Author's Notes: This chapter took far, FAR longer than I wanted it to take, and I'm really sorry about that. This just hasn't been the best of years for me, so far. I promise I'll try to update things more frequently from now.
Chapter 3: A Pirate's Life For Me?
The Milka was a simple merchant's caravel; one of the vast legion of small trader's ships that plied the local waters of all the Blues, forgoing the greater risk/reward paradigm of far-sea travel that other merchants undertook in favor of smaller but more regular profits. With its smiling cow figurehead and single cannon, it was, as ships went, a fairly unimposing and uninteresting sight.
But that hadn't mattered to the sextet from Nerima, who largely couldn't have told a galleon from a brig sloop. All that had mattered to them was that it was within easy reach after their unintended rampage across the docks of Becop Island. With most of the crew having been on shore leave, the handful of guards had been summarily dispatched by the simple process of tossing them overboard like sacks of bad produce before, under Kodachi's barked orders, the sextet had freed the ship from its mooring and sailed it off into the horizon.
With Becop now little more than a fast-retreating smear on the rear horizon and no sign of pursuit, the lost boys and girls from Nerima could relax and finally take stock of their collective situation.
"Aiyah! Shampoo so happy you okay, Airen!"
"Gah! Geddoffame, Shampoo!"
...Which wasn't necessarily a good thing...
"Hey! What do you think you're doing, Shampoo?!" the indignant Ukyo protested, fists clenched tight as she stomped her foot and glared at the Chinese Amazon shamelessly hugging Ukyo's currently female fiance.
"I agree with the chef! Release my Ranma this instant!" Kodachi spat from her position at the wheel, her sense of duty as the self-appointed navigator the only thing that kept her from jumping over to assault her Chinese rival.
"Shampoo giving thanks that Ranma is safe!" the Chinese Amazon snarled in response, twisting around so she could level a red-eyed glare at both girls without having to let Ranma go.
"Wait a minute! Kodachi... you just called the pigtailed girl 'Ranma'?" Nabiki pointed out incredulously.
Her sudden interjection distracted the other three women (well, real women; Ranma didn't count) and they all turned curious looks to the middle Tendo daughter.
"That is his name, after all," Kodachi imperiously retorted.
"...You mean you know?!" Nabiki blurted, the implications fully crystalizing for her.
"That the two Ranmas are the same? Yes, I learned that today."
"She not know it before?" A confused Shampoo asked Ukyo, who simply shrugged uncertainly in response. Truth be told, neither of Ranma's extraneous fiancees tended to interact with Kodachi, who was largely unknown to them as a result.
"Can we please focus on more important things? Like how we got here, where 'here' is, and who's to blame?" Ryoga griped from his position against the mast, watching the bickering girls surrounding his rival with irritation.
"I agree with Ryoga; it's time we had a little chat, Saotome," Nabiki added.
Ranma's spine tingled instinctively at the ice in the Tendo girl's tone. "Hey, it wasn't my doing!"
"Leave the boy alone," came the gruff tones of Umok, before the three-eyed imp gently drifted down from his perch in the rigging, floating into place like a leaf wafting on the breeze.
"Who're you?" Ryoga asked.
"My name is Umok. And... technically... I am the reason you're all here," Umok explained.
At those words, Nabiki lifted an eyebrow in apparent intrigue. "Really? You brought us here?"
"Technically, but... yes," Umok confessed.
Which was when Nabiki's hands suddenly snapped closed around his neck, the middle Tendo daughter moving with far greater speed than any would have credited her with.
"Glak! Not again!" Umok protested.
"Do you have any idea what I've been through?!" Nabiki screamed, shaking the imp like a ragdoll to emphasize her point. "It was worse than working at a hostess bar with Happosai there!"
"Let him go, Nabiki!" Ranma snapped, hand flashing out to latch onto her wrist, squeezing just the right pressure points to force her fingers open, with Umok immediately levitating out of her reach.
Nabiki whirled on Ranma, who flinched instinctively at the rage in her eyes; evidently, Nabiki and Akane weren't quite as different as he'd always thought...
"Give me one good reason I shouldn't throttle that little muppet!" Nabiki snarled.
"Because he's the only one who can possibly get us home!" Ranma shot back.
Evidently, that was the right thing to say, as Nabiki visibly fought for and took a hold of herself as the words sank in. She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and then exhaled slowly, before turning an icy glower upon the floating imp.
"I presume that there's a reason you haven't just zapped us all back home already?" She asked with slow, menacing patience.
"Long story short? I can't. The spell that brought us here wrung me completely dry - I'm totally out of magical energies," Umok explained, rasping slightly.
"...You mean we're stuck here?!" an appalled Ryoga interjected.
"Not exactly... I can undo this! But I need time - time to figure out what happened to me, time to recharge. Until then, you lot will need to worry about the more immediate problems," the imp retorted.
"Those being...?" Ukyo asked.
"Survival. Do any of you know the first thing about taking care of yourself beyond the reach of a city?" the imp asked rhetorically, lighting up another of his foul cigars and sending plumes of greasy scarlet smoke into the air.
"Yes," two-thirds of the teens promptly shot back.
Umok's central eyebrow raised itself half-mockingly. "Oh, really? Then what are the first three essentials of survival?"
"Shelter, water, food," Shampoo immediately replied.
Umok's expression changed, respect visibly creeping onto the half-shrouded visage. "Hm... not your first trip into the wilderness, then?"
"Shampoo is Chinese Amazon! Not weakling city dweller!" the blue-haired Joketsuzoku bragged.
"I've been on the road since I could walk. I could teach lessons on how to camp, forage, hunt, scavenge and survive," Ranma added, unwilling to be upstaged.
"I... I hike cross-country a lot, and that means I camp out more often than not," Ryoga grudgingly confessed.
"Hah! That's one way to put it," Ranma chuckled, causing Ryoga to clench his fist and glare at his currently female rival.
"I may not have a life as crazy as theirs, but I've been looking after myself for over a decade, and I grew up traveling the road; I know how to take care of myself," Ukyo declared, determined to get her own word in.
"Then I suggest that the six of you begin to take stock of what we currently have available to us and what immediate obstacles are presenting themselves to our survival, whilst I retire to my meditations so that I can try to find a way to fix what is wrong with me and get us all back home," Umok declared. Not even waiting for a response, the imp then began floating back towards the crow's nest, leaving the six teens standing in his wake.
"...Little jerk," Nabiki muttered.
"Gee, I wonder why," Ukyo drawled.
"He does make a very good point, however. What say you? Shall we descend into the interior and take further stock of our situation?" Kodachi suggested, with surprising diplomacy from one of Ranma's most infamous would-be suitors.
"Sounds good to me; I'm hungry, and maybe there's some sort of galley we can boil some water in," Ranma put in.
As if on cue, four stomachs audibly complained about the lack of sustenance, with Ranma, Ukyo, Shampoo and Kodachi all blushing and rubbing their bellies. Only Ryoga, who had just finished eating before this whole mess had occurred, and Nabiki, who had gorged herself back on Becop Island, were exempt, and they smirked at their less fortunate counterparts.
"Okay, let's give this tub a look-over," Ranma declared, before the redhead began leading the way to the doorway into the ship's interior.
Shortly afterwards, in the galley...
"Well, we got good news and bad news on the food front," Ryoga solemnly announced... at least, as solemnly as was possible to sound when you were buried head first in the pantry.
"What's the good news?" Ranma asked, busying herself checking the drawers in what was obviously the designated kitchen portion of the ship's common room, the rest of the ship having turned out to consist of a single large cabin at the rear - presumably the captain's quarters - and the empty hold.
"We got enough food here to last us for weeks, especially if we ration it," the Eternally Lost Boy replied.
"And what's the bad news?" the ever-so-cynical Nabiki questioned.
"It's all imperishable essentials - crates of hardtack, slabs of jerky, and a small mountain of assorted citrus fruits. It'll keep us alive, but meals aren't going to be anything to sing about," Ryoga explained.
"Okay then; first priority is to start setting up some fishing poles so we can at least add some fresh seafood to our diets," Ukyo observed.
"Seagulls aren't bad if you cook 'em right either..." Ranma added absently. "Ahhah! Jackpot! We got a kettle - I can finally turn back into a guy!"
"Wait a moment!" Nabiki interjected. "Is there a spare kettle there?"
Ranma glanced over at Nabiki in obvious confusion, before studying the cupboard's contents once more. "Uh... yeah, there's a spare here!"
"Good; pick one and mark it. We'll use that to boil seawater and reserve it strictly for undoing Jusenkyo curses," the middle Tendo declared.
"Why?" Shampoo asked.
"Because your curse and Ranma can't be on a small boat at the same time, and we can't afford to waste precious drinking water on turning either of you back to normal," Nabiki replied, rolling her eyes.
"She's cursed too? Wait, what's wrong with her curse?" Kodachi asked.
Ukyo nudged the youngest Kuno and stage-whispered to her, "She turns into a cat, and Ranchan's deathly scared of cats."
Kodachi's eyes went wide and she let out a wordless murmur of comprehension, nodding her gratitude to the crossdressing chef.
Ignoring them both, Shampoo spoke to Nabiki. "That not what Shampoo asking about. Shampoo asking why Nabiki only mention Shampoo and airen; won't Ryoga need to change back too?"
"Ryoga?" Nabiki repeated in confusion. "What's Ryoga got to do with this?"
In the pantry, Ryoga's eyes went wide as saucers and he turned as pale as a ghost. Ranma was little better; in a desperate panic, he tried to silently signal to Shampoo to drop the subject, but she evidently didn't see him, as she simply charged on ahead.
"Ryoga have Jusenkyo curse too, and little black pig no is much help on big ship."
Silence fell over the galley. Nabiki's eyes were wide in shock, Ranma and Ryoga were both cowering, and Ukyo and Kodachi were observing with rapt attention, scarcely daring to breathe lest they break the spell. Of course, all things must pass, and in this case, it ended when Nabiki whirled to face the pantry and fixed her iciest glare upon its hapless occupant.
"You're P-chan?!" the affronted Nabiki demanded.
"N-no, no, I'm not! It's a mistake!" Ryoga protested.
"No is not. Ryoga has Spring of Drowned Pig Jusenkyo Curse. Shampoo and Great-grandmother learn this long ago. Was part of why Great-grandmother offered to teach Ryoga the Bakusai Tenketsu," Shampoo explained, with surprising nonchalance.
"My sister takes you to bed with her!" Nabiki pointed out, her tone a mixture of indignation and amazement.
"Wait, what?!" Shampoo blurted.
"She doesn't know!" Ryoga hastily interjected. "She's never realized we're the same, it's all completely innocent, I swear!"
"That doesn't make it any better!" Nabiki pointed out.
"I- It's all Ranma's fault!" Ryoga cried.
"My fault?!" Ranma blurted, indignation drowning out his fear. "I've spent weeks trying to stop it! I've lost count of how many times I've either told you to stop the whole P-chan or tried to beat you up for it! And every time, Akane just gets on my case for 'picking on her widdle P-chan' to boot!"
"And you didn't tell Akane because...?" Nabiki asked acidly, turning that same icy expression on Ranma now.
"I tried! She wouldn't listen! I kept on dropping hints, but she just didn't want to hear it if it came from me," Ranma defended himself. "And... sides, what do you even care?"
"What, you don't think I'd take offense to Ryoga tricking my poor gullible little sister?" Nabiki asked rhetorically.
The other five teens all shared a glance before responding with a resounding, "No!"
Now it was Nabiki's turn to wince and look exposed. "Okay, I... guess I deserve that..."
"Please, if we were all in Nerima, you'd be looking to find some way to profit off of this revelation," Kodachi dismissively observed. "But the fact is that we are not in Nerima, and as such it behooves us all to put this little fact behind us and move on to more directly important matters."
"Like what?" Shampoo asked, sounding genuinely curious.
"Sleeping arrangements seem a poignant choice at the moment. We've established there is only one true bed on this vessel, with the other crew using hammocks suspended here in the common area or perhaps even in the hold itself. We thus have to address the inevitable..."
Kodachi drew herself up as imperiously as possible, and looked at each of her fellow teens in turn, holding her gaze firm.
"Which of us shall claim the captain's cabin?" She melodramatically declared, gesturing to the door that concealed the ship's only bed.
Silence hung over the galley, before Nabiki smirked and declared, "Well, obviously, it's got to be me..."
"You wish!" Ranma scoffed.
"And why shouldn't I be the captain? I seem to recall outsmarting you more than once," Nabiki quipped back.
"Captain must command loyalty. Shampoo wouldn't follow Nabiki to a picnic," the Chinese Amazon interjected.
"What she said!" Ukyo added.
A brittle smile spread on Nabiki's face, her eyebrow twitching as she retorted, "Well, it's not as if one of you ladies is going to be chosen. None of you trust each other enough for that..."
Her words were rewarded as each of Ranma's would-be fiancées glanced suspiciously at each other, which deepened Nabiki's expression into a true smirk... up until Shampoo suddenly scoffed loudly.
"Why we even talking this? It obvious who we going to pick."
"It is?" a bemused Ukyo responded, with Kodachi directing an equally confused look at her Chinese rival.
"We make airen captain, sillies!" Shampoo chirped, pointing at Ranma for emphasis.
"What?!" the genderbending martial artist squawked in shock, staring at them all with wide eyes.
"Well, we not trust each other, but we all trust you, airen. We know you not want to hurt or cheat us, can feel safe following you. Plus, you smart, you listen if you need us, and we listen to you."
"I don't," Ryoga interjected grumpily.
"You not count, pig-boy," Shampoo scoffed in response. "So, yes... you is best choice we have for leader right now."
"...The Chinese bimbo has a point, Ranchan," Ukyo conceded.
"Who you calling bimbo?!" Shampoo snarled.
"Well, I for one find that this is an equitable solution. For all her personal faults, Shampoo has made valid arguments, and we will need a central figure to rally around under these circumstances. Very well, Ranma-darling, the captain's quarters are yours... and whoever you may choose to share it with..." Kodach declared, gesturing flamboyantly as she completed her speech.
"...But I didn't want it..." Ranma protested feebly, beads of nervous sweat trickling down the back of his neck. He was ignored as his three would-be lovers, and even Nabiki and Ryoga, all found their attention elsewhere, courtesy of Kodachi's final statement.
'And of course, you will select me as your consort. Now that the little unpleasantness of my earlier ignorance is out of the way, you will swiftly realize my charms and keen mind make me the superior pick to these peasants...'
'Sh-share a room with Ranchan? Oh, I couldn't! ...Oh, who am I kidding? I totally could! Stupid Akane and her stupid family moved into my place before I could really put the moves on Ranma back when the Gambling King showed up... mmm, just imagine Ranchan in the same bed with me... yum!'
'So, that is the game you wish to play, aristocrat? Very well. We are all on equal footing at long last in this place. And when it comes to charming Ranma, I hold the advantage. Winner shall take all in this fight...'
'Am I really so desperate for a bed that I want to seduce Ranma? ...No. No, I'm not. I mean, yes, he's always been cute, but nobody's cute enough to be worth getting tangled up in that mess! Besides, I'm a big girl; if even a spoiled blue-blooded buffoon like Kodachi can tough it out in a hammock until we get better, so can I.'
'Damn you, Ranma, why does everything seem to go your way? I hate you! Even when we get lost in another world, you end up having all the luck!'
Ranma stared at the other five teens aboard the ship, taking in Kodachi's smug smile, Ukyo's unnerving blush, Shampoo's absent-minded confidence, Nabiki's thoughtful expression and Ryoga's sullenness. 'Man, how do I get into these messes? Trying to organize this lot is going to be like herding cats!'
A shiver ran instinctively down his spine at the thought of cats, but Ranma brushed it off; so long as he wasn't actually face to face with a cat, he could still manage to tamp down that particular fear.
''Well, if I gotta be captain, the best I can do is try and keep them alive... alright, time to man up and do some captaining.'
"Ryoga!" Ranma stated, as strongly as he could, in order to snap Ryoga out of his brooding and make him refocus his attention on his old rival.
"What is it, Ranma?"
"You always carry supplies; you still have food on you?"
"Yeah... at least a week's worth for myself, it won't go far between the six of us."
"At least it's something to break up the monotony. What about fishing hooks and line?"
"Yeah, I've got some - I usually set up hand-lines when I camp near a river or stream."
"Alright; Kodachi, do you have any idea where we're sailing?"
The youngest Kuno shook her head. "Unfortunately, Ranma my darling, I only focused on getting us away from that horrible island. I have no idea where our current course may take us."
"Ryoga and I borrowed some books from the marine captain back there; at least some of what we took were maps," Nabiki interjected.
"Good job, Nabiki. You and Kodachi go over those, see if you can find some place habitable, and sail us there. The rest of us will take Ryoga's fishing gear, see if we can find some more stashed away here, and we'll start fishing for tonight's supper."
"You haven't been captain for a minute, and you're already barking orders," Ryoga grumbled, but even so, he slung his pack off of his shoulders and dropped it to the floor to begin rummaging through its contents.
"I think it's quite fitting; I like a man who can take charge," Kodachi purred, even as she and Nabiki walked over to receive their share of Ryoga's bounty.
Meanwhile, back on Becop Island...
"Damage report, Mr. Yamato," Captain Kintaro demanded of his faithful underling, doing his best to sound commanding and in control despite the fact he currently had an icepack on his head to try and soothe a black eye.
"Heavy property damage, but no casualties," the dark-hued Marine reported, his stoic expression only adding to the impression of his rough, ruggedly handsome features having been chiseled from black granite.
"...No casualties?" Captain Kintaro repeated inquisitively, the oddness of that statement penetrating the fog of dull pain from his various aches and pains.
"No, sir. The stinking pirate scum lacked the teeth for a true fight. All of our men survived. But they took considerable damage all the same. Bruises, broken bones, strains, dislocations... approximately two thirds of our men can be safely categorized as walking wounded, sir."
The Marine captain grunted to show that he'd heard, his mind racing as he tried to analyze this strange report. Whilst it wasn't entirely unheard of for pirates to simply beat down their victims and then leave them to live or die on their own merits, most pirates were disinclined to show any true level of mercy to marines, who responded to the hostility in kind. It was rare for a clash between the two rival claimants of the sea to end without any casualties, and that was worth noting.
"What of the remaining third?" Captain Kintaro asked, even as he mused about what this strange behavior might mean.
"Minor injuries at worst, sir. I've taken the liberty of preparing them to pursue the assailants and bring them to justice - they stole a merchant's caravel called the Milka. It shouldn't take them too long to catch them, and with cannons on our men's side, the freakish strength of these pirate scum won't avail them any good."
Captain Kintaro nodded. "Very good, Mister Yamato; make it so."
The marine clicked his heels together sharply and threw a snappy salute, then spun about face and briskly marched away. Captain Kintaro watched him go with disant satisfaction, still lost in his own thoughts.
'If that blasted woman ended up with those pirates, then surely she's out of my hair. But I need to be sure... if her testimony ends up in the ears of the wrong official, my career will be over!'
Dusk, back on the Milka...
"That isn't going to work," Nabiki declared.
"What isn't?" Ranma responded, not taking his eyes from the placid surface of the sea.
"Fishing like that. Ryoga's got the real fishing rods set up. You have a chunk of salted beef on a meathook attached to a chunk of wood by a spare length of rope. What do you possibly expect to catch on a clunky, primitive setup like that?" the middle Tendo demanded.
"So it's primitive, why's that such a big deal?" Ranma asked, a sentiment Ryoga and Ukyo nodded their agreement to from their own positions fishing over the gunwale.
"It's too big! What do you expect to possibly be able to get its mouth around a hook that size?" Nabiki incredulously pointed out.
"In our first minutes at the shoreline of this wretched place, Ranma and I were nearly dragged to our deaths by a giant octopus with a thirty foot armspan. And that was when we were standing on a beach, barely up to our ankles in the surf. Who knows what kind of monsters are lurking in the depths of the open ocean?" Kodachi interjected from her position at the helm.
"...You're joking," Nabiki finally asserted, whilst Ryoga and Ukyo cast new, uneasy looks at their own lines.
Kodachi opened her mouth, ready to emphasize her sincerity, but was cut off by a sudden furious splashing from the water below Ranma.
"Got a bite! And it feels like a big one!" Ranma crowed triumphantly, flashing a cocky grin at the other teens. And that was when whatever was on his line jerked with such force that he was nearly pulled overboard, his upper torso dragged violently over the gunwale. "Whoa!"
"Ranma!" yelped the other teens in an instinctive fearful outburst from the sight.
Fortunately for Ranma, his superhuman strength, speed and reflexes once again came to his rescue; digging his feet hard into the deck he arrested his forward moment, spine uncurling with impossible force to straighten back up from where he had been bent over nearly in half. And not without effort, either; even Nabiki could see the tension in his face and the way Ranma's arms rippled as he battled whatever it was on the end of his line.
"Oh, no you don't! I ain't licked that easy!" Ranma spat, digging his heels into the gunwale to brace himself. And a good thing too, because first his line danced a figure eight, and then it jerked outwards again with such force that Ranma was visibly dragged against the wood, the railings creaking in protest as the thing, whatever it was, tried and failed to drag him overboard. Not for lack of trying, either, as the whole deck suddenly lurched beneath the crew's feet with a groaning of tortured wood.
"What's happening?!" Nabiki shrieked, arms flailing as she tried to avoid falling on her butt.
"We're being dragged off course!" Kodachi shouted back, trying and failing to wrest control back with the wheel. "Ranma darling, pull that thing aboard or it's going to drag us over!"
"Whaddya think I'm tryin' ta do?!" Ranma spat back, every muscle in his body visibly clenched as he heaved and hauled with all his might.
Profanity began to fill the air as the still-unseen terror dragged them sideways through the water, Ranma managing the impressive feat of cursing a blue streak whilst simultaneously fighting his way down to the bow of the ship, to try and alleviate some of the stress being placed on the ship's timbers. Of course, that also meant the ship accelerated as the whatever-it-was towed them behind it, but beggars couldn't be choosers.
"Come on, Ranma, are you going to let some overgrown minnow beat you?" Ryoga demanded, hunkering slightly to better maintain his balance as he offered encouragement in his own particular way.
His response was Ranma shifting his profane tirade from cursing the creature on the end of his line to instead lambaste his rival, but Ryoga took that in stride, for once.
Unable to intervene in this particular battle, the other teens could only stand back and wait, watching intently as Ranma pitted his muscles against whatever aquatic horror he had unwittingly hooked. For over half an hour, the two remained locked in their herculean struggle, Ranma pushing his body harder than any soft civilian could have bared; muscles twisted into knots and cartilage crunched in joints, whilst sinew pulled taut to the point of nearly snapping and organs began to bruise from the pressure. Only the near-mystical fighting arts that Ranma had mastered over a lifetime of training under his father kept him in the game, the art of manipulating one's ki allowing him to literally hold himself together with pure fighting spirit... and, ultimately, it enabled him to achieve a victory through sheer endurance.
Slowly, agonizingly, the ship slowed to its normal speed and Ranma found himself able to at last begin drawing in the line. The cursing had long stopped, Ranma needing the breath to focus on fighting, and it was in tense silence that he hauled the rope back.
'Oh, my aching... everything... damn it, am I that tired, or is this thing really that heavy?'
You could cut the tension with a knife as nervous excitement built in Ranma's impromptu little crew. Five pairs of eyes bored holes into Ranma's back as he mechanically pulled the line back, arm-length by sluggish arm-length.
"That's it, Ranchan, you've almost got it!" Ukyo swore, knuckles clenched white in anticipation.
"Is here, is here!" Shampoo interjected, bouncing up and down as she cheered on her airen.
"But what is it?" Ryoga asked.
With a final roar of effort, Ranma pulled with all his might, swinging a massive form up over the gunwale and onto the deck, which shuddered at the impact.
"It's a - cow-fish?!" Nabiki blurted, staring dumbfounded at the strange creature that Ranma had hauled from the sea.
And "cow-fish" was not a bad summary, because it looked more or less like a dolphin with a cow's head and the black-spotted white hide of a dairy cow. If you ever saw a dolphin that was twenty-five feet long, that is. Then it began to thrash, opening its mouth wide in a silent bellow, and exposing rows of teeth more fit for a shark.
"Get it!"
Nobody was actually sure who had spoken, but in any case, it didn't matter. Ryoga, Shampoo and Ukyo fell upon the strange cow-whale-shark-thing with a vengeance, eager to subdue the massive beast before its roiling and heaving could smash the ship. Ryoga's weighted umbrella and Ukyo's giant spatula cracked audibly against its heavy-boned skull, whilst Shampoo darted in and out with her dao, stabbing and slicing at its gills and throat. Seized by an inexplicable primordial urge, they savaged the creature like wild animals, and after a short, frenzied, bloody effort, the catch lay still, a great puddle of gore pouring across the deck from severed arteries.
"It seems we will have at least one night's reprieve from salt-cured meat and hardtack," Kodachi observed cheerfully. "A splendid effort, Ranma darling!"
"You're welcome," Ranma replied flatly, trying and failing to straighten out his left arm, which was seemingly locked in a bent-elbowed position. Finally giving up, he took his left wrist with his right hand and forcibly reset the joint by yanking his arm straight, eliciting an appalling crackle-crunching sound that made the other teens collectively wince.
"Sheesh, Saotome, you look half-dead," Ryoga observed.
"Still more'n you can handle," Ranma spat back, though even they could tell he was at least half-bluffing.
"Seriously, Ranma, you look beat. Why don't you go and lie down? We'll handle things here," Nabiki asserted.
Ranma stared at her, exhaustion adding an uncanny blankness to his stare that almost made Nabiki nervous, before he slowly nodded. "Alrigh'... wake me f' dinner," he muttered, and then shambled off towards the captain's quarters, swaying as he went.
Three pairs of feminine eyes tracked him with concern, whilst Ryoga pointedly looked away, uncertain of how he felt about Ranma's current state. As for Nabiki, she simply fidgeted, uncomfortable with the atmosphere, until Ranma finally vanished into the cabin. Then she broke the silence.
"Alright, I suppose you rugged survivalist types know what to do with this?" she asked, gingerly trying and failing to nudge the mass of cooling flesh with her foot.
At this, Ryoga snorted like his Jusenkyo-spawned alter-ego. "Typical. Now the actual work comes up, you're leaving it all to us... alright, c'mon, Shampoo, Ukyo, gimme a hand here..."
With an ease that would have surprised those who only knew them casually from Nerima, Ryoga and the two "wild women" of their impromptu group set about trussing ropes around the creature's tail and over the horizontal portion of the sail - the boom, to give it is technical name. Once it was aloft, then came the grisly business of skinning, gutting and otherwise breaking it down to begin making the evening's supper out of it...
Shortly thereafter...
"Mmm, this is good!" Ukyo observed, sucking her fingers where admittedly delicious hot grease had scalded them.
"I have to admit, I was kind of uncertain about eating something that looks like a cross between a cow and a fish, but this is actually surprisingly tasty," Nabiki confessed.
"Surprisingly delectable," was Kodachi Kuno's input, pausing to delicately mop her lips with a napkin. "The marbling and taste is reminiscent of Wagyu beef, but the consistency is like a fine tuna..."
"Wagyu?" Ranma interjected, half-muffled by the chunk of rich, fatty meat in his mouth.
"It's basically the most expensive flavor of beef in the world... of course, Kodachi here probably dines on it nightly," Nabiki explained.
The Kuno girl sniffed scornfully at her Tendo counterpart's words. "And that presumption would be wrong, Miss Tendo. We Kunos do not frivolously flaunt our finances in such a manner."
"All Shampoo care about is that we have fish-beef and lots of it. So eat up, be waste to let it spoil," the Chinese Amazon asserted, even as she tore into a sizzling steak big enough that even Genma probably wouldn't have asked for seconds.
"Not much we can do about that," Ranma observed, directing an idle glance at the swaying remnants of the carcass. "Gutted, skinned, deboned... there's gotta be a few tons of meat left there still. Even we can't eat it all before it goes off."
"Take heart, darling; the charts indicate it shouldn't be more than a day or two to the next nearest island. If kept suitably cool and damp in the hold, it should keep long enough to still be largely portionable for sale when we get there," Kodachi optimistically interjected. "But until then, let us eat, drink and relax, for we have faced our obstacles and overcome them."
"Since when are you such an optimist?" Nabiki wondered, mostly to herself, but doing little to hide her commentary.
Eventually, the six teens had eaten their fill and all drifted away to the ship's interior to sleep, pausing only to clean their night's dishes and bundle Ranma's catch into the hold to try and wrap it in some wet sheets like Kodachi had suggested. Meanwhile, high up in the crow's nest, Umok's third eye finally opened and he glanced down at the now-empty deck. In particular, his gaze focused on the completely untended ship's wheel, devoid of even some rudimentary lashing in an effort to fight the inevitable course alterations provoked by wind or currents.
"...Should I intervene?" the little imp muttered to himself. "It's not as if I need them... oh, what the gibbitz; they might be useful, after all."
He held up an index finger and concentrated fiercely, brows furrowed with the effort. The digit visibly sputtered, throwing off cerulean sparks, like a badly made firework, but slowly developed a flickering aura. Ephemeral chains of the same translucent cerulean light wrapped themselves around the wheel and snapped taut with ghostly clinking, and Umok nodded to himself in satisfaction.
"So, that's one trick I can still pull off... thunder and brimstone, though; I feel like I just ran a marathon. The last time something so simple drained me so badly, I was only a week into my apprenticeship! That BLEEP! Witch will pay for this... and, in the morning, I'm going to give those knuckleheads a little lesson on how to run a ship..."
Umok yawned, closed his eye, and sunk back into a state between meditation and sleep.
Deep into the night...
Commander Yamato stood as still as a statue at the ship's prow, his steely gaze peering out into the murk as far as he could even past the storm lanterns arrayed across the gunwale. Even though the Marines had the best technology in the world available to them, actively sailing at night was something all sailors tried to avoid, as the darkness made it the already challenging tasks of managing a sailing ship even harder. In truth, if he hadn't been in hot pursuit, Commander Yamato would have given the order to take in the sails and slowed the ship down. But they had orders, and their quarry already had a considerable head start, so they had no choice but to run the risk.
After all, the East Blue was vast, and the accursed pirates could have taken any heading. Every minute counted, because surely their foes would have been moving as fast as they possibly could, hoping to lose any pursuers in the great empty expanse of the open sea...
"Ahoy! Ship ahoy!"
The Commander surreptitiously blinked, hiding the fact his watchman's cry had taken him aback. Refocusing his gaze outward revealed that there was indeed a ship emerging from the gloom. At once, he felt the rush of anticipation; could this be it? Could they really have caught up to their quarry already?
"Take it in steady! Keep it quiet!" He barked at his men, who set to their instructions with practiced discipline. He never once took his gaze off of the ship, trusting his crew to do their duties, letting the anticipation wash over him like the waves parting around his ship's bow.
As quietly as was humanly possible, the crew of the Marine cruiser Celestial Thunder piloted their ship closer. With the beams of their lights focused, it was clear that the vessel they had come across was indeed their target; the stolen merchant's carvel known as the Milka. And that wasn't all that was becoming apparent.
"...Where are the guards...?" Commander Yamato muttered to himself.
"It could be they didn't bother posting any," one of his Marines dared to venture. "Wouldn't be the first time that lowly pirates made such simple mistakes."
"True... pirate scum tend to be lacking in discipline," Commander Yamato allowed, inclining his head in concession to the argument.
Even as the cruiser came full alongside the caravel, there wasn't the slightest stirring from the ship. The Marines wasted no time and pounced on this Justice-granted advantage, lashing their vessels together and pouring over the gunwale. Commander Yamato led the charge, and defiantly kicked open the door.
"Surrender, pirate scum! You're all under arrest!" he thundered.
Even he had to blink in confusion and a brief touch of dismay at the sheer panic that erupted from his entrance. Four of the five women who had been involved in the incident at Becop Island visibly sprang awake, squawking like chickens in a fox-invaded henhouse, tumbling about as they gracelessly fell out of the hammocks they had been using. The Marines, of course, took no pity and quickly closed in on them, hedging the pirates in rings of steel. The sole male member of the crew fared no better, emerging dumbfounded from his slumber and then flinching back at the cutlass tips held barely inches away from his face by the Commander and three of his men.
"As I was saying, surrender or die, pirate scum," Yamato announced. "Where are the rest of your crew?"
"This all there is," spat back one of the female pirates, whose crimson eyes glared at him from amidst a disheveled mane of blue locks.
"Don't try to lie to me! There was a redheaded girl at the least! Where is she?" The Marine Commander demanded.
"In the captain's cabin," the male pirate immediately responded.
"Ryoga!" shrieked three enraged teenage girls.
"You, you, and you; secure her!" Yamato barked at the marines helping him hold this male pirate captive, and they immediately raced to do as he commanded. As they vanished into the captain's cabin, he spotted that the male pirate - Ryoga, as his companions had named him, was smirking, and the Marine Commander turned his ire on his captive. "And just what are you grinning at?"
"I know something you don't," the youth smugly declared.
Yamato scowled, and suddenly smacked Ryoga in the side of the head with the butt of his sabre, his ire growing as the youth barely seemed to notice the blow. "And what might that be?"
"I know that Ranma could literally kick your goons' collective butts in his sleep."
As if on a cue, a sudden ruckus erupted from the captain's cabin; crashing and banging, muffled shouts and cries of surprise, the sound of bodies slamming into wood and furniture being overturned. The commotion was so unexpected that Commander Yamato made a mistake - a fatal mistake, all the more humiliating for being such a rookie maneuver. He took his eyes off of his prisoner, and let his guard down as he did so.
All it took was that one moment of distraction for Ryoga to pounce. Swatting aside the Commander's saber, he delivered an open-palm thrust into the Marine leader's midriff that felt like it had been shot from a cannon; the breath erupted from Yamato's lungs in an instant before the impact bodily lifted him from his feet and sent him hurtling through the air like a human cannonball, sending Marines scattering like ninepins in his wake.
Which in turn was all the distraction that the crew's warrior women needed to similarly turn the tables and launch themselves at their would-be captors. The shorthaired girl fled, hiding herself behind something heavy and sturdy, but her three companions fell on the vulnerable marines like wildcats on defenseless mice. With dismaying swiftness, the Marines fell before the onslaught, and it seemed to Yamato almost as if he blinked and in that time, he went from standing triumphantly over captive pirates in the interior to lying in a bruised heap amidst his unconscious command on the ship's deck.
A pirate he'd never seen before, a blackhaired, pigtail-sporting young man, stood over him and scowled down. "Okay, just what is your problem?!"
"Miserable pirate scum! Did you really think we wouldn't come for your heads after what you did?" Yamato defiantly spat back.
"We're not pirates! We were stranded on an island and got picked up by a pirate crew; once we realized who they were, we beat them up and tried to bring them in to turn over to the authorities!" The strange youth protested.
"A likely story! And even if it was true, you assaulted Marine forces!" Yamato scoffed in response.
"Because you attacked us first! We tried to talk you down, but you wouldn't listen!" the boy protested again.
"Self defense is no excuse! Even if you were telling the truth about not being a pirate crew, assaulting Marine forces is a capital crime that demands the strictest punishments!"
Silence fell over the deck, almost deafening in its smothering presence. The only sound to be heard was a whistling breeze that made the sails flap as it gusted through them. Finally, the strange youth - the pirate crew's apparent captain - spoke up.
"...You're serious. You're seriously going to hold us accountable for an honest mistake that your people provoked in the first place?"
"I suggest you turn yourselves in now, and you should get off with only a few years hard labor," Commander Yamato replied. It was, in hindsight, the absolute worst reply he could have made. He barely had time to make out a thunderous expression cross his captor's face before the youth's fist blasted out and smashed into Yamato's own face, breaking his nose and leaving him in an unconscious heap on the deck.
Not one of Ranma's companions lifted a finger to stop him. They were all staring darkly at the unconscious naval troopers littering their stolen deck.
"This has to be the most barbarous place I've ever been," a disgusted Kodachi announced.
"I could have told you that," Nabiki muttered, scowling as she remembered her treatment earlier that very day.
"What we do with them, airen?" Shampoo asked, disdainfully kicking the nearest unconscious Marine.
Ranma hastily thought it over, thoughts racing as he debated himself. Finally, he announced, "We'll drop them back on their ship and let them go - we're not killers... 'sides, it'd probably just make things worse," he amended himself.
"What's to stop them from just chasing after us again?" Nabiki argued.
"If I may?" Kodachi interjected. "We could perform some basic sabotage - nothing so permanent as scuttling the ship, but we could leave them in need of emergency repairs before they can hope to resume pursuit."
"That sounds fair," Ranma declared, not doing a very good job of hiding the dark satisfaction the thought clearly gave him. "I guess you know what to do?"
"Darling, it would be my pleasure," Kodachi purred, grinning the grin that made so many cower in Nerima.
"I say we do something a little more permanent than that," Nabiki declared.
"And just what do you have in mind?" Ukyo asked her.
"Our supplies are minimal at best. Theirs, on the other hand, should be quite amply stocked. I say we take every thing of value they brought - force them to have to limp home to resupply before they can hope to come after us!" The Ice Queen of Furinkan spat.
"Why am I not surprised?" Ukyo dryly muttered. "But... I gotta admit, that makes a lot of sense."
"More food, medical stuff and other necessities are always useful," Ryoga interjected.
"Then it's settled!" Ranma declared, cracking his knuckles and then his neck. "Alright, let's get to work!"
Dawn...
As the sun rose over the horizon, making the ocean glitter like a field of sapphire blue, Umok stirred in the crow's nest, stretching his limbs and yawning loudly. "Black gods of Baal-Sagoth, I needed that! Better see if the younglings are still alive..."
He cast himself over the edge of the cupola and began lazily drifting down towards the deck... only to stop and blink all three eyes in shock as he registered the site before him.
"What the hells?!"
The deck was practically groaning beneath a massive pile of assorted bits and pieces - food, medicine, raw materials for emergency repairs, blankets, pillows, and various other nautical bric-a-brac. Six visibly exhausted teens lay slumped here and there across the deck, most draped over the pile and trying to force themselves to stay awake, with limited success.
Umok drifted down to Ranma and tapped him on the forehead with one gnarled black claw. "What happened here?!"
"We had guests last night," Ranma spat bitterly. "A Marine vessel, out to arrest us - they think we're pirates! And even if they accept we aren't, we're apparently just as bad for defending ourselves from them when they mistook us for pirates!"
"I see... and where'd all this come from?" The imp asked, jabbing a thumb at the pile.
"Payment we took in retribution for their misdeeds," Kodachi declared from her position at the helm, her high tones rather undercut by the way she broke into a yawn mid-sentence.
"You mean you robbed them blind in retribution," Umok flatly declared.
"Call it what you will," Kodachi replied in the same casual manner.
"I call it a good start."
Umok's declaration was confusing enough to elicit the attention of all six stranded teenagers, who turned puzzled expressions on their inhuman traveling companion.
Pulling a fresh cigar out from amidst his pockets and lighting it with a snap of his fingers, Umok explained, "So, good news is, my ability to cast magic is still intact. Bad news is my little 'accident' has wrung me drier than an efreeti's tears. I couldn't hope to muster the juice to send you back home in anything less than... I don't know, maybe 50 to 100 years?"
"What?!" shrieked six horrified teens in a chorus of despair.
"Hold your hippogriffs, I'm getting there! See, lucky for you, my species has the unique ability to draw power out of conflict..."
"...How's that supposed to work?" A befuddled Nabiki demanded.
Umok simply stared at her cuttingly, his extra eye only enhancing the effect. "I can either go into an in-depth expose on my personal metabiology that you probably wouldn't understand, or you can shut up, accept it, and let me get to my point. Which would you prefer?"
"Get to the point, Umok," Ranma interjected bluntly.
"Right. So, anyway, like I was saying, my species can power-up by being around conflict. Which means there's an easy way to accelerate my recharging so we can get you home... I need you to become pirates."
You could have heard a pin drop at that announcement.
"No way!"
And then Ranma exploded.
"Gurk! Why do you keep doing this?!" Umok bleated as once again an angry teen's hands latched onto him and he was bodily dragged through the air. At least this time Ranma was only latched onto his collar, not the imp's neck.
"Listen to me, you little jerk! I don't care what you promise, I'm not turning into some kind of criminal monster for anybody!" Ranma thundered.
"Airen is right! We is proud martial artists, not good for nothing village-raiding bandits!" Spat the affronted Shampoo.
"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with Ranma!" Ryoga declared.
"I can't believe you're all willing to put your morals above getting home," Nabiki muttered to herself.
"H-hey, nobody said nothing about banditry! C-C'mon, lemme explain!" Umok protested.
Ranma glowered at the imp, but released him. "Talk quick."
"Oh sure, talk quick he says, after choking a guy," Umok muttered angrily. "Look, I said I need you to be pirates for me. That don't mean I need you to be the nasty criminal type of pirates."
"There's another type of pirate?" Nabiki skeptically interjected.
"Sure there is! The bold, daring, adventurer of the sea type! Look, I just said I need you to get me conflict. How you do that is entirely up to you. I am perfectly capable of just charging myself on you guys going around searching for lost treasures, crushing rival pirates, beating up those Marine BLEEPs, battling monsters and just... well, doing whatever crazy hijinks you feel you can get away with! Plundering, pillaging, burning, killing and raping is entirely optional!"
Silence fell over the deck once more, as the teens looked uncertainly at each other. Once again, it was Ranma who broke the silence first.
"Well... I guess I could live with that," he slowly declared.
"Doesn't sound too different to what you were all doing back home, except more focus on fighting people apart from yourselves," was Nabiki's candid opinion.
"Gee, thanks," Ranma muttered.
"She have point... Remember hunt for Japanese Nanniichuan? Fight with Maomolin? Those big conflicts," Shampoo observed.
"Or the time we fought the tail-headed Orochi of Ryugenzawa," Ryoga noted.
"Or that time you brought a yuki-onna to the Tendo Dojo and we had to beat up its guardian yokai before it froze the whole city over looking for her," Ranma shot back.
"Wait, that crazy blizzard that came out of nowhere was your doing?! My garden was decimated by that freak weather!" an indignant Kodachi barked.
"What about the time you had to steal the chart back from that disgusting old freak Happosai to restore your strength, Ranchan?" Ukyo pointedly asked, trying to cut Kodachi off.
"Okay, okay, I think we all get it! We lived a crazy life in Nerima, and this actually doesn't sound like it'd be so different, when you put it like that," Ranma declared sharply. "...Alright, Umok; I guess we'll be your pirate crew."
"Hardly mine, Captain Ranma," the imp dryly retorted. "And speaking of such... what are your first orders?
Chapter End & Closing Notes
And the wheels of plot creak slowly but surely. I promise I'll try and get things a little more action-packed from here, but, y'know, setting up is always the worst part of getting a fic off of the ground.