like looking at a bunch of candles behind a sheet, most of the time. Nothing like details, but I know something's there. Now, if I want to tell you how hot a candle flame is though..."

"...you must touch it," the maid finished quietly, nodding to herself. "I see. That is not a problem."

Ranma's head snapped around just as the faint rustle of cloth that had been recently buttoned around the woman's neck was loosened, letting the upper half of her dress fall about her waist. "Whoa, hang on," he squawked, looking back away fast enough to cause his neck to crackle in protest. Regardless of how quickly he had closed his eyes, like a camera, that brief moment had been enough to burn an image into his mind. Swallowing thickly, Ranma sputtered, "I just need contact with your back! That'll be fine!"

Shrugging, the woman turned so that her shoulders and the gentle lines of her back were clearly on display, pulling the forward portion of her now-loosened dress up to cover her breasts. "As you say, Saotome-dono."

Time skip of dooooooom. Yeah, I don't care.

The path to Akasanki-gai wasn't very long or tedious, and in the part of Fire Country they were traveling, wasn't very dangerous either. In the three years Ranma found himself living on the Asano farmstead, the bandit raids had steadily decreased, in the area between the mountains and the walled trade city. At first, the bandits were warned off that particular area, where the less experienced types would often go to 'cut their teeth' on farmers and those brave enough to live outside the nearby city's walls. That warning had come from a black-haired man with a strange accent that most figured was a retired ninja, looking to settle. Sightings had decreased after a year, tapering off completely by the second. Word began to spread that the ninja was getting too wound up in his retirement, and not venturing out anymore.

That would have been good for business, so to speak, if it wasn't for the significantly more vicious redhead that had appeared to fill the position the other man had left. Tales of the carnage she'd left behind – an entire bandit camp slaughtered after they'd attacked one of the local farmer's caravans heading for Akasanki-gai – spread like wildfire.

Bandits were a superstitious lot. Though the trade routes around Akasanki-gai sometimes proved profitable beyond the effort to claim it, the few remaining bands decided to try their luck closer to the border, rather than between the rock – the mountains to the east – and a hard place, in the walled city. Tales of the Red Dragon and Horned Witch traveled far and fast.

"Three years," the redhead walking beside a rather demure young woman muttered. Her method of dress was strange for the land she lived in, consisting of a wide straw hat more commonly found in Rain above an ensemble of clothing more often found in the various Element Temples across the land. The shortened rust-red yukata that was tucked into the waist of a pair of hakama, in cloud-gray, and was left somewhat loose over the woman's sizable bust. That feature was obscured by a sarashi, the cotton wrap binding the redhead's breasts, hinting at an active lifestyle. Despite the hat, the woman's red hair was clear to note, in the long braid it was bound in that came to the small of her back. Tipping the straw hat up slightly, she peered to her companion, startling blue eyes reflecting the sky's hue above. "Has it really been that long?"

To her left and leading a single ox pulling a cart, the woman the question had been directed to nodded once, simply. "Yes. It has been three years since you came to Fire Country from the mountains." In contrast to the lithe redhead, she was more conservatively dressed, in a dark purple and wife sleeved yukata with a plum tree motif and sash in blue. Though she didn't appear as much of a farmer, those that noted her gait and demeanor shrugged off the inconsistency. The woman carried herself in the manner of a servant, possibly one for a noble or larger house. Her blue-black hair was kept in a complex wind at the back of her head, with her bangs resting above her brow and two loose forelocks drifting before her ears to lay across her collar. Of particular note, the dark-haired woman wore a strange headdress, which crossed above her ears and settled atop the tight knot of her hair, bearing a set of black, back-swept, lacquered antlers. Draped across the back of the servant's hair, the ornate headdress bore the rear remnant of a samurai's helmet, identifying its origin. The brief armored flange served to accent the woman's hair, strangely enough, and though peculiar, she wore it well.

The two women painted an odd picture, walking the central trade path between the mountains to the south of Akasanki-gai and the city itself. Those that met them, however, said nothing about their odd appearance, knowing them well enough from local word of mouth, or personal experience. They waved, offered polite or in some cases, smiling greetings openly. Those gestures were returned, lazily in the redhead's case, politely in the servant's.

After all, it would have been rude not to pay some small respect to the Red Dragon and Horned Witch. Like the bandits, the people of the region had their own reasons to tell tales, and in counter to the fear and loathing of the human predators among them, the people found their eccentric champions quite pleasant and approachable.

"It's almost to the point that I'm afraid we're going to start getting asked for autographs," Ranma groused, finally extricating herself from a small mob of children that had poured out of a caravan, when someone had mentioned the pair a little too loudly. She had nearly lost her hat to that bunch. "Won't that be amusing."

"Truly, the life of a farmer is fraught with peril," Hitomi replied, the slight smile she bore barely noticeable if not for the amusement clear in her brown eyes. Ranma saw it clearly enough, and spared the other woman a huffed growl. Though she would still answer to that name from Ranma, it was never truly used anymore. Instead she had taken to using her birth name, the one she had been been called in her previous home, which had resulted in Ranma getting her the 'crown' she wore now. The cursed martial artist had said it was fitting, for someone with the name Kazuno.

Though she had been expecting some kind of retribution for the good-natured joke, Ranma found herself disappointed. Kazuno took an immediate liking to the antlered half-helmet, and began wearing it constantly. When she'd been asked about it later, the answer was direct and concise; "I will wear it, like my birth name, with pride."

Ranma had never commented about it since, other than when it was absent, or to inquire if it needed any repairs for the few panels of slatted armor it bore. It was the least she could do in the face of Kazuno's unquestioning acceptance of her curse and strange origins, and for the patient answers to all the questions she'd had about the world she found herself in. Without that help, she would never have understood the casual violence present beyond the farm, and the fact that human life in this new world was spent like cheap coin.

The martial artist still had some doubts that his world wasn't Yomi, but after three years, regardless, she'd come to call it home. For all the peace in the wild places she could find, the sheer amount of death and violence in the Element Countries, with their war-shinobi, Tailed Beasts, constant skirmishing, and shadow wars made her argument well enough. Ranma reasoned that the only excuse for a world so biased toward war and death, was that it was designed to be so. There were times Kazuno almost found herself believing those arguments, recalling her time in the depths of Wind Country where she had been born.

As for why Ranma had remained in her current form for so long... well. There had been a few hard truths learned in the last three years. One of those being that there were very few martial artists in the Element Countries. Instead, it seemed everyone with some skill or potential in the art went off to be either a ninja in service to a Hidden Village, a samurai sworn to some house or lord, or monk at one of the Element Temples.

Ninja seemed to be more akin to what she was used to working with in Nerima, though with the addition of powerful elemental and mystical skills better suited to her experience with magicians. It wasn't magic, of course, just ki utilized in ways she was unfamiliar with. She still had little real understanding of what made this so-called 'chakra' so much different than ki and chi, but it clearly behaved differently for ninja than her ki did despite being the same essential thing. For one, it seemed every ninja in the Element Countries had some affinity for one element or another, and that tuned their abilities greatly. Kazuno had been very confused when Ranma asked if that had to do with yin and yang, instead explaining a very familiar if different element system. Ranma had learned of a number of such systems in her martial arts training, but none of her previous knowledge matched that of this new world. More disturbing to Ranma was the fact that nearly anyone with skill in chakra was automatically assumed to be a ninja. Even cooks, postmen, and tailors.

Anything Goes, indeed.

Samurai were what the local rulers and cities called their militia, consisting of swordsmen that Ranma found resembled their namesake in only the barest sense – their usual weapons. In her opinion, there was little difference between the average bandit and a samurai. The two seemed to be defined by who they were currently working for, and how far out of line they got, while serving their lords. The general rule was that your local militia were samurai, while everyone else's were bandits.

The Temple monks were most similar to onmyōji, though their focus wasn't on the balance of the two aspects of chi, instead being on one single 'element'. How that achieved any kind of balance was beyond her understanding. Such biased practices, in her experience, only lead to great distortions of natural energies. That element system caused her some confusion as well. Considering lightning and electricity an element seemed strange, but despite her skepticism, the system these people had in place functioned. The one monk she'd talked with considered her views quaint and amusing, at least until she started inquiring on the aspects of yin and yang in chi. The drastic turn-around in the monk's demeanor had spoken clearly enough that her topic was taboo, and best left alone.

Ki was another point of contention in this new world, though it was present. Very present. Instead, the people called their internal and external energies chakra. According to Kazuno, a person's chakra was a mixing of spiritual and physical energies, which to Ranma made some small sense. She came to understand that the spiritual aspect seemed to be more akin to willpower, determination, and experience. In simpler terms, mental fortitude. Physical energy was simplest to think of as raw ki, without focus. What ninja seemed to consider a mix of energies, Ranma understood to be discipline in focus. Without mental 'energy', one couldn't focus their ki. It just flowed without purpose or direction, achieving nothing.

Chi was also considered chakra, which had initially caused Ranma to wonder if there were specialists in this world that were adept at manipulating dragon lines and chi. Perhaps that was why the Element Temples didn't poison their environments with imbalance? Kazuno had looked at her strangely, explaining that no one could use natural chakra – the practice was legendary. Ranma demonstrating that she could do so resulted in the younger woman fainting on the spot. That had prompted a long explanation of her own talents, and what was commonly considered normal in this new world with the former Asano.

Which would have been a great thing to know, before rooting out the bandit population in the nearby area, causing all kinds of rumors and tales. What had seemed like a good idea in the beginning became a massive headache later, as hunter-ninja and Konoha patrols seemed to become a daily annoyance, looking for the 'black-haired missing ninja vigilante'. Because clearly, no one in this world who wasn't a ninja could defend themselves.

Another important lesson had come in her method of dealing with her enemies. Unlike Nerima, some Bureau cases, and bandits, putting down ninja temporarily just seemed to piss them off to the point that when they showed up again, they came with backup and enough firepower to level a city block. Ranma's male form now had a Bingo Book entry and bounty in four separate Countries. Including the one she was currently in.

That had been the deciding factor on her efforts to remain in a female form, as that notoriety came with a constant threat that could spill over on her only friend in this world, Kazuno. That was something Ranma found unacceptable, and would not tolerate. It also heralded a shift in her methods, which was why she currently wore a well-made katana slung across her hips parallel to the ground, her elbows resting back on the sheathe and hilt as she walked. As long as she only used the blade and strict physical arts – taijutsu it was called here – then she was just considered a very talented free samurai.

Samurai didn't get Bingo Book entries, or hunter-ninja patrols sent specifically to collect them. Those ninja with the music note had been damn persistent at that, despite this not even being their home country. Those ninja in particular Ranma hated dealing with, as to nearly a one, their ki had felt knotted, poisoned, and twisted.

"Saotome-dono?"

Ranma pulled herself from her introspection, musing on the last three years and all she'd learned at Kazuno's quiet inquiry. "What's up?"

The former maid took a moment as they walked to gather her thoughts before speaking. "I would like to apologize for my selfishness."

Unsure of what Kazuno meant, Ranma took the lead for their ox, pulling their cart to the side of the track and out of the way of other travelers on the trade route. "Alright, now what are you talking about? You're about the least selfish person I've ever met."

Clearly discomfited, Kazuno lowered her head and refused to meet the cursed woman's eyes. "In the three years you have been in this world, you have helped me with many things. You could have just left that first night, with a clear conscience knowing you already did enough, in saving me—"

"Kazuno, you know I—"

"Please let me finish, Saotome-dono," the uncharacteristically demure woman interrupted, her voice quiet but heavy with pent up emotion. She nearly screamed in frustration as a trio of ninja fell from the trees, silencing their conversation for the moment.

—

AN: If you can't figure out Kazuno's hairstyle, google "horizon kazuno" and you'll get it under the images heading.