Forcibly United

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Chapter 10

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Revy poked her head up from the lower deck, shooting a glare at the two boys standing uselessly behind Dutch.

"Hey, sissy boy! You and your friend with the ballerina shoes can help me move some fucking weapons up to the gunnery hole, alright?" Revy growled, prompting both boys to spin.

"Don't call me a sissy, tomboy!" Ranma protested, his foot shooting out to stop the box of grenade launcher rounds from colliding with his shin. He glanced down at them. "So what else do you need?"

"Get your ass down here and I'll show you!" Revy said, dipping back down and moving to the store room. As the pigtailed brat dropped down, Revy tossed him a loaded RPG, following it up with a brace of three more.

"Holy crap, what the hell? These things could go off and blow us all to hell!" Ranma yelled, gripping the weapon and ammo tightly and glaring at the gunner. She grinned.

"What, is the big bad martial artist afraid of a little firepower?" Revy mused, waiting for him to pass the items up to his friend with Dutch before throwing him a Armalite AR50 sniper rifle. He growled, catching the rubber-banded reload clips for the thing one handed.

"No, the big bad martial artist knows he won't get paid if we blow up the crap we're transporting!" The pigtailed boy snorted. He caught her M79 Grenade Launcher one handed, raising an eyebrow. "How many damned weapons do you need, tomboy?"

"I like some variety," Revy said casually, then pulled her pistol from it's sling and fired at the boy three times, forcing him to frantically dodge. "And I fucking told you before, don't call me tomboy!"

"Holy crap!" Ranma yelped once more, eyeing the dents in the ladder well. "What if I couldn't get out of the way of those things in time?"

"Well, you would have just deflected them, right?" Revy chuckled, moving to the ladder and climbing.

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Benny's mouth went dry as he checked the radar and radio frequencies. Not good. Not good at all. The boats were a problem already. They were modified transports from World War II, heavily armored beasts retrofitted with powerful engines. Some smugglers chose to use them based on their ability to shrug off anything but an RPG.

The fact that they weren't the main issue was bad enough. Worse yet was the air support. A small part of Benny noted that their client would have been very familiar with the model.

The enemy air support was a Mil-produced Mi-24D. More commonly known as the Hind-D, workhorse of the Russian military. With a max speed of over three hundred kilometers an hour, a range of four hundred and fifty kilometers, and a wide variety of nasty weapons to help support the eight troops it could carry.

"Dutch, we've got a problem," Benny said, tapping his earpiece.

"Oh yeah? A bigger problem than the modified transports we've got slowly crawling up on our ass?" Dutch wondered calmly.

"Yeah Dutch. Much bigger. I'm tracking radio frequencies to a bird in the sky. The transponder says it's a Hind-D," Benny said grimly. He tapped some keys, bringing up the specs. "According to what I've got here, the most likely variant they've got is a Mi-24D. The exterior pylons are probably equipped with missiles which will blow us out the water."

"Not to mention the gunpod those things carry," Dutch sighed. Benny felt the tone of the boat's engine change slightly, the weight shifting as his employer changed routes. "Fuck."

"Yeah. Better get Rock ready to support Revy with a few flare guns, Dutch. She's going to be busy keeping that thing distracted. It's maybe twenty minutes out. Let's hope those two boys can keep up their end of this job," Benny finally muttered.

"I don't think Balalaika knew the job would be this dangerous," the black man noted. Benny could feel the grin through the radio link. "Well, I guess it's time to see if they sink or swim."

"If they sink at their first job, our boat sinks, Dutch," the blond American noted, turning back to his equipment.

"Get on the line with Balalaika. See if you can find out something on these guys. Whatever the cargo we're transporting is, these guys want it very, very badly," the ex-soldier noted.

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Ranma was staring at the approaching boats, still just a speck on the horizon, when he heard the loud-mouthed tomboy in the gunnery well groan as she slapped home a clip in her rifle.

"Well, that's just fucking great," the woman hissed. She glanced over at the two boys as they watched the slowly coming horde. "Hey, dipshits! Grab a weapon and get ready! We got a small army coming down on us, and you two aren't paid to look pretty!"

"We're already armed," Ryouga said simply, pulling the bandanas from his head. He began to twirl one idly on the tip of his finger.

"Dumbass, your bad sense of fashion isn't a weapon. These guys have actual guns which fire actual bullets. Grab the grenade launcher or you're just wasting your-Holy shit!" The last was exclaimed as Ryouga twirled the bandanna in her direction, embedding it into the heavy steel plate right near her feet. She stared at the rigid cloth, eyes widening as it went limp as she touched it.

"It's like he said, tomboy. We're already armed," Ranma noted, crossing his arm and turning his attention out over the water.

"What the fuck was that?" Revy snarled, chucking the cloth in Ranma's direction. He caught the limply floating fabric, handing it back to his partner.

"Iron cloth technique," Ryouga noted, his attention focused on the slowly approaching boats. Ranma noted that he must have felt the stare on the side of his face, because he turned to her with a shy grin. "I infuse the cloth with my chi, which makes it harder than steel. A bit of fabric's a lot cheaper than a bullet, right?"

"That's more interesting than Jumbo's trick was," Revy admitted.

"Jumbo?" Ranma prompted, cocking an eyebrow.

"Japanese guy. Apparently nearly as fucking crazy as you two, because he liked to bring a sword to a gunfight," Revy explained, cocking her rifle and staring down the scope. "It helped that he could cut a fucking bullet in half when it was fired at him."

"He's gotta teach me that trick," Ranma said, impressed. He poked her in the thigh, getting an annoyed look in return. "Oi, tomboy. After this job's over, you're introducing me to him."

"I'd be happy to," Revy noted with an evil chuckle.

"I don't trust you. You're being too nice," Ranma accused.

As the lead boat chasing them came into range, Revy fired her weapon three times, pausing for only a second between each. The first shot cracked the glass shielding the boat's pilot. The second shot shattered it completely. Neither Ranma nor Ryouga could see well enough to actually see what the third shot actually did to the man, but even at this range they could see a lot more red in the enemy boat's cabin.

The third shot also had the effect of causing the boat to turn sharply to the left. With the speed the boat was traveling, this was enough for it to twist dangerously one way and then the other, the front tip of the boat dipping into the water as the back end lifted out. With a large splash the boat flipping upside down, quickly falling behind.

"No, trust me. I'm not nice at all," Revy said simply. Her gun barked twice more before she had to reload. Her shots came more and more frequently as the boats slowly gained on the Black Lagoon, and then they were in range.

"Our turn, Ryouga! Save the bandannas for the small fry who get close!" Ranma yelled, focusing on the chi. He idly noted that Revy stopped her gunfire for a moment to stare as the pigtailed boy and his companion started to glow a bright blue and a sickly green, respectively. "I'll take the lead boat on the left. You get the one on the right. Aim for the back, where those engines are. They can't catch us if their boat can't move."

"Hey kid, these guys are trying to kill you. Don't do 'em any favours," Revy advised, sighting on a counter-sniper as he aimed towards them. Even at this range, Ranma could see that the man's trigger-finger was tightening as Revy's large-caliber shot blasted him low in the chest, tumbling him from his position and into the water.

"If we take out their engines, they aren't a problem later," Ryouga noted, his voice thick. He growled and forced the chi swirling around him into his hands. "Perfect Shi Shi Hokodan!"

"Mouko Takabisha Double!" Ranma snarled, half a second behind his rival.

Ryouga's attack took advantage of his huge pool of heavy chi, rising up into the sky and gathering there and pausing briefly. Then it fell as the boat he'd aimed at came underneath, smashing into the back end of the boat and ripping the entire portion off. The impact sent the remaining front portion of the vessel into the path of another, which deflected sharply and started following at a slower speed, clearly damaged.

Ranma's strike was more surgical. The first Mouko Takabisha lanced out directly, striking the boat in the front and deflecting it off to the left. This left the back end briefly exposed to the other chi blast, which ripped directly into the engine itself and left the craft drifting in the water.

"Not fucking bad!" Revy admitted, eyes wide with appreciation. She lowered the rifle into the cabin, gesturing with her hand. Someone below handed her an RPG. She flashed the two boys a grin. "Thing is, boys, you're not the only ones who can make things go boom!"

With that, she raised the RPG to her shoulders and sighted down it briefly before squeezing, sending the thing blasting across the waves towards a fourth boat. The pilot must have seen it coming, but his reaction time was too slow to do anything that mattered: Instead of striking the pilot's window, it instead struck the other plate glass. The impact was still enough to cause it to shatter, a mixture of fire and glass purging the cabin of it's occupants.

Revy briefly admired her handiwork as the boat slowly drifted to a halt, no longer able to be controlled. Then it was too late for anything more, the young raven-haired woman diving out of the gunnery well and taking cover behind the torpedo tube as one boat pulled up on the port side. Then she was lost to Ranma's vision as he and Ryouga turned to the boat approaching on the starboard side.

"Ranma, I'm going to get on that thing and do a Bakusai Tenketsu on the front. They won't be able to continue chasing us if they're too busy sinking," Ryouga snarled, ducking his head as automatic fire beat a rapidly ringing jingle into the torpedo tube they were hiding behind. "That's probably going to stop it fast enough to fling me off the boat. Just hold tight and we'll use these damned bracers to keep me with you!"

"Good plan, P-chan!" Ranma admitted, clapping the boy on the shoulder and gripping one of the railings which covered the old boat.

"I told you, don't call me that!" Ryouga yelled, leaping from cover onto the other boat as the firing briefly ceased.

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Revy grinned as she leaped across to the enemy vessel, confident that her new companions could handle their end without any fuss. She ducked behind a protrusion on the ship, firing a quartet of shots which downed the two fuckers trying to sneak up on her.

"You motherfuckers picked the wrong crew to mess with," Revy snarled, rolling out of cover with her two pistols at the ready. She dove to the side at the sight of a man in full body armor carrying a Kalishnakov, lacing him with three shots to the chest and another to the arm. He dropped his weapon but didn't fall as she rolled back into cover.

Poking her head up, she saw the boat which had engaged the Black Lagoon's starboard side fall behind, flipping end over end as it went. She was surprised to find she didn't wish too hard that the annoying pigtailed bastard was on it when it went.

Footsteps rapidly approached, and Revy leaped up to the top of her cover, pausing briefly to shoot kevlar-boy's two friends in the face before leaping up and over him as he struggled to bring a pistol up to bear. The thing with body armor was that it slowed one down: He didn't even have time to begin a turn to face her when she painted the inside of his mask with his brains.

As she moved around the side of the boat, she saw a hatch beginning to open. She grinned as she spun, her hips slamming the thing back shit as she brought both legs up to brace against the railing. She holstered one of her pistols and unslung the special package she'd prepared for the ship-to-ship jump.

It was a round egg-shaped metal device, roughly the size of an basketball. It's core was a delayed phosphorus fuse linked to an electric current. The thing was weighed so that, when thrown, the thicker side of the egg was on the bottom. Ten seconds after the fuse was pulled, the phosphorus would ignite with the hard-packed aluminum shavings and rust, creating a bubbling mass of molten liquid which was the hottest non-nuclear chemical reaction this side of a nuclear explosion. The C4 packed into the top of the egg then detonated, sending the hot stuff straight down into whatever happened to be underneath.

Revy pulled the switch at the top, igniting the fuse, and threw it to the back of the boat, right where the engines were housed. It landed a second later with a dull thump. A sudden jolt from men body-checking the hatch she was bracing shut sent her feet up over the rail, spilling her back-first onto the deck of the boat.

"Fuck! Fucking bastards, I'll kill you all!" Revy punctuated her statement with a burst of semiautomatic fire from her pistol, scrambling to her feet and bodychecking one of the poor bastards into the narrow gap between this boat and the Black Lagoon as she did.

The egg detonated, and the Black Lagoon began to pull ahead. Revy ran, blind-firing over her shoulder until her gun clicked empty as she raced to make the jump. She slammed the gun into it's holster as her foot found the front tip of the boat as she leaped, aiming for the back-railing of her escape vehicle.

Missed.

"Grab hold of something, Ryouga!" Ranma's voice yelled, diving off the boat after her. Caught her right as both of them hit the water, and held on as they were both jerked with along with the Lagoon. Revy found her face buried in... breasts?

"Why the fuck do you have breasts?" Revy demanded of the suddenly-redhaired girl holding her as they skipped along the surface of the ocean, slowly getting closer and closer to the Black Lagoon.

"Life-saving now, explanation later," the pigtailed girl replied. As they got to the back of the boat, the limber girl reached up and pulled them on one-handed. Revy opened her mouth to speak when 30mm autofire ripped into the top of the ship as a dark shadow passed overhead.

The Hind-D had arrived.

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Author's Notes:

This and the next are going to be critical chapters. Until now, I've mainly been keeping to the Black Lagoon tone by using a lot of swearing. Unfortunately, battles in Black Lagoon are often bloody and violent. This is going to be something that Ranma and Ryouga will have to learn to live with.

Hey, it can't all be fun gunfights and wordplay. I'm not going to spend chapters going on about how depressing it all is, but it's an issue which has to be addressed.