Throughout those two days the mountain of Bremon seemed to be resolved not to get any closer at all. But at least it was now visible, a lone, snow topped peak jutting out from the ground as if to echo one of the great teeth set into the maw of the creature that they knew lay beneath it.

Even at this distance, and through the heat haze sent up by the featureless plain they were hoping to leave at any moment, they could make out a hint of the size of the thing, it’s green slopes clearly home to a forest that dwarfed the well tended things they were used to back in Japan.

Had any of them cared to think things out, to compare what they were seeing with the knowledges their geography teachers had tried so hard to impart into them then perhaps they might have questioned how such a mountain came to be, how it was that there was this lone peak jutting so uniquely out of the scenery. But even with the monotony of travel across the waste of Elrood their minds apparently still had better things to worry about than plate tectonics or the lack of them.

On the other hand they did have plenty of enough time to worry about things like the water supply, about their dwindling supplies of cured meat and the complete lack of improvement of their youngest companion.

Time was supposed to heal all wounds, but apparently it was going to take a great deal more than that to get Akane back among them, let alone back into the wider community.

Nabiki, who of all of them was most aware of the precedents, had forced herself to stop thinking about such things. Her friends in true psychiatry might swear by electro shock therapy and Ranma might be a living advertisement for mental conditioning but any way she looked at it the prospects for her youngest sister were getting grimmer every day she failed to snap out of her fugue.

“Pity there are no healing draughts for the mind” she muttered as she turned her head once again away from where her sister lay under the cover of the wagon that Nabiki was herself driving.

“Huh?” Gos offered from the seat next to her, hearing her for the first time in a long while and even then only possibly because he happened to be turning the pages he was reading when Nabiki spoke.

Of all of them he was the only one who seemed to be coming out of this well, the complete opposite of Ranma and Akane, he had effectively been cured of a maiming by coming here. More than that he had been granted his fondest wishes in terms of those dreams of magic now made a reality.

He had lost good friends, had suffered violence and the threats of violence but Gos was still quietly on top of the world.

“You’re not coming back with us are you” Nabiki offered, the thought having been bouncing around her head for quite a while. For the rest of them more or less everything they had done since the moment they arrived had been part of a process trying to get them home, but there was simply no way Nabiki could see Gos giving up what he had here to go back to being a second rate hack in a wheelchair.

The old Gos might have stammered, might have prevaricated and tried to avoid what was basically an accusation, but that was before he had discovered true magic, before he had finally found a meaning to himself. Instead he met Nabiki’s gaze with an only slightly apologetic one of his own.

“No Nabiki,” he said, “I’m not” he offered, carefully closing his book because he knew this conversation wasn’t one that he could afford to mess up. “I’ll see you all to the gate” he said, “I owe you that much” he offered, “but after that….” He let the sentence trail off, what he did after that wouldn’t be relevant to them, their would be an entire universe between them.

“Owe us?” Nabiki offered, carefully not agreeing or disagreeing. At the end of the day she more or less knew where he was coming from, could even agree on some of the points but she needed to hear him say it anyway, she was dead sure that Ukyo wouldn’t let that one lie nearly so easily.

“It’s my fault we’re here” Gos replied, his new confidence faltering a little to reveal a more familiar touch of the Gos that Nabiki had grown up with. After all it was one thing to feel the guilt for bringing the rest of them here, it was another thing to publicly accept that and dare the consequences.

Life long vendetta’s had started for less.

“Go on” Nabiki prodded, less than particularly kindly. She in fact didn’t wholly agree with the idea that their presence was all the young mage’s fault, they had after all all been given a choice before they came, all been given a chance to back out; and there was clearly more to this trip than Gos had expected.

“Deighton couldn’t have gotten you here without my help” Gos added, cutting once more to the chase. “Even Ranma wouldn’t have agreed to help him the way you agreed to help me”

“True” Nabiki replied, still apparently reserving judgement. In truth she had taken the time to think these things through some time ago, had actually already been over the blame game more than once, just to check that her own reasonings weren’t squewed.

“Which means that none of you would have ever been here to be hurt” Gos explained, forced to fill the silence that Nabiki was leaving for him, “not you, not Ukyo, Ranma or Akane, and not” he paused for a moment, his hands tightening almost imperceptibly on the bindings of his precious book, “not Natsu-chan” he said and Nabiki was reminded once more just how much more there might have been to that story.

Akane might be broken inside but Konatsu, the best ‘friend’ that Gos ever really had, didn’t even have her prospects. All it had taken was that one presumably enchanted bolt, a hefty portion of bad luck and a string of unfavourable coincidences and Konatsu the female-impersonator-ninja had paid the ultimate price.

Surreptitiously Ukyo had gotten closer, her mare seeming to appear next to the seat that Nabiki and Gos were sharing, her face was already a thundercloud and one look at her could instantly tell any onlooker that was only the beginning.

“I loved him you know” Gos said, suddenly stealing the wind from Ukyo’s storm, “not in the way that Ryoga and..” he paused as if unwilling to say the name this time, “not like that” he said, more resolutely. “It wasn’t really an option for me back there” he said, revealing more about how crippled he had felt than he really intended.

Japan, for all her trappings of civilisation, was not a country that treated her invalids very well. Too much of their mindset still lingered in the Shinto beliefs of physical form being a result of internal worth, too many people still secretly held that to be crippled a man had to have done something to deserve such a fate. The ugly and the infirm, even in the twenty-first century, were still commonly treated not only like they had asked for their afflictions but as if their physical shortcomings were merely part of a distasteful whole.

Gos, with his history in Japanese mysticism, had clearly not been able to rid himself of those ideas any more than the society had. It was one thing to be told you were being punished for something you had no knowledge of, it was another to actually believe it yourself.

“But I would have died for him” Gos added, apparently sincerely, reminding both girls just how passionately this man could feel about things. But then how could you repay the first person to argue with that internal voice, the first one to teach you that you were worth something even in a chair.

“Pity you didn’t” offered Ukyo in a harsh whisper that they all knew she didn’t really mean, was part of that same simmering anger at the world.

Gos flinched anyway, and was about to retreat back into his book when Nabiki reached out and squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. “Be careful” was all she added, tacitly agreeing not to stand in his way if he decided to leave them at the Gate.

When it finally caem the end of the Waste came a little earlier than they had planned, that same eerily perfect border of desert-to-foliage demarking the end of the blasted plain and the renewal of the greener lands that surrounded it.

That wasn’t to say it was all going to be plain sailing from there though, the lands here weren’t exactly prime real estate; instead they were low scrub and grassy foothill, far far from ideal for either the cart or the replenishment of already dwindled supplies.

Additionally, with the renewal of living ground-growth, there came the other signs of the restoration of natural laws, including birdsong, animal sign and, perhaps most of all, including the rain. Where the small party had been steadily forging their way through the Waste’s baking heat now they suddenly found themselves subject to chilling downpour and were almost immediately drenched through.

The first touches of it had been almost welcome, a refreshing caress after the desert’s heat, an offered drink of water that hadn’t spent so many tendays heating in a barrel. But that was now hours ago and still the rain was coming down.

“Who was worrying about water supplies again?” offered Ukyo, less than kindly. Her mood, her aggressiveness had improved a little as time had gone by, the keen observer able to spot times when she had literally bitten her tongue to stop the hurtful words. But apparently the cool water trickling down her neck was doing very little to improve her mood.

Ranma’s reply was somewhat less than polite, or even close to ladylike, the rain having taken it’s rather predictable effect on his, now her physique and mood alike. His scouting job had become all the more onerous in the meantime thanks not only to the rain and mud but also to the small matter of Ryoga being completely unable to help in any real way.

Instead the man-turned-pig was now sat on the flatbed seat of their one remaining wagon, next to the somewhat less than amused Gosunki who had been, by virtue of the rain coming down, denied his fondest pastime of reading.

For a small time he had managed to make do with an enchantment that had kept the rain away but that simply hadn’t been able to last, not with the water conspiring to attack him from everywhere it could think of, from the hooves the draught animals or of passing horses, drips from trees, rebounding spray from the wagon and drips from his own head.

So now he rode in the same sodden temper that the others apparently shared.

After the conversation in the Waste not for a moment did anyone truly believe that Gos was going to go through with them, go back to his wheelchair and his crippled body, give up the magic and the ability to walk for the simple trappings of civilisation.

Here his teeth might rot out of his head, his life expectancy might be dramatically shortened by disease, misadventure and more, but at least he could go to the toilet without help, at least he could have a drink without having to worry about where he was going to be when it ran through his system. Here he was a mage and a whole man, at home he would never be either.

But as the Mountain loomed closer he was being forced to think of all the things he was giving up, the luxuries, the safeties and sureties, the few friends he did have back there and the solid friends he had here; this world had already killed Konatsu, broken had hurt almost everyone else that had accompanied him here. That had accompanied him here at his request.

He might not be showing it in quite the same way as the more physical members of the group but Gos was feeling the guilt of all of that with every passing mile, every time that people avoided mentioning Konatsu, or avoided mentioning what had brought them here, Gos felt it and knew that that feeling was never going to go away.

Even getting these people home wasn’t going to make it right, he doubted anything could ever do that now.

In the depressing gloom of the rain his thoughts were turning ever more towards depression

“Bugger it!” announced Nabiki, her voice somewhere between frustrated and determined as she hauled her horse up short. She really hadn’t been agreeing well with that animal anyway and it’s sudden need to drink from every puddle they passed wasn’t helping. Taking to a steed hadn’t in fact been her first choice anyway, it had simply been the only real choice left to them as long as they needed all their bases covered.

The sudden stop forced Gos to haul on his reins and the exclamation brought Ranma back in a shot, a look of concern on is face and his good hand hovering near the sword once more ensconced at his-her hip.

Suddenly everyone was looking back towards Nabiki, their faces a range of confusion and query, silently demanding some explanation for the outburst, if only to relieve the monotony of the rain.

“One more damn day isn’t going to make a difference” she insisted, “and this rain can’t possibly keep up” she said, sounding perhaps a little hopeful at the end.

“So?” Ukyo replied, her voice cutting even against the steady staccato of the rain on the vegetation around them.

“So we bloody well stop” Nabiki insisted, swinging from the saddle to land on the floor with a wet ‘splat’, “rig some tarps and stop slogging through the damn stuff” Nabiki said. “Here is as good a place as any” she insisted, waving a hand out at the rain shrouded scrubland they were moving through, “We make camp, get dry, get a warm meal and a damn rest!”

Ukyo opened her mouth to say something contrary but didn’t manage, the idea of warm and dry was just too appealing, even for her bitterness. So instead she just grunted and turned to look at the person they knew was going to make the final decision, Ranma.

Whether he liked it or not he was their leader in this, the most experienced traveller of them who wasn’t bound to get them lost and might actually appreciate how rough it was on people without stone hard skin. He had been the one time and time again to raise the argument that nobody else had thought of, to offer the benefits of his experience and settle things with a sensible solution. He was the only one who could gainsay Nabiki’s apparent determination, and possibly the only one she was ever going to listen to at this point.

“Okay” he, currently she, said after a bare moment’s more thought, “It’ll give me some time to scout ahead” he added, obviously less at ease now their range of vision had dropped so much.

“Squuee squee!” Ryoga added from his seat next to Gos, bouncing up and down to try and say whatever it was his piggy mouth couldn’t articulate.

“That too” Ranma offered with a nod, finding himself the new center of the odd looks, “Food” he supplied, with absolutely no explanation of how he had understood the squeal, “something other than the smoked mule” he explained and actually managed to earn a smile from Ukyo at that thought. Frankly the diet of smoked horse and near horse had been nearly as offensive to her as anything else they had endured on this sojourn, the prospect of anything else was more welcome than that first cool drink after the desert had been.

“Fish!” Ukyo cheered, instantly grasping one of the more likely ideas, with this weather a whole load of the other game would be hiding in their sets and burrows, but it would bring out the fish, were there any to come out.

“That needs a river” Nabiki offered as she plodded through the wet groundcover back towards the cart , “and the only one around here I know of is the one running down my neck” she countered, wishing again for even the cheapest and nastiest of plastic raincoats rather than the very-much-less-efficient treated canvas they were wearing.

“Where there is rain there is a river” Ukyo replied, sliding down herself and heading towards the now stationary cart, “and if anyone can find a river it’s Ranma” she added, her mood apparently lifted enough to joke, albeit at another’s expense.

“Rain we certainly have” Nabiki agreed, her mood already lightening enough not to get into an argument just from the prospect of a little warmth.

“I’ll do my best” Ranma offered, looking about herself so as to memorise the location that they were setting up in before turning her horse back around and picking an apparently random direction to scout off in.