Authors Notes: Thank you everybody for your support and interest in this project! It's my first ever crossover, so I won't lie, the insecurity and doubt are really rearing their heads here. Still, let's hope we can make something out of this, even if I can only ever hope to chase the skill of This Bites, the fic that got me into One Piece in the first place...
One thing I'll clear up, since a few people asked: only the six Ranma 1/2 characters who appeared in the previous chapter were transported to the One Piece world. Sorry, but this motley crew's going to be hard enough to deal with as it is.
Chapter 2: Together Again
Nabiki Tendo had great confidence in her looks. It was one of the little traits that separated her from her sisters. Unlike Akane, whose insecurities you could write a paper on, or Kasumi, who almost willfully sublimated her sensuality out of a need to be the stand-in grown-up of the family, Nabiki knew that she was good looking, knew that guys would react to this, and took it all in her stride. Indeed, she had weaponized her charms more than once, as Ranma could attest, having received but the barest taste of her skills during their brief stint as an affianced couple. She'd even considered getting an afterschool job at a local hostess bar before Ranma had arrived and it turned out there were even easier ways to earn money in the chaotic new Nerima spawned by the sudden influx of crazy martial artists.
But that did not mean that she was easy, by any definition of the term! As far as Nabiki was concerned, guys were free to look (though she'd be happy to charge them for the privilege when she could), but touching was definitely off the table. Part of the reason she had gone out of her way to cultivate her formidable reputation as the Ice Queen of Furinkan High had been to minimize the chance of being hassled by guys who couldn't grasp that simple maxim.
And yet here she was, stuck in the office of a man who was not merely content to undress her with his eyes with a desire she hadn't even felt from Happosai, but who seemed to be intent on going out of his way to touch, grope and fondle her as much as humanly possible. Worse still, she didn't dare protest or complain, because the man doing this had the literal power of life or death over her.
All in all, today was not one of Nabiki Tendo's better days...
She could feel a vein pulse in her temple in suppressed fury as her unwanted employer's hands ghosted across the nearly-exposed skin of her left buttcheek yet again. "Yes, master? How may I assist you?" she gritted out between teeth clenched so hard that they felt like they could shatter with the slightest further pressure.
The man called Captain Kintaro simply gave her a carefree smile that completely failed to reach his cold, dead, shark-like eyes. "Oh, nothing, Miss Tendo. My hand simply slipped. But, if you're offering, I could use a nice cup of coffee..."
"Coming right up," Nabiki replied, it taking all of her considerable willpower to neither spit the words nor stomp away like an angry Akane.
'I swear, Ranma, I'm going to get you for this!'
Meanwhile, out to sea...
"Ah-ah-ahCHOO!"
"Gesundheit, Ranma darling," Kodachi called to her currently female love interest from the ship's steering wheel.
"Thanks... weird, I wonder where that came from?" Ranma asked, sniffling and wiping her nose on her forearm.
"Perhaps somebody was talking about you?" the Kuno scion suggested.
"Nah, I don't believe that stupid story," Ranma scoffed. "How long until we reach this Becop Island place anyway?"
"Patience, my darling. Wind-propelled ships may be stately, but alas, speed is not their strongest point. I estimate maybe another two hours, perhaps?"
Ranma sighed, cracked her knuckles, then cracked her neck, and then sat down in a shady spot and tried to get comfortable. There wasn't even a kettle on this miserable tug so she could return to her true form.
Becop Port, about an hour later...
"Daddy? Daddy, why is a piggy dragging a backpack through the street?" a little boy asked, tugging on his father's hand.
His father stopped and looked where his son was pointing. "Well, I'll be, there is a pig. I don't know, son. Maybe it belongs to a new marine that transferred here?"
The little boy cast a doe-eyed look at the pig, even as it continued dragging its ridiculously oversized burden through the streets. "Poor, poor piggy... they must be a real jerk to make it carry all that junk..."
"Now, son, don't go saying that where marines can hear you," his father chastised him, before pulling him away from the pig and back onto their walk.
Oblivious to the discussion, Ryoga continued marching along, resigned to the fact he had no idea where he was going but convinced he would get to where he wanted to be eventually. That was how things generally worked out for him, after all. The most annoying part was having to make sure the straps of his backpack were secured so he could pull it along behind him, but he'd been doing that since he got this stupid curse, so he was used to it.
'...Huh. Come to think of it, does dragging this backpack count as strength training?' he mused, picking a random direction and trotting along.
Meanwhile, in the Becop Marine HQ...
'This. Sucks. This absolutely sucks.'
Trying her best not to let her true thoughts show, Nabiki ran a feather duster along a bookshelf standing against the wall in Captain Kintaro's office, sneezing daintily as the dust tickled her nose.
'I hate doing this even back home! And at least back home, I wouldn't have some creep ogling my butt as I do everything... no, wait, Happosai likeslooks to look at us when he thinks he can get away with it, the old pervert...'
Nabiki reached behind herself with her free hand to try and tug down the hem of her skirt, which was riding up over her butt again.
'But at least he keeps his hands to himself! Here, I got this grabby asshole groping me whenever I get within arm's reach, and I can't do anything to stop him! I swear, if he touches my butt one more time, I'm going to dump the next pot of coffee straight in his lap!'
Once again, that damn hanging corpse with its horrible, nightmare inducing face flashed before her mind's eye and she shuddered.
'...Then again, maybe I won't...'
"Oh, Ms. Tendo? When you're done with the dusting, please go down to the kitchen and bring up my lunch from the base cook."
'Cocky, arrogant, son of a bitch...' Nabiki grit her teeth, and then forced herself to smile. "Sure thing, Captain Kintaro!" she declared in her best "sweet girl" voice.
'I swear, I'll get you for this!'
Even Nabiki wasn't sure if she was vowing vengeance on Kintaro or on Ranma...
Later still, atop the Becop Port Watchtower...
Life in the East Blue was a pretty sweet deal, if you were a Marine. Whilst no quadrant of the Grand Blue was free of pirates, everybody knew that the East Blue tended to be the home of the small fries, the unimportants, the nobodies and the do-nothings. If you were a Marine who was stationed in the East Blue, either you were receiving your just desserts in a retirement to an easy life, or you were a total scrub who wasn't cut out for the hard work of enforcing justice in the real danger zones.
Perceptions about this varied, of course. Not a lot of East Blue Marines liked to consider themselves the bottom of the barrel. Even here, most Marines sought to uphold standards as best they could.
"Duh... tell me about da sea-bunnies again, Lenny..."
Emphasis on 'most'.
Lenny "Looksee" Lewowski sighed, and resisted the urge to drag a hand down his face. "Not now, George..."
George "Goliath" Godfrey simply blinked big gray eyes. The two couldn't have made an odder pair; Lenny was small and wiry, with greasy black hair, features that could be charitably described as "mousy" and pale skin, whilst George was giant-blooded; an 8ft tall musclebound Adonis with a flowing mane of blonde hair, dark tanned skin, and abs you could grate meat on. Lenny, however, was the brains of the two; the bigger, stronger George had the mind of a small child, and the maturity to match.
"Aw, but I wanna know about da sea-bunnies!"
"Later, George! Right now, we're on lookout duty, remember? So that means we need to keep watch and make sure that no mean ol' pirates are coming this way, okay?"
"Okay, Lenny..." George said, sniffling and looking sad, but mercifully refraining from throwing a tantrum, at least this time.
Lenny sighed in relief and returned to what he had been doing before; reading his latest porn magazine. He had just refound his place and opened up the centerfold when George suddenly spoke up again.
"Duh, Lenny..."
"I just told you, George, I'm not going to talk about the sea-bunnies!" Lenny snapped angrily.
"Dat's not what I was gunna ask, Lenny..." George responded, looking down at his smaller handler with a hurt, teary-eyed expression.
"Then what is it, George?"
The giant-blooded man thrust one ham-sized fist out over the balcony, pointing with a sausage-like finger. "There's pirates coming, Lenny!" He declared patiently.
Life had not been too generous with Lenny's positive qualities, but it had given him two particular gifts; cunning (especially in the field of foresight), and eyesight. He followed his companion's pointing index and squinted, then sucked in a breath of alarm as he spotted the ship - and, more importantly, the Jolly Roger waving defiantly from its mast.
"Those are pirates, George! Ring the bells! Sound the alarms!" he ordered.
"Duh, okay, Lenny!" George said, nodding eagerly even as he grabbed the bell and began pulling with all his might, setting the warning bells clanging uproariously and alerting every marine stationed there to prepare for attack.
Back on the ship...
"There it is! Becop Island!" Kodachi cheerfully announced, tacking the ship with surprising dexterity in order to expedite their arrival at the port now truly visible on the near horizon.
"Awesome! Finally, a chance to get some food and some hot water!" Ranma cheered, sitting up from where she'd been lounging in idle boredom up until this point. Then she stopped, looking puzzled as a strange sound reached her ears. "Is that thunder?"
"Can't be, Ranma darling; there's not a cloud in the sky," Kodachi replied.
And that was when something hit the ocean just off the side of the ship, sending up a plume of water and causing the ship to shudder and shake.
"What was that?!" Kodachi shrieked.
Recovering, Ranma ran to the bow and looked toward the port, her eyes bulging as she took in the sight before her. "They've got cannons! They're shooting us!" the genderbent boy hollered in disbelief.
"What?!"
"Ah, shit, they just fired! Turn the ship, turn the ship!" Ranma cried, then shouted an incoherent curse and grabbed a nearby rope as Kodachi suddenly jerked the steering wheel, making the whole ship groan in protest. Still, it paid off, because the cannonball splashed into the water just off of the bow, the spray drenching Ranma, who spat at the sudden taste of salt on her tongue.
"Hey, what's going on down there?!" Umok's voice boomed from above, the little imp poking his head up from the crow's nest. "What did the two of you do?!"
"It's not our fault! We haven't even landed yet!" Ranma protested, glaring up at Umok... only to then wilt as she saw something. "...For the love of Kasumi's cooking..." the cursed boy lamented.
"What? What is... it?" Umok trailed off as he looked upwards in turn, only to spot Captain Greenbeard's Jolly Roger still waving jauntily at the top of the ship's mast. "...Oh, BLEEP me. How did we BLEEPing miss that?!"
"It doesn't really matter at this point! We are taking fire and this is not a speedboat; unless somebody does something, one of those cannonballs is going to hit us!" Kodachi interjected, with another mighty splash punctuating her point.
And that was when inspiration struck Ranma like a thunderbolt. This wasn't entirely unusual; the cursed Saotome heir tended to think the fastest on his (currently her) feet when his adrenaline was pumping and he was balanced on the knife-edge of disaster.
"Hold onto something!" Ranma shouted, and sprinted for the stern of the ship, racing past the startled Kodachi, ignoring her startled queries as she went. Ranma flung herself over the side, clinging to the taffrail with one hand and bracing herself with her feet against the hull.
"Here goes nothing," Ranma muttered to herself, holding one arm out and reaching inwards to the pool of energy she had learned to tap. She forced herself to believe in herself as much as she could, dredging up all the confidence she could muster, and then...
"Moko Takabisha!"
A brilliant blaze of golden energy erupted into life at the ship's stern, tongues of spiritual fire erupting out over the surface of the water in a shimmering cascade. And for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, which in this case meant that the concussive force slammed through Ranma and into the ship's hull, propelling it forward like a cork shaken free from a bottle. It began sliding through the waves, deceptively slowly at first, but rapidly building up speed, prompting Ranma to launch another Moko Takabisha, and then another, turning herself into a makeshift and sputtering rocket booster.
At the steering wheel, Kodachi shrieked in triumphant laughter. "That did it, Ranma darling! We're going too fast for them to pinpoint us now!" she cackled, ignoring the alarming creaks and groans echoing through the ship as its timbers protested this distinctly unnatural means of acceleration. "Keep firing, my darling! Don't stop!"
At Becop dock...
"Keep firing, you maggots! Keep firing!" Chief Petty Officer Harumaki roared. But it was little use. The marines assigned to Becop Island weren't the absolute dregs of the Navy, but they were a far cry from the shining glories of the East Blue too. And the unnatural acceleration of this attacking firing vessel was having a definite impact on both their accuracy and their morale.
"Chief Petty Officer! Sir, we have to abandon the port! That ship's going to ram us!" screamed one of the more cowardly grunts.
"Bah! Let them come! I won't run!" the hulking Harumaki thundered back. He was a scarred and grizzled veteran, who wore the marks of his years of service proudly - no pirate in the East Blue would ever frighten him.
He turned an evil eye on the pirate ship as it thundered into the port, defiantly bellowing, "You hear me? I won't run!"
The ship hit the dock and smashed it into kindling, wood splintering and stone cracking in an almighty cacophony as it smashed through the portions of the pier jutting out into the water and was hurled onto the shore by its own momentum.
"I! Won't! Run!" Harumaki howled in what he knew might be his last act of defiance, the screaming, groaning, crunching mass of timber hurtling straight towards him. Onwards it came, crunching and grinding over the stone, slowing as the effort to fight its way across the ground bled away its momentum. It slowed, slowed, slowed... and finally ground to a halt with its mangled prow mere inches from Harumaki's nose.
The grizzled old veteran let out a soft sigh of relief, and then turned his most ferocious glare up to the bow of the ship, where two young women were peeking cautiously over the rail.
"Um... sorry about this, but I promise, this is really all just a misunderstanding!" the redheaded girl said.
Harumaki could feel the blood boiling in his veins at the sheer absurdity of that statement. "What are you useless idiots waiting for?! There's the pirates! Shoot them down!"
The echoes of his furious order had barely died down before his men rallied and the air was filled with the staccato clicking of rifles being aimed and primed, shortly before they erupted in a blaze of gunfire.
Umok watched from the safety of the crow's nest as his two unwitting travel partners began weaving through the hail of bullets, shouting overtures of peace that very quickly turned into flying kicks and punches, the two girls (well, one and a half girls) ploughing into the defenders with the fury of the embarrassed and indignant.
"Good luck, kids... I think I'll wait this out down below," he muttered to himself, before flying down and through the door leading into the hold.
Of course, there was one thing he'd forgotten, and that was the fact that the hold was currently occupied by groaning pirates, sprawled in an array of very uncomfortable-looking positions.
"What the bleeding hell did you do to me ship!?" Ex-Captain Greenbeard demanded, trying to look as intimidating as he could when he was upside down and glowering up at the imp.
"We crashed it into a dock because some goons in white shirts were shooting cannons at us. Now Ranma and Kodachi are up there fighting them," Umok replied casually.
"Those two wenches are picking a fight with the Marines?!" Greenbeard boggled incredulously, before grinning widely. "Well, maties, things are looking up! Once the whiteshirts do for those two slags, we'll just claim that they took us hostage and sneak on out of here - they'll be too busy licking their wounds to stop us!"
"...Yeah, good luck with that," Umok replied, puffing on his cigar and listening to the carnage outside.
At the same time...
"Thar she is! Becop Island!" Billybob chortled, rousing his two female companions from their borderline stupor.
"Finally! No offense, Mr. Witzer, but I've just been worrying myself sick over what might be happening to my poor Ranchan..." Ukyo sighed, staring wistfully at the island on the horizon.
"Well, don't you fret none, missy; Becop Island's the closest outpost of civilization fer a hunnerd nautical miles; if'n yor beau is anywhere aroun' these here parts, he'll be there," the fisherman assured her.
"Shampoo hope so! Be too-too worried over what evil witch Kodachi do to Shampoo's airen..." the Chinese Amazon said, sticking her own two yen into the conversation. Staring back at the island, she blinked in confusion. "Why there big ship crashed into dock?"
Her two shipmates glanced at her in mutual confusion.
"What?"
Ukyo looked in the direction that Shampoo pointed, and her eyes went wide. "That's a pirate ship; it looks like the town is under attack! We gotta go and help!"
"We're goin' as fast as we can, missy; unless you wanna grab the oars and start pitchin' in, we ain't getting there any sooner," Billybob explained patiently. To his surprise, the two girls didn't even hesitate, each snatching up an oar and busily taking it to the water. Deceptively powerful frames fueled by a deep-burning rivalry bent to the task with gusto, and the humble fishing boat promptly shot through the water as if jet-propelled.
A healthy sheen of sweat was glistening on both girls' foreheads by the time they sculled to a stop, just within a martial art's leaping distance of the most intact-looking pier, and they replaced the oars.
"You better go find some place to hide, it's not going to be safe around here," Ukyo warned him.
"Don' you fret none about ol' Billyboy, missy; Ah knows the best secret spots to dock aroun' here. Yah'll jest make shure an' -"
He was cut off as the two girls leaped near simultaneously from his boat, the backlash of their powerful spring making it sway and bob alarmingly on the waves, forcing him to fight to keep it steady.
"Safe," he concluded feebly. Shaking his head at the strangeness of strangers, he still sent up a mental prayer for them before he turned and sailed his vessel away.
The scene that greeted Ukyo as she landed on the pier was a borderline massacre. White-clad men lay scattered about like toys fallen afoul of a particularly bad-tempered child, piled atop each other, lying amidst debris, some even sunk at the bottom of shallow craters or put through the walls of nearby buildings. Though the chorus of groans and moans made it clear that they were unconscious rather than dead, it was still a morbidly impressive sight. Staccato cracks rippled through the air as the remaining fighters sporadically fired rifles, but those were a swift and fast-fading minority.
Ukyo's blood boiled in her veins, a warm wave of adrenaline surging through her. Whilst most people in Nerima tended to turn to the Tendo dojo when they needed some amateur herowork, Ukyo had done her share of that in her travels, and it was something that she secretly enjoyed. Spotting a dense but swiftly thinning knot of the white-clad men battling a redhaired girl, she unslung her trusty battle spatula and charged into the fray with a roar.
"Have at you, you villain!"
Her opponent punched one of her male opponents clean off of his feet, and then yelped as Ukyo's spatula came flying through the air, narrowly dodging before the flat steel would have hit her squarely in the face. The guy trying to attack her from behind wasn't so lucky, and Ukyo blushed as she inadvertently swatted him like a fly.
"Whoops, sorry! Hold still, you - Ranchan?!" she squeaked, finally realizing just who the redhead she had been attacking was.
"Nice to see you too, Ucchan," Ranma sarcastically drawled, whilst simultaneously elbowing a guy who tried to attack her whilst her back was turned in the face so hard as to leave him unconscious.
Blush deepening, Ukyo couldn't help but protest, "I'm sorry, but we thought you were a pirate!"
"We?" Ranma asked.
"Airen!"
That joyous squeal was the only warning Ranma got before a bluish-purple blur knocked the boy-turned-girl clean off of her feet, hitting the ground so hard that she actually skidded a good couple of feet across the cobbles.
"...You missed me, Shampoo?" Ranma weakly asked, once the ringing in her ears stopped.
"Not this time," was the chirpily smug answer from the Chinese Amazon currently wrapped around the genderbender like a python around a rat, even as she nuzzled her cheek against Ranma's blush-red own in a very feline-like fashion. "Shampoo was too-too worried about you, airen!"
"Get off of him, Shampoo!" Ukyo snapped angrily at her archrival. "And you butt out!" she added, flattening one of the white-clad strangers who tried to take advantage of the confusion to attack Ranma whilst she was helpless on the ground.
Unfortunately, that cemented the opinion of the remaining fighters, and they promptly began attacking Ukyo and Shampoo just as fervently as they had been assaulting Ranma. And to very little greater success. An affronted Shampoo reluctantly removed herself from her deathgrip around Ranma and began venting her rage against the interlopers, much to Ranma's relief in the brief interim the cursed boy had before she too rejoined the fray.
Meanwhile, at the Marine Base...
"I want every man at the docks, on the double! We've had peace and quiet on this island for three years now, I will not see it sacked on my watch!"
"Yessir!"
As the thunder of pounding boots faded away down the corridor, Nabiki permitted herself a dark smile. "Trouble in paradise, Captain Kintaro?"
The cold-eyed marine leader turned an insincere smile to his reluctant maid. "Nothing my men can't handle. These are some of the finest marines in the East Blue. In fact... this is actually a welcome intervention."
"How so?" Nabiki asked, immediately shifting into caution as her spine tingled. There was something about the grin on Kintaro's face that made her uneasy... and that sense of ill ease only increased as he began to slowly and purposefully walk towards her. She tried to back away, in order to keep the distance between them, but Kintaro just kept closing the gap.
"Why, to get to know each other better, of course," Kintaro explained, lightly and airily, in a tone that would have been reassuring if it hadn't been so completely at odds with his body language and the hungry glint in his shark-like eyes.
"I think we know each other well enough!" Nabiki protested, stumbling as her hip banged into the corner of the captain's desk. Abandoning any pretense of not being creeped out, she tried to keep it as a barrier between them, but Kintaro simply continued advancing on her.
"Come now, Nabiki..."
"That's Ms. Tendo, to you!" Nabiki hissed in response.
"Nabiki," Kintaro insistently repeated, "Let's be sensible!"
He lunged for her, and Nabiki jumped back, only to curse as her shoulders hit the hard, unyielding stone of the wall. Before she could react, the marine captain had her shoulders, licking his lips as he loomed over her.
"Did you really think that you were going to pay off your debts with a little eye candy and some handsy fun? Now that my men are all busy, we can start your repayment in earnest!"
"Don't touch me!" Nabiki spat back, slapping him across the face with all her might. Unfortunately, Nabiki was not her sister, and instead of leaving him out cold, she merely bruised his cheek.
"You uppity bitch!" Kintaro snarled back,right before his fist crashed into Nabiki's unprepared eye, hurtling her back against the wall with such force that she bounced off of it and ended up face-down on the floor.
At that very moment...
'Where am I now?' Ryoga the pig absently wondered to himself, even as he casually made his way through the strange stone building as men in white stampeded blindly all around him. Having long resigned himself to the erratic nature of his sense of direction, he simply wandered aimlessly and waited to see where he ended up, dragging his backpack along behind him for when he found a source of hot water.
Which was how he came to be staring through the door as the creepiest looking guy he'd seen in a good while harassed a girl in a sexy maid costume. That was a sight that would have set his blood boiling at the best of times, but when the guy punched her in the face...?
'You're gonna die, asshole!'
Spotting a steaming cup of something sitting on a bench, Ryoga didn't even hesitate any longer than it took to shake the straps of his backpack free. With all the surprising speed and agility of his porcine body, he launched himself at the cup like a piggy bullet, slamming into it with enough force to shatter it and drench himself in boiling hot liquid. At once the transformation took place, the world shifting back into its proper positions as he regained his humanoid form, and Ryoga continued ploughing forward.
"You leave her alone!" He roared, charging at the asshole, heedless of his nudity in his righteous indignation.
To his credit, Captain Kintaro whirled around fast enough to look Ryoga dead in the eyes before the enraged martial artist entered punching range. But that was as fast as he managed to be, and he was helpless as Ryoga punched him in the face, the force of the blow so powerful it swept him off of his feet and propelled him straight through two walls in quick succession.
Ryoga watched, waiting for the scumbag to get back up, but when he failed to do anything more than lie there in a pile of mortar and groan, the Eternally Lost Boy smirked darkly to himself. "Pick on somebody your own size..."
A feminine moan drew his attention to the girl now stirring at his feet... and also to his nudity. Letting out a girlish yelp of his own, and turning bright red in a full-body blush, Ryoga dove over to where he'd abandoned his backpack and hurriedly reclothed himself. Only when he was certain his shame was covered did he dare to cautiously approach the girl he'd save.
"Miss? Are you okay?"
"Ow..." she slowly sat up, and gingerly touched her face, her eye already visibly purpling. "...He hit me. Son of a bitch, he actually hit me!" she growled angrily.
"Don't worry, I took care of that jerk... wait... Nabiki Tendo?! Is that you?!" Ryoga blurted out, his attempt to be conciliatory drowned out by his surprise at seeing somebody he recognized.
"What?!" Her head snapped up, and she glared at him, only for her expression to actually soften as she recognized him in turn. "Ryoga? How... I suppose I should be so surprised. If anybody could get this lost, it's you."
"Hey, it's Ranma's fault I'm here, I didn't come here by choice!" Ryoga protested.
"...Well, however you got here, I am grateful you saved me," Nabiki conceded. Then she realized she was still wearing her maid outfit, and she hastily covered her bosom with her arms. "But if you tell anyone you saw me wearing this.."
"Saw you wearing what? I've never seen you in anything other than your school uniform or your casual clothes," Ryoga hastily declared, looking absolutely everywhere other than at Nabiki.
"Smart boy," Nabiki declared, standing upright. Glancing at her surroundings, she added, "Can you do anything like that Hidden Weapons technique of Mousse's?"
"Not as well as he can," Ryoga admitted, "But I can store a lot more stuff than your average person could..."
"Good. Start stripping this place of anything of value," Nabiki declared imperiously.
"What?! I'm no thief! Do I look like Ranma to you?" Ryoga protested indignantly.
Nabiki stared at him, thinking it over. 'Okay, I can pull the Akane card and threaten to slander him to her, but... no, for the moment, I need him. Let's try this instead..'
"Look, Ryoga, this is the office of that jerk who was trying to...to do things to me. Does somebody like that really deserve to keep their nice things whilst I go home and have nightmares about his hands all over me?" Nabiki asked, putting on her best plaintive voice and making herself look as sad as possible, even sniffling like when she was a little girl trying to pull the guilt card on her parents.
Ryoga melted like a snowflake in a blast furnace, righteous indignation and a sheer desire to end the awkwardness of seeing Nabiki look so vulnerable collating together into a volatile mix.. "You know what? You're right! Okay, let's see what this asshole can lose..."
"Thank you, Ryoga! And while you do that, I'll change back into my normal clothes," Nabiki chirped, and this time she wasn't faking the happiness in her voice.
Minutes later, Ryoga's backpack bulged with books, bags of cash and gold coins stolen from a small safe that he had torn open, and assorted other bric-a-brac, whilst Nabiki had reclaimed her old clothes.
"Alright, now, follow me, and we'll head for the docks - I want off this damn island," Nabiki declared.
Ryoga just shrugged and grunted non committedly, following her obediently out the door. It wasn't as if he'd been making any particular progress before now, anyway.
At the docks...
"Okay, I think that's all of them," Ranma announced, dusting her hands as she surveyed the heaps of unconscious marines piled around the docks.
"Truly, a magnificent victory, Ranma darling; I must confess that there were moments when I had my doubts," Kodachi declared, kicking one unfortunate marine in the head to make sure he stayed out cold.
"And we could have avoided the whole BLEEPing mess if somebody had just remembered to take down the Jolly Roger from the pirate ship we stole," Umok flatly pointed out.
"Hey, it was an honest mistake! And we tried to explain that to them!" Ranma protested.
"What give nasty little imp right to complain? Especially when you no lift finger to help!" Shampoo added, with Ukyo nodding her agreement to the sentiment.
The little wizard simply stared at them, and with three eyes, that was a surprisingly creepy thing. He slowly puffed away on his iconic cigar, exhaling a crimson smoke ring.
"Ranma!? Ranma, you jerk, is that you?!" came a sudden masculine bellow, drawing the quintet's attention away from Umok.
Ranma's eyes lit up with sincere relief as she took in the familiar face striding through the carnage. "Ryoga! Man, who'da thought it'd be so easy to find you!"
Ryoga simply snorted. "I should have known that it was you who made this mess, Ranma. You always bring trouble wherever you go."
"That's rich coming from you!" Ranma snapped back, glaring at her archrival.
"If you two are quite done with your dick-measuring contest, I want to get off this island and I want to know how we got here, and I want it in that order!" Nabiki interjected, glaring at all of them with her fiercest expression. She took a certain pleasure in the way that Ranma and his would-be girlfriends all jumped at her sudden interjection, as they obviously hadn't noticed her arriving along with Ryoga.
Ranma looked over at Nabiki and winced, something that actually made her feel a little better until the genderbent redhead said, "Geeze, Nabiki, what happened to your face?"
"I don't want to talk about it," she bluntly told Ranma.
"Some asshole tried to get grabby with her, then punched her when she tried to fight back," Ryoga interjected.
If looks could kill, then the one Nabiki shot the Eternally Lost Boy should have left his shadow burned into the wall. Doing her best to rally her authority, she drew herself up and interjected, "Anyway, as I said, we need to get out of here, and quickly!"
"And how we do that? Just take ship and sail off?" Shampoo asked sarcastically.
"Why not? It worked to get us here," Kodachi replied. "And I think I see a suitable vessel just over there..."
"I don't know... it was one thing to rob a bunch of pirates, but stealing from somebody who never did nothing to us..." Ranma uneasily observed.
"Why not just take the pirate ship, then, if it bothers you so much?" Ukyo asked curiously.
"Because we wrecked it when Ranma turned it into a makeshift torpedo," Umok quipped.
Four teens blinked, and then finally realized that the docks had been partially leveled by a ship that had run aground, tearing itself almost apart in the process. "How'd I miss that...?" Ryoga muttered to himself.
"Whatever! These marines don't mess around, and given we already fought them once, they're not going to listen to reason when they wake up, especially since Ryoga sucker-punched their sicko commander! So we can either beat it now, or let them hang us when they revive!" Nabiki snapped.
"Hang us?!" came the chorus of shocked voices. Five teenagers instinctively clutched at their throats and then swallowed nervously, queasy expressions all around.
It was Ranma who snapped to her senses first. "Alright, I don't like it, but let's get out of here!" she ordered.
The septet quickly made their escape and were soon sailing back out to sea. They had no idea that this unremarkable brawl would go on to the foundation stone of their mutual journey into legend...
Chapter End & Closing Notes
And now the gang's all back together! I know we still need to get them to officially set themselves up to become pirates, but that's what our next chapter will cover. Apologies for how short this is, but I promise the next chapter should come out a lot sooner and hopefully be larger; it was surprisingly tricky to get my head wrapped around how to pull this one off. As always, hope you're enjoying this.