Author's Notes: I'm pleased as punch to announce this project now has a TVTropes page! If my readers can flesh it out, I'd be hugely grateful!
The last chapter was, without a doubt, the most controversial one, and I can see where your complaints are coming from. You are entitled to your opinions, but I feel obligated to point out that a) I DO have a beta-reader who went over the previous chapter and felt it worked, b) Nabiki HAS made more than one selfish and short-sighted scheme in both manga and anime canons, some of which have even gone badly for her (ironically more in the manga than the anime), and c) by the point of the last chapter, our heroes have been effortlessly curbstomping every threat they've faced in the East Blue for the better part of two months. They got overconfident, and that's why they agreed to Nabiki's scheme. The fact that they took personal insult to Nelson dubbing them the "Dirty Coward Pirates" only added fuel to the fire. They do have a tendency to make stupid decisions when goaded by wounded pride, after all.
Chapter 7: You Say 'Pirate', I Say 'Hero'
Shampoo hung limply in the arms of her Marine escorts, allowing them to carry her into the cavernous depths of the ship in which she and the rest of her motley crew were now being imprisoned. Part of the reason was sheer nausea; whilst her recent meal seemed in no real danger of escaping her, it was still sitting in her stomach with all the delicacy and grace of a drunken bear trying to dance on the deck of a ship in stormy seas whilst wearing iron geta. The major reason behind her lack of protest was simple dismay.
'I am sorry, my beloved... once again, I have failed you in your time of need.. I could have saved you from this fate, but I was not strong enough to do so...'
She lifted her head, hoping to catch a glimpse of the unconscious Ranma, only to realize that their escorts were splitting into two groups. "Hey? Where you (urp) take Shampoo?"
"Don't worry, you'll join the rest of your scumbag crew soon enough, but we'd be fools indeed to put a Devil Fruit user in the cages without securing her first!"
'Ha, as if I need some foolish fruit to defeat weaklings like you! Just you wait; once Ranma regains consciousness, we will make a fresh plan of attack, and you will be sorry you dared to lay hands upon us!'
Comforting herself with dreams of vengeance and righteous fury, Shampoo allowed herself to be taken to a small storeroom, full of various kinds of restraints - chains and shackles, weights, cuffs, all the sorts of things that would be needed to immobilize or restrain a person.
'Strange.. Even given the size of this ship, that seems an unusually generous stockpile...' Shampoo mused to herself. She only had a moment to contemplate this fact before she was roughly positioned to have a heavy set of cuffs clamped around her wrists.
The instant they snapped shut, a sudden intense wave of weakness washed over the Chinese Amazon. It was like being violently seasick, only a hundred times worse! Her legs went to jelly, her vision swam and blurred, and she lost all track of her surroundings. Up became down became sideways, tumbling and turning, whirling and spinning. She opened her mouth, either to plead for mercy or to throw up...
And then as swiftly as the sensation had appeared, it vanished, leaving a very confused Shampoo sitting on the floor.
"She turned into an animal!"
"How?!"
'I did what?' Shampoo dumbly thought to herself.
Blinking, she realized that her former escorts had suddenly grown into giants that now towered over her, and she instantly put two and two together.
'I became a cat? Without cold water? How did that happen? ...Priorities, Shampoo! Escape now, contemplate this latest strangeness later!'
One of the marines lunged down to try and grab Shampoo, but to the transformed Chinese Amazon, he might as well have been moving through molasses. Faster than the naked eye could follow, she fell to all fours and took off like a furry little rocket, zooming out the door and down the hall even as the marines finally seemed to realize she was in motion.
"Stop her! Catch that critter!"
'As if! You clumsy clods will never catch me!' The contemptuous Shampoo mentally jeered. The halls around her became a blur, marines little more than barely-mobile obstacles for her to weave around or duck below as she sped off into the darkness.
'Got to find my Ranma!'
Meanwhile, in the hold...
Nabiki moaned softly as she regained consciousness, slowly opening her eyes. "Wh-where am...? Ah! Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah!" she whimpered in a series of jerking gasps, sharp stinging pain greeting every inhalation and leaving her squirming in an effort to try and wriggle away from the source of discomfort.
"Hey, hey, calm down! You're alright, it's not that bad!" Ukyo asserted, leaning over and pinning Nabiki to the floor.
Nabiki blinked up at her crossdressing crewmate, still trying to mentally reboot in the face of her pain. "Ukyo? Where? What?"
"That jackass Eric got you good. Sliced you up with some kinda wind blade attack - it's shallow, but it's long, and it hit hard enough to bruise. You fainted from the hit," Ukyo explained.
Nabiki cringed at that. "I... what happened?"
"Well, after you went down, we all ended up captured. The same attack that knocked you out also cut that thermos in half, so Ryoga couldn't change back. That left the three of us, plus Ranchan with his hands tied, trying to hold off a literal army of marines," Ukyo grumbled.
"Ranma said he could break out of those chains!" Nabiki protested defensively.
"Yeah, if he had a moment to concentrate! But they were on him like starving dogs on a bone - he never had the chance! They hit him with some kind of sleeping gas, and that was it; we all got captured after that... how is Ranchan, Kodachi?" Ukyo suddenly asked, twisting to face the youngest Kuno.
Slowly, and wincing in pain all the while, Nabiki rolled around so she could see Kodachi, who was sitting seiza next to Ranma, who was laid out on his back on the floor.
"Still no response...still, it does seem to be metabolizing quite quickly. I would say he'll be back with us within the next five or six minutes," Kodachi declared, stroking Ranma's brow gently as she did so.
"Um... not that I'm not grateful, but, why is she tending Ranma, and you're tending me?" Nabiki hesitantly asked, looking up at Ukyo.
"She knows more about paralysis and sleeping poisons than I do... plus, I was the only one with bandages to spare," Ukyo admitted.
Nabiki blinked, staring at her in confusion for a moment, before the faint blush on Ukyo's face and the way Ukyo's fingers fiddled with the buttons of her now-closed shirt put the pieces together. Crimson dusted the Tendo girl's own cheeks as she responded, "Ah... thank you, Ukyo."
"You may be a pain in the butt... but we don't want you dead," Ukyo flatly announced.
Before Nabiki could voice her thoughts on those opinions, Ranma suddenly groaned loudly and slowly sat back up.
"Ranma darling, take it easy!" Kodachi cautioned him, reaching out to stabilize him - an unnecessary gesture, but automatic.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Ranma honey," Ukyo declared, the relief in her voice palpable to anybody with ears.
"Oh, man, my head... Ucchan? Kodachi? You're alright?" he asked, gaze shifting to first one and then the other.
"I am unscathed in all save my pride, Ranma darling."
"Yeah, I'm okay, Ranchan."
"That's goo - oh, crap, Nabiki?! What happened to Nabiki?! Where'd those bastards take her?" Ranma demanded frantically, relief evaporating in an instant as his memories caught up with him through the lingering fog of knockout gas..
"Whoa, careful there, Saotome; somebody might get the impression you like me," Nabiki jokingly quipped in response.
"Hey, just because you aren't Akane doesn't mean I don't care what happens to you! I didn't ask to be captain, but it's my job to keep you all alive, and I intend to make sure every last one of us gets home safely - and that goes double for you, Nabiki!"
Nabiki blinked, unsure of how to process the statement - especially the strange tingling sensation that briefly fluttered against her ribs, which she figured must be her cut protesting. "Well, I'm certainly glad to hear that! But I'm still here, and I'm still in one piece, thanks to Ukyo and Kodachi patching me up."
Ranma audibly sighed in relief. "Thanks, girls, I owe ya..."
"Well we couldn't just let her bleed to death," Ukyo responded with a half-giggle. "Despite some people being all too eager to honor her 'glorious death in battle'..." And here she shot an irritated glare at Kodachi, who simply gave her a feral grin in response.
"So, she'll live?" Ranma asked her.
"It was just a flesh wound; she'll be fine," Ukyo reassured him.
"Oh, good... that means I can do this."
And that was when he bounded across the distance between himself and Nabiki, and punched her in the head. Well, 'punched' might have been a bit generous, given the comparative Ranma Strength to Nabiki Toughness ratio, but he still bounced his knuckles solidly off of the top of her head, making her sit up with a yell of pain and clutch her now-aching skull.
"Ow! What the hell, Saotome?!" Nabiki protested.
"That's for getting us into this mess! I can't believe you were so stupid as to risk all our lives like this!" Ranma snarled.
"Hey, you went along with my plan!"
"Yeah, an' I'm kicking myself for it! I can't believe I was so dumb! I knew you wouldn't think twice about screwing me over in the name of your own satisfaction, but I never thought you'd risk your own skin for it! I know you aren't as smart as you think you are, but I still thought you weren't that dumb!"
"Oh, you're criticizing my plans?! Mr. 'I'll turn into a girl and start flirting, that'll surely get me whatever I want'? Where do you get off calling my plans bad?! I've never seen anybody with lamer schemes than you!"
"Hey, at least my plans have worked!"
"Ha, not often! And even when a dumb plan works, it's still a dumb plan! Like when you tried to get back at me for taking the engagement by pretending you'd actually fallen in love with me? Seriously, just what was that supposed to do?"
By this point, Ranma and Nabiki were glaring daggers at each other; to the heightened senses of their audience, it seemed like flashes of energy were crackling and sparking where their eyes met, popping in scintillating bursts like heat lightning from the clashes of their respective wills.
"Hey, knock it off already, the pair of you!" Ukyo roared, making both Ranma and Nabiki jump. "We all know this was a stupid scheme; we've got bigger fish to fry now!"
"Ukyo is correct; we can save recriminations for after we have successfully escaped," Kodachi firmly stated.
Ranma and Nabiki exchanged a last mutual glare, before reluctantly nodding. Turning his back on Nabiki, who indignantly stuck her nose up, Ranma asked,
"What about Ryoga and Shampoo?"
"Ryoga never managed to get changed back, so we lost track of him in the confusion," Kodachi replied.
"Great, no way of telling where he ended up, then," Ranma scoffed.
"As for Shampoo... they were bringing her with us, but they split off with her a couple of floors up. Maybe they have some kind of special cell for her now, since she ate that Devil Fruit and all," Ukyo added.
"Makes sense," Ranma muttered, more to himself than to her, tapping his chin thoughtfully. Then he stopped and blinked as Ukyo's words actually sank in.
"Wait a minute... Shampoo did what?!"
Several floors up...
'Come on, come on! There has to be a door open somewhere in this cursed - thank you, ancestors!'
Shampoo shot across the floor like a small, furry, guided missile, darting through the slightly open door and then kicking it shut once she was safely inside.
'That probably won't delay them long, but it gives me a chance to reorientate... where am I, anyway?'
Glancing around, Shampoo realized she was surrounded by sea chests and bunkbeds, which she quietly began to wend her way between.
'Huh. This must be one of the crew's sleeping quarters. Perhaps I can find - wait, what's that?!'
Motion in the corner of her eye had caught the transformed Chinese Amazon's attention, and she cautiously scampered closer.
'...What the hell am I looking at?'
The strangest creature that Shampoo had ever seen was staring back at her, head tilted quizzically to the side. It looked kind of like somebody had taken the front half of a cat and the rear half of a rabbit, and somehow glued them together. The overall effect of fusion was further taken by taking the cat's ears and enlarging them, until they formed massive, rabbit-like sails that swiveled and twitched at the slightest sound. As if that wasn't an odd enough picture, the creature had a bizarre two-toned color scheme; most of its body was a dark lime green color, offset by a patch of blue fur arranged in a fringe atop its skull between its huge ears - as it tentatively paced back and forth, trying to eye Shampoo as she did the same to it, Shampoo caught glimpse of the traditional rabbit's bobtail, which was the same blue color as its head-fur.
'...That may be the weirdest color scheme I have ever seen. But then, my own cat form is pink and purple, so who am I to judge?'
The sudden sound of the doorknob rattling made both Shampoo's and the strange cat-rabbit-thing's ears spread wide in alarm, and Shampoo twisted away to face the door.
"Come on, we better check this room to be sure!"
Shampoo flattened her ears against her head, and quickly scurried across the floor to one of the furthest bunk beds, clambering up the wall with feline agility before hiding herself behind the pillow.
'Not the best hiding spot, but most people don't look up when looking for creatures smaller than themselves...'
Although she couldn't see what was happening from her new hiding place, she could clearly hear it as the door swung open and two marines tromped inside.
"Why are we even looking here? Door was closed!"
"Hey, this isn't some dumb bunny, this is a Devil Fruit user!"
"Man, talk about a lame-ass power; what good is being able to turn into a bunny, or a half-bunny, supposed to do anybody?"
"What I want to know is how she changed back when she did - those seaprism stone cuffs are supposed to nullify Devil Fruit powers!"
"She just faked you out and changed before you'd finished closing the cuffs, that's all. Hey, whassat?!"
Shampoo tensed, preparing to launch herself into flight once more, only for the second marine to sigh loudly and announce, "That's the mirror, you moron. C'mon, she's obviously not here - let's get looking! Commodore Nelson will have us in the hold with the other prisoners if we fail to find her!"
Shampoo held her breath, waiting for the door to slam shut behind the departing marines, and then sighed in relief. 'Thank goodness... wait a minute.'
Hopping back down to the floor, she softly padded back to where she'd seen the strange cat/rabbit hybrid. Sure enough, it was exactly where she left it, and when she cautiously waved a forepaw in imitation of a greeting, it made the exact same gesture.
'...That's me? What has this Devil Fruit done to me? ...Wait. Based on what they said, part of the 'powers of a beast' granted by a Zoan fruit is voluntary transformation... does that mean I can - whoah!?'
If you asked Shampoo what it was like to have her Jusenkyo curse triggered, she would have said it was hard to explain. Well, using her new Devil Fruit power was even harder to explain, beyond simply 'weird'. The shift in perspective was so quick it was almost, but not quite, disorientating, and Shampoo found herself shaking her head in an effort to clear her vision... which was when she noticed the small problem with this transformation.
'...Why do I still have bunny ears? Cat ears? Whatever they are!'
Strangely enough, this wasn't Shampoo's first experience with being a nekomimi - or perhaps an usagimimi would be a more accurate term this time. On that cursed New Year's Eve when Maomolin had abducted her, she had briefly sported a set of cat's ears atop her head, just in front of her ox horns (or "odango", as the Japanese called her twin-bunned hair style). But this time, she found that not only had her ears migrated in position and changed species, they were also significantly larger; still the same fundamentally cat-like triangular shape, but just a little wider, and much longer. Initially, they had drooped like a lop-eared rabbit's ears and framed her face, but as Shampoo watched, they stiffened back up until they were standing tall and proudly erect. They were the same lime green as before, which meant they stood out against Shampoo's voluminous mane of blue hair.
'Wait, if I have the ears, what about... oh. A rabbit's tail? That's new.'
Shampoo slowly spun back around to face the mirror full on again, feeling the poofy blue rabbit's tail now adorning her posterior twitch as she did so.
'Come on, this stupid fruit is supposed to let me transform, so why not back into a human?! Maybe if I concentrate..."
A full minute ticked by without the slightest alteration to Shampoo's form before she sneered at her reflection, lip curling in disgust.
'Stupid fruit... must be broken. Probably will not even let me change back into a rab-bit?!'
Blinking off the disorientation, Shampoo stared in confusion at her once-more bestial reflection.
'...Well, that happened. Let's try that again... human?'
And just like that, she was back to normal... well, minus the ears and tail. She flicked back and forth between this form and her new bestial form several more times before sighing in exasperation.
'What is going on here? Why can't I resume my original shape? It's not like I can become any more of a hybrid-ow!'
A sharp stabbing pain in her eyes made Shampoo screw them closed and shake her head. When she opened them and saw herself in the mirror...
'Okay... I stand corrected.'
Her eyes had now become more feline in nature, with vertical slits for pupils. A strange prickling in her gums made her pull back her lips, revealing a distinctly altered smile; her canines had grown into long, needle-like fangs, with her premolars similarly growing pointier, whilst her incisors had just grown noticeably larger; she would almost call herself bucktoothed, except that the lower incisors were just as developed. Her legs had twisted in shape, becoming fur-covered and ending in large, rabbit-like paws. Her hands had followed a similar route; fur now covered them from elbow to fingertips, almost like gloves, whilst her hands had morphed into a strange halfway point between their original human form and a bestial paw, complete with cat-like pads on her palms and fingertips and stubby claws... well, they seemed like stubs, until Shampoo experimentally flexed muscles she had familiarized herself with since becoming Jusenkyo curse and foot-long, blade-sharp talons emerged from their sheaths!
'Huh. Well, these might actually be useful... still, this is very strange... but I cannot delay any longer! My beloved Ranma needs my help! First, beast form, for cover's sake...'
Shrinking back into her new half-cat, half-rabbit form, Shampoo closed her eyes, stuck her nose up in the air, and sniffed hard. Though there were limits - she was a cat, after all, not a dog! - one of the few advantages of her Jusenkyo form was a heightened sense of smell compared to her human form. That trait evidently carried on to this new hybrid state, and Shampoo smiled a feline smile as a familiar, much-loved aroma reached her nose.
'Yes, that is airen's scent - and it is coming from below! Hmm... I am supposed to have the powers of a rabbit, am I not? I wonder...'
Experimentally, she pawed at the flooring with one dainty forepaw. As her claws raked through weathered hardwood like it was made of ricepaper, effortlessly tearing up long coils of shredded wood, Shampoo gave the best evil grin that her current body permitted.
'Oh, yes, this does show promise...'
She attacked her target with her full enthusiasm, and in the span of a few heartbeats had clawed a hole big enough for her to effortlessly squeeze through.
'Hold on, airen; I am coming for you!'
Meanwhile, in the kitchen...
"Kitchens... why is it always kitchens?!" Ryoga squealed plaintively, thrashing desperately in the hands of his captor. Alas, he remained trapped in the body of a small, delicious pig, and thus incapable of freeing himself.
"Pretty tiny pig... won't go far," the chef mused, tugging on his long, elegantly coiffed beard as he studied the squealing, oinking offering.
"Maybe it could add some flavor to some soup or something?" the marine suggested.
And that was when Ryoga managed to twist around and bite his captor in the webbing between forefinger and thumb with all his porcine might.
"Son of a frock-muncher!" screamed the marine, who immediately snapped his injured hand out like a whip whilst simultaneously releasing his grip. The end result? A squealing Ryoga went flying through the air like a little black missile before hitting the wall with an audible 'splat!' and then sluggishly rebounding off of the wall... and into a huge pot full of boiling potatoes.
"Eeeyaaagh! I'm gonna rip your stupid head off!" screamed Ryoga in equal parts rage and pain as he erupted from the pot's depth, naked body solid pink from his immersion in boiling hot water and fists clenched into hammers of righteous justice.
This not being a sight they saw every day, the marine and the chef froze in mutual panic. Not that it probably would have helped them much anyway. As quick as a blink, Ryoga had laid them out unconscious, and was already sweeping past their fallen bodies to lay into the small vanguard of chefs and marines currently occupying the rest of the kitchen. They fared no better than the initial targets of Ryoga's wrath, and within barely a minute, he stood alone as the only conscious figure in the whole kitchen.
"Ranma, this is all your fault! Some captain you are! Can't even shut down an idiot plan like this! Just you wait until I get my hands on you!" Ryoga vowed, even as he stole the best-fitting clothes he could find from his victims.
Back in the cell...
"So, we're all agreed? We find the others and get out of here," Ranma declared.
"How are we supposed to find Shampoo and Ryoga in a place this big?" Nabiki complained. By this point, she had laid back down on the floor, as her injury hurt less that way.
"I don't know, but we've got to try! I'm not going to just leave them behind! Besides, it's not like they'll just fall into our laps..."
And that was when, heralded only by the sound of tearing, splintering wood, something small and fluffy dropped from the ceiling and landed squarely in Ranma's lap.
There was a prolonged moment of silence before Nabiki spoke up, speaking for all of them as she asked, "What the heck...?"
"They grow dang big rats on this ship," Ukyo observed, whistling as she surveyed the hole above them.
"That is the strangest looking rat I've ever seen," Kodachi interjected.
"Since when do you know anything about rats?" Ukyo questioned in response.
"It's not a rat, it's a rabbit," Ranma interjected. "And... beats me why, but something about it looks familiar..."
The strange green and blue bunny drew itself up proudly, a very human smile on its lips as it puffed out its chest and raised one forepaw in an adorable salute. "Niahao, Airen! Shampoo find you!"
"Whaa?!"
Shampoo blinked in confusion at the dumbfounded faces staring down at her. "What? Is something on Shampoo face?"
"Shampoo? You talk?" Ranma blurted incredulously.
The rabbit pouted. "That not nice, Ranma! Not Shampoo fault Shampoo no speak Japanese so good... wait... you understanding Shampoo?!"
"Loud and clear," Ranma retorted, with the other girls nodding in unison.
"Huh... must be new power Shampoo gain from Devil Fruit... seriously, things get very weird once Shampoo eat stupid fruit."
"Like anything about this world has been normal!" Nabiki quipped, a somewhat hysterical giggle escaping her as she did so.
"So, your super power is that you're... a talking bunny?" an incredulous Ukyo asked.
"Is it just me, or is there something very feline about her still? Something about the face," Kodachi interjected.
"Shampoo, the Chinese Amazon cabbit... sounds like some magical girl's talking animal sidekick," Nabiki snickered.
"Shampoo's powers go beyond that. Watch this!"
A blink of the eye, and where there had been a cabbit, there was now a naked Shampoo, sitting proudly on Ranma's lap.
"Ta-dah!" Shampoo proudly announced, beaming in delight. That expression gave way to confusion as Ranma let out a wordless squawk and then keeled over backwards. "Airen!? What wrong?"
"Haven't worked out the kinks in your henshin yet, Magical Warrior Pretty Usagi-Neko Shampoo?" Nabiki giggled, only to then clutch her waist with a pitiful groan. "Oh, it hurts when I laugh..."
"What silly Tendo girl talking?" an indignant Shampoo demanded.
"You're naked, Shampoo," Ukyo dryly pointed out.
"Although, given the circumstances, we cannot rule out the possibility of an inflicted concussion, either," Kodachi snidely interjected.
Both Shampoo and Ukyo stared at her in confusion for that statement, whilst Nabiki snickered from her position on the floor. Then Kodachi directed a meaningful glance at Shampoo's chest and understanding dawned. The Chinese Amazon cabbit-girl rolled her eyes. "No is Shampoo's fault you is all so flat."
"Hey!" an indignant trio of girls rebutted her.
"Shampoo, would you please get off of me already?!" Ranma demanded from the floor, firmly not looking in her direction.
Shampoo pouted, but obediently sidled out of Ranma's lap. Ranma promptly sat up, took off his greatcoat, and tossed it at Shampoo, resulting in the flying fabric wrapping itself around her face.
The newly minted Devil Fruit user wrestled with her cloth assailant, and after a moment managed to pull it free, directing a confused stare from the clothing to her now-shirtless fiance-cum-captain.
"Airen?"
"Just put it on! It's better than nothing!" Ranma ordered her, still visibly blushing.
Shampoo sighed loudly. "You still too-too polite," she grumbled. But she wrapped Ranma's greatcoat around herself, and it was at least long enough to preserve some semblance of her feminine modesty in the process.
"Anyway, the plan is to bust out of here, find Ryoga, get back to the ship, and leave. Got any problems?" Ranma asked them all, ignoring Shampoo's commentary.
"A perfectly sensible plan to me, darling."
"Shampoo good with that."
"Works for me, Ranchan."
"Can we just go already?" Nabiki complained, slowly standing up and cautiously stretching out some of the worst kinks. She hissed as her injuries protested even that tentative action.
'...But, given the alternative is staying here, I'll suck it up... kami, I hope Shampoo actually knows how to doctor for real...'
Ranma simply nodded, and stood up before stalking over to the cell door.
As cell doors went, it was quite an impressive specimen. Good, solid planks of dense hardwood had been neatly fitted together, bound and reinforced with iron studs and plates, settled on well-made hinges and with a thick iron lock. It was the kind of cell door that could have had a dozen men hammering at it in vain and it would have weathered them all stoically.
And then, one punch from Ranma later, it was so many splinters lying scattered across the floor.
Ranma led the girls through the yawning portal, footsteps echoing through the hall. "Okay, where to start looking for Ryoga..."
"Might as well just pick a random direction and go that way," Nabiki opined.
"Huh... makes sense. We all know Ryoga couldn't find his way out of a closet on his own. Okay, then we'll go... this way!"
Off the motley quintet went, moving quickly but quietly through the dungeon-like hallway. They'd only been walking for maybe two or three minutes before Shampoo stopped, her long rabbit-like ears twitching as they swiveled on her head.
"You hear that?" a bemused Chinese Amazon asked her companions.
"We don't have satellite dishes for ears, Shampoo," Nabiki retorted.
"What do you hear, Shampoo?" Ranma interjected, casting a quick glare at his injured quartermaster.
"Sound like... crying," Shampoo explained, already stalking over to one of the other cell doors. "Think it coming from here... wha?!"
She recoiled, springing back as a young woman suddenly grabbed the bars in the small window at the top of the door. The stranger would have been quite attractive, if she weren't red-eyed, weeping and covered in dirt.
"Save me! Please, save me!" she sobbed hysterically.
"Who are you? Why you in there?"
"I don't know! I was just an ordinary serving girl in a restaurant on Melody Island, and then the next thing I know, some scary marines are dragging me into this giant ship! Please, please, you have to help me!" she wept.
Her cried echoed through the hall, and almost as if a floodgate had burst, a chorus of wails and weeping erupted from the cells surrounding them.
"Please, you can't leave us here!"
"Get us out of here!"
"I was just out fishing and they dragged me off of my ship and threw me in here!"
"I was one of the ship's cooks, and then I spilled a plate meant for the commodore's table!"
"We're musicians who were brought aboard to play for the troops from Sunshine Isle - the Commodore didn't like the music we played, so he threw us in here!"
"Why would he make you all prisoners? It doesn't make sense!" a dumbfounded Ranma shouted back, trying to be heard over the crying and sobbing.
"It's because we're not prisoners - he's got something even worse planned for us!" shouted one cell's occupant.
"Like what?" Nabiki demanded.
"I used to be a seaman's apprentice on this ship! I was cleaning his quarters when I stumbled across an open journal - he intends to sell us all as slaves in the Holy City of Mariejois!"
The hold fell so quiet you could have heard a pin-drop. Slowly, the atmosphere began to thicken, the sconces hanging from the walls dimming as ghostly fire began to creep across Ranma's skin, drinking in the light and leaving in its wake a suffocating sensation of dread.
"Excuse me?" Ranma asked, his voice soft and calm, but the words reaching to the furthest depths of the hold, shivering under the weight of the sheer fury behind them.
"I read it myself! Apparently, the Holy Land depends on a constant influx of slaves to tend to the whims of the World Nobles - the supreme rulers of the World Government! Slavery's supposed to have been illegal for centuries! When I confronted the fat bastard about it, he threw me in here! Please, I don't care if you're pirates, you're human beings - you've got to save us!"
Ranma's battle aura surged to life, flooding the hold with its oppressive weight, the prisoners cowering and cringing in wordless silence as the feeling of gut-wrenching dread gripped them like a snake... and then, in the blinking of an eye, it retreated and light returned to the hold.
"All in favor of busting these guys out?" Ranma asked conversationally.
"Hell yeah!" Ukyo snarled.
"To battle slavers is sacred duty of Chinese Amazons! Great-grandmother never forgive Shampoo if she turn her back on this!" the Chinese Amazon cabbit declared.
'Funny, given how you like to play with love magic,' Nabiki sarcastically observed... though she kept this thought to herself.
"Ahhhh-hahhahahahaha! Oh, my darling, I wouldn't think twice! To hell and high water with our self-righteous foes - they will fall before the wrath of the Black Rose and her crew!" Kodachi crowed.
"You girls never stop surprising me... alright, let's get these people outta this mess!" Ranma barked. Even as he said this, he was walking over to the closest door, which he tore from its hinges and then snapped contemptuously over his knee.
The other martial artists scrambled to follow his example. Shampoo stove in doors like they were made of wet cardboard with contemptuous kicks and punches, Ukyo ripped locks free of their holding rings, and Kodachi deftly shattered those self-same locks with her kicks.
As they worked, the prisoners in the cells began to pour forth. Most came out quickly, weeping and expressing their gratitude, uncaring of the fact that their rescuers were evidently pirates. Others slunk out warily, as if waiting for their saviors to turn on them. And others still refused to move, simply huddling in their cells and at best weeping softly, but more often just staring blindly into space; these unfortunates had to be dragged out by their more lively counterparts. Finally, well over a hundred and twenty prisoners now mingled uncertainly in the hall, watching their pirate saviors with cautious, often hopeless eyes.
"So, what's the plan now?" asked the former seaman apprentice.
Feeling the eyes upon him - the ex-prisoners watching with mingled hope and fear, and curiosity from his own crew - Ranma bit the inside of his lip for a moment, before inspiration came to him in a flash, as it so often did.
"You know where the armory is? We'll take that first and leave you guys there, then we'll deal with the rest of the crew. Once they've all been kicked around, you guys can take the lifeboats and leave," Ranma declared firmly.
"You're going to take on an entire shipful of marines? By yourselves? Just the five of you?" the former crewman asked in obvious disbelief.
"Well, Nabiki will be staying with you, but we should pick up Ryoga along the way... so, yeah, just the five of us," Ranma admitted.
"You'll be outnumbered a hundred to one!" the unofficial spokesman for the prisoners protested.
"Yeah... not the fairest fight. They'll be completely outmatched," Ranma smirked.
The ex-marine stared at Ranma, regret flickering across his features before he glanced at the mangled ruins of what had been cell doors and finally made a resigned shrug. "Alright, follow me..."
They moved swiftly, but, of course things weren't going to be quite that simple, as proven when they ran into their first sign of resistance; at least two dozen marines, who immediately formed a firing line as Ranma and his companions came jogging out of the gloom.
"Halt at once! I don't know how you scum got out of your cells, but you're going right back there this instant!" Snarled the scar-faced, grizzled leader of the group.
Ranma was about to fire back his own witty comment, only for Kodachi to beat him to the punch by throwing back her head and laughing her signature whooping cackle, which had all but her fellow Nerimans wincing at the aural assault.
"Aiiiihhahahah! Look at these fools, my darling captain! They think they honestly stand a chance against you! You, who could sweep them all aside like a divine wind! Tell me, Ranma; do you feel these insolent vermin deserve the time it would take to beat them into the ground? Or should they be shown the errors of misplaced confidence against one who truly knows its worth?"
Everybody was staring at Kodachi at this point, with even Ranma unable to resist giving her a dumbfounded look. She just smiled back at him knowingly, causing Ranma's mind to race... and then he blinked, and gave her the most wicked smile that any of the Nerimans had ever seen on his face.
"No... they're not worth the time to actually fight them," Ranma agreed, turning with purposeful menace from Kodachi to the marines, right hand raising to face them with fingers spread, as if loosely cupping a ball.
A faint humming noise began to fill the air as a ghostly orb of light suddenly flared into light against Ranma's palm; initially the size of a golfball, but rapidly swelling and intensifying into a brilliant golden orb the size of a baseball. Shadows played across its surface like jets of plasma leaping from the skin of a star, twirling and swirling around the orb as the hum ominously thrummed in the ears of all present.
The obvious leader of this band of marines was ghostly white, sweat pouring off of his face in veritable rivers at the display. "Oh, shit! Shoot - aaaagh!"
And that was when the world exploded. In less than an instant, the sphere contracted itself into almost nothing, and then erupted in a blinding horizontal pillar of golden light, brilliance and rushing winds flooding the darkness of the hold and making the former prisoners cover their eyes and cower. The backwash tore at their hair and clothing like a gale, almost but not quite drowning out the screams of the marines as they took the full force of the attack. Crashing and splintering filled the air, the decks trembling and groaning as they vibrated under the pressure...
And then, as swiftly as it had come, it was over. All there was left was wisps of black smoke curling from Ranma's palm before he clenched his fist closed and smirked triumphantly.
"And that takes care of that." He announced.
The former prisoners could only stare at what their mysterious benefactor had done. The entire corridor before them had been scoured clean; blackened scorch marks marred the walls, floor and ceiling, all the way to the horizon of their enclosed world, where a jagged circle of light marked where the attack had blown clean through the ship's hull to the exterior, as it had done every door and wall in its direct way.
"Are...are they... dead?" The former marine and current ex-prisoner spokesman meekly asked.
"Nah. They're just out there floating around. They'll be fine once you fish 'em up," Ranma flippantly replied, waving a hand. "Now, let's get out of here before more of those idiots show up... I'd rather not sink the ship just yet..."
The ex-marine swallowed hard, but finally nodded. "R-right... this way, Captain..."
As the group set off once more, Nabiki made her way through the press to whisper to Ranma, "You know, I tend to forget you can do that..."
Ranma just smirked and kept on walking. If there was a little more pep in his step, who was to say?
Meanwhile, high above...
Commodore Nelson Royale was tucking into a light lunch of two roast suckling pigs and a dozen crunchy roast potatoes when the ship suddenly vibrated hard enough for him to feel it, a motion coinciding with the distant but distinct muted roar of an explosion from far below. He gagged and choked, spitting wads of half-chewed pork fat, crackling and gristle over himself, his eyes going wide in shock.
"What the blistering blue barnacles was that?!" He roared, once his throat was clear.
"Unknown, sir! An explosion from below decks!" One marine barked, snapping a salute.
"I can hear that, you imbecile! Send some men to check it out! This instant! Run, you useless sack of bones!" the Commodore screamed, sending the marine fleeing in headlong terror.
Nelson sighed the bone-deep sigh of the truly resigned. "The East Blue... why did I come to this Dragons-forsaken backwater?" he grumbled, before scooping up a handful of partially masticated pork from his table-like belly and shoving it back into his mouth, noisily chomping and slurping before he picked up one of the pigs and took a deep bite out of its belly.
And back down below...
As it turned out, there were positives and negatives to the sheer size of the ship that Ranma was currently invading from the inside. On the negative, there was a lot of floor to cross to get anywhere, and there were a lot of marines just waiting to pick a fight with any would-be escapees. On the positive, the sheer size of the ship meant the marines were actually struggling to find the Nerimans in any real numbers, so rather than swamping the martial artists with hundreds of men all at once, they were instead stumbling into Ranma's way in groups of a few dozen at a time... which had as much effect as cubes of steak throwing themselves into a working meat grinder.
When a group of marines showed up at sufficient range, Ranma simply blasted them out of the way with a Moko Takabisha, which meant that Commodore Nelson's ship was slowly accumulating a number of good-sized holes. When they showed up too close, however, things instead reverted to hand-to-hand combat.
...Not that this was exactly serving the marines any better.
"We are the rocks of the eternal shore! Crash against us, and be broken!" Kodachi howled, dodging the thrust of one cutlass-wielding marine and in the same movement grabbing his wrist and pulling him off of his feet, spinning him around in a circle that saw his boots smacking against the temples of half a dozen other marines that tried to surround her, before she then twisted around and swung him through the air in a vertical slash that ended with her planting his head so hard into the floor it ended up punching through the floorboards in a small crater.
"What does that even mean, anyway?" Ranma asked her in a half-laugh, even as he twisted through three strikes so fast that all three of his targets were launched across the room at the same time, albeit not in the same direction.
"Just trying to get into the spirit of things, captain darling," Kodachi replied flippantly, simultaneously sweeping a discarded cutlass from the floor, deflecting one marine's strike with it and kicking a second marine squarely in the solar plexus.
"Eh, chaff like this no worth the effort," Shampoo scoffed, effortlessly backhanding one marine into unconsciousness, only for two to suddenly spring at her with a heavy net and attempt to wrap it over her head whilst she was distracted. The Chinese Amazon let out a distinctly feline snarl-scream of rage that made Ranma's skin pale, shifting to her more bestial hybrid form and reducing the net to so many shredded pieces of rope - whilst also leaving her would-be captors in bleeding heaps on the floor.
"Since when can you do that?!" Ranma incredulously demanded, casually grabbing one marine and using him to club a second marine unconscious.
"Devil Fruit!" Shampoo quipped, then highkicked the last marine unconscious.
...Which of course was when another patrol came charging down one of the hallways to join the fray, waving their swords and screaming battlecries as they came.
"This is starting to get old," Ranma complained, raising his hand and beginning to charge a Moko Takabisha...
And that was when Ryoga suddenly came bursting through the roof, piledriving one unfortunate marine into what had been their floor so hard that the hallway collapsed, burying the would-be attackers in wooden rubble and cutting them off from the pirates and their accompanying ex-slaves.
"Ryoga?" Ranma asked, blinking in confusion. His half-formed ki sphere popped like a soap bubble as he beamed in delight. "Ryoga! You're not dead!"
"No thanks to you!" the eternally lost boy snarled, swatting his way through the wreckage. "Because of you, I've seen hell!"
"Oh, really?" Ranma drawled, quirking one eyebrow at Ryoga's melodramatics.
"Yes, really!" Ryoga snarled, lunging forward to grab Ranma by the shirt collar... only to realize that Ranma was currently naked from the waist up and hastily recoiled. "What happened to your shirt?!"
Ranma simply jabbed a thumb back at Shampoo, who waved cheerfully to Ryoga.
"Anyway, Ryoga, thanks for saving us the trouble of looking for you. Yo, Mikki! You know any other routes from here to the armory?"
Their guide blinked in confusion, visibly wracking his brains. "Uh... well, if we could break through the wall to your left, that should get us to a stairwell to the upper floors, where we'll find the armory..."
"Great! One door, coming up... you wanna do the honors, first mate Hibiki, or shall I?" Ranma cheerfully asked.
Ryoga glared at him, then gave a confused look at the slaves crowding in the hallway behind them, before walking over to the wall that Mikki had indicated and smashing it open with all the ease of somebody pulling open a sliding door. In fact, that was kind of how Ryoga opened it; slamming his fingers through the wood and then simply pulling hard to splinter boards until a yawning opening was made.
"Thank you! Alright, Mikki, get us back on course!"
Soon afterwards...
The thick hardwood door swung open at the barest touch of Ranma's fingers, the limp bodies of its former guards lying unconscious at his feet as he strode through and looked around, taking in the racks of swords and pistols that filled the sizable chamber.
"The armory at last! Good work, Mikki! Now -"
"My spatula!"
"Gah!" Ranma found himself spun around like a top as Ukyo rushed past him, racing over to snatch her beloved battle spatula from where it had been laid to rest against a rack of glaives. Why there was a rack of polearms on a navy ship, Ranma didn't know, and he didn't really care.
"My ribbon! Can anyone see my ribbon?" Kodachi demanded, rushing past Ranma and spinning him the opposite way.
Ranma threw a glare at both of them, but was resoundingly ignored; Ukyo was too busy nuzzling her cheek against her spatula and assuring it that she'd never lose it again, whilst Kodachi was ransacking through the various racks and bins with an air of increasing irritation. Biting back a sigh, he turned his attention back to the liberated prisoners, who were at least doing him the courtesy of pretending they hadn't seen his crew disrespect him like that.
"As I was saying... Mikki, do you think you can hold up here with the others?"
"Between you taking out at least a third of the crew on the way to get here, and the fact you're giving us the armory? We most certainly can," Mikki assured him, a slightly hysterical laugh escaping him as he did so.
"Good. Barricade yourselves in here, and try to hold out for as long as you can. We'll go after the sack of garbage running this place and kick his ass, then we'll come back and let you know you're safe to go," Ranma declared.
Then Ranma turned to his crew, smiling darkly as he did so. "Any objections to giving that fat bastard a beating?"
"Suits me just fine," Ryoga replied, cracking his knuckles with intent as he did so.
"Shampoo want her pound of flesh," the Chinese Amazon cabbit purred, flexing her newly-clawed fingers as she did so.
"You got my spatula, Ranchan!" Ukyo assured him.
A sudden whip-crack made the four martial artists start and snap to face... Kodachi, who was investigating the braid on a long, vicious-looking whip. She snapped it again, and nodded in satisfaction, tucking her purloined cutlass into her belt. "I say that whatever we do to him, he's had coming for a long time..."
"Then it's settled! Nabiki, you stay here and wait with the others..."
Nabiki and scoffed loudly. "As if I was going to do anything else! Getting sliced up once was bad enough, I'm not putting my precious skin on the line again!"
"That's fine... we'll be etching our own lesson into your precious skin when we get back to the ship," Kodachi conversationally observed, punctuating her words with a deft snap of her newly acquired whip.
Nabiki jumped, and glared at her, but the martial artists were already marching off, ready to take on whatever was left of the marine forces. They vanished through the armory's doorway, and some of the former prisoners immediately scurried over to slam the door shut and throw the bar in place, whilst others raced to begin grabbing swords and rifles.
As the now-hopeful ex-prisoners got ready to defend themselves, Mikki sidled up to Nabiki. "Do you really think they have a chance?"
Nabiki scoffed lightly. "Forewarned and armed to the teeth? The question isn't whether they'll win-"
A sudden explosion made the armory tremble, the familiar sound of one of Ranma's Moko Takabishas blowing clean through the ship echoing back to them.
The unflappable Nabiki continued as if she hadn't been interrupted, "It's how much of this ship will be left when they're done..."
Not long after, in the captain's hall...
Commodore Nelson snarled, the bright red spirals on his cheeks somehow turning even redder as he gritted his teeth at the shudders that were running through his ship, the aftermath of monstrous crashes and thuds.
"Ten thousand thundering typhoons, what is going on out there?!" he roared.
"S-sir, it's the pirates we captured earlier! They're broken free, they've freed the other prisoners and they've been fighting their way up to the main deck! They're making mincemeat out of us, sir! Yee!"
The marine flung himself to the floor as a bullet whistled through the air and plunged through his cap, the smoking pistol of its origin having seemingly materialized in the fuming commodore's hand.
"Imbeciles! Every time I think you worthless worms have reached the limits of uselessness, you find entirely new ways to disappoint me! Get me onto the commander's platform, this instant! Eric!"
At once, the self-proclaimed "Sickle Human" materialized out of the shadows. "As ever, sir, I am right here, there's no need to shout."
"You defeated these cretinous heathens once before! Get out on that deck and take them down, hard! Lop off a hand or a leg if you must, just make them stop fighting!"
"I hear and obey, but I'll be expecting a bonus," Eric smoothly replied.
"Bah, money is no problem, I'll pay you whatever you want! Just get out there and stop them!"
"Of course, sir," Eric replied, before striding purposefully off in the direction of the main deck.
Commodore Nelson immediately switched his attention to the marines lining the room. "Well, what are you idiots waiting for?! Carry me!"
With the speed of panic, a dozen men scrambled forth, grabbing the carrying poles and slowly hoisting them into the air before they began laboriously carrying the Commodore from his plinth in the hall to the balcony overlooking the main deck.
What Commodore Nelson saw when he emerged at last into the light of day was absolute madness. Five miserable pirates standing against what had to be at least two hundred marines... and the pirates were winning!
Ranma launched a blast of golden light that swept across the deck like a vengeful god's hand, sweeping screaming marines up by the dozen and casting them over the edge and into the ocean far below.
A snarling Ryoga had chosen a more direct approach, using a length of wood torn from somewhere as a great club to bash and batter through the marines that dared to try and get in close, leaving heaps of bruised, unconscious bodies in his wake.
Kodachi fought with surprising ambidexterity; the whip in her left hand lashed out to trip, snare, entangle and blind with all the expertise she normally applied to her beloved ribbon. Those that somehow managed to wend their way through the storm of snapping leather found themselves confronting the sword she wielded with deftness and lethal accuracy in her right hand.
"I didn't know you knew swordplay, Kodachi!" Ranma called to her through the melee, fists blurring into motion and scattering men in an impossibly fast volley of punches.
The Kuno heiress laughed her ear-piercing laugh. "Aaahhahahaha! Truly, Ranma darling, you are surprised? Have you forgotten who my brother is? Dear Tatewaki may be the kendo devotee of the family, but he insisted on tutoring me in the weaponry arts of the traditional samurai's daughter!"
"You are just full of surprises," Ranma conceded, deftly dodging and then counter-attacking one artless marine even as he spoke.
Nearby, an irritated Ukyo swung her battle spatula so hard she smashed through the cheap steel of a dozen marine's swords in a single blow, her weapon carrying on to pound them into the deck in the same motion. "Who does that Kodachi think she is, anyway?"
"She just show off, that all," Shampoo assured her, even as she twisted her way through a series of blindingly fast kicks that left a dozen more marines crumpled on the deck.
From his perch above, Commodore Nelson glowered down at the carnage, massive teeth grit so hard they would have crunched through brick. "Useless East Blue vermin! I'm surrounded by incompetents! Eric!"
"Sickle-Sickle Whirlwind!"
No combination of vowels could convey the sound of a literal blade of wind sweeping over the deck. Those marines fortunate enough to hear Eric's call flung themselves to the deck and cowered, allowing it to pass overhead; those too slow or too distracted screamed in pain as the attack, visible as a rippling effect in the air itself, indiscriminately scythed through them like a harvester's blade through wheat, leaving bleeding wounds and screaming victims in its wake.
Kodachi reacted instinctively, springing into the air in a single graceful leap even as her purloined whip snaked out and caught hold of some rigging, a deft tug of the former gymnast's wrists sending her swinging safely out of the attack's way. Shampoo, driven by instincts from her still unexplored Devil Fruit, simply leapt to safety over it, vaulting it effortlessly. But unlike them, poor Ukyo was a practitioner of a style centered on grounded combat, rooted in the principle of standing firm. Her fighting instincts betrayed her, she could only watch in horror as the razor-sharp wind came screaming towards her...
And then there was Ranma. Ukyo's eyes went wide as her crush turned captain seemed to practically materialize in front of her, shielding her from the razor wind with his own body. The coruscating blade of air struck the barrier of Ranma's back and then shattered, but even as it did so, tendrils of air wound themselves around Ranma's torso and outstretched arms. Devoid of even the dubious barrier of clothing, Ukyo had a front-row seat as Ranma's flesh parted into a series of shallow, winding cuts that snaked and curled across Ranma's upper body, slicing with cruel abandon until the blood flowed like water from a dozen or more long, red mouths that had been carved into the young martial artist's skin. And they didn't just cut, they clawed, the force behind the attack spawning bruises that visibly bloomed outwards from each gash. Fury spent, the unnatural winds dissipated into nothingness and they left Ranma a bleeding mess, droplets of gore raining from his outstretched arms onto the deck.
"Ranchan!" Ukyo whimpered, tears starting to fill her eyes as she took in the full scale of the wounds Ranma had suffered on her account.
"Nice save, Saotome!" Ryoga called from where he was busily beating a dozen marines unconscious with a thirteenth, and for once actually meaning it.
'...Okay, gotta give him credit; that actually stung!' Ranma conceded to himself. But pride, stubbornness and pure macho compelled him to grit his teeth, force away the pain until he had the luxury of dealing with it, and do his best to give Ukyo a cocky smile... the effect somewhat spoiled by the tears of pain that escaped the corners of his treacherous eyes. "Hey, Ucchan... you alright?"
Sniffling, the crossdressing chef nodded, unable to find the words.
The moment was spoiled when, snickering to himself, Eric strutted across the deck, kicking aside one bleeding, crumpled marine who dared to try and grab at the Devil Fruit user's boots. "Impressive display... you're not the typical East Blue chaff, are you?"
Ranma visibly bristled, spinning away from Ukyo to glower wrathfully at his foe. "And you're the lowest of the low! Seriously, what kind of scumbag uses an attack like that on a defenseless girl?!"
"Pfah! You're the one who decided to let his bedwarmers play at being pirates! If they can't take the heat, they should stay out of the kitchen," Eric mockingly shot back.
"You don't talk about 'em like that!" a beet-red Ranma screamed back furiously, equal parts indignant and mortified.
"If it bothers you so much, then why don't you stop me! Sickle-Sickle Wind Slash!"
A sweep of his arm and another blade of air screamed forth, this one barely visible. Ranma unthinkingly shoved Ukyo to the deck and then flipped nimbly over the attack, which sailed off into the distance behind him. Ranma deftly landed on his feet, then smirked at the suited mercenary. "Y'know, you need a shorter attack name for a move like that..."
"Good advice... I'll carve it on your headstone! Sickle-Sickle Whirlwind!"
Three sweeps of his arms, and triple blades of wind raced shrieking through the air at Ranma, who practically danced through the deadly barrage, leaping, ducking and twisting so that even the splinters they gouged up from the decking below failed to touch him.
"Where are you even getting those things from?!" Ranma demanded.
"Hah! Impressive, no? I ate the Sickle-Sickle Fruit! I can conjure an endless supply of wind blades with a flick of my wrist! And each blade is as sharp as I want it to be, from a debilitating, painful gash to as sharp as a legendary sword! Why, tearing an opponent limb from limb is child's play to me!" Eric boasted, before following up his bragging with yet another Sickle-Sickle Whirlwind.
Ranma just dodged this one as easily as the others, and did the same to the next three attacks. "...So, what, your big plan is to hope I catch a cold and die from how breezy it is?"
A vein visibly throbbed in Eric's temple and he scowled in irritation. "Slippery thing, aren't you! Well, you might be able to dodge... but your pet girls can't!"
"Don't you dare!" Ranma roared, but it was too late as Eric suddenly launched three Sickle-Sickle Whirlwinds simultaneously, each aimed straight at one of Ranma's female crewmates!
"You heartless fiend!" Ryoga cried, forcing himself to his feet and hauling two dozen very surprised marines into the air from where they had dogpiled him, their shouts growing louder before abruptly fading out as he casually tossed them over the railing and into the sea.
But this time, the girls were prepared.
Shouting her loudest kiai, Ukyo swung her battle spatula like a shield, smashing it into the wind blade and scattering it into a dozen cruel breezes that gouged at the decking, but left her untouched... save for the bright sheen of scratched metal now glinting on her spatula's head.
"Hey! This is a family heirloom, ya jackass!" the indignant battle chef cried, glaring at the mercenary.
Kodachi made a similar attack, swinging her purloined sword into the wind-blade as if she were deflecting an enemy sword. Those in earshot winced at the hideous screeching of edges scraping together, but rather than stand her ground, Kodachi deliberately fell back, maneuvering her blade and her body as one in such a manner as to channel and deflect the razor wind harmlessly out to sea. It was a picture perfect defensive sword maneuver but not without its cost, as the blade of Kodachi's saber shattered into fragments that rained down on the deck with a strangely musical tinkling.
"Tch! Cheap, shoddy, mass produced junk..." Kodachi declared, casting a baleful eye over the now-bladeless hilt before disdainfully casting it aside.
As for Shampoo, she simply hopped over the attack, cartwheeling through the air to land in a spot-on two-point landing back where she had been standing once the blade sailed past. She smirked at Eric and asked, "You aiming that at Shampoo?"
"Hhhh... Figures that a rabbit zoan would jump good - it's the only power a useless fruit like that has to offer!" the disgruntled mercenary spat at her.
"You're one to talk about useless fruits! C'mon, man, is that the best you got? Just one attack you mindlessly throw out over and over? Even Ryoga's not that pathetic!" Ranma scoffed.
"Who're you calling pathetic?!" an angry Ryoga roared.
"This loser here with the one-trick Devil Fruit!" Ranma spat back.
"L-loser?!" Eric snarled like an animal, hands visibly trembling and veins bulging in his fury. "I've had enough of playing around! Die already! Sickle-Sickle Wind Slash... Rapid Fire!"
Curling both hands into claws, Eric began frantically pawing at the winds, spawning dozens of razor wind attacks that, instead of flying at their target, began to twist and coil around each other, weaving into a whirling vortex of slicing air blades.
Even Ranma's eyes widened at this sight, though fortunately for his image everybody else was watching Eric instead of him. '...Okay, that one looks like it'd hurt! Time to put an end to this!'
"That's just more of the same!" Ranma bellowed, trying to present more bravado than he necessarily felt even as he launched himself at Eric like a human missile. Incredibly, Eric actually managed to react in time, a final sweep of his hands sending the scything vortex roaring through the deck towards the sprinting martial artist.
'This is gonna suck!'
Ranma hit the whirlwind dead on, crying out in his best kiai as he relied on speed, momentum, toughness and sheer stubbornness to bulldoze through the attack. The clawing winds gashed and tore at his flesh until his blood filled the air in a halo of sparkling crimson droplets, bruises upon bruises covering him from head to toe, and still Ranma ploughed on. An instant of torture, and then he was on the other side. Another heartbeat, and he was within reach of the Devil Fruit user.
Eric barely had time to realize what was happening before Ranma's fist caught him in the jaw and sent him rocketing through the air to slam into the base of one of the ship's tree trunk-like masts, striking so hard the wood splintered around his outline as a result. As he crashed limply to the deck, the vortex suddenly dissipated into nothingness, vanishing in the middle of the deck.
"Alright, c'mon, show me what you got!" Ranma roared, adopting a defensive stance... only for Eric to simply groan and continue lying limply on the deck. There was no sound save for the faint whistle of an errant sea breeze, before Ranma incredulously slipped out of his stance.
"Wait... that's it? Man, you're even more pathetic than I thought!" the disdainful martial artist announced.
"Imbeciles! Must I do everything myself?!"
Everyone still conscious on the deck winced at the sheer volume assaulting their ears, all eyes going skyward to fix on the source. Commodore Nelson glowered from his position on the balcony overlooking the main deck, his bloated, toad-like form radiating rage and disgust as an almost palpable force.
"I have had enough of this cursed sea! You filthy heathens... you will surrender to me this instant, or else!" The Commodore roared down at them.
"Or else what, tubby!" Ranma spat back.
At this, the sneering bloated sack of flesh reached into the interior of his loosely-worn jacket and drew out...
"A snail? What, yer gonna throw yer lunch at us?" Ranma asked, genuinely confused at this turn of events.
"Idiot! This is a transponder snail, connecting me to the dozen ships that make up my own personal fleet! I give the call, and they'll be here within an hour!"
The Nerimans all blanched at that. Taking down the hundreds of marines on this single ship, whilst doable, hadn't been entirely a cakewalk. Taking on a dozen ships at once, each carrying just as many marines? That was another thing entirely!
"And once they arrive, you'll all go back into the hold! We'll strip that miserable island clean of life, and these pathetic excuses for marines will join you all in the hold too! I'll take you all back to Mariejois, and sell you to the highest bidder! Pirates, East Blue heathens, incompetent marines, that worthless mercenary Eric - you'll all spend what little time is left for you serving the Celestial Dra- GAK!"
And just like that, Commodore Nelson went silent. His eyes rolled up in their sockets, his jaw dropped... and then, with a sickening slurping sound, his head slowly slid off the severed stump of his neck. Blood began to spray into the air in a macabre fountain as the former Commodore's head rolled down his own belly and finally landed with a wet splat on the balcony floor. Followed by shrieks of shock from his former litter bearers, which was drowned out by the thunderous crash as they spontaneously dropped their massive load of now-literal dead weight.
Slowly, Ranma's appalled gaze went from what had just seconds ago been a living, breathing being to Eric, who was now standing defiantly at the base of the mast where Ranma had punched him, swaying slightly on his feet, with one taloned finger pointing at the deck.
"Nobody sells Eric the Whirlwind," the Devil Fruit user stated with an eerie calmness.
'...Morally, I should be upset. On the other hand...I can't really care that much about that fat bastard,' Ranma quietly noted to himself. Instead, he just levelly held Eric's gaze. "So... what happens now?"
"Well, with no employer, I see no reason for us to continue fighting. We might as well just go our separate ways from here," Eric calmly responded.
"And they won't have anything to say about it?" Ranma asked, jabbing a thumb at the dumbstruck marines watching them as if the two warriors were kegs of gunpowder with lit fuses jammed in them.
"I think at this point, we all can agree that it would best serve our purposes to concoct a suitably tragic explanation for the 'good' Commodore's passing, and pretend our paths never crossed," was Eric's smooth, silky response.
"And the innocent people being held below?" Ranma jeered back.
"Take 'em and go! We didn't want anything to do with that plan in the first place! We're marines - we're supposed to fight for justice, not be drafted into the slavery trade!" interjected one marine. Had Ranma the knowledge of marine insignias, he would have recognized the man as a lieutenant, but Ranma frankly neither knew nor cared.
"...Tell ya what. This is what we're going to do. We're going to go to tubby's room and take whatever we want from his personal crap, and then we're going to leave. You are going to get those poor people back to civilization. We run into each other in the future, fine, we'll play pirates and marines again. But today... let's just call it a draw, alright?" Ranma asked, trying his best to sound diplomatic.
The marine lieutenant took in the state of his forces, battered, bruised, bleeding and demoralized. Then he looked at the five pirates who had taken on hundreds-to-one odds and prevailed, and the bloodthirsty Devil Fruit-using mercenary. In the end, he made the only decision he could given the position he was in.
"Deal."
Soon afterwards...
The lift finally lurched to a stop, and six tired Nerimans stepped back onto the Milka's deck.
Ranma sighed in relief. "I'm glad that's over..."
"Well, in the end, it all worked out! I mean, look at this book we found in the commodore's quarters! The Devil Fruit Encyclopedia - that Eric guy said this book was really rare and pricey!" Nabiki chirped, nuzzling her latest acquisition like a baby.
"Figures - we get captured, you nearly get killed, but you don't even care because we got loot out of it," Ryoga scoffed.
"Well, that's what being a pirate means, doesn't it? Danger for treasure; it's the basic equation of this lifestyle," Nabiki shot back.
Ranma sucked in a breath, ready to take on the rare opportunity to be the one giving the disapproving lecture for once instead of receiving it, but was interrupted as Umok came drifting over.
"You're back! I was starting to wonder what was keeping you - wait, what the hells happened to you all?!" the imp demanded, his voice rising to a thundering bellow on those closing words. A rather appropriate reaction, considering their general state of disarray, the way Nabiki was moving as gingerly as possible and still wincing at each step, and the fact Ranma was still covered in scabbed-over cuts and fading bruises... which itself spoke to how intense the beating he'd taken from Eric's razor winds had been, given Ranma's notoriously fast healing rate.
"It's a long story... let's just get the ship back into sail and get away from this place..." Ranma sighed
"Alright, but I want to hear the full story!" Umok declared firmly.
One long story later...
"Hmm... mmhmmm..."
Eyes glowing in a scintillating pattern, Umok floated lazily through the air around both Shampoo, tracing a strange path of loops, twists and turns with his body. Ranma tapped his foot, watching as the imp continued to spiral around and around, before finally losing his patience.
"So, are you gonna tell us what's going on here or not?!"
"Well... I think I may have some idea of what's going on here," Umok concluded, finally drifting away from the Jusenkyo cursed Devil Fruit user to float before the fuming captain.
"You think?" Ranma icily repeated.
"Hey, this is slapdash even for field work! I don't have any of my tools, I don't have any test subjects, I don't even know the magics we're talking about all that well! I'm sorry, but whatever fancy talk I can put on it, in the end, guessing is all I can really do!" Umok snapped.
"Ranma didn't mean it like that, Umok... please, tell us what you can," Kodachi asked, interceding with surprising deftness.
Her words seemed to mollify the imp, who sighed and nodded. "Okay... well, I'm gonna do my best to dumb this down for you lot, but this is hard to explain to people without any understanding of magic."
"Just... anything is better than nothing," Ranma conceded.
"Okay... well, bear with me. You Jusenkyo cursed stick out in my aura vision because of your curses; you radiate a strong aura of both water elemental magic and transmutation magic - that is, the magic of transformation and change. Before Shampoo ate it, that Devil Fruit gave off the same kind of aura..."
"Wait, wouldn't that mean they work well together, if they're just more of the same?" Ukyo interjected.
"Sometimes it works that way, but more often than not, trying to mix similar magics ends up going wrong precisely because they're so similar. The effects get... muddled. It's like trying to pour two bottles into one glass, you follow me?" Umok asked.
"I get it; because they're basically very similar kinds of magic, Shampoo's Jusenkyo curse and her new Devil Fruit sort of got mixed together," Ranma reasoned thoughtfully.
"Exactly! Now, I can't say for sure if this would happen with any Devil Fruit, or if it's just because Shampoo had the bad luck to eat a Zoan, which has a pretty strong... thematic overlap, shall we say? But the short and dirty answer is that Shampoo's bestial forms have fused - she used to be a cat, she should have turned into a rabbit, but neither magic could overwhelm the other. So they compromised. Hence, we have Shampoo the cabbit," Umok declared, gesturing at the transformed hybrid sitting on the floor between them.
"So... you do all that to basically confirm what Shampoo already suspect?" she dryly asked, staring up at the hovering imp.
"Well, at least now you know for sure that's what's happened! ...Sort of. I do have a theory that we can test, though, if you'll change back to your human form?"
Shampoo gave Umok a suspicious look, before glancing at Ranma. When her captain nodded, the Chinese Amazon cabbit sighed and shifted forms again.
"The hot water, Kodachi, if you please?"
The Black Rose of Saint Hebereke obediently stepped forward and tipped the steaming kettle's contents over Shampoo's heads. No sooner was her head completely soaked in water than Shampoo's bestial ears and tail melted away as if they had never been there.
"And now you're human again! But, try to transform, Shampoo," the imp instructed her.
Shampoo closed her eyes and concentrated... but nothing happened. Seconds ticked past, her brow furrowing in confusion, before she opened her eyes and looked at Umok. "Shampoo... Shampoo can't. No can feel power. What happen?"
Umok nodded in satisfaction. "Yes, my theory grows more solid... Next test! Ryoga, splash her with some cold water."
Shampoo bristled, but even before the words could leave her mouth, Ryoga had bluntly splashed her in the face with a bucket of cold seawater. Sour look framed by two massive drooping bunny-like ears, Shampoo spat out a stray mouthful of brine.
"Now try and transform."
The Chinese Amazon rolled her eyes, then shrank away, her form twisting in an instant into a strange creature with the face and forelimbs of a cat, the hindquarters and tail of a rabbit, and massive ears that bore elements of both species. She glanced up at these half-drooping appendages, and then narrowed her eyes, visibly confused. "Strange... it work straight away that time..."
"Just as I suspected... it's a side effect of the fusion process," Umok declared triumphantly.
"Lemme get this straight... because her Jusenkyo curse says she should be a cat if she's been splashed with cold water, but her Devil Fruit says she can change into a rabbit, human, or bunnygirl whenever she wants, they've basically compromised? So she can't use her Devil Fruit powers at all unless she's been splashed with cold water first?" a confused Ranma asked him.
"I won't deny, it's a strange system, but evidently that's how it works. It also explains why Shampoo can't access her human form without hot water, only that 'demibeast' form; it's the best compromise her merged magics can make between the Zoan fruit telling her she's a human and the Jusenkyo curse telling her she's a cat - or at least a cabbit," Umok explained, nodding sagely as he did so.
"You think there any side effects to this fusion?" Shampoo asked.
"I'd need to run more tests, but it seems stable to me. It's possible that maybe there's a way to unlock the cold water trigger mechanism, but I can't be certain," Umok replied, shrugging his shoulders.
"Anything else you can tell us?" Ranm asked, niot a little sarcastically.
"Just two things," the imp replied. "Firstly, it's possible that Shampoo's unique magical mix has given her the combined powers of the rabbit and housecat Zoan Devil Fruits... which I admit doesn't exactly sound like a particularly powerful combination of abilities. Secondly, this is actually a pretty major upgrade for Shampoo in terms of quality of life."
"It is?" five puzzled teenagers asked in response.
Shampoo, on the other hand, looked puzzled for a moment, then visibly brightened in realization, smacking a fist into her palm for emphasis. "Because Shampoo now can change shapes at will, Shampoo no more need worry about stray water making Shampoo helpless! Also, because cabbit no scare Airen, no more fears of Nekoken!"
"You're right, that is a pretty major improvement!" Ranma confessed, grinning and chuckling as he did so.
"Correct... I'm surprised you didn't realize it already, when Ryoga splashed Shampoo with cold water, but she didn't change into her beast form. - her transformations are completely voluntary, outside of that triggering mechanism," Umok explained.
Ranma chuckled grimly at that. "What can I say? It's been a long day... so, are you done with Shampoo?"
"Well, there are other tests I can think of to perform, such as comparing her different humanoid forms in terms of strength, speed, agility and reflexes..." Umok admitted.
"Any tests that absolutely have to be done right this minute?" Ranma drawled in response.
"Well... no," Umok conceded.
"Then we're done for the day. Shampoo ain't some lab rat for you to poke and prod. She's okay, if anything she's better than ever, and we are going to take some well-earned rest and relaxation," Ranma declared firmly.
"Shampoo second that!" The Chinese Amazon cabbit announced, springing at Ranma and shifting into her beast form in mid-leap, using her claws to catch hold of Ranma's shirt and then scamper up his torso to sit proudly on his shoulder. "Shampoo think she get used to this new body fast..." she purred, nuzzling Ranma's cheek.
"You shameless little beast!" Kodachi cried, Ukyo nodding fiercely and glaring at the transformed Chinese Amazon, who simply stuck her tongue out at both of them.
Umok watched as the bickering sextet paraded back off onto the deck and then sighed, shaking his head. "A revolutionary fusion of magic, and they couldn't care less... mundies. Ah well, we'll see how things develop. One thing's for sure; it won't be boring!"
Chapter End & Closing Notes
And thus we reach the end of this chapter at last. Shampoo has a Devil Fruit upgrade, and our heroes have finally been confronted with the fact that if they're going to play pirate in this world, they're going to need to commit. Well, in the next chapter, I promise we will finally see them get around to deciding upon proper... what's the term... articles of introduction for themselves as pirates - by which I mean a crew name, a name for their ship, and a Jolly Roger.
Sadly, I can't promise the next chapter will be out too soon. In fact, I'm going to have to go on a short writing hiatus. I want to submit some articles to this year's Quoth the Raven, the yearly Ravenloft fan-content netbook, and that means I have to work to get them done by the September 30th deadline. After that deadline, I'll resume giving my full attention to fanfic writing, but until then, progress is going to be slow-to-nonexistent, okay?