The waste itself was not hard going, the smooth packed and parched earth of the great blast plain about as easy on the trekers as it ever could be. However the ground was never going to be the problem, rather it was the air.

At the height of the day the heat was literally stifling, every breath made to feel like it was forced through against that relentless heat and a painful reminder of how closely they were rationing their water.

The else-world travellers had quickly taken to avoiding the head of the noon hours under strung tarpaulins and the shade of the wagons but even that was precious little against the rebounding ripples of warmth.

“Two more days,” Nabiki repeated for what had to be the hundredth time, her countdown had become her little mantra against the heat, her way of marking the passing of time as they forged their way across the heat of the man made desert. The figures of course were little more than a best guess, based on estimated travel and her personal faith in Ranma’s ability to keep them on the straight path.

Of course that faith wasn’t exactly optional, even a slight deviation as they had crossed the featureless landscape could yet see them adding days to their trek, days that their water wouldn’t hold out for.

Already they had had to take the more practical decision to slaughter some fo the animals they had brought with them and ‘recycle’ one of the wagons they had been drawing into firewood. They hadn’t needed it to draw their water anymore, having drunk the largest part of it, and sheer practicality said that to water animals they didn’t need wasn’t conducive to longer life.

Everyone had been waiting for Akane to protest, to demand and decry until the animals were instead released for a slow death out of sight. But she hadn’t and the silence had been somehow worse than the tantrum they had expected, another reminder of the tragedy that had befallen the party.

Nobody was feeling that worse than Ryoga, for whom the enforced distance between himself and the woman he had pursued for so very long was an almost physically painful thing. He dared not so much as let her see him lest the screaming start again and her silence was little better.

For as long as the two of them had been together he had been used to her temper and her tantrums, they had been the one constant of his otherwise directionless existence. Without them he felt literally lost again.

So he had filled his days with other things, with practice and with useful little bits of campcraft. While they had moved he had been desperately seeking some new mental technique to follow the passage of terrain, so far it hadn’t worked but he had to believe he was closer for the effort.

If nothing else it kept his mind occupied and not thinking about the silence that seemed to have wrapped around them like a shroud. When they travelled such silence seemed natural enough, somehow fitting considering the terrain they moved through, but when they stopped they had little choice but to return to the here and now.

All of which meant the midday stops were the hardest times for him, times when he couldn’t avoid looking at the wagon that drew Akane along, time when he had to talk to the others and pretend that he wasn’t noticing the way they avoided certain subjects, or the painful pauses when the conversation strayed too close.

He was not expecting today to be any different and, as the girls almost automaton-like began stringing the tarps, he busied himself helping the animals to get comfortable too. Ukyo had once quipped that he should be better able than most to get on with the mules, something about similar mentalities but they all knew now that the only assistance they really needed was the exhaustion that was folding around the beasts of burden as surely as the silence around their owners.

“We could give them an extra ration of water?” Ryoga suggested as Ranma moved to join him in releasing the beasts from their traces and saddles. The short rations didn’t only mean thirst for that animals, it meant hunger too, it took a great deal of water for them to digest their fodder so the creatures were operating on the minimum of that too.

“We could” Ranma agreed but his tone said there was a counter argument coming, not turning to meet Ryoga’s eyes. That in itself was pretty surreal for Ryoga, Ranma avoiding an argument, being polite. “But we’d be banking on finding water soon the other side” he explained, making it a choice of sorts.

Basically what it came down to was that the animals would recover fast enough if they found a decent supply of water around Bremon, but they themselves wouldn’t make it if they used up all their water before they found a fresh supply.

Once again hard practicalities were being forced ahead of softer principles. Which in itself was a new thing for a good few of the group for whom softer living and civilised morality had come as a birthright.

That it was happening now was perhaps just another example of just how vulnerable some of them were feeling in this dark and uncivilised land.

“Never mind then” Ryoga replied, taking the practical path and resigning to starving the poor animals some more.

For a short while that same silence returned, broken only by the subdued noises of the folks as they went about the now routine process of setting noonday camp. Then suddenly, like a bolt from the blue sky above, it was broken.

“No!” Ranma insisted, his voice quiet but iron hard, hard enough that it carried even to where the girls were setting their pegs in. Suddenly everyone was looking at him, tense as hell for an explosion of some sort.

“No!” he repeated, setting his tool down and heading for the water butts, his voice louder now and just as hard. “It does matter!” he insisted “We should mind!” he asserted, collecting a feed sacking bucket and dipping it, “some things are right and some things are wrong” he asserted, finishing the preparations and giving the first animal that precious, long sought after drink.

“Those who can make a difference should, practicality be damned” he said, “martial artist or not” he finished, reaching for the next bag. Only to be interrupted as Ryoga reached out and took the bag from him.

“They should” the fanged man agreed with an adamant nod.

“And what about the costs?” Asked another voice, “who pays for these principles” Gosunki asked, his tone steady and even, interrogative rather than angry. Nobody there needed reminded what the so called principles and honour or the wrecking crew had cost him on the other side. Here he might be walking among them, he’d never manage that at home.

Beside him Nabiki stood too, her expression very focused indeed on this sudden turn in the ‘conversation.’ She too had been part of that dynamic, had seen the damage that ‘honour’ pacts had caused. She didn’t need reminding how trapped Ranma had been, she had used his honour for that enough times herself. Honour had brought all of them there, and bound them together right till the end. Without heart held principles Nerima couldn’t have happened, it couldn’t have been the relatively innocent game it had been for so much of it’s time.

But they were now a long way from Nerima, in every sense of the word.

“We all do” Ranma replied, turning to meet her eyes for what was about the first time since the ‘incident’ “but the world is a better place for it” he added, his voice sure and relentless.

“Easy for you to say” Ukyo retorted, standing up to join Nabiki looking at the men. This wasn’t about animals anymore, if it ever really had been. It was about something a great deal more important.

“Easy isn’t the point” Ranma replied, his tone not raising to match hers, he wasn’t about to get into that argument. But he did less than consciously reach up and scratch at the bandage now covering one side of his face, and did use a badly damaged hand to do it.

Those who knew about such things would know just how much pain those injuries must still be giving him, every day. But those around him had honestly more or less stopped thinking about it. It was all too easy to do when Ranma himself made no mention of the pain or the loss.

“The easy road only goes downhill” Ryoga said, suddenly breaking in himself. That had taken a bit of doing too, to side with Ranma, to stay calm himself and not rise to this argument as his every conditioning had wanted to do.

Ranma, every bit as surprised as Ukyo at the support, looked over to his friend and nodded before looking back to the girls where they stood. “Some things are important enough that you worry about the consequences afterwards” he avowed.

“Rubbish” Nabiki offered, without venom, “you always worry about the consequences” she insisted, but at the same time she was closing the gap and reaching for a feedbag herself. “You just don’t have to let them stop you” she said, filling the bag for another animal.

All her life she had been very good at weighing things, at profit-cost analysis, benefits against risks. She had supported her family on it and put herself through college on it. But deep down she was also her father’s daughter, and her principles were one thing she had never sold.

Squeezed a little, bent from time to time, but never sold.

“A martial artist protects those weaker than himself” Ukyo quoted, her eyes narrowing. Inside she could feel that same bitterness welling up again, looking for it’s target and she tried to fight it once more but the words came out anyway, “what about Olhmin?” she asked, the words stopping everything like the crack of a whip.

“Mousse and Shampoo” she added, her eyes glaring right at Ranma as she named some of the lives he had taken. “Martial artists don’t kill” she said, twisting the metaphorical knife. If there was one thing Ranma had never been it was eloquent, from the moment they had met him he had been almost completely unable to express anything deeper than they could see. And this time the platitudes his father had instilled weren’t going to cut it.

The rest looked back in shocked silence, stunned that she would say those words to him of all folks. Only Ranma’s face didn’t change, only his expression remained even. After all this was old news to him.

“Sometimes” he offered, quietly, “our own principles are less important than bigger ones,” he said, “Sometimes promises we make to ourselves are more wrong than promises we should have made to others.”

“Olhmin deserved to die” Ryoga agreed, having similarly struggled with this same problem, “not just for what he had done” he added, “but to stop him from doing it again”

“And again” Nabiki agreed, her own opinion on Olhmin’s end more than apparent from the hard edged tone in her voice. Ranma held up a hand to stop them, gathering himself again.

He had always known he would be called to account sooner ort later, he just hadn’t expected it from Ukyo, a girl whose early life’s bread and water had been revenge “Every time” he said, “we take a life” he asserted, “we are lessened.” the words were clearly not all his own, had clearly been read somewhere, but thy were also coming from his heart, “even if the taking is justified” he added.

”But far better that way” he said, “than we stand aside and let another evil triumph or become an evil ourselves”

“Personal isn’t always the same as important” he finished, his words crystal clear in the still air.

And Ukyo couldn’t argue, nor could anyone else.

Instead the Chef and the others slowly nodded and went back to doing what they knew was right, feeding the animals whose lives depended on them, and leaving their own worry for another time.

“You’ve changed a lot Ranchan” Ukyo whispered as she found herself working next to the pig-tailed martial artist. He nodded a sad reply through pursed lips, the prices of those changes weren’t exactly ones he would have chosen to pay.

The silence came back afterwards, but somehow it wasn’t as oppressive, something had changed and even the heat didn’t seem quite so awful.

Nabiki knew what it was, could see it quietly sneaking into the every motion of her fellow travellers, it was the re-dawning of hope, of a belief in a brighter world where right and wrong mattered and where the being the good guys was important.

She just hoped they wouldn’t live to regret it.