Rather to the surprise of all of them the rain did in fact let up, a seemingly reluctant sun peeking through suddenly whiter clouds and finally dispersing the grey gloom of the morning and early after noon. Greyer clouds still loitered on the horizon but for the moment at least they seemed content to stay there.

In the expected-to-be-brief respite the girls and Gos took the time to set some things to rights, to repair the structure of their rather too hastily constructed covers and break out the gear to light a proper fire.

Once they got it warm enough they would be able to burn even the wetter wood around them but they needed to get the thing lit first and once again the folks found themselves wishing for some of the simple things that they took more or less for granted back home, simple things like matches.

In the end it was Gos who came to the rescue, summoning up some of his newfound magical ability to create the first flame which Ukyo then carefully sculpted into a proper fire. At Nabiki’s insistence Gos then used some more of his power to repeat the trick he had used for the slaver wagon and eliminate the smoke from their fire, setting it to disperse rather than column up.

They might not think there was anyone after them but they had more than enough reasons not to take risks they didn’t need to.

And if they needed any reminders then Akane amply supplied them, going into another fit of screaming when her sister tried to help her into some drier clothes. Not that Nabiki hadn’t expected such a reaction, hadn't steeled herself for it, but being prepared did little to ameliorate the effects of the wails.

As Nabiki sat down her face was as pale as it had been the day they had arrived, before the long treks that this world had necessitated. And there was little anyone else could say to help out, there simply weren’t any answers.

“It’ll work out” Ukyo said anyway, her words sounding hollow even to her ears, and made all the more so when instead of being cheered up Nabiki just solemnly shook her head, she knew what Akane’s chances were and even being optimistic for her sister didn’t involve much hope right then.

“It has to” added another voice, the re-humanised Ryoga who had just reappeared, clothed again, from around the shelter. He might be a virtuoso of despair himself but there remained still that little touch of the naive youth about him, the one that genuinely believed that everything could work out I the end if they just tried hard enough.

For a moment it was just a question of which one of the two girls was going to bite his ehad off first, Gos was already flinching in anticipation. But then they were interrupted by another, more welcome, observation.

“Ranma’s back” Ryoga said, “nearly” he added, trying to explain what he meant, while he reached for the bundle of clothes that he had been forced to discar when the water came down, “I felt him coming” he offered, simultaneously revealing that he had been practicing some of Ranma’s tricks, and revealing perhaps a little of what the boys had chatted about more or less very night as they crossed the Waste.

“Then” Nabiki argued, watching the Lost boy through narrowing eyes, “would you care to tell me why you’re getting your fighting gear together?” she asked, having ot missed what exactly it was that Ryoga had come into the lean to for.

Whatever Ryoga replied was lost on the wind, partly because he only mumbled it rather than said it and partly because Ukyo was interrupting with a low growl. Apparently she already had her own opinions about why exactly Ryoga might be doing what he was doing, and already had her response worked out.

“It’s nothing like that!” Ryoga argued quickly, a grim premonition of spatula inflicted pain flashing through his mind, “I just felt his mood!” the lost boy offered, raising a few eyebrows at that idea.

“He was projecting” Ryoga allowed and was more than a little put out to see the girls relax a good deal more once he admitted that he hadn’t actually suddenly developed empathic skills from nowhere.

In it’s own way that would have been nearly as disconcerting as anything else that had happened here. One thing any of the crew would have put money on happily, even at Nabiki’s odds, would have been Ryoga’s ability to miss or misread the emotions of others completely, and that especially went for anything to do with Ranma’s motivations.

“You were planning on sharing this when?” Nabiki asked, her voice far from soft as she began to work herself into readiness too. Deliberately she was letting Ryoga feel a taste of her anger, while she could understand his desire not to worry the girls, to protect them even from the thought of possible trouble, she really couldn’t have him taking those decisions on his own. His head simply wasn’t level enough.

“Um” Ryoga supplied, looking about in increasing desperation as the implications of what he had done started to filter in. Even as he did that feeling of impending spatuala-isation was returning.

“Jackass!” Ukyo began to growl, reaching for said implement. It had taken her quite a considerable portion of their trip through the waste to modify the weapon she had bought into the ‘correct’ shape for her art and right now she wasn’t able to think of a single damn reason why ‘pork-butt’ shouldn’t be the first one to ‘test’ it’s efficacy.

Ryoga was quickly backing off, his every expression revealing the increasing desperation he was feeling as he failed to come up with any form of excuse that wasn’t about to make things worse.

Nabiki let him stew for a while before slowly, resolutely imposing a hand between him and the avenging angel-come-chef. “Defence first,” she insisted, her tone brooking no refusal even if it hadn’t been the most sensible course, “punishment later” she added, just to underline the fact this wasn’t over yet and Ryoga was far from off the hook.

A few minutes after that she had everyone organised; Gos hidden and ready with one of his more destructive techniques, Ukyo with a loaded crossbow and her sharpened spatula as backup, Ryoga already gripping his bandana substitutes and her own hands filled with the second crossbow, it’s dark fletched bolt already set into the groove, it’s darker arms pulled back under that lethal tension.

All they needed now was an enemy.

Instead what they got was Ranma and her horse. The pair of them emerged from behind the bushes some distance away and continued their seemingly slow advance, without any sign of particular haste or alarm.

For the second time in that matter of minutes the crew’s eyes turned to Ryoga and a growl returned to Ukyo’s lips, the idea of all this concern for nothing evidently also a beating offence, despite Ryoga’s obvious earlier reluctance to reveal anything. It wasn’t exactly fair but then the concept of an unfair universe wasn’t exactly new to Ryoga either.

Fortunately for the oft-lost-boy Ranma’s arrival forestalled any of the nastiness that might have otherwise come his way, not least of which because as the Pig-tailed martial artist did in fact arrive his expression was clearly one of deep focus and perhaps even concern rather than anything else.

“Ranma?” Nabiki asked, her hand still held up to still Ukyo’s vengeance.

“Give me a moment” Ranma replied, hopping down from his saddle in another of those innate displays of grace that he thought so very little about. “I need to work out how to say this” he replied, demonstrating once more a few of the changes that had come over him since the heady days of Nerima.

It wasn’t al that long ago that the idea of thinking before he opened his mouth would have been an almost alien concept to him, and indeed the fact he didn’t think before talking had seemed an almost signature part of him

Needless to say Gos, Ukyo and Ryoga who had perhaps seen a good deal less of this new side of him than Nabiki had, were more than a little surprised to hear such words from their friend, and for the moment forgot the violence that had been impending in favour of listening to try and work out what exactly was so important that even Ranma realised he had to present it carefully.

“Well?” demanded Ukyo, her patience already thinner than normal.

“I found some folk up ahead” Ranma offered, walking over to the waterskin that hung from the wagon, more to buy some more thinking time than anything else.

As he took the drink Ranma was still trying to work out how to present what he had observed, and perhaps more than that still trying to work out what he felt about what he had seen.

In the end he came to the same conclusion he had been coming to a great deal recently, he couldn’t work it out alone so he’d talk it through with someone he trusted.

“There are some people up ahead,” he supplied, looking directly at Nabiki as he began to lay out what was bothering him. “They are slavers” he explained, his tone as even as he could keep it, “with a couple of wagons of people” he said, explaining how he had first guessed their identity. “They aren’t in a good way” he supplied, his tone changing just a touch to imply how much of a euphemism that was.

Already Ukyo’s knuckles were white on her weapon, her opinion of their next actions plainer than if she had just shouted it at the top of her voice. As far as she was concerned those simple facts should have been enough, and their response wasn’t a cause for debate, slavers were slavers and they had forfeited their right to breathe when they had taken up their ‘profession.’

But Nabiki wasn’t anywhere near satisfied yet, there were still some big holes in this that didn’t make much sense, like what these people were doing here. There was a chance that they too were on the exiles’ trail, seeking the same reward that Ohlmin had bragged of, but in that case why were they burdening themselves with the other people; and if they weren’t after the other-worldly fugitives then what were they doing out here, the area around Bremon wasn’t exactly densely populated or even well roaded.

“They had been raiding into a place called Theranjani” Ranma offered.

“Therajani” Gos corrected, unconsciously demonstrating a little more of the confidence that this Side had granted him, back home there was no way he would have corrected Ranma, and certainly not without worrying about what would happen if he did. “It’s a nation state East of here” he explained, “run by an Elven aristocracy” he supplied, without the defensive smugness that might once have accompanied such a statement of superior knowledge.

Ranma shrugged offhandedly to accept the correction and continued, unaware of how the relationships around him were being redefined, “they were chased this way by some troops” he added, “who they think they have lost” he said as Nabiki’s slight nod prompted for more information on that part.

“Numbers?” Nabiki asked, her gaze still apparently focused on Ranma’s but quietly taking in the others around her too. From the tension in the chef’s frame it was easy to see that leaving these people alone wasn’t going to be a popular decision, but the chef was handle-able, it was Ryoga she was more worried about, the quiet coming from him could only be the quiet before a storm.

“Eleven definite” Ranma asserted, “but there might be more inside one of the wagons” he supplied, “It was shielded” he said, nodding slightly towards Gos to indicate that he suspected it was a Mage’s wagon. “No great skill” he continued, not needing to say how his professional’s eye had ascertained that, “standard swordsmen types.”

“Armed?” Nabiki asked, not missing that Ranma’s definition of ‘standard swordsmen’ might have included Kuno Tatewaki and more than a few other very good combatants.

“Every one of them” Ranma agreed, crouching down to start drawing a map on the ground, “crossbows here and here” he supplied, pointing to where he had quickly set up some fallen wood as model wagons and indicating that the crossbowmen were hanging out on top of the same.

At that point Nabiki had to admit that the decision was made, she had asked the questions and now they were moving on to the planning stage, it was no longer about whether they would take the slavers on but how. Silently she thought back to see where the choices had been changed but it wasn’t easy, which led her to wonder whether or not she would really have wanted them any other way than they were now.

Intellectually she prided herself on her ability to separate matters of import from her emotions, to make decisions based on cold, hard necessities rather than emotive response but she wasn’t so much of a fool to think that she never broke that rule and deep down it wasn’t hard to find the anger at their own experience with this type of people still bubbling.

Anger was not a good motive to kill for, which took her to the next problem, this wasn’t the same as the other times they had been forced to fight, they weren’t reacting to being attacked or doing this for personal protection, what her friends were now planning was the deliberate and wilful attack of other people with the explicit intent of taking their lives.

It wasn’t exactly something that Nabiki had ever expected to see Ranma doing.

“No” Ranma was arguing, deflecting a part of the plan that someone else had suggested, “we keep Gos in reserve” he said, his voice insistent as ever she had heard it, “we can’t afford to be without magical protections” he explained, revealing again just how good at these things he was. For all the alienness of their situation, all the strange new physical rules that they were up against Ranma had simply adapted, integrated those new parameters into his tactics and found a way to counter them.

The question was whether he was adapting to the taking of lives just as easily. If he was then Nabiki wasn’t very sure she wanted to be around him anymore, just the idea of some dark-Ranma capable of ending lives with as little remorse as he showed at a dinner table was a frankly terrifying thought.

“We don’t kill” Ranma suddenly said, as if he had read Nabiki’s mind, “unless we have to” he corrected, pretending not to understand the growl of disapproval that was coming from Ukyo’s throat. “Just because they are wrong does not mean we have to be” he said, his tone betraying a good deal of personal thinking time on that subject.

It was a big relief to more than one of them, Ryoga too had been more than a little worried about that aspect of things, for all his threats and all his cries against the world enough of the honour code he and Ranma shared still lingered in him to make the idea of deliberately seeking the death of people weaker than him more than distasteful.

“They won’t like being captured” Nabiki interjected, finally crouching down to join the others, “and won’t go easily” she added, her eyes narrowing as she deliberately reminded them of what that decision would mean. Dead men did not get back up and stab people in the back when they weren’t watching.

“It doesn’t matter” Ranma argued, the slight shake of his head spreading more droplets of water, “we’re good enough” he insisted, his smile breaking through again along with that now quieter confidence.

“So” he continued, nodding to the others to focus them back on the plan as he was explaining it, “Ukyo will….”