The car journey was later remembered mostly for being cold, they had tried closing the windows but the overpowering acidic stench of the blackened form in the boot had quickly put paid to that idea. Even with every window wound down and the fans on there seemed to be no real escape from the nauseating reminder of the fate of their friend.

Stealing a car to get them where they needed to be had been a simple decision, they didn’t have enough roof hoppers to carry all the people they needed to carry and they certainly couldn’t afford the attention while accompanied by the burnt remains of one youth and the catatonic form of another.

There had however been a little debate over who was going to drive, the first suggestion having been Ranma until Nabiki reminded them that the only way he knew how to drive was ‘Martial arts combat driving’ and they really didn’t need that kind of heat either.

So instead it was Ukyo at the wheel, with Gos beside her giving directions and the others in the back wearing very different expressions as they contemplated what they were about to do.

For Ranma that meant nursing a compressed rage that was being carefully honed to the point he would need for when he confronted the man directly responsible for the deaths of two of his friends and the very real loss of the woman who he had once upon a time loved with all his heart.

Nabiki on the other hand was already planning way beyond that, taking the beating of the man who tricked them as read and already working the angles for what that would mean for the rest of them. There were some very harsh decisions to be made and precious little time to make them in.

“We’re going back?” Ukyo asked, finally voicing the concern that had been burning in her mind since the issue had been raised. Here, on this side, the terrible things that had happened to her seemed much further away, it almost seemed like they had happened to someone else. Riding on that unexpected high she was less than keen to return to face her demons through any gates.

“I am” Ranma supplied, his voice a hard steel with only the traces of anger there to separate it from the one they knew from his time using the Soul of Ice technique. “It’s Ryoga’s only hope” he supplied grimly.

“And Akane’s” Nabiki added, finally admitting that this side’s medicine was at best a slim hope for a woman in Akane’s current state. It would undoubtedly involve some fairly extreme methods, electro shock being one of the milder ones, and even then complete catatonia was rarely cured. There wouldn’t be much of their Akane left afterwards.

Gos didn’t add that it was his too, the elation of being still alive having rapidly faded as he had once more been confronted with the realities of living in his crippled frame. Steadily the memories of his life here were coming back to him and he knew that there was no way he could face that again, especially after once more tasting the freedoms of an able body.

In the driver’s seat Ukyo swallowed and nodded. There really was no arguing with that sort of logic and no way she could back out now. Ranma might be deliberately not speaking for anyone else, deliberately not forcing anyone to go along with his personal determination, but he didn’t need to. Each and every one of them, by family or lifestyle, was part of the same tradition, and not one of them would desert their fellows now.

No matter how much it would cost them.

“Maybe Konatsu too?” Ukyo added, her voice small and nearly lost into the whipping of the wind as they sped through the streets of the city they had once called home. After even this small time away though everything did look different, the neon lights and tightly packed housing somehow intensely oppressive after the wide open spaces they had ranged across; the sheer number of people hurrying about their night-time activities somehow alien to the people that had found Pathadaway large despite the fact it would have disappeared into just one of Tokyo’s wards.

The smells, car-fumes and habitual pollutions that had become part of everyday life in this more civilised reality were suddenly seeming very alien indeed, much like the noises.

Of course it wasn’t as simple as that and Nabiki at least recognised that a good bit of the disjointed feeling they were getting was likely to be delayed shock, a similar effect to what was referred to as post-traumatic stress. One of the key indicators of it was a feeling of being separated from and incompatible with the life you had known before the events.

She was seeing it in the way her friends were looking about at the world beyond the windows and in the way she herself had been hearing the sounds of sirens in the distance as if for the first time. She knew that it wasn’t something with a quick cure and wasn’t something she was even nearly qualified to deal with. She just had to hope…

“Sirens” she announced, suddenly concerned. “No” she argued, even as the others were tensing up, “they are going away from us” she said. Somewhere in her mind she had been so used to the idea that people were out to get them she had forgotten that this world had more important things to wonder about than one stolen car and a few oddly dressed people.

Of course if they were stopped…

Nabiki very deliberately put that thought aside, they simply could not be stopped, could not afford to be prevented from what they had planned. Even if they weren’t charged with having a hand in Ryoga’s death or the state of her sister they would still have to face the fact that Akane would be taken off to the funny farm and Ryoga would be buried, beyond even their reach; perhaps worst of all the one man they knew had a solution to this would hear they were back and would have time to prepare.

Right now they were hoping that the paucity of magic on this side meant that Dr Deighton would have no idea they were back, and wouldn’t be prepared for the arrival of a few very pissed of former pawns in his plans.

What happened then would be between him and the blunt force of a martial artist’s fists, glancing down at Ranma’s Nabiki had little doubt that Deighton wouldn’t enjoy the discussion

They swept through another area and suddenly the buildings of the University were looming about them. Gos’s quiet words, spoken against the noise of the wind, were carefully guiding them to their destination, a house he knew well indeed.

He too had a hard expression on his face, deliberately fighting off all other thoughts as he fought his mind around to what he would need to do when they confronted his former master of all things mystical. He was utterly determined not to let him pull another one over on them.

If Akane noticed any of this then there was no sign of it, her wide open eyes fixed on the back of the seat in front of her, not even really reacting to the lights as they zipped past the window.

“Here” Gos supplied, and Ukyo brought them to a halt on the road between some faculty housing and one of the university buildings, “he’s in six F” he supplied, nodding towards one of the shadowed edifices dimly illuminated by the amber streetlights.

Together, without any apparent signal, they all got out of the stolen car and stepped into the lamp-lit street, Ranma taking a turn to lit Gos. They looked from the building and back to each other, their deeply tanned faces made somehow spectral by the stillness on the night. Dimly in the distance they could hear those sounds of the living city around them but here things were ominously calm.

They all knew it, that this was a decision point that fundamentally altered the lives they would lead from here on out, there was no undoing what they planned, no ignoring of the consequences, this was the point of no return, either they broke into this man’s house and compelled him to do their will or they didn’t.

There would be no time for second thoughts later.

“Let’s do this” Ukyo said, her voice solid and calm, determined. Of all of them he had perhaps the least to directly gain by this. Instead she would be walking away from all the trappings and luxuries she had worked so hard to earn, would be returning to a land that had caused her only hurt.

But there wasn’t a single quaver in her voice, not a hint of doubt. For above all else Ukyo was he martial artist she had been raised to be. Martial artists didn’t let others take the responsibility for their actions, martial artists didn’t leave debts unpaid and martial artists did not desert the people who had stood by them.

Ranma opened his mouth to ask, to check that this was really what the chef wanted, but he was stopped by a stilling hand from Nabiki, standing once more by his side, “She’s sure” Nabiki promised, and that was that.

Less than ten minutes later Ukyo was headed back down the stairs to fetch the charred form of the once lost boy and Nabiki was running her hand under the cold tap. Deighton, literally for his sins, was tied into a chair in his small kitchen, his left eye swelling fast, a vigilant Ranma glaring cold death at him while pretending not to be concerned about Nabiki.

The exiled mage had surprised them by not being in bed, as the front rank martial artists had kicked into his sleeping area he had actually stepped from the small bathroom, his face registering nearly as much shock as Nabiki’s.

Of course while his reaction had been to draw a breath to shout Nabiki’s had been to lash out with a hard right cross. Unfortunately for her she had been so surprised as to have forgotten most of the lessons that Ranma had taught her, and when her fist connected with Deighton’s orbital ridge it wasn’t nearly clenched enough.

It had made a very unpleasant crunch noise and the middle Tendo daughter had offered some fairly unladylike words to follow. But by that point Deighton was sparko on the floor, his consciousness having fallen away at the same time his legs had buckled.

“Found it!” exclaimed Gos, lost into the study room of the flat and searching for something that he claimed they would need.

“Good” Ranma offered, pulling up a chair and spinning it around to face it’s back towards the bound mage before smoothly straddling it and bringing his eyes to Deighton’s level.

“Your turn” the pig tailed warrior offered, not missing the confusion on the professor’s face, or the twinge of fear as he took in the hard expression on Ranma’s cyclopean face.

“My turn?” Deighton asked, his voice rasping dry thanks to the fear he was still trying to get under control and at the same time mesh these hard faced killers with the kids he had seen sent through the veil to the other side.

A few hours beforehand he had felt a ripple in that veil, what he now knew must have been these people coming through, but at the time he had been sure that it had been neither long enough nor strong enough to have been the gate he was expecting. So he had promised himself that he would investigate it first thing in the morning.

He was regretting that decision a very great deal right now.

When he had been in possession of all his powers, back on the side he was born to, or even if he had been given enough time to prepare himself on this side, he would have been feeling a lot more confident. But not only had these hard faced invaders taken him by surprise, not only were they dressed in clothes that bore some very worrisome dark stains but they also seemed to be taking this very personally indeed.

He had of course done some research since he had tricked Gosunki into taking his little crew across to the other side, unknowingly bound to do what Deighton himself could not and open the way for the once great mage’s return, and so he had quickly recognised the people now holding him hostage, well by name anyway.

Because somehow the faces, scarred and soot darkened, hard and implacable, didn’t quite fit the supposedly near innocent young people he had read about.

On the other hand Deighton was not so much of a fool as to doubt the identities or indeed the capabilities of the people in front of him, especially of the dark haired man who’s face bore this new patch.

He had read about, checked and double-checked into this boy’s history in particular, had even congratulated himself on securing such a capable agent, one whose skills would have stood him in such good stead on the other side. But now he was wishing he could take those thoughts back to, and block out the images of this man crushing stones with his bare hands.

“Your turn” Ranma agreed, flexing his hands together as he looked into the Mage’s eyes, “because right now we’re going to ask you a few questions” he explained, “and we better damn well like your answers ” he told him, “or else” he finished and let Deighton’s imagination do the rest.

Ranma and the others had already guessed that this man was not native to this side, his command of things mystical and the hints Gos had collected over the years of association proving circumstantial enough to amount to a reasonable argument. So they had also already guessed that he would be used to a less cultured way of thinking, and would have little trouble believing that Ranma and the others would systematically break him into very small pieces indeed should he try anything tricky.

But Nabiki had also pointed out that the man’s imagination was going to be a lot more colourful than their language was likely to be, that for a man so used to being in control, the very lack of information would be a more effective weapon than most.

Of course she had also hinted that if push came to shove she could get pretty inventive herself, and quietly Ranma had sworn that he wouldn’t make her do that if he could help it.

So he was laying it on thick and as he let Deighton contemplate what he had been told Ranma reached over and slowly drew the bright Katana he had rescued from deep within the dragon’s tunnels, it’s wave patterned blade a cold promise of some very permanent violence to come.

Deighton hadn’t needed the extra encouragement, hadn’t needed the hard sell, his mind was still trying to deal with the image his own mind had conjured up of this hard faced young man and a certain heart ripping technique he apparently knew and trying to work out exactly where this had gone wrong.
“Uh!” Ranma commanded, cutting off Deighton’s words before they could even be spoken, “We ask, you answer” he supplied, his tone making it a statement of fact, and hinting once more at nebulous ‘bad things’ should the exiled mage even think of transgressing.

Deighton nodded, swallowing hard as his vision swam once more, the fuzziness around the edges of what he was seeing more to do with just how hard the girl had hit him than the gloom cast by the one lamp that Ranma had chosen to put on and point at him.

“First” Ranma said, “you knew exactly what Gos had planned and set him up.” It wasn’t really a question, just a statement that Ranma was daring him to disagree with. Deighton wasn’t that daft.

“And therefore everything that happened after that is your fault” Ranma continued, taking a leaf out of Ryoga’s book and lumping cause and effects together whether they fit properly or not, “everything” he added, in a growl that took what remaining colour there was from Deighton’s face.

“I had no way of knowing that would…” he began, only to be cut off by a glare from the returned Nabiki, now standing at Ranma’s shoulder and looking for all the world like she would dearly love to rip his head right off his shoulders. Little did he know that the look was backed up by a realisation that somehow this man did know something of what had happened to them on the other side, that somehow he wasn’t completely ignorant of the prices they had paid for his ambitions.

Ranma took his cue and loudly clenched the fist of his damaged hand, ignoring the flash of pain at the same time as he noted the look of terror that raced across the now once again silent professor. “Everything that..” he prompted, his voice a growl that didn’t so much promise pain as primal violence.

“Everything that happened after that is my fault” the man agreed, his mouth drier than a desert dune and his bowels threatening to any moment reveal just how scared he was.

The flows between the two sides of the veil were never constant but they had allowed him more than an occasional glimpse of their progress on the other side. One such moment of clarity had let him see the night that Ohlmin had caught up with them before the wastes and even if he hadn’t seen the detail of the aftermath he knew enough of the way such people operated to be able to guess a lot of it.

He had been truly relieved to see them alive the next time the veil cleared enough for sight, but hadn’t for a moment tried to convince himself that the group had escaped unscathed.

Ranma let the man sweat for a moment, waiting for some sort of cue from Nabiki whose hand was now resting on his shoulder as she contemplated revising their plan, such as it was, maybe getting some payback for the things they had suffered.

With an effort of will she fought those thoughts down, her hand unconsciously clenching hard onto Ranma’s shoulder as she forced herself to be practical. They needed this man and they needed his skills as much as they needed his talent for magic, breaking him just wasn’t an option.

Fortunately they were bought some more time as Ukyo arrived back, the wrapped body of their valiant friend in her arms.

Seeing that, and putting it together with what he had just admitted to Deighton nearly fainted dead away, suddenly very afraid indeed that they were here to kill him, that all they were here for was revenge. “Oh hell” he whispered, his eyes falling closed as ice ran down his spine and he imagined he could feel eternity stretching out to receive him.

“Fortunately for you” Nabiki offered, calling his attention back to the people in front of him, and letting a glimmer of hope shine into the suddenly very bleak place that had once been his life, “we’ve decided to give you a chance to make some of it up to us” she told him and the glimmer became a beam.

“Anything” he promised, making no attempt to hide either his desperation or his fear.

“Right then” Nabiki told him, “here’s what we expect” she began and proceeded to lay out the shape of their final hours on this side of that dividing veil.