Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse

by rewind gone nuts

Becoming a pirate captain in a fantastical world was never in Ranma's life plans. But when magic strands him in the Grand Blue, he has no choice. With an impish wizard as a guide, Ryoga as his navigator, and a crew made of unwanted fiancees (plus Nabiki), Ranma sets out to find the One Piece and return to Nerima!

32. Chapter 29

Authors Notes: This chapter took WAY too long to get out, and I apologize. I just got hit with a lot of stuff getting in the way... like, you remember one of my dogs died before I posted the last chapter? Well, since the last chapter, both my other dogs needed to go to the vet, with one of them being basically lamed for life - rat bait, same thing that killed my first dog. And those bills were NOT cheap, so if anyone wants to help out, well, I would be mighty grateful... Especially since, as I said chapters earlier, I really want to do a big group-piece of the whole crew In more pleasant news, though, I finally have a new computer! No more worries that my computer's going to crash and die whilst I'm midway through writing the next chapter...

Fangs of Death, all the characters on the Kamikaze Pirates crew have art, just not all of them by Alex-Kellar. In fact, there's actually been several new pieces added since my last chapter update; you can find them all on the Spacebattles thread or on my deviantart!

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Chapter 29: Our Lady of the Two Faces

---

'Y'know, you gotta take time to appreciate the little pleasures in life...' Ranma mused to himself in a rare philosophical mood.

'Like, a nice breakfast. A gorgeous sunny day. Good friends...'

"Hi-YAAAA!"

"WAAAAGH-!" CRRRRUUUNCH-CRASH-CRACKLE

'Or the sight of Ryoga getting his ass handed to him,' Ranma added with sadistic glee, not even trying to hide his smile as he joined his crewmates in applauding the skill on display.

Shampoo notably did not overtly react to the praise from her crewmates, instead dusting off her hands before turning to an uncertain-looking Lilith. "And that how you do that throw..."

"Why am I the training dummy here?!" Ryoga demanded as he emerged from the splintered pile of boards and hoop rings that had once been a set of empty liquor casks.

"Because you toughest one on ship, so Shampoo no worry she kill you by mistake," came the cool, conversational reply from the Chinese Amazon.

Ryoga scowled, glowering emphatically as he swept wreckage aside with low, lanky-armed blows and lumbered with exaggerated contempt back towards his 'sparring partner'.

Lilith shuffled her feet. "Do you really think I can learn this stuff...?"

"Well, Shampoo be first to admit she not true master of Snake Fu, and certainly not of Cobra Fu, but Shampoo know enough of basics to pass on - is certainly better than Shampoo's Tibetan Ghost Bat Fu..."

"Oh, come on, you're making that up!" Nabiki catcalled from where she was hanging upside down from the spider's web of rigging that cradled the underbelly of the Stormbringer's air balloon.

"No, no, it's a real thing... One of the Three Forces Styles. And you were supposed to be working on your pull-ups," Ranma added sharply as an afterthought.

"Slave driver," Nabiki pouted, but resignedly began to heave herself back upwards.

"...As Shampoo was saying, Cobra Fu have heavy focus on standing throws - there two-fifty-six throws you could master! For offense, also use finger jabs and backhand strikes - these the Cobra's Fangs and Tail - as well as joint attacks, pole-arms, swords, and soft weapons. Even if Lilith never extend into other four branches of Snake Fu - Adder, Asp, Python and Viper - this style at least mean Lilith can do more than just grow big and spit poison."

"How do you even know this stuff, China girl?!" Ukyo called out to her, cupping her hands in a needless amplification of her voice.

Shampoo blushed and smiled sheepishly. "Um... well, when Shampoo two year, three year younger, there this really cute boy in village whose family practice Snake Fu..."

A chorus of feminine laughter emerged from the watching girls, with Kodachi the first to speak up. "Why you wicked little vixen! So you had somebody in the village, hm? Should Ranma be jealous?"

Shampoo smiled sadly and shook her head. "It never go anywhere. Stupid Mousse no like it when he realize Shampoo like this boy. Stupid Mousse say it just accident, but he never fully regain use of hand... fall in love with his nurse, Shampoo's cousin Sugar. They have twin daughters just before Shampoo meet Ranma..."

"...Holy crap, you Amazons don't waste any time, do you?" Ukyo feebly proclaimed, saying what was on everybody's mind as they stared wide-eyed at Shampoo.

"It was accident! Birth control fail! They three years older than Shampoo, and things different in countryside!" Shampoo protested, bristling in defense of her far-distant kin.

"Island ahoy!" Umok's voice suddenly echoed across the deck, disrupting any further conversations along that line.

It was a small island. Were they sailing the Grand Line, it would probably be little more than a glorified rocky spit jutting out of the waves - a crumbling mesa of stone surrounded by a narrow strip of stony beaches and jagged peaks. Since this was the White-White Sea, it was much softer looking, but it still conveyed that basic sensation of being harsh and isolated. There was some greenery, in the form of a carefully tended orchard atop the relatively flat peak of the island, but its most notable feature was that the island's mountainous core had been visibly carved into. Devoted laborers had worked with tools to cut into the mountain like mice boring into a giant block of cheese, shaping the face that abutted the widest, flattest strip of coastline into a bleakly impressive pseudo-castle.

"Yo, Lilith! What's this place?" Ranma called their resident skylander.

"This'd be Caryae Island, Captain Saotome! Honestly, it's kind of a nowhere place - relatively fixed in place, yeah, but the sea-clouds kind of ebb and flow, so not many folks come here, and they tend to go right past it," She declared, leaning on the gunwale to admire the view.

'Caryae Island...? Why does that ring a bell...?' Nabiki mused to herself, still clinging upside down from the web of rigging, trying to ignore how weirdly comfortable it felt to be crawling hand over hand across the makeshift roof to get closer to Ranma. She was right behind him when she hooked her feet into the webbing - somehow, taking her werebat form felt like cheating, and not the good kind of cheating - and let go with her hands, dangling behind him.

"What's on your mind, Nabs?"

"Oh, come on! There is no way that you heard me!" She protested with only slightly exaggerated indignation.

"Keep tellin' ya, Nabs; ya gotta learn to use more than yer eyes an' ears," Ranma held up a finger and shook it in mock reproach, before finally turning to face her as the mischievous grin fell from his face. "So, like I said, what's up?"

"While we were shopping back on Thunderhead Bay, I think heard some things about this place... something about relics?"

Ranma blinked, before turning a quizzical expression to Lilith, who nodded sagely in response.

"Oh, yeah; Caryae Island is home to a nunnery - don't know what god they worship, though. They're said to have some kind of holy relics they keep locked away in a sacred vault."

"Okay - and what's this got to do with us?" Ranma asked, turning his attention back to Nabiki.

"I believe ze point she is making, mon capitaine, is that these relics, which are likely to be very old, could perhaps include remnants from Dyna's homeland," Penelope interjected, only to blush and hang her head sheepishly when everybody turned her way at the outburst.

"Sounds like a long shot to me," Ryoga bluntly opined.

"Can't really hurt to look, though," Ranma shot back, finger upheld in emphasis.

"And besides, if any crew has a chance to get a look, it's us," Lilith giggled musically, causing everybody to turn and look at her. She easily read the unspoken question and elaborated, "Only women are allowed to set foot on Caryae Island!"

For a long moment, the only sound to be heard was the whistling of the wind, the lapping of the waves, and the various creaks and groans of any ship in response to these eternal forces. The Kamikaze Pirates stared at the smiling form of their Sky-Seas guide, before Kodachi slowly nodded her head sagely.

"Yes... that makes sense. A little extreme, but not unprecedented..."

She felt the collective weight of her crewmates' attention shift to her, before sighing and launching into her explanation of their unspoken question.

"Despite the common misconception, nuns are not merely 'Christian miko'. They are expected to swear lifelong vows of celibacy, chastity, poverty and pacifism upon taking their holy robes, supposedly to become closer to their god by devoting themselves to acts of charity with others."

"And you know this because...?" Ukyo prompted her.

"You are aware that I attended Saint Hebereke School for Girls, no? Even if the vast majority of the students have no interest in converting to a strange foreign faith, Christian girl's schools have always been favored by those who believe girls should attend gender-segregated schooling in the first place, as their beliefs place a particularly strict emphasis on chastity."

"And how often do the girls actually listen to those rules?" Came the sarcastic quip from Ranma.

Mischief danced in Kodachi's eyes as she immediately shot back, "Far less often then they'd like!" before bursting out one of her iconic mad cackles.

"Anyway, point is, we're going to be stuck here until the Log Pose resets anyway, so why not take advantage of the situation and go explore? Even if there's nothing relating to Dyna's homeland, there could be some cool treasure?" Lilith pointed out.

"Hey, if there's nothing relevant to Dyna, we're leaving it! We're not that kind of pirate!" Ranma snapped angrily.

"What's the matter? Scared you'll get cursed if you mess with holy relics?" Lilith giggled in amusement.

"YES!" Shouted Ranma, Ryoga, Nabiki, Kodachi, Shampoo and Ukyo all as one, making the cobra zoan flinch in surprise before turning a confused stare on them all in turn.

"Okay... well, either way, we're going to be stuck here for hours regardless, so my point still stands. So, what're we going to do, captain?"

"I say we hold a vote!" Ryoga promptly announced.

---

Minutes later...

---

"Stupid rigged votes!" Ryoga whined as she pulled at the oars, sending their lifeboat rapidly hurtling towards the cloudstuff shore of Caraye Island.

"You honestly expected different?" Nabiki drawled from where she was sitting under a gentlewoman's umbrella, fanning herself with a little hand fan... both of them black and emblazoned with a skull and blood-drops design. She was pointedly ignoring the smug look on Kodachi's face as she stared at the vampire zoan's accouterments.

Ryoga just grumbled sullenly, ignoring her crewmates and the way Miriam was lazily swimming along beside them, Harumi and Penelope riding on her back whilst Lilith watched them and pouted enviously.

"Query; why is this unit coming with you?" Dyna suddenly asked.

"Well, if there are relics from your homeland here, you're the only one who can identify them," Ranma lazily replied, not even looking up from where she was trailing a hand in the sea-clouds.

"And you do not believe my appearance will cause issues with the residents?"

Ranma shrugged her shoulders. "Why should it? You're a girl - probably more of a girl than I am."

Dyna's single eyelid flickered rapidly in palpable confusion. "...That is not what I was referring to but... thank you for the compliment?"

The conversation was cut off there as the prow of their vessel struck the shore - whilst island-cloud lacked the distinct grinding, crunching sound of sand or stone, it was certainly hard enough for them to feel the impact. Miriam hit the shallows and waded ashore like a colossus, her riders now dangling from her shoulders as she idly reached down and grabbed the rowboat's hull, dragging it safely up above the tideline so they could disembark.

The monastery was even more impressive up close, with the island-cloud equivalent of a tall, barren peak carved into a vaguely rectangular structure - like a tower on steroids. Small windows reinforced with iron-cloud bars gazed out over the beach, and the door was large and solid-looking, just big enough for Miriam to fit through with only a minimum of stooping. Higher even than the wotan's head was a man-sized iron cloud bell, in the Western style, mounted from a comparatively small armature that held it out away from the wall. A small placard was mounted to the right of the door:

Penitent ones without, ring this bell to be permitted access to the mercy within.

"Fancy way to say, 'use the doorbell'," Ranma joked, even as he reached out and tugged on the long rope woven from something akin to coconut hairs... And nothing happened. Frowning slightly in confusion, the temporary redhead jerked on the rope again, harder this time... and still nothing happened.

"You pull like a girl, Saotome; want me to show you how it's done?"

"Shut it, 'Yoiko'!" Ranma spat in anger, grabbing the rope with both hands and pulling with all her might. The bell still didn't ring... but the armature it was hanging from promptly snapped in half, sending the bell hurtling down!

"Ranchan, look out!"

Before Ranma could react, Ukyo had lunged forward and shoved her boyfriend (temporarily girlfriend) out of the way - and then the bell landed right onto her with a metallic crash.

"UCCHAN!"

The bell rocked back and forth, before a metallic cracking noise filled the air. Fissures spiderwebbed across its surface, before, with a doleful whine, it shattered into pieces like an egg whose occupant had grown mighty tired of being confined within. Ukyo brushed metal dust off of her shoulders, a sour look on her face.

"What kinda rat hole are these bimbos running?!" She demanded. She might have heaped further invective on them, but she was a little distracted as a ballistic shortstack nearly knocked her off of her feet.

"Damn stupid rickety - oh, Ucchan, I'm so glad you're alright! You scared me half to death!" Ranma said - not sobbed, because anyone who said that was a filthy liar who was going to get their teeth punched in - even as she squeezed Ukyo as tightly as she could without breaking a rib.

If it had been anybody else, Ukyo probably would have put up her toughest front, maybe saying something clever about how she was too good to be taken down by something as measly as dropping a half-ton bell on her. Since this was Ranma hugging her in relief, she just smiled dopily, cheeks burning red as she intermittently mumbled something that even the most optimistic kindergarten teacher couldn't describe as actual words.

This didn't go unnoticed by the rest of the group. Shampoo huffed loudly, crossing her arms and pointedly looking away, pouting even as her foot beat an irritated tattoo on the shore.

"What the deal here? Ranma no hug Shampoo like that when Shampoo get bell dropped on her..."

"...Are you talking about that mess with the Super Soba? Where you dropped the bell on Ranma first, and then he got you stuck under it by feeding you the antidote?" Nabiki asked her casually, grinning smugly when Shampoo winced.

Lilith looked between the two of them, and then at Ranma and Ukyo clearly intrigued. Miriam and Harumi seemed similarly curious, but made more of an effort to be polite and hide how they felt. Ranma seemed to finally remember she had an audience, and the faux-girl let go of Ukyo as if she were on fire, her cheeks nearly as red as her hair.

Before anyone could say anything, a metallic rattling emanated from behind the door. All eyes were drawn to the solid-looking mass of (presumably) iron-cloud as a hatch opened and a young woman's face peered suspiciously out through it.

"Yeah? Whatcha want?"

Ranma immediately stepped forward, a winning smile on her face, curled hands tucked under her chin in one of her 'cute girl' poses.

"Oh, hi! I'm Ranko Tendo! My friends and I were thinking of joining your convent - could we come in and take a look around?" She chirped cheerfully, using the same sweet tone she had adopted when trying to present herself as the bridal candidate for Picolet Chardin - not as sickly-sweet as her usual 'I'm so innocent and sweet teehee' routine, but lacking the sultry tones of her 'flirt' routine.

The nun on the other side of the door looked quite confused at Ranma's suggestion. Without a word, she slammed the hatch shut. Shampoo's cat-rabbit ears perked up as she listened to the sound of footsteps rapidly receding into the nunnery's interior, then flattened themselves against her skull as a surprisingly cold and fierce wind gusted across the group.

"Well, that was rude," sniffed Kodachi, a disdainful look on her face.

"So, what now? We smash down the door and force our way inside?" Lilith suggested.

"I'm not gonna beat up a bunch of helpless women!" Came the indignant protest from Ranma.

As one, Kodachi, Shampoo and Ukyo adopted dark expressions, crossing their arms and looking harshly at Ranma, a chorus of "Excuse me?" echoing from their collective throats.

"Hey, they're sworn to pacifism, you know I'm right!" Ranma defensively retorted.

Before the debate could progress down the usual road into a full-fledged argument that would probably end in a free-for-all brawl - you could take the martial artist out of Nerima, but you couldn't take the Nerima out of the martial artists - the door to the nunnery suddenly swung open, causing the Kamikaze Pirates to collectively shut up and turn to face it.

Standing in the door was a tall, regal older woman - attractive in a cold, statuesque way, dressed in the weird black and white robes and headscarf (or whatever it was) that Ranma vaguely thought of as "nunnish" from the handful of times he'd seen such characters in manga or the odd anime or two. Dark eyes swept coolly over the assembled girls (and two guys in girl's skins, and one guy who was faking it as hard as possible), taking them in and revealing nothing of her thoughts in return.

"I am Matron Mother Mary Marguerite d'Youville, leader of this convent of the Sisterhood of Our Lady of the Two Faces. You claim you come to us seeking to join our holy ranks?"

Her voice was cold as a glacial wind, every clipped word as precise as a sniper's bullet, her eyes continuing to scour their faces, peering into their collective souls.

Ranma absently noted as Kodachi suddenly tried to surreptitiously hide herself behind her genderbent captain, but never took her eyes off of the self-proclaimed Matron Mother, instead putting on the same winning smile that she had used before.

"That's right! I know we really should have sent messages ahead, but we've come ever so far to be here... please, won't you at least let us come in?"

The Matron Mother simply stared icily into Ranma's eyes. Ranma had never actually had to deal with a disapproving mother in his life, but somehow she just knew that horrible sinking feeling in her gut, the appalling sensation of guilt's clammy tendrils creeping through her body, was exactly what she would have felt if she had ever been in that position.

Beads of sweat broke out all over the transformed boy's brow, burning in the corners of her eyes as she tried not to flinch before the sheer weight of the maternal scrutiny digging deep into his soul. She bit the inside of her lip until it bled, the spike of pain barely even registering before the convent's leader nodded her head.

"Very well. If you are sincere, then follow me."

Without further ado, she turned and marched back inside, and Ranma could only watch her as she went.

'Sheesh, even the old ghoul wasn't that scary!'

"Yo, what's the hold up, 'Ranko'?"

Ryoga's voice, which still sounded so weird filtered through her new feminine vocal chords, jarred Ranma from her stupor, and Ranma hurried after the older woman, her crewmates marching obediently along behind.

In contrast to the stark, fortress-like interior, once Ranma had passed through the doors, she found herself seeing a surprisingly beautiful foyer. The sculptors - or whatever the name was for builders who worked with island-cloud - had taken full advantage of their medium to create a vista of intricately carved, ornate pillars and arching roofs that screamed classy even to Ranma's admittedly limited perspective. Vases and busts (which Ranma still thought was a weird name for sculptures of heads and upper torsos) sat on plinths, and mosaics adorned the walls. But the centerpiece of the decor had to be a massive sculpture of a beautiful woman in a nun's habit, eyes cast heavenwards as she lay bound in the coils of a massive golden serpent.

Ranma tore her attention away from the decor as the Matron Mother began to speak again.

"Of course, you will not be accepted to say your vows immediately; we must first test your dedication to the principles of your order. We shall begin by clothing you in suitable attire..."

"Oh, yeah, course," Ranma blurted out instinctively, glancing back at her crewmates and shrugging helplessly to them.

---

Minutes later...

---

Ranma twisted and turned, feeling the way the robes fluttered with each motion. "Gotta admit, these got way more give in 'em than I expected..."

The young woman who had helped dole out the habits for the 'aspirant nuns' smiled joyfully. "We pride ourselves on our dedication to detail! We have a habit here for any nun, no matter her shape! ...Well, almost any nun..."

Her smile grew crooked as she cast an embarrassed look in Dyna's direction, the fembot's usual placidness having given way to a scowl that could have been etched in steel.

"This unit looks ridiculous," She announced, punctuating her words by snapping her massive battle claw. The nuns in the convent's laundry had tried their best, but ultimately given up, settling for just putting a headdress on Dyna's head and calling it a day.

"Nah, you look fine... I look like the star in a very niche porn pulpie," scoffed Miriam. The wotan had been given the biggest clothes that the nuns could find, but they still ended up looking like a tube-top and booty shorts on her massive frame.

"Well, I think you look pretty cute... and I'm sure Harumi agrees, don't you, sweetie?" Giggled Lilith even as she nudged the blushing crossdresser with her elbow.

Ukyo swished the hem of her skirt, twisting her head to stare over her shoulders. "Does this make my butt look big?"

"Honestly? They are rather more form-flattering than I had anticipated," Kodachi confessed, running a hand down her torso and frowning as she took in the way the motion highlight her bosom.

"If you ladies are quite done?" came the cold, commanding tone of the Matron Mother, and instinctively their collective attention immediately snapped to her. This also drew their eye to the gaggle of other nuns that had joined her; none as imposing as Mother d'Youville, but all radiating an aura of 'don't mess with me' that even Lilith could read.

"Now that you are suitably attired, you will be split into smaller groups and sent to join some of our full members to experience a sample of daily life in our convent. Ranko and Nabiki Tendo, you two will be going with Sister Dolores here. Yoiko Hibiki and Dyna, you are to follow Sister Hildegard. Penelope laFloo and Harumi Tsukiyomi, go with Sister Angelica. Shampoo and Ukyo Kuonji, you are with Sister Catherine. Since you're an odd numbered group in total, that means Kodachi Kuno, Miriam and Lilith, you will all be following Sister Maura Clarke. You are to obey the sister superior to whom you have been attached; you will work until the evening meal, then be allowed to retire to a guest dormitory. Any questions?"

"What about lunch?" Miriam protested immediately.

"Dining only at sunbreak and sundown is one of the rules of behavior expected of a member of our convent," came the reply, mild in delivery and yet carrying such weight it might as well have been cast in solid lead.

Miriam's face fell at the thought, and even the rest of the Kamikaze Pirates silently echoed her despair.

"Now, be off with you!" The Matron Mother ordered, clapping her hands sharply for emphasis.

Ranma flinched, expecting Miriam to cast a resentful look her way - Ryoga certainly wasted no time in throwing an incendiary glare at her rival-turned-captain. But the wotan simply sighed and obediently loped towards her assigned nun. Almost like a chain reaction, the rest of the Kamikaze Pirates filed in her wake, and once they were all divided, allowed themselves to be led away.

---

In the kitchen...

---

The convent's kitchens were a cyclopean vault of a chamber, the walls stained bloody red by the flickering light of roaring fires that fueled enormous ovens, rotisserie spits, flat-topped stoves and bubbling cauldrons. A dozen or more nuns tackled a seemingly endless array of tasks; chopping, dicing, pounding, grating, stirring, spinning and other more arcane practices unique to the kitchen.

Nabiki took in the organized chaos and felt her heart sink. 'Why did it have be cooking?'

Sister Dolores, a younger woman who was still quite beautiful despite the jagged scar that had obliterated her left eye, which she covered with a patch, gestured grandiosely at the chaos. "There are currently six hundred and sixty six sisters serving at this convent! And here we provide the food to feed them all! Find a spot and get to work!"

Ranma - or 'Ranko', whilst she was here - smiled sweetly and nodded enthusiastically, already rolling up her sleeves and cracking her neck as she replied, "Yes, Sister Dolores!"

The nun gave a curt grunt of acknowledgement, and then strode away, losing herself in the bustle of the kitchen. Ranma followed, making her way over to a table where several nuns were busy chopping through a small mountain of fruits and vegetables, leaving only Nabiki standing uncertainly in their wake.

'What am I going to do? I'm not as bad as Akane, but still, cooking is one of my weakest skills! I don't even want to think about how they'll tease me if they find out all I can make is okayu... even Ranma and Ryoga are better than that! Need to find something simple, something where I don't need to do anything too flashy... hello, what's this?'

One table had caught her eye, where about a dozen nuns were busy juicing lemons and pouring milk into an enormous pot on a relatively cool fire. Nabiki sauntered over to take a closer look.

"Hello there! What are you doing?" She asked, using her best manners.

"We're making cottage cheese to turn into sambocade to serve with tonight's meal!" Chirped one young nun, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty who couldn't have been older than Nabiki herself.

"Sambocade?" The vampire zoan repeated the foreign word.

The nun nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah! It's like a sweet cake made from cheese and cream and sugar - it's really yummy!"

'...A cheesecake? All the way up here?! Oh, now this sounds like my type of cooking!'

Nabiki's tongue flicked instinctively at the corner of her mouth, an autonomous reaction to catch any stray droplets of saliva that might have leaked out at the prospect of a dessert, before she put on her most winning grin and asked the obvious question.

"Do you mind if I join you ladies?"

Meanwhile, unaware of Nabiki's choice, Ranma strutted up to the chopping and peeling table, cocky grin at the ready.

"Hey there, ladies! I'm Ranko Tendo - I'm going to be working with you today, according to the big boss lady!"

They stopped their work and looked towards the genderbending pirate captain with cool expressions. One of them, eerily similar to Ranma's teacher Hinako Ninomiya save for her red hair, green eyes and copious freckles, wrinkled her nose into a rather unpleasant sneer.

"You know which end of a knife is which?" She challenged Ranma, throwing a potato at her.

Ranma deftly caught it with her left hand, before tossing it up and catching it on the tip of her index finger and setting it to spinning like a top with a few deft flicks of her digits. As it spun, she snatched up a spare knife from the table and held it to the whirling tuber, causing a single unbroken line of peel to corkscrew away into the air and land neatly on the table. Once the potato was bare, a snap of Ranma's wrist launched it into the air again, whereupon she snatched it up. And all the while, she never took her eyes off of the apparent leader of the nuns.

"Oh, I dabble a little," she replied casually, smirking at the obvious surprise and even flickers of admiration amongst most of the nuns.

The redheaded nun simply scowled harder. "Alright, fine, I guess you can join in..."

Ranma casually diced the potato, threw its pieces into a bin of spuds that had suffered a similar fate, and then properly stepped into the group.

"But you'll need to keep up the pace! There's going to be a lot of hungry mouths waiting for us at supper!" The apparent leader of this particular group of cooking nuns continued, waving her knife at Ranma in obvious reproach.

Ranma didn't even try to hide her snort of amusement, eyes sweeping over her blade's future victims.

"Trust me; ain't gonna be me who has trouble with the pace..."

Meanwhile, Nabiki was busily stirring at the great copper cauldron of gently boiling salted milk. "I never knew it was so easy to make cheese!"

"Oh, yeah! That's just about ready to come off the boil, then we add the lemon juice and vinegar. Then it's just waiting until the curds separate from the whey before we drain it."

"Allow me," Nabiki said, before letting go of the stirring stick and taking hold of the cauldron's handles - making sure to grab a cloth for each hand; she had burned herself in the kitchen enough, thank you!

"No, wait, that's a two woman job!" Protested Sabina - as Nabiki's self-proclaimed new friend was called. Then she stood and gaped in wide-eyed amazement as Nabiki casually hefted the enormous cauldron with its sloshing liquid contents.

"Where did you want this again?" Nabiki asked in the most innocent voice she could imagine, secretly drinking in the awe like a thirsty flower at last granted a life-saving shower of rain.

Sabina numbly pointed, and Nabiki obediently placed it down before turning back to her and asking, "What do we do now?"

"Well, it'll take quite some time before the cheese is ready, so we're supposed to split up and join one of the other teams," Sabina explained, quickly regaining her usual good cheer.

Nabiki suppressed a wince at the unknowingly unpleasant suggestion. 'Great, another chance to screw up where Ranma can see it... wait... there is one dish I know how to make...'

"What if we make another dessert? Not that this sambocade doesn't sound delicious! But I know a really lovely dish that I'm sure everyone would love..."

Sabina looked surprised for a moment, then furrowed her brow in thought before nodding and grinning hugely. "Sure! Sounds fun! But what about your sister? Don't you want to help her?"

"Firstly, Ranko's my cousin, not my sister. Secondly..."

Nabiki glanced over at the chopping table, where most of the nuns had started playing a game of throwing food at Ranma and watching as it came apart in mid-air, courtesy of the human Ginsu gadget they were targeting.

"I think she's doing just fine on her own."

Sabina giggled nervously and nodded slowly, a bead of sweat running down her cheek as she followed Nabiki's eyes. Then she shook herself back to her usual perky demeanor and asked, "So, what do you want to make?"

Nabiki smiled a smile better suited for a princess of hell than a supposed aspirant nun. "Have you ever heard of... Canelés de Bordeaux...?"

---

Somewhere deep inside the covenant...

---

The convent, as it transpired, wormed its way into the depths of the island-cloud like a maggot gnawing heartily into an overripe apple. Sister Hildegard, an exceedingly tall and slender woman with pale skin, dark hair and dark eyes, had led Ryoga and Dyna through the halls in silence, never deigning to speak to them or even look at them.

Ryoga thought of himself (well, currently herself) as a pretty stoic, silent sort of guy... but even she was starting to get a little spooked with the silent act.

"Hey, so, where are we-?"

Ryoga nearly ran into the woman as she stopped suddenly, gesturing to what looked like just a blank wall of white. The only things present here were the ever-present light dials, a couple of small wheeled carts that looked like they could have come from any mine down on the surface, and a smattering of picks and shovels.

"The convent needs expanding. You two will dig," she stated.

"Wait... that's it? You just want us to dig?" Ryoga asked, staring between the nun and the wall incredulously.

Sister Hildegard didn't even deign to reply verbally, instead just nodding and emitting a soft grunt in response.

Ryoga sighed, but then began to limber up, rolling her head from side to side until her shoulders popped, intertwining her fingers and cracking her knuckles. "Well, we did promise to help out..."

"This unit does not possess a drilling apparatus," Dyna politely pointed out.

"Eh, you can load the... rocks, I guess. Leave the breaking to me. Speaking of... Bakusai Tenketsu-!"

"STOP!" Dyna suddenly shrilled in a voice like a cross between a foghorn and a bull-calf who just discovered the hard way what the two bricks were for.

Ryoga jerked to a halt, her index finger mere millimeters from contact with the uncut faux-rock that she had been about to begin shattering. Her free hand instinctively clasped itself over her heart as she panted, willing herself to calm down from the shock, before she whirled to face Dyna.

"What was that all about?! You nearly gave me a heart attack!" Ryoga roared, a gesture she knew exposed her overly long canines, the ones that people had been teasing her about all her life, and which right now she couldn't care less about.

"You have never used your Bakusai Tenketsu technique on island-cloud, correct?"

"Yeah, so what?"

"Are you one hundred percent certain that the move will function as it does on stone, and not by disrupting the integrity of the entire island, causing it to collapse into insubstantial vapors and pitch everyone and everything on it into the sea-clouds beneath us?" Dyna finished, gesturing broadly at the room around them.

Ryoga opened her mouth, ready to express just how stupid she thought Dyna's worries were... and then she stopped. She closed her mouth, thinking it over, before silently turning her head to look at her still out-stretched index finger, an expression of betrayal on her face. Slowly, begrudgingly, she shook her head and silently opened the hand she had been about to use.

"... I guess I don't really want to find out that way... I guess we'll do it the old fashioned way."

Ryoga sighed, and picked up one of the pickaxes before turning a sullen glower on the wall.

'Why does my life always have to be so hard?' She lamented, even as she swung the pick back in preparation to strike.

"Halt," came the sudden sharp command from Dyna, albeit not in the same terrifying screech as before.

"Oh, now what?!" Ryoga whined, frozen mid-swing and not even turning to look at the fembot.

The metallic clickety-clank of Dyna's spidery legs on pseudo-stone floor echoed in Ryoga's ears as she skittered over to the Eternally Lost Girl. Ryoga could feel her small manipulator-hands gently but firmly taking hold of her body, and bemusedly allowed Dyna to rotate her until Ryoga was facing in a different direction.

"This is the direction we were assigned to dig," Dyna placidly informed Ryoga, releasing the genderbender and taking a step back.

"...Shut up."

---

Atop the mountain...

---

Shampoo screwed up her eyes and shaded her face with her hand as the sunlight struck retinas currently set to darkvision with the grace and restraint of a sledgehammer swung by a drunken dock worker whose pint had just been spilled. Despite that momentary obstacle, her other senses were already analyzing her surroundings; the heat of the sun on her exposed skin (what little of it there was) alleviated by a gentle breeze that made her new habit ruffle and flap against her limbs. The smell of wildflowers in bloom brought an instinctive smile to her lips, their sweetness amplified by her Devil Fruit-heightened olfactory nerves... though she could have done without the craving to eat them. But it was her magnificently sensitive ears, swiveling and flicking atop her skull like a pair of satellite dishes, that she paid the most attention to.

'Is that thunder? But it is a beautiful, clear day... Then again, not only are we standing atop a potential thundercloud, but the weather of the Grand Line obeys only its own whims. Best to be prepared...'

She pushed the thought out of her mind as she opened her now-adjusted eyes and refocused her attention on the woman they had followed. Sister Catherine was a surprisingly short woman, closer to their height despite clearly being in her twenties, with curves even her habit couldn't diminish, blonde hair that had been tied into a set of twintails that dangled almost the ground and two of the bluest eyes they had ever seen. The nun marched briskly across the grassy hilltop as if she did this every day... and, in fairness, she probably did.

Her path led them to a small hut built from blocks of island-cloud piled together, at the center of a large field of sky-grass. Surrounding the hut was a flock of two or three dozen goats... but not like any goats that Shampoo had ever seen. Their coats of wool were thick and bushy, more like a cartoony sheep than a goat, and combined with its coloration - dark gray streaked with silver and yellow - made them look almost like little storm clouds wandering over the grass. Their horns were long and crooked, with pronounced zig-zag shapes that made them look similar to lightning bolts.

Their guide gestured to the goats as she declared, "As your task today, you are to shear and milk these thundergut goats. You'll find the tools you need in the shed here."

"Milk some goats? Sure, that'll be easy!" Ukyo announced, grinning broadly.

"Ukyo never handle goats before, huh?" Was the deadpan response from Shampoo, who turned a blank look at her old rival turned friend.

"Well... no, but c'mon, we're us! And how bad could a bunch of goats possibly be?" The ex-crossdresser protested, arms spread wide in an emphatic gesture.

And that was when one goat, a particularly large and sullen-looking billy, lifted its tail and broke wind. This in and of itself was nothing unusual, as anyone who had ever spent a lot of time around goats could tell you. What was unusual was the fact it did so with such violent enthusiasm that it was jet-propelled straight at Ukyo!

"What the hell?!" Yelped Ukyo, instinctively reaching back for a battle spatula... that wasn't present, the whole crew having left their weapons behind as part of the subterfuge.

"Ucchan, watch out!" Shampoo cried out, muscles tensing as she prepared to spring - but even for her, it was too late.

A normal girl would have been struck by the rocketing goat, and would have counted herself lucky to get away with just a few cracked ribs. Ukyo was not a normal girl. She caught the goat by its horns at the very last second, her feet digging trenches in the thin soil that obscured the island-cloud beneath as she bent her will and her muscle to the task of bleeding off its momentum. Five seconds she held the beast at bay, before it ran out of stored gas, whereupon Ukyo was finally able to bring her strength to bear in a different way: bodily slamming the goat into the ground by the head repeatedly, like a traditional washerwoman beating an old carpet against a rock.

Ignoring the display of animal cruelty - Shampoo couldn't deny she'd had similar outbursts back in Nyuchiezhu - Shampoo turned to Sister Catherine. "You want explain what just happened?!"

"Oh, thundergut goats can be a little flighty, is all. You're going to have to move quickly if you want to catch them, especially once they spook," the nun chipperly explained, smiling brightly as she did.

As if on cue, the whole herd of goats promptly flew away in all directions in a series of rolling flatulent thunderclaps. Sister Catherine never even blinked, nor did her smile so much as twitch.

"Good luck! I expect you to have it all done before sundown," she proclaimed, before she turned on her heel and walked away.

Shampoo watched her go, then sighed loudly. "And here Shampoo thought Shampoo's days of dealing with goats be over..."

"Well, you never can tell what'll happen next on this crazy sea," Ukyo observed, walking over to stand at Shampoo's side and dusting her hands, the unconscious male goat now laying deathly still in a shallow crater.

"By the way... what was with that 'Ucchan', huh?"

Shampoo's cheeks burned red. "Is airen's fault! He call Ukyo that name all the time now - it slipped out!"

Ukyo grinned mischievously, visibly basking in this rare moment of one-upmanship over her bitterest rival. "Oh, really now? Are you sure that's all it was? Because I think maybe I figured out yer dirty little secret, China girl..."

"Wh-What secret?!"

"Oh, just the little fact that under all the bluster, all the 'obstacles is for killing', all the struggling for Ranma's hand in Nerima and the reluctant truce now... you might just actually like me," Ukyo needled, wagging a finger mockingly at the Chinese Amazon cabbit.

To her surprise, Shampoo visibly relaxed once she was done.

"Oh, is that all? Because yes, is true; Shampoo do like Ukyo."

"Wai-wha?!"

"What not to like? Ukyo is strong woman - strong fighter, strong will. Rise up after stupid old panda ruin reputation as girl and hone self to become instrument of vengeance. Chase Ranma for ten years, never stop looking, but never lose sight of heart, so when Ukyo learn truth, find it in her to forgive Ranma, to keep loving Ranma. We rivals, yes, but Shampoo have much to respect Ukyo for."

The Chinese Amazon shrugged, and Ukyo's mouth hung open in shock. Now it was Shampoo's turn to smile wickedly as she took a step closer to her, bending forward in a strangely innocent manner.

"Ukyo want to know a secret?"

Dumbly, Ukyo nodded, just barely finding it in herself to close her mouth as Shampoo sashayed towards her, a "cat that drank the cream" grin on her lips. She felt her cheeks grow warm and her heart start to race as Shampoo melodramatically bent her mouth to her ear, the Chinese Amazon's herbal namesake drowning out the wildflowers as the wind gently blew a lock of Shampoo's hair across Ukyo's face.

"Shampoo no lie, would like to have Ranma all to self... but Shampoo could share him with Ukyo. Would be more than happy to share with Ukyo..."

A weird tingly feeling danced across Ukyo's skin at the purr in Shampoo's voice. But before she could marshal her own treacherous tongue into asking - demanding - an explanation, Shampoo casually stood up and walked away, heading towards the shed.

"Is good thing Ukyo get hang of Moonwalk recently, no?"

"Uh... yeah? It is? I mean, why?" Ukyo asked, trying to adjust to the sudden change in topics.

"Be much easier to catch flying goats if can fly yourself, yes?" Shampoo patiently explained, rummaging around the shed's interior.

"Wait a minute, why do I have to catch them?! You're better at the move, and you have those cat-rabbit legs of yours - shouldn't you be off running them down?!" Ukyo spluttered indignantly.

"...Ukyo know how to shear goat once catch them? Or milk them?" Shampoo asked, emerging from the shed and pointedly clicking the thick pair of shears she had found, the long blades of sharpened and lacquered shell sliding back and forth.

"Uh... no?" Ukyo reluctantly admitted.

"Then Ukyo go get goats, and Shampoo take care of them. Is perk of Shampoo being one what actually grow up on farm. Now go - goats no come back here by selves!" The zoan ordered, pointing imperiously at the closest mini-flock for emphasis.

Muttering darkly, but still blushing despite herself, Ukyo angrily turned and started jogging after her quarry...

---

In the laundry...

---

'How ironic; for a room devoted to cleanliness in a building devoted to holiness and spiritual purity, this place could certainly pass for one of the more esoteric hells...' Kodachi philosophically mused.

Despite the best efforts of the architects, there were certain unavoidable realities to having a laundry set up in an enclosed environment. Great tubs filled with boiling water resulted in a lot of steam, which filled the room with a permanent haze of soap-scented mists and caused moisture to gather on the roof, drizzling down on the nuns stoically engaged in the various businesses of hand-washing. Some were busily stirring the contents of the tubs with long poles to ensure they were properly soaked with soapy water, whilst others dragged the sodden clothes free to scrub them on scrubbing boards. Still others dragged the now-washed clothes to ancient devices designed to wring them clean, after which the damp clothes were carried out to a different room to be hung up for drying.

'So primitive... This world is truly such a contradiction in terms of technology. Even given that the people of the sky-seas must rely on dials over iron it's strange to see them using methods that haven't been used in most non-impoverished parts of the world since... maybe the 1800s?'

"You guys must treat a lot of injured people," Miriam suddenly announced.

Kodachi was so surprised she ran right into Sister Maura Clarke, a middle-aged woman with a pleasant enough demeanor, despite her somewhat moon-faced features, the silver sprinkled through her auburn hair, and the three long knife-scars that marred her left cheek.

"I do humbly apologize," Kodachi began, but the nun ignored her, instead directing a surprised look at Miriam.

"Why, whatever makes you say that, dearie?"

Miriam simply snorted and tapped her nose with one sausage-like finger. "Shark-girl, remember? I can smell the blood; the steam carries it from every tub and surrounds me in it, has been doing so since I stepped foot in here. Trust me, I'd have to be dead to not recognize that sweet, sweet smell..."

A sudden sullen growl echoed from her exposed belly, and all around the laundry nuns flinched back, some going so far as to deliberately put their washtubs or whatever else might be close between themselves and the wotan.

"Oh, come on! What kind of monster do you take me for?! I'm not going to go on some kind of rampage just because it's been a few hours since breakfast!" Miriam growled bitterly.

"Indeed! And you call yourselves nuns - you should be ashamed of yourselves!" Kodachi hissed angrily, eyes glittering in the hazy light as she stepped aggressively in front of her larger crewmate.

"She's right! Why, I've been traveling with them for over a week now - Miriam wouldn't hurt a fly!" Lilith professed, authoritatively reaching up and loudly slapping Miriam's butt.

The whole room went quiet, Kodachi giving Lilith a disbelieving look whilst Miriam partially turned to stare down at the completely shameless cobra zoan.

"...Was that supposed to be showing solidarity, or just an excuse to grab my ass?" The unamused wotan grumbled.

Lilith just shrugged and grinned saucily up at her. "It can be both!"

Miriam sighed, and gently swatted the smaller woman in the head with her tail. She put no real force into the blow, and so Lilith merely staggered back, never-once losing her lecherous leer.

Kodachi's palm hit her forehead with an audible 'smack' as she muttered to herself, "Seriously, Lilith, do you have no sense of appropriate behavior...?"

Despite Kodachi's imprecations, the mood in the laundry seemed to have calmed down, with the nuns returning to their work, unceremoniously stepping out of quote-unquote 'hiding' where needed. Sister Clarke coughed demurely into a closed fist, drawing the attention of the pirate trio back to her.

"Anyway, ladies, your task today will be to assist in the washing. You can either work together or join a different group; I'll let you decide."

And with that, she turned and walked away, soon losing herself in the swirling steam and the general confusion. Once she was gone, Kodachi turned to her companions.

"I think it's probably for the best that we remain together, don't you, ladies?"

"Sounds good to me," Miriam nodded.

"Well, somebody's gotta cover for you anyway," Lilith giggled.

Kodachi's eyes narrowed, and the look in them could have frozen the blood in a weak man's veins.

"And exactly what do you mean by that?" She asked, her tone cold and crisp, and anyone who might have happened to be standing close to her would have noticed that the normal muggy heat of the laundry was noticeably stronger in her presence.

"Oh, come on! You may be a - sailor, but it's obvious to anyone who knows you that you were a noblewoman beforehand. What's a girl like you know about doing laundry?" Lilith scoffed, waving a hand in symbolic dismissal of the very thought, though the lightness of her tone and the faint smile on her lips showed she didn't mean to be /too/ harsh with that assessment.

"You might be surprised. I assure you, *I* will not be the one holding us back!" Kodachi hissed at the older woman.

"That's the spirit!" The zoan announced, but though she was still grinning, it was ever so slightly quivering around the edges.

Lilith didn't wait for Kodachi to reply, instead walking briskly over to the nearest washing tub. Kodachi sighed softly and glanced up at Miriam, who looked down with obvious sympathy before girl and wotan followed the zoan, joining a clearly very surprised group of girls at a boiling tub full of laundry.

---

In the library...

---

"Mes dieux, tant de livres!"

Penelope's squeal of delight echoed through the impressively well-stocked library - larger than any that Harumi had ever seen before, although he would be the first to admit that he hadn't seen very many. The noise elicited scowls and hissed 'shushes' from the few nuns in the library with them, especially their guide, Sister Angelica - an older woman, hair graying and face lined with age, but still radiating strength and determination. Honestly, she reminded Harumi of his grandmother... which meant he was carefully hiding behind Penelope as much as possible. His grandmother scared him worse than his mother did.

Penelope didn't even notice. Though she had insisted on wearing a veil, her eyes were wide with sheer joy, the sapphire blue irises almost seeming to twinkle in delight as she clasped her hands reverently in front of herself, her tail wagging back and forth like the biggest, fluffiest happy dog's tail that Harumi could ever imagine.

'You're almost as adorable as Miriam, aren't you?' Harumi mused fondly, unable to hold back a smile as he watched Penelope nearly vibrate in her eagerness to run over and take a closer look at the tomes surrounding them.

They were so distracted - Penelope with the prospect of immersing herself in the library's contents, and Harumi in his admiration of a pretty girl being cute - he would never *dream* of betraying Miriam, but that didn't mean his eyes had stopped working! - that they barely realized Sister Angelica was talking to them. They just bowed their heads obediently and murmured assent, and watched as she left. Then, once she was gone, Penelope immediately rushed over to the nearest shelf and began browsing, finger running along spines and giggling almost maniacally to herself.

"Sooo many books! Oh, I am just loving books! Back 'ome, I was not being ze most popular child when I was younger - ze other kids would be teasing me about my looks, you see. My parents tried so hard, but even with my savate training, I spent so many long hours locked away reading and studying... books are one of ze greatest treasures in ze world," the skunk-woman sighed loudly.

"Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about - books and animals were the only friends I had on my island growing up too," Harumi confessed, having joined her in looking over the shelves himself.

As he ran his gaze over the titles on his half of the bookshelf, he continued, "Of course, my options were probably far more limited than yours... oooh! One of the Monsieur Dupin books!"

"Let me see!" Cheered Penelope, the Fraucen scholar eagerly pushing her way into Harumi's space to grab the book he indicated from the shelf.

"Whilst ze Navy does not like 'im much, for many believe he shows ze Navy's intelligence in a bad light, he is being very big in Frauce - did you know ze original author was from Frauce? And zis one is being...ze Case of ze Five Orange Pips! A classic! ...Mes dieux, it's a first printing!"

"...Is that something special?" A confused Harumi asked, watching as Penelope excitedly hugged the book to her ample chest.

"Ze Five Orange Pips was very controversial when it was first published, for tackling ze topic of anti-fishman sentiments, oui? Zey only printed about two hundred copies... even my family only owned a fourth printing," Penelope patiently explained, giving the book one last reverent nuzzle before carefully placing it back.

"I had no idea," Harumi admitted, marveling at the revelation before turning his attention back to the books, as Penelope had already done the same.

They continued browsing in companionable silence for several minutes, slowly drifting between the different shelves.

"...Excuse-moi, but are these titles looking... odd, to you, Harumi?" Penelope suddenly asked, glancing over at her crossdressing companion.

"Now that you mention it... I admit to not being the most classically educated in terms of literature, but some of these titles seem rather unusual for a nunnery," the disguised swordsman observed.

"Oui. Many of these titles, I am recognizing as rare collector's items, worth great sums even in ze Four Blues. But most of these titles? They are being connected to crime, ze macabre, and ze occult. Ze Annotated Index of Yog-Sothothery, ze Tale of ze Demon Barber of Fleet Street, ze Chronicles of Averoigne, ze Saga of Varney ze Vampire, ze Kitab al-Azif... look, here is being an unabridged copy of Lucrezzia Belladonna's Cookbook!"

"...That doesn't sound so inappropriate for nuns?" Harumi pointed out, tilting his head and looking in confusion at his skunk counterpart.

"Do not be letting ze title fool you! It is being a biography of a famous poisoner, complete with recipes for ze poisons she used and how she was poisoning her victims!"

Harumi blanched, although some might say that with his particularly pale complexion, it was hard to notice. He resumed his scrutiny of the titles with greater intensity. One title in particular caught his eye, and he instinctively began to reach for it, even as he spoke.

"Lady Penelope? Have you ever heard of a book called 'Salò' before...?"

"What?!"

The next thing Harumi knew, the skunk-girl had slapped his hand away from the book, like a mother warding off a child from touching an open flame (not that /his/ mother had ever done so). Then she bodily pushed him aside to look at it herself, only to recoil with a hissed stream of Fraucen profanities.

"What is it?" The confused crossdresser asked, not daring to touch the agitated skunk.

"Salò is being ze last book that we should be finding in a place like this! It is being banned by ze World Government for obscenity!" She shot back, practically spitting in her disgust.

"...They do things like that?" Harumi asked, dumbfounded.

"According to stories I 'eard growing up, ze only copies that are left are ze prize of only two types of people; being ze most utterly depraved, or ze type who 'as more money than brains! Ze World Government abhors this book so much that they have made printing it punishable with death, and possession with sentencing to Impel Down!"

Now Harumi recoiled, staring at the book as if it were a snake preparing to bite him... Probably with more distrust than that, in fact, as he'd always managed to do quite well with the snakes that proliferated in the jungles of Femille.

...Which still hadn't made it any less alarming when he'd found Lilith in her cobra form curled up in his laundry basket, despite her assurances she'd just gotten sleepy and slithered into the wrong room...

Pushing those mad thoughts aside, he still found himself obligated to offer a possible explanation.

"Well, they are a religious order. Maybe it's considered part of their spiritual training - hardening their souls against the temptations of evil, or learning to identify it better?"

"A possibility... but didn't madmoiselle Kodachi say that nuns are pacifists?" Penelope gently rebutted.

Harumi frowned, nodding as he conceded her point, before a rebuttal struck him. "Then maybe it's about keeping evil locked away? You did say that this... book... is banned for its depravity..."

Even behind her veil, Harumi could tell that Penelope was seriously thinking it over, and finally she nodded slowly. "Oui, that does make sense... still, I am thinking we should be talking to ze capitaine about this..."

Harumi nodded emphatically in agreement.

---

Sundown, and dinner time...

---

The nunnery's enormous dining room was an odd contrast; tables groaning under lavish arrangements of food surrounded by row upon row of quiet, demurely-behaved women. Whilst individuals might murmur softly to each other here and there, the general attitude was solemn and stately.

So the Kamikaze Pirates were doing their best to try and keep on their best behavior.

"BUUUURRRRPPP!"

Well... 'best behavior' is a rather relative term...

Indifferent to the hundreds of eyes staring at her, Miriam contentedly picked her teeth with a bullock's rib that'd been sucked clean of flesh. "Ahhh, I needed that... how do these women live on only two meals a day?!"

Harumi smiled and gently stroked the back of her enormous hand with his own fingertips as he cheerily observed, "Not every woman has your appetite, my little sea-rose."

Miriam scoffed loudly. "Don't try to use cutesy nicknames with me; you're no good at 'em and I'm not that kind of girl."

Despite her assertions, she was visibly blushing, and smiling dopily down at her smaller swain, who simply gazed up into her eyes happily.

Ranma almost felt guilty about loudly coughing and drawing everybody's attention back to matters at hand. Almost, given that something in the back of his (well, currently /her/) mind started squirming at the looks that his kind-of sorta girlfriends were giving the very odd couple.

"So, anybody here notice anythin' interesting today? All I got was that Nabiki is a pretty good dessert cook..."

"She is?" Was the startled reply from Ukyo, who looked from Ranma over at the vampire zoan.

Nabiki just smiled politely and took a forkful of sambocade without answering. But they could feel the smug radiating from her like heat from a furnace.

"Yeah; she helped make this sambo-whatever cake-"

"Which is no New York-style cheesecake, but is certainly most delectable," Kodachi mildly observed, taking a forkful for herself.

Ranma continued as if Kodachi hadn't spoken, "-But she also taught them to make these Canelés de Bordeaux things."

The transformed boy then snatched one up and ate it, as if to emphasize her point, but really just because she could. Ranma reached for a second, only for Kodachi to steal it away before Ranma could take hold of it. She gave her ex-stalker turned girlfriend a look that was equal parts annoyed and impressed, but Kodachi gave her no attention back. Instead, she took a bite out of her prize and delicately consumed it before speaking up again.

"I must say, this repast does feel a trifle lavish for our hosts..."

"How so?" Ukyo observed, taking a careful sip of the sweet fruit juice that had been provided for liquid refreshments.

Twirling her own cup and staring into its contents as they performed their liquid dance, Kodachi replied, "Nuns are usually sworn to vows of poverty, and whilst that does not necessarily mean they take vows of asceticism, it does mean they are supposed to live existences of humble means..."

"Eating only twice a day sounds plenty humble to me!" Grumbled a repulsed Miriam.

"Even beyond that, I would expect most nuns to dine on more bread, water and cheese, and less meat, cake and wine," Kodachi declared solemnly, still staring into her own cup.

"Then how come Kodachi eat so much, hm?" Shampoo asked, the smirk on her lips making it obvious she was teasing.

"I have neither sworn any formal vows to become a novitiate of this order, nor do I intend to," came the prim, proper response.

"Besides, she's not the one stuffing her face here," came the interjection from the ever-moody Ryoga.

Unthinkingly, the whole crew's heads turned to face the obvious candidates for Ryoga's comment. Nabiki stared coolly back at them, even as she finished off the last of her second complete sambocade. Penelope, however, blushed vividly, which was visible even through her fur - especially since her cheeks were already crammed near to bursting with a roughly equal parts mixture of sambocade and canelés. She masticated furiously, swallowing hard to gulp down the overabundance of sugary sweets, then made a valiant if futile effort to stifle a belch into one demure hand as her gullet protested having so much being forced into it so fast.

"Pardon, but I am being a martyr to my sweet tooth," she protested, still blushing and surreptitiously making a futile attempt to adjust a habit that was now visibly stretched tight around her midriff.

"I thought you were supposed to be a skunk, not a pig..." jeered the eternally lost girl.

"Hey, lay off, 'Yoiko'! Don't be takin' it out on her that you're uncomfortable here!" Ranma hissed, jabbing a warning finger at her first mate for emphasis.

Ryoga snarled toothily, cup splintering into worthless shards of shell under the pressure of her fingers.

Ukyo quickly spoke up, lest the ever-volatile first mate forget where she was and leap across the table to begin one of her and Ranma's characteristic brawls.

"Shamps and I actually noticed something funny, Ranchan..."

As one, their attention turned to the Chinese cabbit-girl, who was staring dumbfoundedly at Ukyo and mouthing the word 'Shamps?' with obvious disbelief. Then she recognized the attention, coughed into one hand, and turned to face them.

"Ukyo and Shampoo asked to herd goats for milking and shearing. But gear was badly maintained - not look as if used in long time. Goats also much wilder than should be..."

"Maybe they're just bad goats?" Ranma brought up, compelled to offer an alternative.

"No, Shampoo raise goats in village... Shampoo know goats. Shampoo tell you, those goats never be sheared or milked before - or at least, no be done in long, long time..."

"We noticed something weird in the laundry, too," Lilith suddenly interjected.

"The place reeked of blood... at least, to those of us with the right senses..." She stuck out her tongue for emphasis, her companions watching with mingled admiration and disgust as the eerily long appendage rolled down to writhe like a snake in the valley of her bosom before she sucked it back into her mouth.

"Yes, and those clothes were, on average, far too fine to come from the kinds of poor supplicants who would normally turn to a hospice over a hospital," Kodachi mused darkly.

"And the library was filled with books that really have no place being here," Harumi added quickly.

Ranma folded her arms across her chest and nodded sagely. "Yes, it does sound very odd... but, does any of this add up to anything we need to get involved in?"

They fell silent and looked at each other, considering, before collectively shaking their heads.

"Not gonna lie, it sounds weird. But we don't really have anything to do with them... I mean, yeah, if we turn up any signs they're really up to something nasty, we'll stop them, but at the moment, we got no reason to interfere. So, tonight, we'll go for a little look-see of our own, and then we'll say goodbye to this place tomorrow, okay?"

The Kamikaze Pirates looked at each other once more, then back at Ranma and nodded.

---

The witching hour...

---

The halls of the convent were dark and still, the only sound to be heard the faint after-echoes of the bells that tolled the midnight hour. A normal person would have had little chance to navigate in stealth, the need for light by which to see would have made them a beacon for any prying eyes.

Fortunately for the Kamikaze Pirates, they weren't "normal" people by any stretch of the definition...

"Don't you feel even the slightest undignified doing that?" Ryoga quietly asked Dyna, the fembot currently being carried along by a hastily rigged array of ropes that secured her to Miriam's back like a baby.

"It is simply logical. My body cannot move with the stealth you organics evidence, by its very nature. This compensates for that limitation. Why should I feel ashamed of it?" Came the soft, docile response from Dyna.

"Don't really know that I'm that stealthy..." Muttered the wotan, even as she gingerly followed their leader - Ranma, as always.

Nabiki, who was flying alongside, nodded her head to Miriam. "Don't take it too hard; Ranma has that effect on people. Judging yourself by his standards is a good way to give yourself an inferiority complex..."

She promptly shut up as Ranma cast a look at her over his currently feminine shoulder, one containing both an unspoken reprimand and a certain level of hurt.

In silence they slipped into the convent's depths, veritable ghosts in the gloom, wending their way deeper, until they came to a particularly large, solid-looking and imposing door. Ranma frowned gently, leaning forward and running her fingertips over the doorknob - and the keyhole that lay just below and beside it.

"Can you pick it?" Ukyo asked quietly, her voice barely above a whisper, as much from her reluctance to bring up the oft-speculated but seldom-invoked specter of just how deep into criminality Genma Saotome had been and what dark lessons he may have passed onto his only son and heir as from the practicality of remaining hidden.

In response, Ranma simply twisted the knob and pushed, and the door slid open, whisper-quiet in its passage and in defiance of all spy thriller, gothic melodrama or horror novel conventions.

"Don't need to," Ranma whispered back, before placing her index finger to her lips and exhaling softly.

With her companions cautioned, Ranma eased the door open just a little further and peeked cautiously around it.

"...This ain't the vault," she dumbfoundedly observed, her reaction inciting the more curious members of her crew to crowd around so they could see what had Ranma so shocked.

Behind the door, a series of three short staircases led down to an enormous chamber, in which dozens, maybe hundreds of nuns were busily working across the biggest armory that Ranma had seen since coming to this world. A mixture of dial-based and more 'conventional' weapons were laid out upon tables, stacked into racks, or loaded into crates. Nuns were everywhere, checking, assembling, loading, or otherwise busying themselves with the arsenal.

"I thought you said nuns were pacifists?" A disbelieving Ranma whispered to an equally gobsmacked Kodachi.

"Obviously, these are not the nuns I'm familiar with!" She hissed back to Ranma.

At the far end of the armory was a raised dais, below an enormous statue similar to the one they had seen when they first entered the convent; a nun wrapped in the coils of a golden serpent. Except that this nun was dressed in a habit that... well, Ranma had never even heard the term "naughty nun" before, but one look at this one's dress and Ranma knew exactly what it meant. And the snake was so obviously sexualized in its entwining that even Ranma could figure it out, blushing beet red as she worked out exactly where the snake's tail disappeared.

Standing on the dias was the unmistakable figure of Matron Mother Mary Marguerite d'Youville, who raised her arms into the air and cried out, "Sisters! Hearken to me!"

At once, every single nun in the place stopped what she was doing and turned silently and obediently to their leader.

"Our holy work has rewarded us most favorably in recent weeks, sisters! But jealous eyes have also fallen upon us for what we have done - the World Government, the tyrants from the below, they condemn us for embracing the holy truth! Hypocrites, we know them! For do they not embrace the six coils of the serpent as we do, sisters? Do they not embrace avidity and gluttony, carnality and paramountcy, vainglory and indolency?"

"YES!" The nuns roared back as one.

"And yet they would condemn us as criminals for embracing the true goddess of the world! Dealers in illicit drugs and illegal arms, peddlers in flesh and poison - such is the slander they would heap upon our holy brow!"

A chorus of outraged jeering erupted from the gathered sisters, many making wrathful or obscene gestures in their disgust.

"But the serpent is merciful, sisters! It has shielded us from their perfidy! And so they sent spies into our midst - unbelievers who came under false flags, claiming to desire membership into our sacred sisterhood!"

The Kamikaze Pirates collectively flinched as if cut by a knife.

"Okay, how did you not only give us away, but make them think we were with the World Government?!" Ryoga harshly hissed to Ranma.

Ranma opened her mouth, about to tell her old rival /exactly/ what she thought of that accusation, only for the Matron Mother to suddenly resume her rant.

"Behold, sisters! The faces of the parasites!"

She snapped her fingers authoritatively and four particularly large and burly nuns marched out onto the dias beside her, dragging with them two struggling, squirming figures, dignity barely preserved by habits that had been almost ripped to pieces..

"Lemme go ya hairy-armed hacks!"

"Stop this at once! I am a Captain in the Navy! I'll see you all sent to Impel Down for this!"

The nuns jeered and hurled profanities at the Chaser sisters as they were roughly hauled in front of the now-serenely smug Matron Mother and forced to their knees before her. She didn't even look down at their hatefully defiant faces, instead gesturing to her followers once more.

"What say you, sisters? Shall we let these lickspittles run back to their tyrannical masters...? Or shall we punish them, as the golden serpent decrees?"

Once again, the nuns roared out as one, and whilst the individual replies varied, the sentiment was universal: a cry for the Marines to be put to death.

"Then death it shall be! With their blood, we shall wash away the stain their presence has wrought upon this sacred ground!"

The nuns cheered and roared in approval, waving their fists and stamping their feet. Akasuki tried to scream her defiance over them, but Kiyoshi simply closed her eyes and hung her head, attempting to preserve some dignity by resigning herself to the inevitable.

'Mother... Father... I failed you...'

She felt a single tear slide down her cheek as she heard a pistol being cocked, before its cold metal muzzle was touched to the back of her skull.

"Oh no ya don't!"

The Navy captain's eyes flew open in shock as a nun suddenly flew threw the air and dispatched the half-dozen nuns guarding Kiyoshi and Akasuki with a single lightning-fast combo attack, launching them bodily across the armory and into their assembled counterparts, bringing calamity and confusion.

Kiyoshi blinked rapidly, trying to process what she was seeing, barely daring to believe it. "Who...what?!"

"Geeze, how'd ya get yerself into this mess?" The turncoat nun asked, grinning cockily down at Kiyoshi as she yanked off her wimple, revealing crimson locks tied up in an all-too-familiar pigtail...

"You! Captain Saotome!" Kiyoshi shrieked.

"In the flesh - an' lucky fer you!" Chortled the hateful pirate, her face twisted into what Kiyoshi would swear blindly was a mocking sneer.

"What is the meaning of this?!" Roared the matron mother, glowering down from her dias like a vengeful goddess from on high.

"Well, I was just gonna pack up and leave tomorrow morning, since it didn't seem like you girls had what I was after, but I wasn't just gonna let ya /kill/ these two in cold blood!" Ranma spat back, absently pointing a finger at the stunned sisters behind herself.

The matron mother laughed, covering her mouth with her sleeve in an incongruous picture of demureness. "A pirate? Playing the heroine? How utterly ridiculous! And now you think to battle my entire convent alone?"

"Alone? Well, that might be a little tricky," Ranma conceded, finger curled beneath her bottom lip as she nodded thoughtfully in exaggerated contemplation. Then she grinned wickedly. "Good thing I brought help!"

"Shishi Hokodan!"

A coruscating fireball of sickly green flame hurtled through the air and caught the matron mother squarely in the chest, blasting her backwards with a scream of equal parts shock and pain. She slammed into the idol behind the dias with such force it smashed into a cascade of pieces, burying her in chunks of fake-stone.

To give the nuns their credit, they almost immediately rallied, grabbing for the freely available weapons and whirling to face the newly revealed threat... unfortunately, they were absolutely not prepared for the Kamikaze Pirates to fall on them like a Grand Line storm.

Ryoga hurtled through the air like a meteorite, landing on a table and crushing it into slivers of plastic-like stiffened cloud-stuff, the impact driving back the nuns gathered around them. Before they could rally, the eternally lost girl was upon them, fists swinging like sledgehammers, falling upon them with crushing force.

Kodachi, Ukyo, Harumi and Penelope descended in a series of mighty leaps, the non-Nerimans admittedly doing so with a little less skill than their Neriman counterparts. They practically flew at the tables covered in weaponry, snatching up arms for themselves before launching themselves into the fray, relying on being in close quarters to prevent any of the armed nuns from shooting them back.

Nabiki took to the wing, flanked by a Moonwalking, hybrid form'd Shampoo, and hurtled through the air. The two zoans lashed out in a series of gravity-defying kicks, sending nuns flying with every blow and jinking around any retaliatory shots.

Dyna, in contrast, lacked the dignity of their respective entries. Instead, Miriam launched her through the air like a shotput, sending her slamming into the massed ranks of nuns like a runaway train. The fembot stoically endured her bouncing for several moments before deploying her primary arm and legs, filling the ear with an ear-splitting screeching sound. The distraction of many nuns as they clapped their hands over their ears to try and dull the audial assault was their downfall, as Dyna lurched into the fray the microsecond she had control over her momentum.

At the same time, Miriam followed in Dyna's wake, leaping from the top of the stairs to add a little extra 'oomph' to her Seismic Slam technique. Enormous fists crashed into island-cloud, the naturally pliant nature of the pseudo-stone amplifying the shockwaves and causing the floor to visibly ripple. Half the room shook as the impact literally rolled across it like a series of waves, knocking countless nuns off their feet.

Ranma watched the carnage, beaming proudly as she watched her crewmates, before turning her attention to the dumbstruck Chaser sisters.

"So, how the heck did you two end up here? Don't tell me you came all this way chasin' little old me!" The faux-girl giggled, only slightly playing up her amusement.

Kiyoshi looked disgusted and scoffed loudly, before spitting, "As if, you arrogant, over-endowed, balloon-breasted bimbo!"

"Yeah, what she said!" Akasuki chorused.

Ukyo struck out with a glowing red greatsword, driving back the nuns foolish enough to come close to face her. She cast a baleful look at the Chaser sisters and scoffed loudly to herself, muttering, "As if either of you two have any room to talk!"

Ranma just laughed at them both. "Flattery will get ya nowhere! But, seriously, how'd ya get here?"

"If you must know, Commodore Sukumvit insisted on traveling to the Sky-Seas in pursuit of your new master, Captain Shiki..." Kiyoshi grumbled.

"Okay, first up, I ain't got nothin' ta do with that Shiki guy - he's nuts! An' second thing, I bow ta nobody, got that?!" Ranma scowled thunderously.

Kiyoshi simply glared defiantly back at the transformed boy. "Regardless, as the first marine presence here in, frankly, far too long, we found ourselves drafted to infiltrate the Sisterhood of the Golden Serpent."

There was a dopplering scream as a nun came flying through the air. Ranma bent to the side at an angle that made Kiyoshi's spine hurt just looking at it to let her pass by unimpeded, the young pirate captain never taking her eyes off of Kiyoshi.

"So, you know what the deal with these loonies is?"

"They're a criminal cult!" Akasuki piped up.

Ranma gave her an exasperated look, folding her arms across her chest. The sarcasm practically dripped from her words as she drawled, "No, really?"

"She means that they worship crime. They're even more insane than most pirates," Kiyoshi snapped, bristling as she tried to defend her sister's honor.

A nun rushed at Ranma, screaming defiantly, only for Ranma to backhand her across the mouth so hard she flew back the way she came without even looking, leaving a trail of teeth clattering to the floor in her wake.

"So, we done? Stop gloating and kill us already," Kiyoshi spat at Ranma, who recoiled as if physically struck.

"I ain't gonna kill ya!" She shrieked in outraged disgust.

Kiyoshi rolled her eyes disdainfully. "Seriously, who was this Kasumi woman? Your lover? Your dead sister?"

"Okay, firstly, me not wanting ya dead had nothin' ta do with you lookin' like Kasumi!" Snapped Ranma.

"And secondly, Kasumi is my sister," Nabiki interjected as she came crashing down next to them, an unfortunate nun clutched in the zoan's prehensile feet as she performed the kind of jumping piledriver only somebody with wings could pull off.

The two marines looked at her with naked shock.

"Since when are you a zoan?!" demanded the incredulous Akasuki.

"I look like your sister?!" an appalled Kiyoshi spluttered.

"Since recently, and you both do," came the cheerful answer from Nabiki, who kicked her groaning victim aside.

The two Marines couldn't have looked more revolted if they tried, but before they could verbally express their disgust, Ranma quickly interjected.

"Look, not gonna pretend we're buddies, but do you think you can at least agree to a truce until we take these jerks out? I'd rather not have to leave you tied up 'n' vulnerable till we're done..."

Kiyoshi looked at Akasuki, who sighed softly and grudgingly nodded acceptance, before she turned her attention back to Ranma with as much haughty pride as she could muster, given her position. "Very well, a truce... but just for today."

Nabiki promptly shifted to her hybrid form, then she reached out and sliced through the cloud-stuff bonds binding the sisters' wrists and ankles. They shot to their feet, rubbing their chafed wrists, clearly anticipating an attack, only for the two Kamikaze Pirates to turn their backs and leap into the ongoing melee.

Despite the shock-and-awe opening strike that the Kamikaze Pirates had made, those nuns who weren't taken down in the first few minutes - and their sheer numbers meant those were quite numerous - were doing their best to rally and trying to push back.

One particularly bold nun charged screaming defiantly at Ryoga, who sighed and punched at her. But this nun was faster than the others, and intercepted Ryoga's punch with a flat, spiral-shaped shell. To Ryoga's shock, her blow literally stopped dead, as if she'd hit nothing at all, and the nun grinned evilly back at the transformed boy. Ryoga punched again and again, delivering three powerful blows in succession, but none of them so much as made the nun's hand tremble.

"Aww, such weak little punches - now it's my turn! Reject!"

And before Ryoga could react, the nun shoved the shell into Ryoga's stomach and it went off like a bomb, discharging a concussive blast of force. The Eternally Lost Girl staggered backwards three steps and doubled over, clapping a hand over her mouth to keep from puking in response to such a powerful blow to her solar plexus. Blood spurted around her clenching fingers and puddled on the floor, Ryoga instinctively wrapping an arm around her midriff and the bruised organs within.

'I think she cracked some of my ribs! Ohhh... that hurts... I think I need to see Shampoo once this fight is over...'

Ryoga fared better than her would-be assailant, however, who was flung off her feet and launched clear across the room, shrieking in agony as the recoil snapped her arm like kindling, broken bones tearing through twisted flesh in three places. Even Ryoga winced at the sight, once she had fought down the nausea and spat out the last of the blood.

Miriam cursed as a squad of nuns opened fire on her, their pistols emitting blinding flashes of light in time with each bullet. Thanks to her natural wotan toughness, plus a little improvised Bakusai Tenketsu training that her captain had cooked up for her, the bullets harmlessly bounced off of her toughened skin, but the strobing effect was still quite painful.

"Ow! Lousy flash guns... why do you even have those?!" She demanded.

"They're supposed to be used to counter opponents capable of dodging bullets! They weren't really made for a girl like you," Lilith called, sweeping her tail out like an enormous whip and scything through a cluster of nuns that were trying to rush her with swords and clubs.

They went flying... but that simply encouraged the next batch to hold back, instead bringing flame bazookas to bear and launching streams of fire at the two biggest targets. The cobra zoan nimbly weaved around the projectiles, which splashed against the walls - some even hit other nuns, who went up like howling candles and fell to the floor, desperately clawing at their burning habits. Not that this stopped the nuns with the flame bazookas from continuing their barrage. Miriam, on the other hand, was a much easier target; she howled in pain as at least three flame jets struck her in the midriff, swatting instinctively at the flashburn and blistered skin they raised, before she snatched up some fallen tables as makeshift shields against a larger, more concentrated volley.

"You little vermin! Well, two can play that game!" Hissed an indignant Lilith as she continued to slither around and under their desperate attempts to shoot her.

As they stopped to reload, Lilith struck; her tail reached out and wrapped itself around Penelope's midriff, yanking the skunk-featured mink away from the gaggle of nuns whom she had been beating senseless with an echoing girlish squeal of surprised confusion. Lilith smirked triumphantly, venom glistening on her fangs as she brandished Penelope at the bazooka-wielding nuns rear-fist like a human pistol... okay, a mink pistol...

"What are you doing?! Put me down!" Penelope demanded, kicking and flailing futilely in Lilith's coils.

The nuns froze, staring at the zoan and the mink with naked confusion, so dumbfounded that one or two actually lowered their weapons. Their apparent leader spoke up, scratching her head as she asked, "Uh... what...?"

Lilith looked momentarily perturbed, before grinning wickedly. "Silly me, I forgot to take the safety off!"

With the speed of a snake striking, she reached out and bluntly yanked up both Penelope's tail and the hem of her borrowed habit, exposing her buttocks before tightening her coiled grip around the skunk-girl's midriff.

The result was immediate and unspeakable in its effects as a thick jet of skunk musk squirted through the air, aerosolizing as it went so that what hit the nuns was half-liquid, half-vapor, and all undiluted stink. Shrieks of horror filled the air, cut short in many cases by immediate retching and mad sneezing. The unfortunate nuns clawed wildly at their habits, half-stripping themselves in their desperate, instinctive attempt to escape the noxious aroma, before they threw down their weapons and fled. Their sisters recoiled as one, some losing their own lunch as the fleeing nuns came too close, and many started running too in an attempt to escape the lingering stench that was now insinuating itself through the armory, a chain reaction that had to take down at least a third of the nuns who were still conscious and fighting.

"Sne-hahahaha! Lookit'em run! That showed them not to mess with us!" Lilith cackled in delight.

"Ugh, I dunno that it was worth it! I think I would have rather had the fireballs!" Complained Miriam, her voice nasally and distorted from how tightly she was clutching her sensitive nose.

Shampoo unceremoniously echoed the sentiment by noisily vomiting all over the nun she had been sword-dueling, sending her fleeing as well.

"Rabaisse-moi, connasse!" Penelope spat with icy, commanding tones, her blush so intense it could be seen through her fur.

Lilith froze for a moment, a faint look of worry on her serpentine features. She gently lowered the mink's tail and dress, before carefully placing her back on her feet and removing her serpent's tail from around their waist.

Penelope dusted herself up, stared dead into Lilith's eyes, took a deep breath, and broke out into a tirade of Fraucen, her voice echoing around the chamber like thunder. Everyone still conscious stopped what they were doing to watch the dressing down, the vitriol in Penelope's voice almost seeming to sizzle in their ears, and certainly enough to make the six-meter-long ton-and-change cobra zoan cringe before the much smaller mink.

"...Wow, that's one pissed-off skunk-girl. Hey, Kodachi, you speak French; what's she sayin'?" Ranma asked curiously.

"You can't possibly expect an innocent maiden such as myself to repeat such things!" Cried Kodachi, who was blushing madly and refused to look Ranma in the eye, even as she continued to maintain a chokehold on a nun who was slapping the floor in a desperate signal of surrender.

Ranma looked back to Penelope with considerably more respect as the mink wound down from her rant, bosom heaving with equal parts exertion and righteous indignation as she loudly caught her breath.

"...In my defense, it did disperse them..." Lilith meekly pointed out, gingerly raising a finger as she did.

"Why couldn't you be using your own damnée poison?! I 'ave never been so humiliée!" Hissed Penelope, baring her own surprisingly sharp teeth at Lilith, who did at least have the decency to look repentant.

"I... don't think I can. Not dispersed into mist, the way you do..." Lilith looked puzzled at the thought, momentarily rubbing her chin.

Penelope sniffed haughtily, giving her larger counterpart a second toothy scowl. "It is just being a matter of using your lips and tongue in ze right way! Now, if you are quite done with ze m'humilier, J'ai un combat à gagner!"

She pointedly turned her back on the shamed zoan and then surged forward into the nearest gaggle of nuns like an avalanche crammed into a nun's habit. Before they could even think to raise their weapons in their defense, she was amongst them in a flurry of punches and kicks, sending unconscious bodies crashing to the floor, bouncing off of walls and spilling over tables along the way.

And with that, the spell was broken and the melee resumed in all its chaos.

Ranma watched in equal parts amusement and pride as her crewmates continued to run roughshod over the remaining defenders. Lilith and Miriam sweeping and squashing squads of sisters at a time with their threshing tails. Shampoo bouncing here and there and everywhere, ricocheting off of the walls and ceiling to slash or clobber anyone too slow to get in her way. Harumi a veritable blur of twirling cloth and flashing blades as he danced through ranks of lesser swordswomen. Nabiki flapping ominously overhead, an ever-present threat from above. Kodachi cartwheeling, somersaulting and vaulting through the confusion, striking with sword and foot as she went. Ryoga swinging one of the burlier nuns by the foot like a club. Ryoga's injuries from his little encounter with the Reject Dial didn't seem to hamper him in the slightest, but to Ranma's trained eye the eternally lost girl was breathing much more shallowly. Ukyo carving a battle spatula from a broken table with her bare hands before laying into her enemies like a runaway wheat thresher. Dyna using her single arm to snatch up a nun and bounce her head repeatedly off of the floor like some monstrous crab before throwing her at a gaggle of other nuns. And Penelope, of course, whom none of the nuns even wanted to get near, leaving her trying to chase them down so she could beat them up.

Suddenly, Ranma's instincts screamed at her to move, and she leapt out of the way as a strange sword with a blade of pure flames scythed through the air where she had been standing barely a heartbeat beforehand. Its wielder, the convent's matron mother, her habit torn and face visibly bruised, screamed in fury and struck at Ranma again and again, her rage adding strength and speed to her strikes... but nowhere near enough to even touch Ranma.

'Oh, hey, I think I recognize that sword...'

"Ain't this the sword you use, Akasuki?" Ranma absently called over her shoulder, before bending over backwards to avoid a swipe that would have taken off her head.

The younger of the Chaser sisters glanced up from where she and Kiyoshi were putting one unfortunate nun through a powerbomb-chokeslam combo.

"Oh, yeah, that is a burn blade! I have one just like it! ...Had to leave it with the Commodore while I was on this stupid mission," Akasuki declared, pouting at the memory.

"I told you, sister, it couldn't be helped!" Kiyoshi chided her.

"You miserable wretch! You've ruined everything!" Howled Mother d'Youville as she continued to strike at Ranma, every effort in vain.

"Foolish woman! You called down the thunder; now reap the whirlwind!" Kodachi cried from where she had just downed her own latest batch of opponents.

"What she say!" Shampoo added, surrounded by the groaning bodies of nuns who had thought to test their might against a Chinese Amazon.

"C'mon, Ranchan - stop playing! Kick her ass so we can do what we came for and leave!" Ukyo added, before scowling at her makeshift spatula, whose head had snapped off after being used to bludgeon a nun unconscious.

"Alright, gals, if you insist! Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken!"

The Matron Mother didn't stand a chance as Ranma exploded into action, raining down blows too fast for her to even try and defend herself with her weapon. In the span of two heartbeats, it was all over, the older woman collapsing to the floor with an agonized groan. Her sword - her burn blade, as Akasuki had called it - hit the floor and deactivated with a sound Ranma could only describe as a snap-hiss.

The sight of Ranma standing over their fallen leader, fist still outstretched, was the last straw for the comparative handful of nuns who remained conscious. They turned and fled for their lives, abandoning their fallen and streaming up the single staircase in a thundering herd.

Ranma watched them go, then dusted off her hands, clicking her tongue in annoyance. "Tch. I expected more of a challenge..."

"They're smugglers and arms dealers; direct combat isn't exactly their forte," Kiyoshi observed coolly, instinctively moving to shield her sister as she watched the rest of the pirates advancing to join their captain.

"Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. I guess I was just expectin' the leader of the group to be the one who can kick the most ass,'' Ranma admitted, absently cracking her knuckles.

"So... what now?" Kiyoshi asked, warily eying the pirates grouped before her.

"You got a way to tell your boss that you took this place down?" Ranma asked, folding her arms over her chest.

"...We have a transponder snail," the Marine captain reluctantly admitted.

"Cool. First, we're gonna tie all these losers up. Next, you're gonna show us to wherever these girls kept their loot. Then, once we're all packed up and gone, you can call your bully-boys in and take them off to prison," Ranma declared cheerfully.

Kiyoshi's eyes immediately went first to her sister, bristling indignantly but waiting patiently on her elder sister's lead, then to the cocky smirk of the pirate captain, and then to the near-dozen pirates that were all circled around them. Especially the ones who had taken a particular interest in beating up Akasuki the last time they'd fought...

'I should be trying to stop them... but who am I kidding? I'm outnumbered, and I don't know if I'm good enough to fight this woman - whoever she is - even if it was just her and I. There's only one sane answer I can give...'

"Fine, I'll consider that part of the truce," Kiyoshi declared, looking her red-haired counterpart directly in her eyes.

"How miraculous; a marine with a brain," Kodachi laughed. The Chaser sisters flinched, but the other Kamikaze Pirates... well, they winced too, but not so much that it stopped them from beginning the process of tying up their dozens upon dozens of victims.

---

Soon afterwards...

---

"Alright, here's the vault... but you're never going to get into it; that's solid Wootz Steel," Kiyoshi declared, unable to keep the smugness from her voice as she folded her arms under her breasts and stared defiantly at Ranma.

A chorus of giggles and a plethora of smirks greeted her words, the most infuriatingly cocky being on Ranma's face before she called out in a sing-song voice, "Oh, Ryoga...?"

Ryoga rolled his (currently her) eyes and marched up to the vault door, unphased by what should have been an ominously impressive slab of metal, its dark surface seeming to glisten in the light of the lamp dials. Once she was in arm's length, she rolled her neck until it cracked, took the proper stance, and raised her index finger.

"Bakusai Tenketsu!"

As the 'impregnable' steel door dissolved into a shower of fine dust, Ryoga smirked in triumph at the naked shock on the faces of their marine guides before stepping aside and grimacing.

Ranma gestured to the vault's interior. "Okay, Dyna; anything in there look familiar?"

The fembot scuttled forward and into the vault's interior, eye shining as she clumsily spun in a circle after centering herself amongst the cascades of gold, jewels, statuettes, weapons, necklaces and other treasures. After three rotations, she scurried back out the way she came.

"Negative, captain. None of the articles within have any connection to my homeland."

She spoke with her usual monotone, leaving it to Ranma to look crestfallen and sigh mournfully.

"I'm sorry, Dyna... but we'll keep looking, I promise."

Then her face brightened and she clapped her hands together, rubbing them excitedly. "Okay, then, let's start looting!"

Nabiki cheered and almost literally flew through the air into the vault, coins and gems tinkling and chiming musically as she greedily swept them into her arms. Her crewmates smirked and giggled as they followed in her wake.

"I don't suppose I could talk you out of it?" Kiyoshi dryly asked.

"Hey, unlike you Navy clowns who get food, drink and ship repairs for free, we have to /work/ for a living," Ranma scoffed back.

"You call this work?" Akasuki muttered.

"Although, I suppose, since you did technically help us find it, I should give you both equal shares..." The Kamikaze captain mused, rubbing her chin thoughtfully.

"We don't want your blood money!" The younger Chaser sister jeered.

"We'll take it!" Kiyoshi suddenly interjected.

"Sister!?" Her appalled sibling squawked.

"Hey, you know as well as I what kind of crummy salaries the World Government pays us!"

"Well, maybe if you didn't have to keep compensating the quartermaster for all the coats you lose!"

---

Dawn...

---

The rising sun painted the White-White Sea in a kaleidoscope of fiery oranges, brilliant yellows, bloody reds and rosy pinks as the Stormbringer unfurled its sails and caught the morning winds away from Caryae Island. Standing behind the figurehead and back in his true form, Ranma basked in the warmth and the wind before turning to Dyna, currently sitting silently on the deck.

"I am sorry we didn't find anything for you, Dyna... but who knows? Maybe the next island..."

"Your attempt at comfort is unnecessary, Captain," Dyna declared in her usual flat monotone. Then, a rare softness came across her usually doll-like features before she quietly added, "But it is not unwelcome..."

"I can't believe we put all that time and energy into a scheme for nothing," Ryoga grumbled from where he was tying off some rigging.

"Ah, it's not like we aren't used to it," Ukyo dismissively declared, okonomiyaki sizzling on the portable grill she had brought out onto the deck to provide breakfast al fresco.

"And we made out like bandits all the same!" giggled Nabiki, who thumbed excitedly though a bundle of berie bills thick enough to be used as a cosh before lovingly rubbing it against her cheek.

"I wonder what we'll see next?" Miriam wondered aloud, even as she laid herself down on the deck and stretched out to enjoy the sunshine.

"Who knows? That's one of the joys of being a pirate!" Kodachi emphasized her point by throwing back her head and laughing long and loud, the manic peals of glee echoing over the milky waves as they sailed onward into the unknown.

---

Chapter End & Closing Notes

---

I really don't know what to say, except I promise the action is coming soon and I'll try to get the next chapter out faster! As always, please leave a review if you liked it, there's a TVtropes page begging for additions, and I've a Kofi account if you want to help out with some fanart for this here serial!