Author's Notes: Happy Australia Day! It took a while, and I'm sorry, but finally we have the next chapter in this work; I hope it's worth the wait!

On the topic of the vote... it got close, but in the end, the Vampire Fruit upstaged a win, so we'll have that little development to look forward to in the future.

As always, this story has a TVTropes page, so give it some love! And I have a Ko-Fi up if you want to contribute to this story getting some more artwork - like the lovely piece Amenoosa did for our newest character - or to help me finally replace this computer of mine before it dies.

Fox Boss: It was indeed planned to turn Blooming Garden into a whip-sword, inspired by Ivy Valentine from Soul Calibur. As for the Human-Human Fruit, Model Type: Yukionna, it looks like a promising fruit, though sadly Nabiki's fruit is currently set in stone. I had considered it (or at least a "Yukinezumi", a counterpart to the Hinenezumi - fire rat - for the added animal symbolism and an easier-to-grasp difference between human & hybrid forms), and it might still find a place, if you see the end notes...

Chapter 21: The Crazy Clockwork of Karakuri Castle!

Ranma closed his eyes, counted to five under his breath, and then opened it again. When the impossible vision he had beheld before failed to disappear, he turned to his uncertain-looking crew.

"Okay... what's the story here?" He cautiously asked them.

"Would you believe... it's part of our winnings?" Ukyo asked, grinning sheepishly as she did.

"...This is worth 300 million?!" Ranma blurted out incredulously, gesturing at the silent figure before them.

"Certainly not! We got a proper payout," an affronted Nabiki indignantly interjected.

"It's simply that when we claimed our prize upon arriving, this... thing... was amongst the cash and treasures we had won," Kodachi added more calmly.

Digesting that fact, Ranma glanced back at the object of their conversation. To be honest, when he had called it a "robot girl" before, it was, perhaps, not entirely the most accurate description...

What sat on the deck before Ranma resembled nothing so much as a great steel barrel, with rivets visibly holding various seams together. Arrayed around the bottom was a circle of eight articulated limbs, little more than spider's leg-like appendages of piston-propelled long metal struts attached to heavily reinforced gear "knees" that went up and then down in a kind of upside-down Z shape.

Near the barrel's top, two large, clunky, mechanical arms were attached; the right arm ended in a set of three curved mechanical claws arranged in a pincer-like fashion - one closing between two - with some kind of slotted underslung attachment of indeterminate purpose, whilst the left arm ended in some kind of empty socket that looked as if it had been some kind of mount or fitting once upon a time. Six small, spidery-looking mechanical graspers visibly folded into vertical slots around the barrel's circumference, articulated in a way that vaguely reminded Ranma of praying mantis limbs. Over the thing's "shoulders" were angled round tubes that reminded Ranma greatly of some mortars he'd seen on an American military base when he was younger.

Finally, sticking out of the center of the barrel's top, back-framed by about half a dozen mushroom-like vents emerging from the "back" of the clunky-looking body, was an eerily human face, held securely in place by rings of thick, solid-looking rubber. At first glance, it could be mistaken for the face of a human girl, but a closer look revealed it to actually belong to some kind of human-sized porcelain doll, and one that had been through the ringer at that. The right eye was gone, the gaping wound covered by a clunky metal patch that had been screwed into the wearer's skull, failing to hide the scar-like crack that radiated down its cheek. Most of its electric yellow hair had been shaved short, save for a single forelock that dangled over the patch, as if in a vain attempt to hide it.

In fact, there was actually a lot of damage, now that Ranma looked closer at it. Holes surrounded by rust, dents, scrapes, and other various markers that made it look like the thing had been savagely beaten on at some point.

"...Are we sure this is a robot and not some kind of really ugly modern art?" Ranma mused aloud.

"Well, I'm no mechanic, Ranchan, but all that articulation looks overkill for just some kind of statue," Ukyo replied.

Ranma hummed to himself and rubbed his chin, deep in thought. "Do we know how this thing came to be in the Moonscar Pirates' possession?"

"Actually, yes! The man we received our winnings from said that it was part of the haul they took from their last raid, on a cargo ship that turned out to be escorted by nobody less than a Navy Admiral," Kodachi elaborated.

Ranma blinked in surprise, remembering his brief encounter with the captain of the Moonscar Pirates back in the underground pirate bar on Hannabal. "So that's how they met Vice-Admiral Onigumo... Well, that answers the question of whether or not this is valuable. And I'm guessing Ryoga's been calmed down, or he'd have already pitched this thing into the ocean."

"Believe me, I was tempted," Ryoga declared bluntly. "But if they let the Moonscar Pirates get away with their lives, they probably figure nobody can repair it... which makes sense, because it's not like this world is generally that technically advanced, oddities aside."

"You're right... hmm..." Ranma trailed off, looking at the robot and contemplating it.

"...Is Biera still aboard?" He suddenly asked, glancing towards Kodachi.

"Yes, actually; he and the Bascud siblings wanted to wait for you to regain consciousness so they could thank you for what you did," Kodachi assured him.

"Well, now..." Ranma purred, grinning mischievously.

Several hours later...

"Well, sonny, I can tell you one thing about whoever built this contraption; they were a damn genius with steam, that's for sure! I didn't know it was possible to make a boiler so compact yet still able to generate power!"

The old man's voice had a metallic echo to it, given that he was currently buried up to his waist inside of a previously hidden hatch in the rear of the robot girl's barrel-shaped body. As he worked, the collected Kamikaze Pirates watched, with the Bascud siblings also peeking at him as best they could.

"So, do you think you can get it started?" Ranma asked inquisitively.

"Well, I can certainly give it a go! But I'm not gonna make any promises... this is way more complicated than the engine on the Salamander... plus, it doesn't help that somebody let most of my tools sink to the bottom of the Grand Line..." Beira replied, legs absently kicking as he continued to tinker with whatever unseen mechanisms had his attention.

"Shampoo could have let you go with them," the Chinese Amazon grumpily asserted.

"Not that I'm not grateful you didn't! But it isn't helping... ah, here's an issue I recognize - the air inlet's all gunked up! Lemme just clear that out... got it! Now, light the starter..."

A sudden muffled bang! and a gout of acrid black smoke made the collected onlookers jump, spluttering coughs and retching echoing from the interior of the fume-belching robot. Biera hastily wriggled his way to freedom, waving a hand in front of his soot-smeared face and spluttering loudly.

"Phwoo! Dangnabbit, but that's a nasty case of build-up! Still, she's all fired up now," the elderly mechanic proudly announced.

"You mean it'll turn on?"

"Probably? Gotta confess, I don't really know much about this sort of machinery, but the engine's running now, so once the water heats up, if she's going to go, she'll go," Biera declared staunchly.

After a statement like that, all they could do was watch patiently. As the proverbial clock slowly ticked by, faint wisps of steam began to trickle from the vents emerging from the robot's back, slowly building in thickness to visible plumes. The faintest whistling noise could be heard from somewhere in its mechanical guts, but it still sat silently on the deck, not even so much as twitching.

"...Maybe there's an on button?" Ryoga suggested, after a few minutes of continued silence.

The robot's one eye suddenly snapped open, the electric blue iris literally glowing as the disturbingly human mouth dropped open to release the most ungodly shriek of rage and pain that any of the Kamikaze Pirates had ever heard. It was like standing at ground zero for a steam whistle being tortured, the collected teenagers (along with their guests) clapping their hands over their ears in pain as the hellish scream echoed off the hull's interior and rattled their brains.

Steam whistled and shrilled, rusty gears grinding and under-lubricated pistons groaning as the robot lurched to its spidery feet. It staggered around like a drunken crab, teetering first one way and then the other, steam and smoke billowing from seams and holes and various openings, intentional or not. And as it went, it wildly flailed its arms, swinging them blindly at its surroundings.

"What the hell's going on?!" Ranma barked.

"How should I know? I fix boilers, sonny, not robots!" Beira yelled back.

"Can we focus! If nobody stops that hunk of junk, it'll put a hole in the hull!" Nabiki yelped.

"I'm on it!" Miriam bellowed, charging forward, arms out wide and head down low as she prepared to seize the robot.

She was greatly surprised, therefore, when the glowing eye snapped to her with unprecedented focus, its single great pincer-claw rocketing out and seizing her by the neck. But not as surprised as when the robot yanked the four meter tall shark-girl clean off of her feet before slamming her face first into the floor, hard enough that the impact reverberated through the hull like a miniature earthquake and nearly shook the others off of their feet.

Harumi's horrified gasp was drowned out as the robot leveled its stump-handed left arm at the wotan's head. Sparks suddenly flew from the socket, eliciting another anguished squeal from the fembot. That clearly not having been what it had expected to happen, it instead raised its left "hand" and clubbed Miriam over the head so hard that the crack of steel on giant-bred bone was audible.

Even as Miriam slumped limply to the deck, blood streaming from a gash in her scalp, an enraged cry sprang up from amidst the crowd of onlookers.

"Leave her alone!" Harumi demanded even as he sprang forward with swords drawn. The unwanted heir to the Crying Willow Sect was little more than a blur as he crossed the intervening gap, and the hulking mechanical monster was too slow to react as Shirohebi scraped across what would have been her ribs had she been human.

The screech of metal on metal filled the air as Shirohebi, one of the 50 swords known to the swordsmen of the Grand Blues as "Ryō Wazamono", or "Skillful Grade Blades", carved a great gash through the rusted iron of the robot's side, slicing off one of the smaller manipulator arms in the process. Unfortunately for Harumi, any triumph he may have felt was quickly extinguished as a great jet of steam boiled from the wound and blasted him squarely in the face, sending him stumbling backwards with a squall of pained shock, narrowly avoiding a retaliatory blow that probably would have caved his skull in.

The tripartite blades of the robot's gripping claw snapped spasmodically together with great metallic gnashes. It brandished the bestial appendage in the air, and suddenly the elongated oval shape of a chainsaw blade snapped forth from the slotted attachment on the claw's side. It briefly screamed into life... for all of two seconds, then the bladed chain of teeth snapped in a shower of sparks and another shriek of eerily human agony from the machine wielding it.

"KIILL! Killkillkuh-kuh-killkillkill! PAAAAIN! Stop it! Stopitstopitstopitstopitstopit! It hurts! ITTT HUUUUUUUURTTTTSSSSS!"

Shuraiya immediately grabbed his sister and retreated with her, which none of the Kamikazes would begrudge afterwards, when they actually had time to stop and think about anything other than the immediate threat confronting them.

"What the hell is going on?!" Nabiki demanded of Beira, grabbing him by his overall straps.

"Beats me, lady! I already told you, I'm just an engine guy!" The old man snapped back at her.

"How do we stop this thing?!" Ukyo cried, grabbing Biera by the face and pulling him around to face her.

"Th-The boiler! Puncture the boiler, and there's no power!" Biera stammered, gesturing blindly at the screaming robot as he did so.

That was all that Ranma needed to hear, and he reached out to tap Ryoga on the shoulder, nimbly evading the punch that his rival cum reluctant buddy instinctively threw at him in shock.

"I'll distract it, you let the water out of her!" Ranma pronounced, before springing over to land in front of the flailing, gibbering machine.

"Over here, chrome-dome! You wanna fight somebody, here I am!" Ranma yelled, waving his arms to make himself an even more obvious target.

Screaming at the top of its artificial lungs, the robot lurched forward, its claw snapping out for Ranma in a spirited attempt to pluck his head from his shoulders. But it might as well have been trying to grab mist, as Ranma nimbly danced around the clunky machine, leading it on a skittering dance through the hold.

'But I haven't mastered the Bakusai Tenketsu variant for metal!' Ryoga mentally protested, before metaphorically shrugging his shoulders. 'Oh, what the hell, it's only rusty old iron!'

Bolstered by that thought, and refusing to be shown up by Ranma in any case, Ryoga hurled himself into the fray the instant the robot had turned to face Ranma. With brutal efficiency, the Eternally Lost Boy used a spear-hand thrust and plunged it right into the robot's back. Metal crumbled around his digits with a metallic screech, although that could have been the robot screaming again, and Ryoga knew he'd struck true when a jet of steam and boiling hot water sprayed out... and of course it splashed him fair in the face.

Ryoga recoiled with a bellow of pain; Bakusai Tenketsu or not, that was hot! He narrowly avoided taking a blow to the face from the robot as it whirled madly on the spot, even its remaining manipulator arms extending in a desperate attempt to grab and slap whatever came into reach. Steam poured from the wound Ryoga had inflicted, filling the hold with a hot, humid mist that dampened their clothes and cloyed in their lungs.

"Killyou! Kill you! Kill...you...! Ki...lll... youuuuu..."

The light in the robot's one good eye dimmed, flickered, and finally went out, her artificial eyelid sliding shut as her movements slowed to a crawl before she finally slumped slowly to the deck and went still, the last of the steam hissing from her various orifices before all went silent.

The Kamikaze Pirates held their collective breath, the only motion coming from Harumi, who was quietly fussing over Miriam as the wotan shipwright painfully sat up. After a minute or two, Ranma crept closer and gingerly poked the murder-machine, ready to leap to safety at a moment's notice. When it completely failed to respond to several taps, everybody sighed in relief.

"Well, that was fun..." Nabiki drawled sarcastically.

"Is you okay?" Shampoo asked, bustling over to the three injured parties in full-fledged nurse mode.

"I-I'm fine, but Miriam..." Harumi began.

"I'm okay; we giants have hard heads," the wotan interjected.

"No excuse! You let Shampoo see - may need stitches," the Zoan ordered her, making the larger demihuman pout before grumpily lowering her head so that the Chinese Amazon could take a look at it.

Ranma sighed and rolled his shoulders. "I know what you're gonna say, Ryoga, and I agree; we gotta dump this thing in the ocean."

"Just lemme get a hold of it," Miriam rumbled in her throat.

"Uh... Actually, I was going to say that we should try and bring it under control," Ryoga patiently corrected his rival.

The Kamikaze Pirates collectively stared at him as if he'd sprouted a second head.

"...Come again?" Ranma finally asked.

"I hate you, Ranma, but... you had a point. Ever since the World Government dubbed us pirates, we've had a target painted on our backs, which means we need allies. And if this thing was worthwhile enough to the World Government that they wanted a Navy Admiral to babysit it... well, doesn't that mean it's probably pretty powerful?" Ryoga asked, the question only half-hypothetical.

He waited for a response, looked at the dumbfounded expressions being cast his way, and scowled thunderously. "Oh, come on! I have good ideas too!"

"You most certainly do... come on, Ranchan, why not give it a shot? What have we got to lose?" Ukyo asked, giving her captain/fiance a pleading look, her inner mecha fan geeking out over the idea of adding a real live robot to the crew.

"For what it's worth, captain darling, I believe there is merit to the notion. I observed the machine complaining about being in pain before it attacked... perhaps it was motivated by anguish rather than inherent hostility?" Kodachi suggested, looking speculatively at the very clearly damaged machinery.

Ranma hummed softly to him, scratching his nose with a fingertip as he pondered what his crew was saying. "Well... you all got good points, but... how're we supposed to fix her? Biera's the best tech-guy we have at the moment, and he already admitted that this is beyond him."

"Beyond me, yes... but I may know of somebody who can help," the old engineer promptly interjected.

"You do, Granpa?" Anaguma - no, wait, Adelle, that was the name Ranma had been told to call her by now - asked, voicing the thought on the pirates' minds as they collectively turned to him in his curiosity.

Biera smirked proudly, hooking his overall straps around his thumbs. "Any of you pups heard of... Karakuri Castle...?"

Several hours later...

The Stormbringer sped merrily through calm blue seas, Partia Island a long-distant memory as the sun shone in clear skies above. And on the deck, the Kamikaze Pirates gathered around the helm, brought together by mutual curiosity.

"What's it say, Captain Darling?" Kodachi asked, glancing from the wheel to Ranma.

"Still straight ahead, Kodachi," Ranma replied. In his upturned palm, he held what might have looked like a slightly oversized old-fashioned pocket watch, except that the sliding panel revealed not the expected clock face, but a small indentation filled with crystal clear water overlaying an imprint of the traditional compass rose. And, swimming placidly in the center of the miniature pond, was the tiniest sea turtle that any of them had ever seen.

"In all my years, I've never seen a Log Pose like that one before," Miriam proclaimed, her superior height letting her easily look over her crewmates' shoulders at it.

"Cute little thing, though," Harumi noted.

"And not unprecedented. Many animals have keen homing instincts, and these have often been exploited as navigation tools... albeit rarely in so direct a manner as this," Umok commented, reaching out to gently stroke the turtle's tiny head with the tip of one jagged claw.

"So that settles that; we just follow this Turtle Pose until we get to Mecha Island!" Ranma declared, carefully closing the case's water-tight lid with a soft metallic click.

"Anybody else think it's just a little weird that old man Beira happened to know this island's ruler?" Ryoga asked casually.

"Well, like-minds do tend to gather together. That's one of the reasons we have school clubs, after all. And he is the best mechanical engineer we've met on this sea so far - no offense, Miriam," Nabiki replied.

"None taken," the wotan flippantly interjected.

"By the way, Nabiki, aren't you going to eat your new Devil Fruit?" Ukyo asked.

"Wait, what?" the Kamikaze's quartermaster blurted, blinking in surprise.

"I was actually wondering that myself," Ranma confessed. "I mean, you did say you wanted to become a Logia, and now we have a Logia Devil Fruit - I'm honestly surprised it hasn't been eaten already."

"I said I wanted a Devil Fruit to make myself stronger - what's turning into candy supposed to do for me?" Nabiki incredulously interjected.

"Probably a lot? I mean, I don't think that Gasparde jerk actually knew how to use his powers that well, and he still almost beat me," Ranma coolly replied, touching his cheek and wincing as he remembered the ex-Marine's knuckles cracking his bones.

"He was that powerful, captain?" Harumi asked the question on everybody's minds.

Ranma nodded, an uncharacteristically grim expression on his face. "Everything Nabiki said about Logias being stupidly tough was right. Gasparde probably could have hardened himself into something like a super-dense jawbreaker, but he largely just turned into syrup. I literally buried my arm in him up to the elbow and all I did was get stuck. Didn't matter how hard I stabbed him or bashed him or chopped him, he just sort of... 'glooped' back together! And even if I cut bits off, he just grew them back."

"How'd you beat somebody like that, Ranchan?" an appalled Ukyo asked.

"Sheer luck," Ranma confessed. "I got desperate and tried to fire off a Moko Takabisha; blew his guts out and freed myself. I think ki attacks are able to bypass Logia... uh, whatever you wanna call it that makes them so tough."

"So, you beat him down with the Moko Takabisha? That lame-duck move you tried and failed to use to beat my Shisi Hokodan?" Ryoga commented.

"Actually, I tried to get him with the Hiryu Shoten Ha, but it turned out that he really didn't like the icy ki that I emit with the Soul of Ice. He sort of... froze up wherever I touched him. Even then, all it did was hurt him; I couldn't finish him off until I cooked up a... a sort of ice ki hadoken," Ranma shrugged exaggeratedly.

"That makes sense," Umok suddenly interjected.

All eyes turned to the imp. He glanced at their curious expressions, and launched into an explanation.

"Devil Fruit powers are rooted fundamentally in the physical. It makes sense that a spiritual attack would bypass any physical defenses offered by Devil Fruits - you are, in effect, punching them in their soul and not their body. Which means I would suspect there are local fighting traditions specifically designed to counter Logias..."

"I've never heard of anything like that," Miriam protested.

"I... think I remember some stories? But I'm not really sure; they were the kind of stories I wasn't supposed to be listening to," Harumi observed, brow furrowed in contemplation.

"Yes, well, if such fighting traditions exist, it would make sense that the Navy would attempt to impose a monopoly on their teachings, to further strengthen their position," Umok mused, sucking deeply on his cigar before exhaling a black and red smoke cloud that looked like a writhing cluster of demonic fingers.

"You mean a Logia fruit isn't a guaranteed victory power up?!" an appalled Nabiki cried in dismay.

"Did you really think it would be that easy?!" an incredulous Ranma asked her, and was promptly ignored.

Nabiki cradled her face in the palm of her right hand and shook her head. "Great. Because it wasn't hard enough deciding if I should eat this Fruit or wait and hope we get something even stronger."

"Not to mention that there's a lot of money to be made in selling a Logia - how much you think they'd pay for it?" Ukyo wondered.

"A confirmed Logia Devil Fruit? Easily billions, I would suspect," Umok replied, drawing a sigil with the burning end of his cigar.

Nabiki let out a muffled choking noise, even as Kodachi nodded sagely.

"And don't forget what Ranma said; one of the Four Emperors of the New World wants this particular Devil Fruit. Being able to offer it in exchange could be enormously valuable, if not the key to our survival, once we reach that far-flung goal," the Kuno heiress reminded them.

"Now you're doing this on purpose!" Nabiki snapped, glaring at them all indiscriminately.

Ranma couldn't hold it back, and burst out laughing at his crew's antics. The flat look that Nabiki sent his way in response only made him laugh harder, until finally he shook his head in an effort to banish the last of his snickers.

"Alright, enough playing around; it's Nabiki's choice what she does with a Devil Fruit. Now set your eyes on the horizon, because it's a beautiful day, and nothing's gonna stop us from reaching Mecha Island!" He proclaimed, gesturing boldly towards the Stormbringer's prow.

KRAKAKOOM!

The sudden peal of thunder split the air, an instant before the sky grew dark and the heavens opened up, drenching the assembled Kamikaze Pirates in a tumultuous downpour.

Even Ranma had the good graces to look sheepish at the flat looks his - currently her - crew gave her through the pouring rain.

"You had to open your big mouth..." Ryoga muttered darkly, trying in vain to tug her shirt down from where it was riding up and exposing her bellybutton.

"How could this possibly be my fault?!" Ranma protested instinctively.

"Who else should we blame the rain on?" the Eternally Lost Girl asked.

"Uh, the Grand Line being the Grand Line? Look, this damn rain's centered right on us!" Ranma shot back.

Ryoga actually blinked in confusion, then followed Ranma's indignantly pointing digit towards the horizon. Sure enough, the circle of darkness and rain ended about three or four meters past the Stormbringer's hull. Beyond that it was bright and sunny, as it had been overhead not five minutes ago.

"...Huh. Don't see that every day. But I'm sure it's still your fault somehow, Ranma," Ryoga conversationally declared.

"Yeah, yeah, what else is new? But the Grand Line will have its laughs and then this'll all clear up soon, you'll see," Ranma authoritatively stated.

Two days later...

The hissing of rain almost drowned out the churning of the waves as the Stormbringer sailed on, still overshadowed by its own personal stormcloud even as the rest of the Grand Line basked in a beautiful sunny day.

From her post at the helm, hunched under a rainslicker and her biggest, most waterproof tricorne hat, Kodachi gloomily adjusted the ship to follow a course correction indicated by their Turtle Pose.

"Didn't you say that this storm would blow over soon, Ranma darling?" she asked, a rare bitter note in her voice as she did.

"Oh, bite me. I can't control the weather," Ranma huffed sullenly, trying futilely to blow a sodden crimson forelock from her eye as she adjusted some of the library of ropes that controlled the Stormbringer's sails.

All fell silent again as those Kamikaze Pirates who'd drawn the short straws attended to their business amidst the pouring rain, which hadn't let up since it started all those days ago.

"Hrraaaaaaagh! I can't take it any more!"

Everyone on deck looked up in surprise as Ryoga kicked open the door and stormed on to the deck, rugged masculinity running like wax and taking on a new form that was curvaceously feminine. The newly minted blonde stopped square in the middle of the deck and raised her head to the heavens, shaking her fist at the clouds as she bellowed at the top of her lungs.

"The joke was maybe a little funny to start with, but it's gone on long enough! I've played all the boardgames, I've read everything in the library, and if I keep snacking like this, I'm going to get fat! We get it, the Grand Line be crazy, so why don't you just get LOST!"

Even as she screamed, the Eternally Lost Girl's hands curled into the cupping shape of her trademark Shishi Hokodan. Greenish-black witch-flames ignited in her palms before a pillar of heavy ki roared into the sky, penetrating into the center of the stormcloud with the lethal certainty of a spear thrust.

"Are you crazy?! That's going to come falling right back down on us!" Ranma shrieked furiously at her oldest rival.

Ryoga winced apologetically. "I'm sorry, but I'm sick of this... rain?"

She trailed off, looking upwards in confusion as the rain suddenly subsided, the vision-blocking sheet of drizzle thinning out and then stopping completely before their eyes. Ranma followed Ryoga's gaze, and watched as weird, green lightning bolts crawled madly through and around the surface of the storm cloud, which began to violently shudder and writhe.

"...That don't look healthy..." Ranma muttered, staring hypnotized at the spectacle before she shook her head to refocus her wits.

Turning in the direction of the open door, she began to bellow, "Shampoo-!"

But before she could finish ordering the ship's zoan to man her engine, the storm clouds that had been shadowing them for the past couple of days simply blew apart without a sound, the thick gray mass breaking up swiftly into increasingly smaller chunks that scattered to the four winds like a perfect billiards split. In their wake, the sun shone down bright and hot, the damp timbers of the Stormbringer steaming softly under its caress.

"Airen? What you want?" Shampoo asked, poking her head inquisitively out of the now-open door.

That was when Ranma realized her jaw had been hanging open, and she closed it with a gentle click. "N-Nothin', Shampoo, it's nothing now..."

"Okay, airen - ooh, sun is out at last! Shampoo want to sunbathe!" the zoan cheered excitedly, before ducking back inside, clearly intent on setting up for a bit of leisure activity in the newly returned sun.

Ranma looked quietly over at her oldest friend - scratch that, her oldest rival, hoping against all odds that he (presently she) might have some kind of explanation. Ryoga just stared blankly back at the genderbending pirate captain and shrugged her shoulders, causing Ranma to sigh and hang her head in silent defeat.

Morning of the fourth day since Partia...

Most people who have owned a cat, or even lived near a cat, would agree that being awoken by said cat screaming in fury was in the top fifteen worst ways to wake up.

"Noooo! Not the pit, daddy! Not the PIT!"

As an ailurophobe with very traumatic memories of angry cats, Ranma would rate such a wakeup significantly higher than that...

As a second feline screech raked its metaphorical talons through the bleeding wounds in Ranma's psyche, the heir to the Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts and captain of the Kamikaze Pirates bolted blindly from his bed and raced screaming for the door. He wasn't even aware of slamming open first his bedroom door and then the galley door, or even of the barely post-dawn sun hitting his face. All he was aware of was the physical need to be as far away from that screeching, squalling, hissing little furry demon as possible!

...And that was when the ink spray caught him square in the face, the slimy black goop stinging his eyes and washing over his tongue, Ranma having been in mid-scream at the moment. It was just the thing he needed to shock him back to sanity... although it was such a sight that he found himself doubting his own senses!

The Stormbringer's deck was the sight of a furious battle, with every single member of the crew having rallied to repel boarders. That was nothing especially new; it went with the territory given their life as pirates. What was new was for those boarders to be a massive shoal of squids.

Instinctively, Ranma reached up and rubbed his eyes, cursing as the ink stung him further. But, when he looked again, sure enough, the ship was under attack by squids. And not just any squids, but black squids standing on their smaller arms and wielding weapons in their long tentacles. Swords, daggers, staffs, spears... and more than a few that Ranma remembered from his own lessons in the more archaic weapons of his homeland - there was one squid that had just struck up a pose in front of him which was swinging around a pair of nunchucks!

Ranma boggled, but the cephalopod simply twirled its weapons artfully around its body, snapping them from boneless limb to boneless limb with a speed and dexterity that even a trained ninjitsu master would have admired. The carved, salt-encrusted driftwood was blurry even to Ranma's finely honed senses, and he could see the challenge smoldering in his invertebrate opponent's eyes.

It was almost a shame that instead of a proper duel, Ranma's foot lashed out and caught it square in its... well, 'face' for lack of a better term, punting it in arc that saw it soaring as high as Umok's nest - where the beeping imp was angrily beating off a trio of very unhappy-looking squids with a purloined broomstick - before gravity caught it and it came whistling down like an arrow to plunge into the sea.

"What the hell is going on?!" Ranma shouted, stamping his foot for emphasis. Only to then recoil on one leg with a girlish squeal of terror as another black squid came skittering past him, bleeding from a score of wounds and being portrayed by a yowling, ink-stained Shampoo in full cabbit form, her claws and teeth stained with blue blood.

"Nice of you to join the party, Ranma," Ryoga jeered from where he was angrily swiping at squids with his trusty umbrella, the dozen or so bludgeoned bodies at his feet compelling the others to scurry rapidly out of his way.

"Does anyone know where these nasty little creatures came from!?" an indignant Kodachi demanded, arcs of blue trailing through the air wherever her sword passed and cut through squid flesh like a hot knife through butter.

"I'm afraid this is my fault!" Miriam apologetically bellowed, even as she brought one massive fist down in a deck-rattling blow that left a half-dozen squids that'd been too slow flattened against the hardwood, only to suddenly reinflate like something out of an American cartoon and dazedly stagger away, fleeing over the gunwale and back into the safety of the sea.

"Yours?" a dumbfounded Ranma asked, absently beating down three squids that made the mistake of presuming he was too distracted to notice them sneaking up on him.

"Long story, 30 years ago, I ticked off the prince of a clan of squinjas; every so often, he sends his goons to try and kill me, even though it hasn't worked yet!" This last part the wotan directed to the scurrying cephalopods gathered around her feet, seconds before she swatted them off of the ship with one of her trusty anchors.

Ranma stared at her, whilst also instinctively backhanding a squid - no, a "squinja" - in the face when it tried to leap up behind him and stab him in the back with its sword. He rolled Miriam's words around in his mind and finally decided there was only one appropriate response.

"...What."

Miriam blushed. "I, uh, may have... bitten off his tentacle. His...'special' tentacle. But it wasn't my fault! He's the one who stuck it in my face in the first place! And it's not like it didn't grow back!" she defensively protested, punting more squinjas off the ship.

Ranma sidestepped a flying squinja armed with twin sai, slammed it to the deck with an elbow, then booted it over the gunwale, all without taking his eye off of the embarrassed wotan. Finally, he grinned mischievously.

"Well, look at that! You were meant to be part of this crew!" He cackled in delight.

"...Pardon?" she asked, looking confused at him. Even the nearby squinjas stopped to direct quizzical looks at the Kamikaze Pirates captain.

"Random weirdos showing up looking for revenge over stupid stuff from long ago? That's practically my entire life!" Ranma declared proudly.

"Who're you calling a random weirdo?!" Ryoga, Shampoo and Ukyo all shouted indignantly as one, only to realize they had done so, look at each other, and then turn away, embarrassed,

"Anyway! So, what's the plan, Miriam? We going to stuff ourselves on calamari tonight?" Ranma asked, causing the squinjas to go quite pale at the suggestion.

The wotan shook her head. "Nah, it's not their fault their boss's a jerk. Just chase 'em back into the sea, they'll swim away once they're overpowered."

"Your enemy, your call," Ranma declared cheerfully, before turning his attention to the nearest cluster of squinjas, who were watching him cautiously.

"Alright, ya little jerks... try to make this interesting, will ya?" He declared, cracking his knuckles in anticipation...

Sixth day since setting off for Mecha Island...

"Ship off the port bow!" Came the call from the crow's nest.

"Oh, goody; someone else who's asses we'll need to kick," Miriam chuckled, cracking her neck and her knuckles in anticipation.

"They could just be an innocent merchant ship," Harumi pointed out from where he had been sitting with a line cast over the gunwale.

"Do innocent merchant ships normally sail alone through the Grand Line?" Kodachi asked sweetly, genuinely curious as she tilted her head towards the crew's newest recruit.

"Well, it happens more than you'd think," Harumi proclaimed, with a slight shrug.

"I don't think it's a merchant ship - look!" Ryoga interjected, jabbing a finger out in the direction.

The Kamikazes looked as one as the ship Umok had sighted finally drifted into view... emphasis on 'drifted'. It was similar in shape and size to their own Stormbringer, with a figurehead fashioned in the shape of a smirking mermaid holding a set of scales, but it was completely devoid of a flag - or of any sails!

Adding to the weirdness was that there was hardly any life aboard the ship; just a handful of men lounging listlessly around, looking highly dismayed.

"What the heck is their deal? What kind of idiot goes to sea with no sails?" Ranma wondered.

As the stricken vessel drifted closer, its tiny crew noticed the Stormbringer, and finally showed some life by scrambling to their feet, expressions of terror emblazoned on their faces.

"Pirates! Pirate ship dead ahead!" howled one.

"Oh, no, not more of them!"

"We gotta fight!"

"Screw that, we gotta run, dumbass!"

"Oh yeah, with what sails, moron?!"

Ranma watched incredulously as the other ship's crew began to brawl with each other in sheer panic, a bead of sweat rolling down his temple. "...Sheesh, what a bunch of amateurs. Even we weren't that bad at our worst!"

Sighing softly, he called at the top of his lungs, "Ahoy! We're the Kamikaze Pirates!"

"We surrender! Don't hurt us! We don't have anything worth taking!" came the panicked scream back across the waters.

Ranma hummed to himself, thinking things over, then finally nodded.

"Take us alongside, Kodachi," he called to the ship's helmsman.

"Are you sure, captain darling?" she asked, even as she began to stir the ship.

"I wanna get to the bottom of this," Ranma darkly vowed.

One explanation later...

"So, you lost your captain and every ranking member of your crew?" Ranma asked incredulously.

The man he was talking to, a spindly, scarred fellow with a bandanna wrapped around his head and holes in his ears that had once housed earrings, nodded his head glumly.

"Yeah... they stripped us of everything we had, and just left us the ship. We were just fightin' men, they didn't think we were worth adding to the crew, so they booted us back out to sea and left us to die," he sighed plaintively.

Then he looked up at Ranma, hope in his eyes. "But you! You're clearly pirates - we could come and work for you!"

"Uh! Ah... we're... not exactly recruiting at the moment," Ranma said, trying to be diplomatic. Despite his reputation, he was capable of such a feat, and certainly not dumb enough to comment on how he didn't think any of them looked like they had the stomach to man a fishing boat, much less a pirate's crew.

The hope guttered from his counterpart's eyes like a candle snuffed by the wind and he slumped back down with a sigh. "I thought so... but I'll admit, none of us really have the stomach to go pirating any more. We just wanna get back to dry land and forget we ever went to sea!"

"Do you have a Log Pose?" Ranma asked, a rare pang of pity piercing him despite his usual smoldering contempt for most adults he met.

"It's one of the only things those bastards left us! None of us are real navigators, but we could at least follow that, there's an island not too far from here... but we'd need sails and food and clean water," the defeated ex-pirate sighed.

"Well... we have plenty of those things. We'll give you what you need so you can get there, alright? Just get your guys together and give us a hand to load the stuff," Ranma replied.

The former pirates stared at him, gobsmacked.

"Uh - I - Y-you're sure?!" stammered their makeshift leader.

Ranma rolled his eyes. "Just get to it, will ya?"

The defeated looking men visibly perked up and noisily scrambled to their feet, before filing away to the Stormbringer's hold under the watchful eyes of Ryoga, Nabiki and Miriam.

Ranma watched them go, before he noticed Ukyo sidle up behind him.

"That was a real generous thing, Ranchan," she proudly observed, smiling.

Ranma scoffed and crossed his arms over his chest.

"Pft! I may practice Anything-Goes, but I don't like kicking guys when they're down," he explained, trying to deny the flicker of pride he felt at Ukyo's praise.

Soon enough, the ex-pirates were sailing away, their impromptu captain waving to Ranma as they did. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he shouted, "Thank you for everything! Don't make our mistake - beware the Foxy Pirates!"

One week since leaving Partia...

Under a gray, cloudy sky that foretold rain, whips of fog starting to curl across a restless sea, Ranma stood at the prow of the Stormbringer, staring darkly out over the choppy water. Behind him, the rest of the crew busied themselves with the simple mundanities of shipboard life and the ever-present need to battle boredom. Nabiki sparred with a barehanded Harumi under the watchful eye of Shampoo, whilst Miriam carefully adjusted the sails. Kodachi was at her eternal post of the ship's wheel, quietly talking to Ryoga as they bent over the Turtle Pose, and Ukyo was in the kitchen, grilling up seafood okonomiyaki.

'We've been following this Turtle Pose for a week, and we're still looking. Did that old man trick us? But we saved his life! Him an' his granddaughter! He'd have no reason to do so, right? Then again, we are pirates, and he's certainly got no reason to feel fond of pirates...'

As he let the dark thoughts slither around his head, his eyes absently scanned the horizon once again... then something caught his attention, and he instinctively snapped into focus.

There through the mist, an island began to emerge, growing ever larger by the second as the wind blew them on. A grin split Ranma's face and he sucked in air before shouting at the top of his lungs...

"Land ho! Mecha Island, dead ahead!"

Everyone looked up from what they were doing, and everyone apart from Kodachi, Ukyo and Umok came hurrying over to join Ranma at the prow.

"We here at last!" Shampoo cheered jubilantly.

"Bout time! I was wondering if you had gotten us tricked," Ryoga scoffed.

"Wasn't it actually your idea we seek this place out?" A puzzled Harumi asked.

"Oh, shut up!" Ryoga snapped back at him.

By now, the island was looming large in front of them. It wasn't the most spectacular island they could have imagined - honestly, it was a little generic looking. Oval shaped and dominated by a single massive hill, the island's mass rose up to a single central point square in its center. Massive stony ridges informally quartered the island, whose sloping flanks were adorned with green, indicating thick forests. As they cut through the waves towards the nearest shore, they passed by scattered fishermen pulling in nets and lines, singing to themselves in an unfamiliar language as they worked. Beyond the golden sand of the shore, they could see a large town made of stone buildings, prosperous looking but not a major metropolis compared to, say, Loguetown.

"You know, for a place called Mecha Island, I kind of pictured something more... industrialized," Nabiki commented, bending over the gunwale for a better look.

Ranma absently nodded his agreement; the town was well and truly visible at this point, and it was made of simple white stone buildings. It looked ancient, laidback and very much the opposite of mechanized.

"It's not like every island on the Grand Line has some kind of descriptive name, you know? Especially inhabited islands like this one," Miriam replied.

"Maybe it's a language thing? Many nations across the Grand Line and the Four Blues have their own regional dialects, even though the World Government has spread the common tongue to every known corner of the world," Harumi observed, leaning gently against Miriam's thigh, the wotan carefully swishing her tail his way in a crude attempt to curl it around him.

"You learn something new every day," Ukyo noted, before she stopped and squinted at something. "Hey, look over there! Now that looks more like something you'd expect to see on a place called Mecha Island!"

The rest of the crew followed her pointing finger, and sure enough, a complex was now visible on the shoreline. It was a mess of metal structures, oversized machinery, parts and components that must have had some kind of intended purpose, but which made absolutely no sense to any of the Kamikaze Pirates.

Taking it in one last time, Ranma turned to their recruits. "Are you sure neither of you know anything about this place?"

"Positive, captain; I'd never even heard of a Turtle Pose before old man Biera gave us his, and while it was never one of the big port towns, Shay-Lot wasn't exactly the boonies, either!" Miriam assured him, tail swishing in agitation.

"Well, fair enough. That means we're going in blind. We should probably anchor the ship somewhere that isn't too obvious; we come in peace, but they don't know that..." Ranma mused aloud.

Suddenly, a chorus of hissing steam and whirring gears filled the air as the beach came alive, dozens upon dozens of coffin-like metal pods suddenly springing out of what had once been clean white sand on the beach before them. Each coffin snapped open by flipping upright, exposing a figure of wood and metal - a life-sized puppet of an archer, all holding very real bows with loaded arrows, the sun glinting menacingly off of their sharp points.

"You couldn't have thought of that a little sooner, Ranma?!" Ryoga complained loudly.

"Why are you complaining? They'd probably just bounce off of you!" Nabiki observed.

"So much for not causing trouble," Ukyo quipped.

As they watched, a small mechanical vehicle pulled up on the sand behind the assembled archer-puppets, a loudspeaker-like contraption mounted on its roof. Inside, a young man with a green jacket, a purple tattoo of crescent moons interlinking to form a vertical chain on his exposed breast, and blue-with-green-stripes hair arranged in a triple-fin mohawk that Ukyo would later swear made him look like Sonic the Hedgehog sneered at them. He reached a hand to what looked like a transponder snail and took a round speaker from a rig on its shell, lifting it to his mouth and starting to speak, the snail broadcasting his words to the bemused pirates.

"Yo-ho! Welcome to Mecha Island! You can't win, pirates! What exactly are you here for? Don't think you're gonna lay your dirty hands on our island! You're not getting squat! This is a sacred island ruled by the great Ratchet! Without his permission, not a single one of you insects is laying a foot here! Got that? Now turn your puny ship around and buzz off! Otherwise, you'll have a thousand arrows shot through you! Well? Are you scared? Why don't you run home crying, like the pathetic, breastfed wimps you are!"

"Wow, ego much?" Nabiki drawled.

"...Do you think we can kick this guy's ass without causing a diplomatic incident?" Ukyo wondered darkly.

"We don't want your island! We want to see your boss!" Miriam bellowed back, her greater size giving her a correspondingly louder voice.

"Captain? I don't wish to question your judgment, but shouldn't we be a little more concerned about this situation?" Harumi asked softly.

Ranma just chuckled and shook his head. "Nah, we're fine, Harumi! Take a good look at those so-called 'archers' over there - tell me what you see."

Puzzled, the crossdressing young swordsman did as he was asked. As he stared intently, he noticed something that made his eyes widen in realization.

"The elbows of those archers can't bend!" he deduced aloud.

"That's right - and with no way to aim, those things are just glorified loaded crossbows. If they fire, between Miriam and Shampoo, we can get safely inside their arc and they'll be useless," Ranma confidently asserted.

"Not that it seems we'll need to, as it appears our welcoming committee overplayed his role," Nabiki commented dryly.

Another small vehicle had arrived on the beach now, this one piloted by two figures, one of whom had leapt from his seat and was conferring with the blue-haired man who had been mocking them seconds ago. Judging by his deferential attitude, the newcomer clearly outranked him, and he meekly handed over his snail's speaker to the new arrival.

"I am Ratchet, Lord of Mecha Island! Who are you, and what do you want here?" Boomed the snail-powered speakers.

Ranma cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted back, "I am Captain Ranma Saotome, of the Kamikaze Pirates! We're here because we have a mechanical puzzle that only a genius like you could solve!"

"Look at that; you learned how to flatter people!" Nabiki dryly commented, a wry grin revealing the playful intentions behind her teasing.

"You'd be surprised what I know how to do," Ranma cockily retorted, smirking at her in response.

Before they could get any further with their banter, Ratchet interrupted them.

"What kind of puzzle?"

"It's a broken machine... sort of. Can we land? It's easier to show ya then explain," Ranma called back.

There was no sound to be heard other than the gentle crashing of the waves on the shore and the squalling of gulls for a few minutes, before the archer-puppet doors suddenly began slamming back down and vanishing beneath the sand once more. Once the last of them had been buried, the speakers rang out again.

"You may land... but I warn you, treachery will reap an appropriate reward!"

"Yeah, yeah," Ranma declared, waving nonchalantly. "Alright, guys, let's bring 'er in and drop anchor!"

Moments later...

"Incredible! Amazing! Wondrous!" Ratchet gushed, practically hopping from foot to foot in his excitement as he circled around and around the broken-down robot that Miriam had plunked into the sand of the beach.

"You like her, huh?" Ranma asked, unable to keep a grin off of his face at the nobleman's antics.

"I can't believe it! Despite the obvious age and the clear wear-and-tear, this is one of the most advanced steam-powered machines I've ever seen! Why, I've been experimenting in similar fields myself, but this is... another level! I wouldn't go so far as to say it must be a Vegapunk design, but even with that, it's still an awesome piece of work," Ratchet proclaimed jubilantly.

It had to be said that Ratchet was not exactly what any of them would have pictured as a nobleman, even given Ranma's personal experience with some of the odder specimens to claim such a rank back in and around Tokyo and China. It wasn't his looks - tall and slender, honestly rather fair-featured, even with the almost Mousse-like large, rimless glasses he wore. It was his fashion sense... or lack thereof. Whoever heard of a lord going around in nothing but green pants, ridiculously oversized yellow cross suspenders, an oversized scarf, and a pair of bracelets? Even Tatewaki Kuno had a better fashion sense than that, and he spent most of his free time dressed in a traditional hakama!

Still, the young man clearly knew machinery, even if he didn't quite seem to know how to dress himself.

"So, do you think you can fix her?" Ranma casually questioned, summing up their reason for being there in that simple sentence.

"Well, I would certainly love to give it a go! But it would take me some time to complete - as you can see from all this battle damage, there's a lot of repair work needed!" Ratchet commented, poking one particularly prominent hole in the barrel-like body with a fingertip.

"Well, we didn't have anywhere to go in a hurry, so we'd be happy to wait here while you take a look at her - if you're interested in poking around inside of her, that is?" Ranma asked, trying not to look too smug as he did.

"I most certainly am! Please, why don't you join me for dinner tonight in Karakuri Castle? I insist!" The young lord proclaimed, spinning to face Ranma and pushing his glasses up his nose as he did so.

This finally elicited a reaction from Ratchet's two companions; the Sonic-haired loudmouth, apparently named General Meiji, and a taller, dark-skinned, barrel-chested afro-sporting ape of a man apparently called Colonel Honki, who both gaped at their master in dismay.

"Lord Ratchet, is that wise?! Whatever would your mother, the Lady Roba, think?!" they protested as one.

Ratchet simply sighed. "My mother would, in all sincerity, be happy that I have invited friends over to dinner. Kindly take the machine to my lab; I will begin a proper investigation after dinner."

As one, the two sighed and bowed their heads. "Yes, master..."

"Miriam, give 'em a hand loading her up," Ranma interjected.

"Alright, captain," the wotan agreed, before striding over and picking up the decrepit gynoid with a grunt, carrying her over and placing her on a pump-trolley and carrying car ensemble that Ratchet and Honki had ridden to reach the beach in the first place.

Soon afterwards...

Karakuri Castle, as it transpired, had been built far more in line with the theme that the name "Mecha Island" conjured. It was a great construct of steel and stone, featuring a massive paddle wheel, smokestacks, cranes and other mechanical paraphernalia that gave it a generally machine-like aesthetic. Inside, however, it was much more luxurious, with spacious stone chambers, elaborate banners, and other items clearly made to convey the decor of a properly luxuriant castle residence.

Not that any of the Kamikaze Piraters were particularly paying attention to the decor! No, their attention was focused with laser intensity on the tables groaning with food and drink that had been laid out for them... unfortunately, only they were present at the moment, and they had better manners than to start attacking the fare before their hosts arrived!

...No matter how loudly certain stomachs rumbled in anticipation of a meal.

"Don't you have any manners, Ranma? Even Miriam isn't making that much of a fuss!" Ryoga mockingly complained as Ranma's stomach growled audibly.

"Miriam thought to grab a snack before we came ashore," Ranma shot back in reply.

Before they could really start to bicker, a section of the wall suddenly popped open and slid out three small humanoid puppets in snazzy red uniforms, outfitted with two kinds of drum and a trumpet, which they began to play a fanfare on.

"Ah! Our hosts arrive!" Kodachi chirped brightly.

Suddenly, the lights dimmed... only to be replaced by swirling spots of brightness and brilliant streaks of colored light that cut through the gloom, the illumination changing color every few seconds to tinge everything in different shades.

"Is this a dinner or a disco?" Nabiki wondered with her characteristic snark.

Fog suddenly began to billow from vents hidden near the floor against a far wall, in front of a mighty door that suddenly swung inwards. From within came a series of deep, mechanical whirrs and groans, punctuated by thunderous impacts. As the Kamikaze Pirates watched, a massive form lurched through the artificial fog; a mighty mechanical turtle, with Ratchet seated regally atop a throne mounted on its flat, purple-colored shell, what was evidently the crest of Ratchet's royal family emblazoned proudly on a panel of shell just above the turtle mecha's cybernetic head. Slowly it lumbered forward, grinding to a halt once it was clear of the fog.

Ratchet's glasses glimmered in the ambient light, which suddenly snapped back to normal, before he reached up and adjusted them. He was still clad in the same half-an-outfit they had met him in earlier on the beach, but he seemed completely unphased by the lack of formal attire.

"Welcome, guests! Good evening!" He cried, smiling warmly to fit his cheerful tones.

He snapped his fingers, and Colonel Honki jogged forward to toggle a switch hidden on the mechanical turtle's flanks. The giant key that jutted from its rear like a tail began to whir as it slowly and jerkily rotated, in a manner not too dissimilar to a child's toy from back in Tokyo.

Of course, this was radically new technology for those of the Kamikazes who had been born in the Grand Line. Miriam and Harumi were staring at the oversized machine with dropped jaws and wide eyes.

"That's incredible!" Harumi cheered.

"How's it work?!" Miriam demanded, stepping forward in her eagerness to watch.

"You like him? This is Zougame No. 5, a mecha of my own design! He may not be as advanced as the machine that you brought to my doorstep, but I'm very proud of him, all the same," Ratchet cheerfully declared, raising a half-curled fist to his chin and turning his face in feigned modesty.

"You really are as much of a genius as old man Biera said!" Ranma laughed, hands on his hips. "I knew we made the right call looking for you!"

"Ah, Biera; I haven't spoken to him in many months. How is the old man, anyway?" Ratchet inquired, leaning forward.

"Better, now that we rescued him from a corrupt Marine turned pirate!" Ranma replied, grinning proudly.

"You freed him? Well, then you have my thanks! Despite the difference in our ages, I consider Biera one of my closest friends; there are few of us in these seas who truly appreciate the finer nuances of machinery," Ratchet proclaimed, buffing his chest.

"Raaaa-chet!" Came an elderly but still strong female voice.

Annoyance flashed over Ratchet's face and he sighed, palm reaching up to cup his face, muttering, "Case in point..."

The Kamikazes weren't sure he meant for them to hear that statement, but they politely pretended they hadn't.

From a side-door came a little old lady, easily around Cologne's height, but seeming taller thanks to her massive and elaborately styled mane of paling blonde hair. She was clad in a traditional-looking black kimono, her geta clicking on the stonework as she strode briskly towards them.

"Ratchet?! Who are these young hoodlums, and what are they doing in our home?" She demanded, brandishing an intricately decorated walking stick at the young lord for emphasis.

"These are guests of mine, mother; they came here seeking my help in a matter concerning machinery, and I offered them an invitation to dinner," Ratchet replied, gesturing grandiosely towards the assembled pirates.

The little old lady blinked, looked from her son to the Kamikazes, and then suddenly smiled hugely, the light glittering from a set of dentures made of solid gold. "Well, that's alright then, son! You need to make some more friends! Just don't go roping them into any of your silly nonsense, do you hear me?!"

"No, mother, I promise, it's just business and some good food to celebrate," the young man responded, heaving a long-suffering sigh.

Then he seemed to remember his role as host and coughed purposefully before turning back to them. "I'm sorry you had to see that - come, you must be famished; eat, drink, be merry! I promise you that I will begin work on your fascinating machine as soon as possible, though I fear it will take me some time to fully restore it to functionality."

"Oh, that's fine, we expected as much... Actually, we were looking for a place where we could make landfall for a while and train. Would it be alright with you if we honed our skills while we're waiting for you?" Ranma asked, his curiosity the only thing preventing him from grabbing a seat.

"But of course! It's the least I can do if you're going to be here for a while. I want you to consider this island your home while you're here," Ratchet effused, gesturing grandly to magnify his words.

"Then we're happy to accept," Ranma grinned, before he and the rest of his crew broke from their formal manners and hurried to the tables to begin eating their fill.

And so, the next day, they began to train...

In his room aboard the Stormbringer, Ranma sat in his meditation pose, knees folded beneath him... well, technically above him, because the Saotomes meditated whilst standing on their heads.

'It ain't just about getting stronger 'n' faster... though that's good too. It's about using ki... 'S the one martial art I know the least about, and it looks like that might be my best weapon on these seas. If I hadn't learned the Hiryu Shoten Ha and the Moko Takabisha, I'd have been dead in that fight! Even back on Shay-Lot... if I hadn't lucked into doing that giant aura trick of the old freak's, who knows how things would have gone? If I hadn't... Ucchan woulda...'

A whole body shiver wracked the teenage martial artist's body, yet somehow failed to topple him to the floor.

'Course, knowing I need ta get better with it is one thing. Figurin' out how ta do it is another. Useless old pervert... for a supposed grandmaster who claims he picked me as his heir, he ain't never did a damn thing ta teach me anything useful! Or pops - hello, if you and old man Tendo can do that same giant-shift trick as the old freak, then why not tell me?! Damn them all to the hell where people get skinned alive - the old ghoul's done more to teach me about using ki manipulation, and all she ever did was teach me the Hiryu Shoten Ha an' critique my attempt to learn the Shishi Hokodan that one time!'

He stopped, forcibly inhaling and exhaling in deep, slow breaths to try and refocus his mind.

'Hmm... wonder if Shampoo might know any tricks from her great-grandma? Three hundred year old ghoul has to know something cool. Nabiki said she was levitating huge ice boulders when I was under the Nekoken in our last fight over the Full Body Cat's Tongue - imagine the possibilities there! And then there's ki emission... Huh, y'know, I just realized; there's cold ki, I used that to beat Gasparde, and there's hot ki, because that's part of the Hiryu Shoten Ha, so maybe I can also use that to shoot fireballs? That'd be pretty cool! And if that works... ain't there supposed to be ki for all the elements? I wonder what I could do with that... if only I knew where to start!'

'Well, this ain't gettin' me nowhere... gotta try and do something. Probably shouldn't practice that ice ki blast move - gotta come up with a name for that, now - until I got a target I can use it on, but... hm... what if...'

Patiently inhaling and exhaling, Ranma cleared his mind and focused deeply on his passion and his rage, following the teachings he had learned from a young age on how to draw forth his battle aura. Instead of simply letting it well up from within him, however, he stoked the metaphorical fire within him, letting the fiery energy blaze away in his core, then tried to focus it up and out his hand in much the same way he had done with the Soul of Ice when facing Gasparde...

Suddenly, he felt a wave of intense heat wash over his skin, the faint crackle-hiss of snapping flames whispering in his ears. His eyes snapped open, and Ranma stared dumbstruck at the literal ball of fire now clutched.

"I did it! I did it!" He cried excitedly... which was when the searing pain of holding very much non-metaphorical fire finally registered in his brain.

"HOT! HOThothothothothothothothothothot!" he screamed, jumping randomly around his room and doing his best to shake out the flames that stubbornly clung to his flesh. Finally, after a few minutes, he managed to succeed, leaving him blowing on the blistered, tender skin of his fingers.

"Okay... knew it couldn't be that easy. First, I gotta figure out how to control this projection thing better..." Ranma tried to flex his fingers and winced as some of the blisters popped, dribbling unspeakable fluids to the floor.

"Check that; first thing, go see Shampoo for some burn ointment..."

And they trained...

Harumi gasped desperately for air, feeling his heart beating so hard it felt like it was going to burst out of his chest. His muscles burned and sweat poured off of him in rivers, stinging his eyes as he pushed himself to the limit to lift the weighted rope-and-tackle he was struggling with.

"Fuh-Fifty...one! Ha...Ha...Ha... F-fif-fifty... two! Hoo... hoo... hoo... Ahgods...F-fuh-Fifty... three!"

"That's it, Harumi, keep it up! No pain, no gain!" Miriam cheered him from her own spot nearby, where she was casually doing some bicep curls with a set of weights that probably outweighed her boyfriend at a ratio of 6-to-1 each.

Overlooking the pair, Ryoga paused from his sparring match with Ranma to glance at them and shake his head. "I wonder if it ever bugs him that his girlfriend is manlier than he is?"

"Well, you like Akane just fine, and you'd be twice the man you are if you were half as manly as she is," Ranma quipped, fists flying towards Ryoga's face.

"You don't talk that way about Akane!" an outraged Ryoga bellowed, parrying Ranma's strikes before charging forward in an attempt to grapple his bitterest rival... a move that Ranma made him pay for with an Amaguriken-powered drill-punch to the gut.

At the same time, Kodachi, Shampoo and Ukyo had paused in their own duel to glance over at the native-born members of their impromptu crew.

"So, when is okay to congratulate them on being together?" Shampoo asked, before parrying a quick sword stroke from Kodachi.

"When they feel comfortable in announcing it to us, dearie - it's bad manners to make it look like we're paying such attention to their private business," Kodachi explained, deftly deflecting a blow from Ukyo's spatula.

"You don't think they're trying to keep it secret, do you?" the chef wondered, using the flat of her spatula blade as a shield against Shampoo's stroke.

"They do very bad job of hiding it if so. And why they want to hide that, anyway?" Shampoo wondered, ducking under a spatula strike from Ukyo and then dodging around a blow from Kodachi.

"Who can say? Foreigners have very strange beliefs and behaviors," Kodachi proclaimed.

"Shampoo foreigner!" the indignant Chinese Amazon snarled back, shifting into her hybrid Zoan form and then catching the startled aristocrat in a leaping tackle, forcing Ukyo to race over to pull them apart.

And they trained...

"I'm sorry, you want me to what?" an incredulous Miriam asked.

"I want you to hit me with that plate of scrap iron that Ratchet let us take," Ryoga explained again with an air of the long-suffering, currently dangling from an array of ropes that had him suspended from the yardarm.

"...Why?" the wotan demanded, looking at her technically superior as if he'd lost his mind.

"It's training for my Bakusai Tenketsu technique - I want to see if I can learn how to use it on steel as well as stone," Ryoga asserted, giving her an affronted look in return.

"...Why?" she repeated in the exact same tone.

"Because it could be useful! ...Also, the training is great for boosting my resistance to impacts," Ryoga added.

"...Okay, I think you're nuts, but if this is what you want..." Miriam trailed off, rotating her shoulder and preparing to give a good hard swat to the sheet of iron plate currently hanging from its own array of ropes between her and Ryoga.

Ryoga just grimly watched, right arm held out to the side, all fingers save his index curled into a fist.

Finally, the wotan punched the sheet of iron and sent it rocketing towards Ryoga, who snarled and met it in mid-flight with a defiant finger jab... before inertia did its cruel business and brought it slamming straight into his face, carrying him with it to the peak of its arc before it swung back towards Miriam.

"You okay?!" she cried, snatching the iron plate by its rope and preventing it from swinging back towards him.

Ryoga just stared stupidly at her for a moment, then shook his head and nodded. "I'm fine! Swing it again - I've got to keep practicing!"

"There are easier ways to kill yourself!" Miriam protested.

"I said I'm fine! I've been through this before, that didn't even hurt!" Ryoga insisted.

Which was when two thin rivers of blood began to slowly seep from his nose and run down his chin, despite Ryoga's attempts to look stoic.

And they trained some more...

Ukyo looked over the recipe she had been given for a second time, brow furrowed in concern before she looked up at her Chinese rival. "So, will this really give me tougher yakisoba noodles?"

The Zoan nodded her head emphatically. "Yes! Is not best recipe Shampoo know of - in village, there martial arts chef who make noodle whip that shrink after wrapping around target, crush target to death unless they cut free. But Shampoo only know basics of Martial Arts Takeout, so this best Shampoo can offer."

Ukyo just silently looked her up and down, suspicion on her face. "Why're you being so nice to me, sugar?"

Shampoo simply shrugged and replied, "Shampoo always respect Ukyo. Respect Ukyo more for vow to stay true to family style, even in face of Grand Line. Shampoo give you this as symbol of respect. Besides, airen be upset if Ukyo die."

"Gee, thanks," Ukyo flatly replied.

But they did find time to relax as well...

"Oh! Ohhhh... Ah! There, right there! Yes-yes-YESSSSS..." Nabiki trailed off into something in between a hiss and a moan as she slumped bonelessly into the softness of Ranma's mattress.

"D'you have to make it sound so dirty?! It's just a massage!" Ranma protested, flushed hot enough a swift individual could probably have fried an egg on his face.

"Mmm... what is it with you martial arts lunatics being absolute gods of massages? Ohhh... I've been to professional spas that weren't this good..." Nabiki sighed luxuriantly, wallowing in the sensations as Ranma's hands glided across her body, bringing relief to joints and muscles aching after the day's hard training.

"Couldn't you have gotten Shampoo to do this? She's the ship's nurse," the embarrassed captain grumbled, even though he kept working the aches and kinks from Nabiki's body.

"She's busy with the other girls, you're just as good as she is, and you're way more fun to tease," Nabiki promptly responded, before purring in pleasure as Ranma's fingers worked out a particularly stubborn knot.

"Glad I amuse you," he dryly drawled.

"Oh, you know you love it. Why else would your big revenge scheme when we were engaged have been to tell me that you love me, hm?" she giggled at the very memory.

Ranma's blush returned with a vengeance at that. "...Not one of my smarter plans," he softly confessed.

"Oh, I don't know... if I had known then what I know now... well, that's all in the past," Nabiki proclaimed, lazily waving one hand.

"W-what's that supposed ta mean?!" Ranma demanded, still blushing.

"I'm sure you'll work it out eventually... but while you do, rub my feet?" Nabiki suggested, grinning smugly as she did.

One week since arriving at Mecha Island...

"My friends... it is done!" Ratchet announced proudly, sitting atop his usual throne atop Zougame No. 5, gesturing around the hall where the Kamikaze Pirates had once again been invited to dine for the evening.

"You fixed our machine?" Ranma asked, pausing from taking a bite of succulent sauce-smothered smoked chicken.

"Indeed, I have! I reveled in the challenge that it provided, and I must thank you for bringing it here; I haven't had such a chance to test my wits in a long time," the badly dressed scientist-nobleman enthusiastically proclaimed.

"Oh, we should be thanking you for taking such an interest in it!" Kodachi interjected, before taking a genteel sip from a glass of fine red wine.

"Yeah, if there's anything we can do to pay you back, just let us know!" Ranma added.

At those words, Ratchet suddenly smiled toothily, his glasses fogging up... until he tapped a button on one earpiece and activated a pair of wipers that swiftly scraped away the condensation.

"As it so happens... my men told me that your crew discovered a cave on the southern shore of my island today...?"

Ranma paled and immediately pointed at Ryoga, who had been munching away at a salad. "It was Ryoga's fault that cliff broke!"

"My fault - you were the one who challenged me to hit both those eye-shaped rocks!" the indignant first mate protested.

"You misunderstand me, gentlemen! I'm not angry - in fact, you've helped me a great deal by unearthing that cave," Ratchet hastily assured them.

"We have?" a confused Ranma replied.

Their host nodded, placing his hands together with the fingertips splayed yet pressed tip to tip. "Indeed. You see, there is an ancient legend of this island, concerning an incredible treasure, known as the Golden Crown of the Sea King. For five years now, I have been searching for that treasure... but you unearthed the route I have been searching for! And so... I wish to request your aid in finding the treasure, as payment for my generosity..."

Ranma opened his mouth, ready to answer, only to be cut off as Nabiki suddenly spoke up from where she had been leisurely working her way through a decadent cream-stuffed pastry dish.

"For a cut of the treasure, count us in!"

"Nabiki!" Ranma protested, glaring at his greedy quartermaster, only to find his chastising glare rolling off of her self-assurance like water off of a duck's back.

"Well, it's only fair; if we're doing the heavy lifting, then we should receive at least a percentage of the reward," she declared calmly, dabbing at her lips with a napkin.

"...Very well, but only if we can explore the cave before I show you what I've done for your machine," Ratchet replied, holding up his index finger for emphasis.

"Deal," Nabiki proclaimed, before she took another forkful of cake, ignoring the unamused looks from her fellow crewmates.

The next day...

The Stormbringer had anchored itself in the bay facing the strangely serpent-like cave that Ryoga had opened earlier that day, with the Kamikaze Pirates transferring themselves into a fan-propelled scouting craft that Ratchet had boasted was of his own design. The sole exception was Miriam, who for obvious reasons had assigned herself to swim alongside.

As the wotan shipwright eagerly questioned Ratchet over the principles behind his propulsion system, which the half-clad nobleman was all too happy to boast about, Ranma sidled over to Nabiki.

"You sure were quick to get us on this little treasure hunt, huh?" He muttered to her.

"Oh, please; you were going to accept his request anyway, I just made sure we'd get a piece of the pie when we were finished," Nabiki scoffed back, just as quietly.

Ranma opened his mouth to protest Nabiki's assertions... then closed it silently.

'She's not wrong there...' he admitted to himself.

Unable to think of a proper rebuttal, he instead turned his attention back to Ratchet, who had finally wrapped up his little discussion with Miriam. The nobleman placed a foot on the prow and took an imperious pose, pointing down the metaphorical gullet of the snake-shaped cavern mouth before them.

"Before us lies the gateway to the Golden Crown! Let's go!" he cried, trying to sound commanding.

Colonel Honki pulled a lever and the fan on the boat's back roared into life, sending them racing across the bay and into the cavern, with Miriam easily keeping pace alongside thanks to her fishman heritage.

Needless to say, the interior was quite dark, with the sole sources of illumination being the faint glow of a few lanterns hanging from their ship bouncing off of the water and the cavern walls. A strange wind intermittently wafted through the cave, seeming to emanate from somewhere in its interior. Ratchet busied himself with some levers, slowly their progress to a decent but measured speed in the name of safety.

"Spooky place, huh?" Ranma observed casually.

"Cursed Tunnel of Lost Love was way worse," Shampoo calmly stated.

"Hey, I've been wondering; did those ghosts try anything on you and Mousse when you went through?" Ukyo asked her.

"Yes, but only few. Shampoo beat up first few ghouls, then they stop bothering Shampoo. Mousse not happy they say we clearly not couple either," she added, smiling darkly at the memory.

"Cursed Tunnel of Lost Love? What are you talking about?" A dumbfounded Harumi interjected.

"Is long story..." Shampoo sighed.

"The short version is that Shampoo and I tried to trick Ranchan and this girl he was engaged to, Akkane Tendo, into visiting a haunted tunnel said to irreversibly break up any couple that dared enter. Didn't work out like we planned... no thanks to this useless lump," Ukyo pointed at Ryoga, scowling at the memory.

"Hey, it was your dumb scheme, not mine!" Ryoga defensively asserted.

"But you were going to benefit from it too, and you still fouled everything up!" Ukyo snapped, now glaring at him and causing him to glare right back at her.

'Huh... that explains a few things about that whole misadventure that never made sense. And, in hindsight, probably should have taken it as a warning that all those ghosts let up on me 'n' Akane because when they tried to pull us apart, we forgot about fightin' 'em and started bickering instead...' Ranma mused privately to himself, paying little attention to the everyday squabbling of his crew.

"Anyone else notice the current's picking up?" Miriam suddenly interjected from where she was idly gliding along beside their ship.

"Now that you mention it, I did think the ship felt odd," Ratchet confessed. Suddenly, he went pale - well, more so than usual. "It seems this will be no simple pleasure cruise!"

Confused, the Kamikaze Pirates looked up, following where Ratchet was staring, and realized that they had drifted into a veritable graveyard of ships. Splintered wrecks littered the walls of the cave around them, rotted timbers glowing with bioluminescent growths and squirming with all manner of seafaring creepy crawlies.

"...I'm guessing these aren't yours," Ranma slowly informed Ratchet.

The nobleman instinctively shook his head. "No, I've been looking for this cave for five years now, and this is the first time I've set foot here! Whoever helmed these ships, they came here long before I ruled over this island..."

In a more somber mood now, the group pressed forward, now alert for potential danger - after all, those ships hadn't wrecked themselves, right? Ratchet cut the fan, and allowed their vessel to be carried along by the current, which was still moving at a decent pace. And it was a good thing they had, too, because out of the darkness loomed an imposing rock formation; perhaps once it had been an array of stalactites, but now it had formed into what almost looked like a corrugated wall of stone, the protrusions sharpened by the crashing waves into giant blades angled towards any oncoming ship, with plentiful wreckage strewn at its base to suggest its effectiveness. Only a small sliver of empty space, a vertical slash in the stony wall, revealed that the water continued beyond them.

"Blast it all! What an obstacle - how are we supposed to get through this?!" Ratchet cursed.

Ryoga chuckled loudly and pushed his way to the front of the boat.

"Don't worry; just get us in close and leave it to me," He bragged, pointing a thumb at himself for emphasis.

Ratchet looked confused, but did as he was told. With Miriam for an extra hand to hold them against the current, they soon had their little scouting ship hovering right at the entrance - as they had suspected, the gap was too narrow for Ratchet's fanboat to pass through. Leaning over the prow, Ryoga studied the rock walls for a few moments, and then reached out and gave each side of the divide a good hard poke with his index finger, before stepping back and triumphantly folding his arms across his chest.

Ratchet stared at Ryoga in dumbfoundment before demanding, "Just what was that supposed to achieve?!"

A sonorous groan echoed off of the walls around them, the stone moaning in protest as cracks raced across the faces of the walls blocking their way. A web woven by a drunken and deranged spider grew before their eyes, each thread an ever-deepening crevasse in the once-solid rock. Then, inevitably, gravity took its toll and the once-imposing walls collapsed, a cascade of small boulders raining down into the water that ran beneath it.

The walls now ended at about Ryoga's head-height above the surface of the wave, and the once-narrow crevice that had provided passage had easily tripled in width. Ratchet stared at the devastation and blinked owlishly, his glasses only magnifying his shock.

"...I stand corrected," he meekly admitted.

"The Bakusai Tenketsu. No stone can hold me back!" Ryoga bragged.

"Should we tell him that you figured that move out yesterday?" Ranma whispered to Shampoo.

"No, let silly Ryoga have moment," the Chinese Amazon replied, shaking her head softly.

Obstacle removed, the group resumed their progress, only to encounter yet another obstruction... not as literal as the last one, though. Quite the opposite, in fact.

"Why is there a waterfall?!" Nabiki demanded furiously.

"I... don't suppose you can fly?" Ratchet asked nervously.

"No, we ain't mastered that trick yet - brace yerselves for a swim, guys!" Ranma cried.

Shampoo snapped into her cabbit form and leapt for Ranma, burrowing into his shirt and holding him tightly, even as Nabiki latched onto his arm. With stopping being pointless, the ship sailed on through the narrow aperture at the far end of the cavern and sent them all plummeting into the abyss. Miriam held back for a few moments, then shrugged her shoulders and let the current carry her after them, leaping from the water and jack-knifing into a perfect dive after them.

Down and down they fell, until finally they landed with an almighty splash at the bottom. Ratchet's poor boat took the brunt of the impact and smashed to pieces, whilst the Kamikaze Pirates instead leapt upwards at the last moment, saving themselves from being caught in the initial crash - but not from falling into the water afterwards. Nor from being soaked by the wave kicked up when a dwarf wotan came splashing down behind them.

Ranma kicked for the surface and spat a stream of saltwater from her mouth, even as she lifted a sodden and miserable Shampoo out of the water and onto the safety of her scalp. With her spare hand, she pulled Nabiki's head above the surface, leaving her coughing up saltwater that had gone down the wrong pipes.

"Ptooie! Sound off, guys!" She called, scanning through the gloom.

"I am unharmed, Ranma darling," Kodachi replied, shaking the excess water from her scalp with a toss of the head that would have had a model photographer drooling.

"I'm alive... for now, at least," Nabiki grumbled, even as she clung to her transformed sort of-technically-kinda-fiance for added support in the water.

"We're okay over here - whoa, c'mon there, guys, don't pass out on me!" Ukyo addressed the stunned Meiji and Honki, whom she was partially holding afloat.

"Well, that sure was fun," Ryoga grumbled, pushing aside the gawking Ratchet, who was trying and failing to articulate the many questions that the Jusenkyo curses were raising.

"Shampoo okay," the cabbit declared, nuzzling her cheek against the top of Ranma's scalp.

"I am fine, captain," Harumi declared, before yelping softly in surprise as Miriam suddenly surfaced beneath him, leaving the human swordsman clinging to her shoulder and dorsal fin for support.

"Alright, I see land over there - c'mon, let's get outta here!" Ranma declared, pointing in the indicated direction.

They made for the shore, and found themselves on a kind of underground beach, leading off into two massive cave structures. One clearly led to wherever the water's outlet was, as a kind of stream wound its serpentine path through its center, whilst the other was dry as a bone and relatively flat-floored, leading up to a series of small hillocks that formed a kind of natural staircase.

"Okay, buddy, this is your treasure hunt; where do we go now?" Ranma asked Ratchet, once they were all safely back on dry land.

"I-what? How?! You! And he! You're shes!" He gabbled.

Ranma and Ryoga sighed as one.

"It's a looong story... just, think of it as a really bad imitation of a Human-Human Zoan-type Devil Fruit, okay?" Ranma pleaded with him.

Ratchet opened and closed his mouth several times, then shook his head and visibly puffed out his chest. "Right. Sorry. Now, the treasure! It seems we have two options here; which direction do you think we should take?"

"Me?" a startled Ranma blurted.

"You are the pirate captain here; treasure hunting is your area of expertise," Ratchet replied, with what Ranma personally considered an unnecessary amount of smugness.

"...Fair enough," Ranma grumbled, before looking at her options. After a moment's thought, she pointed at the land-based route and declared, "Let's go that way."

"After you then, Captain Saotome," Ratchet said, smiling in what Ranma considered an obsequious manner. Well, she would have done if she knew what the word meant.

With a direction chosen, the two groups promptly trooped off together, Ratchet and his two flunkies following noticeably behind the Kamikazes, but not far from them either.

"What they doing?" Shampoo quietly wondered.

Nabiki gave her a grim smile and whispered back, "They're hoping to use us to trigger any traps we might run into along the way - no, don't look at them!"

"They not use us as cannon fodder!" Shampoo hissed angrily, baring her teeth - which Nabiki noted had assumed a very fang-like state around the incisors - but at the same time, she didn't throw off the hand that Nabiki had locked around her wrist.

"Just keep your wits sharp; something about our 'host' has been rubbing me the wrong way, so if things go wrong, I want you to be ready to act, understand?" Nabiki quietly instructed her.

"You tell this to airen?" Shampoo muttered back, curiosity expressed in the quirk of her eye and the tilt of her ears.

"Not yet. Ranma has many talents, but decent acting skills aren't one of them. If things do heat up, it's going to be up to us to pull this crew out of the fire, okay?"

"Shampoo remember," the zoan assured her, though she couldn't fight off a smug expression at the idea of being entrusted with so valuable a role.

Nabiki made sure that Shampoo couldn't see her rolling her eyes. 'Lucky for me you martial artists are still just raging infernos of ego, isn't it?'

"You guys! Come and look at this!"

Ranma's sudden shout startled Nabiki from her thoughts, and she had to hustle to keep up with the rest of her crew as they hurried to answer their captain's call.

What Ranma had found was a marvel; an underground grove, nourished by sunlight that poured down from an opening hidden somewhere in the ceiling high above, feeding a thick carpet of luxuriantly green grass and wildflowers surrounding a great pool of what had to be fresh water. Further adding to the spectacle of the scene were the myriad sculptures of animals placed around the grove, as if in imitation of wildlife cavorting around a spring.

"...Is this what you were expecting?" Ranma asked, turning to face Ratchet.

The island's lord shook his head, his two men hastening to wipe the looks of amazement from their faces.

"Not in the least. I've never heard nor read of anything like this place!" Ratchet assured them. "But... doesn't this seem like a likely place for the Golden Crown to be hidden?"

"Well, it's obviously important to whoever was last here, or they wouldn't have bothered decorating... Alright, guys! Fan out, and let's look for clues!" Ranma declared, pumping her fist for emphasis.

The Kamikazes spread out to search the chamber, with Ratchet and his henchmen doing the same. Minutes later...

"Hey, over here! There's symbols inscribed in this pillar!" Ukyo called.

Everyone hastily gathered around her as the chef turned to Ratchet.

"Can you read them?"

The nobleman leaned forward, peering myopically through his ever-present glasses. "Hmm... This is an ancient text, long unused on the island, but fortunately I have made a study of it. Let me see... hm, yes, yes, this is good!"

"What's it say?" Ranma asked, peering at the sigils, which made her eyes hurt just to look at them - this looked even worse than kanji!

"It's an ancient song, the only true hint to the Golden Crown's existence that has been passed down on this island."

"Then deciphering it should be a snap, right?" Nabiki observed, grinning with anticipation at the thought.

"N...Not as such, no," Ratchet sheepishly admitted.

Nabiki stared at him flatly, letting out a simple, "What."

"As I said, this language is ancient and little used - worse, many of these characters can have alternate meanings! This one, for instance," he tapped a symbol, "Is from the stanzas that are still sung on the island today, and it can be read as either 'moon' or 'strike'; I thought it was meant to be read as the former, but you proved it was supposed to be read as the latter," Ratchet explained.

"Great, so we're no better off?" Nabiki groused.

"Hey, half a clue's better than no clue, right?" Ranma diplomatically intervened. "So, what's the song say, Ratchet?"

The lord of Mecha Island cleared his throat purposefully. "Ahem. As I said, these characters make up a song, a portion of which has survived through to the present on this island. I'll skip those stanzas, you've probably heard them just visiting the marketplace, but these lost stanzas say... A blue jug of water; when you drink it dry, lightning strikes in the green forest. Swaying, swaying, swaying. The king of the seas, the golden crown."

"...That strangest riddle Shampoo ever heard," the Chinese Amazon offered in the silence once Ratchet had finished.

"The last two lines about the swaying, the king of the seas and the golden crown, I think we can safely ignore for our purposes - they seem to be more of a song refrain than meaningful instructions. But that just leaves the preceding lines..." Ratchet concluded.

"Well, I think we all know the first place to look for the green forest and the blue jug of water," Ranma announced, turning to look at the pond at the center of the grove, an action the others all repeated.

"Yes, that is the most logical direction to take... but how to drink it dry?" Ratchet wondered aloud.

Ranma promptly gave him a mischievous smirk, triumphantly responding, "We don't need to bother with that - we have a Miriam."

The wotan blinked twice, then her eyes widened as she realized where Ranma was going. Her terrifying teeth stretched into a monstrous smile of pride. "Aye-aye, captain!"

Without further ado, she strode over to the side of the pond and knelt on the bank before sliding face-first into the blue water like a giant crocodile. A flick of her tail and she vanished into the depths.

"A useful crewmate, for a pirate crew," Ratchet observed.

"Yeah, she's one of a kind, alright," Ranma proudly responded.

Behind him, Harumi simply stared intently into the depths. 'Please, be safe, Miriam...' he mentally prayed.

After a minute or two, Miriam surfaced from the pond with a great splash, water arcing through the air as she tossed her head.

"Well, this was definitely manmade - there's stairs and some kind of tunnel down there!" She announced.

"What about the green forest!?" Ratchet called to her.

"Nope, nothing like that down here... just what looks like some kind of stone seal, possibly to let the water out, stairs, a tunnel that was too small for me to fit through, and a rock that's giving me a really funny feeling," the wotan reported.

"A funny feeling rock?" A confused Ranma asked the question everyone was thinking.

Miriam shrugged her shoulders defensively. "I don't know what it is, but there's this one stone with a gash in it that just makes my skin crawl going near it... it's kind of like the feeling I get when we're in a lightning storm."

"Huh... I wonder what that's all about," Ranma mused, scratching her head.

"Perhaps it has to do with the lightning striking portion of the riddle?" Kodachi suggested, causing everyone to turn a bemused look her way.

"Come again?" Ratchet asked.

"Sharks have a special ability to sense the electrical energy given off by living creatures. As a shark fishman hybrid, Miriam probably has that same sense too. In which case, what she's reacting to is most likely a strong electrical field hidden in the water," Kodachi explained patiently.

The nobleman blinked once, then twice, and then he closed his eyes, folded his arms across his chest, and began to chuckle, which built into a full-blown self-congratulatory guffaw.

"Excellent! I knew it was a good idea to bring you into this! Now, if you'll just exit the pond, Miss Miriam, I will complete the next step of the riddle!"

"You? How?" Ranma asked, even as she beckoned to Miriam, who waded quickly out of the pool and walked up the bank towards them.

Ratchet walked down to the bank, and slung off a backpack that he had managed to carry even during the wreck of his ship. He knelt down and began to rummage through its contents, even as he answered Ranma's question.

"The line about lightning striking in the green forest must obviously refer to activating whatever machinery is hidden at the bottom of this flooded alcove. And I have a simple way to do that..."

He emerged from the bag with two vials full of liquid and a larger glass beaker in his hands. He uncorked the vials and poured them into the beaker, even as he continued to speak.

"What we have here is a simple chemical battery of sorts - short-lived and highly volatile, but that suits our purposes just fine..."

An electrical sizzling noise filled the air as the contents of the beaker began to glow and fizz, sparks visibly flashing in its depths with increasing violence, crackling arcs of energy surging from its top amidst the foaming bubbles. Ratchet held onto the buzzing mess of who-knew-what just long enough for it to begin bubbling over the top, then flung its contents out into the lake.

A great thunderclap echoed off the walls as the chemicals struck the water and reacted explosively, a massive surge of electrical energy flashing through the water and racing down into its depths. The water frothed and boiled, the electrical energy producing a surge of brilliance that made the Kamikazes shield their collective eyes to avoid being dazzled... and then, as suddenly as it had happened, it was over and the pool was dark and still once more.

Ranma looked slowly around the room. "Um... Issat it?"

Ratchet smiled. It was not a nice smile. It was wide and toothy, and more than a little deranged looking.

"I wish to express my gratitude to you all. Thank you. Thanks to you, we finally made it..."

As if to punctuate his words, the earth began to tremble and light began to emanate from the very rock, lines of luminescence tracing a hexagon shape around the exterior of the pond.

"Yo, what the hell!?" Ranma yelped, fighting to keep her footing as the whole island shivered.

Cracks began to spiderweb across the roof, the stone groaning as enormous boulders began to slowly peel away from each other and succumb at last to gravity's allure, dropping to the cavern floor and adding their own concussive contributions to the quaking of the earth. A veritable rain of rock began falling from the stony sky above, sending the Kamikaze Pirates scrambling for shelter. Fists flashed like thunderbolts to shatter incoming death from above, but even the martial artists from Nerima were forced to take shelter at the very edges of grove, hiding behind boulders and column-like outcroppings as the ceiling gave way in a great cloud of dust, filling the air with thunderous noise.

When it was all over with, Ranma quickly looked up. "Everyone okay?!"

"Shampoo is safe, airen," the Chinese Amazon replied, taking advantage of the opportunity to hug him from behind.

"All okay over here, sugar!" Ukyo called from the boulder where she, Ryoga and Kodachi had taken shelter.

"We're good!" Miriam added, stepping out from behind a pillar to wave to her captain, her other arm serving as a seat for Harumi, who had his arms flung around the wotan's neck.

"So, do you grab me every time danger threatens because I'm weak, or because you like to get your hands on me?" Nabiki asked conversationally, causing Ranma to realize she was currently carrying the older girl bridal style.

"I-It's just to keep you safe! Honest!" Ranma spluttered defensively, cheeks flaring red.

"So you say..." Nabiki replied, smirking and tapping Ranma on the tip of her nose with a finger, causing the boy-turned girl to go momentarily cross-eyed before lowering Nabiki to her feet.

Which put the eldest of the Neriman contingent of the crew to see the giant hole that had been torn out of the far side of the cavern, revealing the sights that lay beyond.

"What the heck is that?!" she demanded at the top of her lungs, jabbing an accusatory finger towards the new opening.

And well she might have asked, for down the newly revealed slopes of Mecha Island's high mountains, emerging from the shore below by the light of the setting sun, was an enormous rounded shape, one that dwarfed the imposing form of Karakuri Castle like a newborn moon. A shape that was becoming more distinct by the second, leading to a single inevitable conclusion...

"That's a turtle!" Ranma yelped.

"Indeed, the biggest we've seen since the one that bore the Octopus Shogunate aboard its back," Kodachi interjected.

"You mean this whole island was a turtle all along?" Harumi asked, sliding down from his perch on Miriam's shoulder to get a better look.

"That is correct!" Came the voice of Ratchet, punctuated by the crashing of stone on stone as Colonel Honki unearthed the pair of them from beneath a particularly large slab of rock. The taller man began to dust off his employer, who examined his broken glasses before discarding them with a flick of the wrist, then opening a flap in his trousers to reveal several spare sets and select one.

"Alright, buddy, you better start talking - you knew this was gonna happen!" Ranma accused him, taking a step forward to punctuate her words.

Ratchet smiled, the sun gleaming off of his glasses in a way that looked quite menacing... before he took out a transponder snail and a microphone and began to broadcast his reply.

"When my father died, I was informed of the holy ruins at the top of the hill on which my ancestors sleep. It is only accessible by the males of our family line. The details of this turtle's origins are recorded there. Her name is Shimagame, and countless centuries ago, the ancestors of my people came to live upon her back. It's been a thousand years since Shimagame fell into her slumber. Since then, everybody has lived peacefully on the island - in other words, on her shell. When the time came for her to lay eggs, she would be awakened. That tradition of awakening her has been passed down for ages in the form of song."

"That'd be the song you mentioned earlier?" Nabiki asked, folding her arms over her chest and looking at their host with an unamused expression.

"Correct," he calmly replied. "Unfortunately, the meanings behind the song's lyrics became lost with time, hence my need for your services."

"So there never was a Golden Crown, was there? It was all a scheme to trick us into helping you," Nabiki continued.

Ratchet held up his free hand and wagged his finger in reproach, tsk-tsking as he did. "Don't be so quick to assume, madame Tendo. It is true that I exploited the story of the Golden Crown to coax you into assisting me, I freely admit that. But I honestly cannot say as to whether the treasure exists or not. It is referred to repeatedly in the song, but alas, I have no idea what it could mean. My ancestors were not the greatest of record keepers."

"So, what, you did all this to prove the turtle exists or something?" Ranma asked, scratching her head in confusion.

"Obviously, he has an ulterior motive," Kodachi interjected.

Ratchet chuckled, the sound broadcast through his snail. "Very well, since I only made it this far with your help, I shall tell you. It's only fair, after all. My plans do indeed go beyond awakening Shimagame. This is just the beginning. With this turtle at my beck and call, I shall pursue my dream! My dream... of world domination!"

All fell silent at those words, with nothing but the faint whistle of the wind in the trees to be heard. As one, the Kamikaze Pirates looked from Ratchet to Shimagame's head and back again.

"You're gonna conquer the world... with a giant turtle," Ranma flatly observed.

"That is what I said!" A peeved Ratchet replied.

"Does it fly?" Ryoga asked, cracking her neck.

Ratchet physically recoiled, mouth dropping in shock as he was taken aback by the question. "What?! No! It's a turtle!"

"Does it breathe fire?" Ranma interjected.

"No! It's a turtle! Ratchet protested.

"What about shooting lasers out of its eyes?" Nabiki asked.

"Or controlling the weather?" Ukyo added.

"Or making earthquakes?" Kodachi eagerly suggested.

"Or spewing poison smog?" Shampoo interjected.

"No, no, no, NO! She's a turtle! Have none of you people even seen a turtle before?!" an annoyed Ratchet demanded, childishly stamping his foot for emphasis.

"That's lame!" Chorused the Neriman members of the crew, all of them at least passingly familiar with the phenomena of kaiju movies due to their origins.

"Wh-what?!" screeched an outraged Ratchet, face blushing bright red with a mixture of rage and embarrassment.

"What kind of stupid plan do you call that? Okay, yeah, you got a biiig turtle to ride around on; that's kinda cool. But the Navy's got thousands of battleships, and kami know how many stupidly strong soldiers, many of them armed with Devil Fruits! They'll wipe that pretty castle of yours off of Shimagame's shell like a dust bunny, then probably sink her for good measure!" Ranma jeered in response.

"Why, you... how long do you plan to insult me?!" Ratchet demanded.

"You got a couple of spare hours?" Ranma mocked right back.

Ratchet gnashed his teeth, still blushing with equal parts rage and embarrassment, then squawked into his microphone, "Grr... fine! Maybe Shimagame isn't quite the all-conquering weapon she could be... but you solved that problem for me, as well! Thanks to you, I now have a soldier superior to anything in the World Government's arsenal - and, once I mass-produce it, my forces will be unstoppable! I will sail the seas with impunity, and drown all resistance beneath a flood of armored robots; stronger, tougher, better than any fighting man! Devoid of conscience, devoid of pity, devoid of fear - and all utterly replaceable! With their help, I shall be like a god upon the seas!"

He threw back his head and cackled madly, the insane guffaws of delight echoing around the newly exposed cavern and drifting down the mountain - no, the mountain-like peak of Shimagame's enormous shell.

"...Y'know, I've met my share of loonies, but you have to take the fruitcake!" Ranma shouted over the nobleman's laughter, stopping him dead in mid-guffaw.

"And why is that?!" Ratchet furiously demanded, glasses steaming up before the obligatory button-press made them wipe themselves clean.

"Well, first of all, now that you've woken the turtle up, how are you gonna control her?" Ranma jeered.

Ratchet puffed out his chest and laughed again, briefly this time. "You think I hadn't thought of that? Really, don't insult me. Something like that is hardly a problem for me. Well, I think we're done here. I no longer have any use for you. I actually wanted to let you go... but you'd just get in the way, wouldn't you? So, I've decided to have you just stay put..."

"Really... the two of you, are gonna take on all of us?" Ranma jeered, gesturing to her crew even as they began their personal pre-beatdown warmups.

Ratchet just shook his head, never losing his confident smirk. "There's no way we can win if we fight you all head-on..."

Suddenly, a mechanical whirring noise filled the air, before the slender, unmistakable form of a small airplane deliberately buzzed through the air between them, diving straight past the grinning Ratchet and Honki.

"What the hell is that?!" Miriam and Harumi yelled as one.

"Where'd you get an airplane?!" the Neriman members of the crew demanded.

They got no answer... at least not a verbal one. The plane - a kind of torsion-powered glider more than anything - circled back around to them, revealing a grinning Meiji slung beneath it. With practiced ease, he dropped down a rope ladder that Honki caught with one hand whilst grabbing his boss in the other, allowing the plane's momentum to carry them away from the Kamikaze Pirates... and also away from the dozen of small, black, cartoony-looking bombs that Meiji had tossed in his wake.

Bombs whose fuses swiftly burned away to nothing.

In the sky above, the thunder of the explosion and the great cloud of dust it produced engulfed Ratchet's powered glider for a moment before Meiji steered it away of the all-consuming shroud. Still clinging to the ladder with one hand, Honki clutched his employer to his chest with the other, looking for all the world like an oversized ape.

"Are you alright, sir?" He shouted over the buzzing, whirring noise of the plane's engine.

"I'm fine. Head for the castle!" Ratchet ordered Meiji, who cheered wordlessly before angling the plane in the indicated direction.

Grinning to himself, Ratchet glanced back at the smoke-filled crater and proclaimed, "Being violent really doesn't suit me... oh, well. I hope you dream about treasure, pirates... may it comfort you in your eternal slumber..."

Meanwhile, back below...

Enveloped in pitch blackness, ears ringing, dust in her nose, burns itching on her skin and back aching from stone grinding into it, Ranma had experienced better days. She sneezed loudly, wiping her nose on her wrist before sighing.

"Stupid four-eyed jerk... everybody alright?" She called out.

"Shampoo okay, airen... feel better when stupid... rock... move!" The Zoan growled, shifting into hybrid form and twisting around so that she could tuck her knees up under her chin, allowing her to deliver a tremendous kick to the boulders that had piled on top of them after the explosion had brought yet-more of the already unstable roof down on them. Devil Fruit-augmented muscles coiled like springs before exploding outwards, and the boulder shattered like a pane of glass hit by a bullet, flooding their little alcove with dust.

Ranma coughed, wiped the grime from her face, and proclaimed, "Thanks, Shampoo... where's Nabiki?"

"She a little preoccupied," the Chinese Amazon answered, pointing one clawed finger for emphasis.

Ranma followed the digit, then blushed beet red as she realized she was straddling the supine girl, the weight of the rock the transformed boy had been supporting having pushed Ranma's Jusenkyo-granted bosom firmly into the older girl's face.

"Sorry, Nabiki!" Ranma yelped, scrambling aside and letting Nabiki sit up.

Nabiki gasped for air, coughing a few times as the dust scratched her throat before muttering, "I really don't see why guys find that so appealing..."

Trying to avoid looking at her, Ranma looked around the wreckage of what had once been a hidden gem of beauty. Over there was Miriam, casually shrugging off boulders that had settled on her shoulder and around her flanks as she uncurled from around Harumi. Meanwhile, snarling with rage more than effort, Ryoga hoisted aloft a huge boulder and threw it aside, allowing an unscathed Ukyo and Kodachi to emerge from her shadow.

"When I get my hands on that scrawny little jerk, I'm going to wring his pencil-neck!" the Eternally Lost Girl vowed, clenching her fists in her anger.

"Well, you're clearly alright," Ranma drawled sarcastically. "How about the rest of you?"

"More annoyed than anything," Miriam proclaimed.

"We're not going to just let him get away with this, are we, Ranma darling?" Kodachi asked, icy fury smoldering in her words and a glint of madness in her eye.

"No we ain't," Ranma agreed darkly, cracking her knuckles for emphasis.

Then the ground began to tremble, the rumbling of the earth audible in their ears.

"Oh, what now?!" Ranma snarled.

"Let's get out of here - I don't wanna risk being buried again!" Ryoga cried.

The Kamikaze Pirates bolted from the now-destroyed grotto, leaping through the broken-open wall and down the face of the mountainous shell they had mistaken for an island. This brought them to a ledge overlooking Shimagame's head and Karakuri Castle, and gave them a perfect view of what was happening.

A chorus of gasps and muttered profanity escaped the collected teens as the earth buckled and tore around Karakuri Castle's base, dozens of enormous spidery mechanical limbs surfacing from buried sites beneath the ground or emerged from the castle itself, burying their pointed tips deep into the soil.

"His castle can walk?!" an incredulous Ranma blurted as the tremors began to subside.

"I don't think so, Ranchan - it looks more like those are... braces, or anchors or something like that," Ukyo replied, shielding her eyes from the sunset's glare for a better look.

"What would he need those for?" Ryoga wondered.

"Who cares? We're not gonna give him a chance to use it," Ranma declared, cracking her knuckles.

As one, the Kamikaze Pirates nodded grimly, before they charged down the slope. The martial artists amongst them leapt and sprang over rocks and between trees, covering the distance in huge bounds, whilst Miriam thundered along behind them, scooping up Nabiki like a parcel in mid-stride to ensure she wouldn't get left behind.

Within moments, they were before the castle's gates, which had been sealed tight. Ranma curled her lip in disdain as she looked them over.

"Great. Stupid girl body... this is gonna take a bit of work," she grumbled, rotating her right arm at the shoulder in preparation.

"Wait, Ranma! Let me sort this out," Ryoga interjected, stepping forward and holding out her arm for emphasis.

"You ain't that much stronger than me as a girl, Ryoga!" Ranma protested.

For once, it was Ryoga's turn to give a cocky smirk. "Watch and learn, Ranma..."

She strutted forward confidently, even her old rival watching quietly as she studied the door. Once she was within arm's length, Ryoga stopped, drew back her right arm, and then delivered a two-fingered jab to the door, letting out a fierce kiai as she did. The Eternally Lost Girl's fingers bit deeply into the solid steel of the door, stabbing into it, before a mighty crackling noise filled the air. Cracks spiderwebbed across the surface of the gate, racing upwards and downwards and outwards in every direction, before the doors suddenly collapsed with a metallic screech into a cascade of metallic fragments the size of large pebbles.

Ryog turned back to the rest of her crew and made a show of dusting off her hands as she smirked. "And that takes care of that!"

"...You son of a bitch; you figured out how to make the Bakusai Tenketsu work on metal!" Ranma blurted, her shock making Ryoga smirk all the harder.

"Oh, it was easy enough," she bragged.

"I still can't believe me hitting you with that scrap metal actually worked; I thought I was just going to beat you to death," Miriam observed.

"Well credit me with a little more common sense than that!" an annoyed Ryoga retorted.

"You do remember we were here to beat up the guy who tried to kill us, right?" Nabiki dryly asked from where she was clinging to Miriam's shoulder for extra safety.

Ranma shook her head. "Right! Okay guys; let's get the jerk!"

"He's probably at the top of the castle - guys like that always put their lair on the highest floor in anime and manga," Ukyo observed.

"Then that's where we go first!" Ranma announced triumphantly.

They marched in through the wreckage of what had once been a solid door, shards of metal snapping underfoot like brittle glass, the crunch and crackle nearly drowned out by mechanical whirring and the hiss of steam. The castle's interior had changed very drastically since they were last present, with old-fashioned stone walls having slid away to expose turning gears, pounding pistons and all manner of mechanical bric-a-brac that the Kamikazes couldn't hope to identify.

"Sheesh, look at all this junk!" Ryoga declared.

"Honestly, I think it's pretty impressive - he may be a demented little weasel, but he clearly knows his way around machinery," Ukyo added, taking a moment to admire the intricate devices and gizmos now dominating the superstructure around them.

"Yeah, well, I say we better be careful; he's just the kind of guy to set up traps in case of folks like us..." Ranma declared darkly.

Which was when the floor suddenly swung down under Ranma's foot, sending the boy-turned-girl pitching forward into a previously hidden hole with a girlish scream... until a whip suddenly wrapped around her waist and she was jerked to a halt, still hanging down the chute that had attempted to swallow her.

"What was that you were saying about being careful, darling?" Kodachi asked, straining somewhat to keep her footing, even as Shampoo and Ukyo grabbed her by the waist to anchor her.

"Well, it proves my point, don't it?!" Ranma grumbled back. "Now get me outta here!"

Suddenly, a portion of the roof began to swing downwards, water flowing over its descending lip and sloshing down the chute, eliciting a squawk of surprise as Ranma found herself drenched.

"Oh no ya don't!" Miriam snarled, surging forward and slamming the evident water sluice back up into the ceiling, putting all of her considerable weight behind jamming it back into place. The metal deformed as she left a handprint embedded in its surface, but her actions gave Kodachi and the other girls a chance to pull Ranma back to safety.

The now-drenched redhead shook herself off like a dog. "Thanks, girls... Now, let's find this jerk and kick his ass!"

Barely minutes later...

"How did he fit a giant boulder trap in a castle?!" Ranma screeched in dismay.

"Less wondering, more running!" Ukyo chided him.

The Kamikaze Pirates pelted headlong down a rail-girded tunnel, a massive sphere of solid stone rolling behind them, ready to crush them all to a jelly should it catch them.

"Who tripped that switch?!" Nabiki demanded.

"Wasn't any of us!" Ranma shot back.

"Why are we even running from this thing?" Miriam wondered.

"So we don't get crushed!" Kodachi incredulously barked in reply.

"I mean... don't you guys know some special technique that destroys rock?" The wotan explained, her thunderous footfalls competing with the ominous rumbling of the boulder rolling behind them.

It takes a certain amount of skill to facepalm and run at the same time. Luckily for Ranma, he (well, she, at the moment) had that skill.

"Ryoga! Shampoo! One of you, fix this!" The temporarily female captain demanded.

It was the ship's Zoan who rose to the call, spinning on her heel and launching herself at the onrushing boulder of doom. Shifting to her hybrid form, she reared back and did a perfect spin-kick straight to the center-mass of the boulder, the combination of a Bakusai Tenketsu and her own superhuman strength reducing what would have been a horrible death to a merely annoying avalanche of dust and small pebbles that would have crashed over her like an earthen wave had she not use the impact to propel herself back to safety.

"Alright, Shampoo!" Ranma cheered.

"Way ta go, China Girl!" Ukyo added, equally jubilant.

"A stunning display!" Kodachi cheerfully added.

"Meh. I could've done that," Ryoga grumpily asserted.

"You'll get it next time," Nabiki cheekily assured him, patting his shoulder in a gesture that went from reassuring straight to insulting.

Shampoo proudly puffed out her chest and began to saunter back towards her companions... only for her smile to fade as something she stepped on went 'click'.

A choir of annoyed groans filled the air even as murder-holes in the nearby walls snapped open and a volley of arrows exploded forth... only for the barrage of projectiles to disintegrate into a harmless flurry of slivers in mid-flight in a series of steely flashes.

"You're getting better at that, Harumi!" Ranma cheerfully observed.

"You're too kind, master Saotome," the crossdressing swordsman replied, returning his blades to their sheaths with a soft click of steel.

"These traps getting too-too annoying," Shampoo grumbled.

"Well, they're really all he has - and all he can do is slow us down," Ukyo added.

"Why not just start breaking things from here? Force him to fight?" Ryoga wondered aloud.

"Are you nuts?! You mess with the superstructure like that, and who knows what could happen - this whole place could come caving in on top of us!" Miriam snapped, although from the looks on their faces, Nabiki, Ukyo and Kodachi had all been just about to give Ryoga a similar lecture.

"Just thought I'd ask," Ryoga muttered sullenly.

"C'mon, let's keep going; we'll find the crazy jerk eventually," Ranma declared.

"Can we at least rip open a hot water pipe so we can fight him as men?" Ryoga asked plaintively, even as she followed the rest of them away.

Unnoticed by the Kamikaze Pirates, a tall figure made taller still by his ridiculous mohawk emerged from the gloom, frowning at their departing backs.

"I really thought that trap would get them," General Meiji muttered to himself, even as he sprinted for the nearby speaking tube and whistled into it.

"What is it, Meiji? Report!" Ratchet's voice echoed down to him.

"No good, sir! The pirates have either evaded, escaped from or just plain destroyed every trap I've hit them with! I can't hold them back much longer - they're heading for the control room, baby!" Meiji cried back up the pipe.

"Blast it all! I never should have underestimated them! Do what you can to further delay them, but fortunately, we're ready to deploy the final stage," Ratchet concluded.

"On my way, baby!" Meiji whooped, before closing the speaking pipe and running off through the castle's maze of secret passages.

In the control room...

"It's up to you!" Ratchet shouted down the pipe, unaware that his overly enthusiastic goon was already gone. He then turned and shouted over his shoulder, "You get ready too, Colonel Honki!"

The hulking bruiser grinned proudly and struck a pose, shouting, "Yes sir!" before he jogged for the nearest door.

Alone save for his mechanical maids, Ratchet clenched his fists in a rage.

"I won't let some damn pirates get in my way!"

Then he smiled wickedly, and dramatically raised his right arm, his index finger pointing downwards. "

"Off we go, Giant Fortress Shimagame!"

And with that, he stabbed his finger into a big red button prominently displayed on his control bank.

Back down below...

The Kamikazes stopped and glanced upwards as the whole castle trembled violently.

"What the hell now?!" Ranma complained.

"Well don't look at me, I didn't do anything!" Ryoga protested.

Suddenly, previously inactive machinery sprung to life; pistons thumping and cogwheels looking together, a chain reaction of mechanical motion that swiftly spread all around them, building in speed and scope.

"It must be something Ratchet has set in motion - but what could it be?" Kodachi wondered.

"I say we don't stick around to find out, just in case it's some sort of pirate mincing machine!" Nabiki replied.

"I agree with Nabiki," Miriam added, distrustfully glancing at her surroundings. The wotan's bulk meant she was having more trouble maneuvering through the maze of moving parts than her smaller companions.

"Let's go, then!"

As it transpired, minutes later, the Kamikazes had a chance to see what the commotion had been about as they climbed some stairs. Harumi glanced out of the window and stopped dead in his tracks.

"What are those things?!" he cried, pointing out the window for emphasis.

As one, the Kamikaze Pirates crowded around the window for a glimpse. Through the comparatively small opening, they could see a slice of the coast, dominated by the battleship-sized shape of Shimagame's flipper. A spider's web of massive black cables had wrapped around the enormous chelonian's appendage, which jerkily cut back and forth through the water.

"Well, that's something you don't see every day," Nabiki muttered.

Ukyo suddenly smacked a fist into her palm. "I got it! Those cables must have been what all that machinery starting up just now was about!"

"But why? What's he doing with them?" Miriam asked, having to stoop to get a glance at things.

"Why, they're his control mechanism, dearie," Kodachi answered her. "Think about it; just waking this turtle up doesn't give Ratchet any control over it. But by using those cables, he can physically manipulate her limbs, similarly to a puppeteer. It's cruel, but effective."

"The poor thing," Miriam murmured, looking quite distraught at the idea.

"We'll stop him - we just gotta catch the jerk in his control room!" Ranma assured her, before they all resumed their climb towards the tower.

Up stairs and through corridors they went, working their way towards their goal, demolishing or evading any traps they triggered along the way. A grand pair of doors loomed before the onrushing pirates, and was summarily kicked open to reveal a large chamber, dominated by a table that had clearly been set for a victory feast. A stairwell at the far end signaled at least another level to reach, but Ratchet's last line of defense now stood before them.

Meiji grinned ferally, sitting atop what looked for all the world like some kind of crazy bike, its front-piece sculpted into a leering skull with a protruding tongue fashioned into a sharpened, upwards-curving ram-spike. At his side stood Honki, clad in a massive suit of articulated steel armor. A huge tank on his back fed into cannons mounted on his shoulders, and his face was hidden behind a steel mask that would have been imposing, were it not for the rugby ball-shaped attachment to its skull for containing his afro.

Honki's breath audibly hissed and whistled behind his mask as Meiji leered at the assembled pirates and made an obscene gesture at them. "Alright, you assholes! That's far enough - the great Lord Ratchet set us to stop you, and that's what we're gonna do!"

Ranma folded her arms across her chest and sneered. "Right. The two of you, against all of us? Don't make me laugh!"

"Don't underestimate the brilliant inventions of Lord Ratchet!" Meiji snarled, revving the engine on his battle bike for emphasis.

Honki suddenly began grabbing at his mask in a visible panic, his wheezing breaths having stopped dead. He scrabbled desperately at the latch before yanking his helmet off, face flushed red as he gasped for air. "Can't breathe!"

"I told you to get that design flaw fixed!" Meiji snapped at his partner in crime.

"I brought it to Lord Ratchet, but he was busy!" Honki protested defensively.

Ranma cradled her aching head in her hands. "Oh, brother... Well, if it's an asskicking you want...!"

The transformed boy cracked her neck, and was about to charge towards the two older men, when Kodachi suddenly stepped in front of her and held out an imperious arm.

"Kodachi?" Ranma wondered aloud.

"Ranma darling, leave these fools to us. You go ahead and stop Ratchet," Kodachi haughtily declared, never once taking her eyes off of the now-bickering pair.

"You sure?" Ranma asked hesitantly, only to then yell in protest as hot liquid smelling strongly of onions poured over her head.

"C'mon, Ranma, she already said they could handle it; you gotta let them stand on their own two feet eventually," Ryoga grunted, already restored to his male form, albeit more perfumed than before.

"Oi! Those were some of my favorite soups!" Meiji yelled angrily.

"Ryoga is right, airen - you go, we take care of stupid mens," Shampoo added, shifting into her hybrid form and extending her claws.

"Besides, we still outnumber them nearly three to one; we can take 'em, Ranchan," Ukyo assured him, Nabiki's glance making it quite clear she had read the implicit insult in her words.

Ranma hesitated, then slowly nodded. "Alright, girls - kick their asses!"

"It's not gonna be that easy!" Meiji howled and gunned the motor on his bike, rocketing forward as a series of horns mounted around his seat played a brassy little tune. At his side, Honki pounded the floor with his fists like the armor-plated gorilla he resembled and barrelled forward.

Unfortunately for them, they had underestimated how quick and nimble both Ranma and Ryoga were capable of being. Now restored to their male forms, the teens leapt high into the air and bounced off of Meiji's and Honki's heads like the Mario Brothers, using their skulls as stepping stones to propel them towards the stairwell behind them. Indignant bellows echoed in the teen's wake, but were swiftly drowned out by battle cries and the unmistakable sounds of violence.

They pelted up the stairs as fast as they could, and finally burst through the doors at the top to find themselves in what was clearly the control room. Over two dozen identical-looking maids busied themselves at various consoles or simply stood like dolls against the walls. At one end of the room was a massive glass-and-steel window that clearly showed the back of Shimagame's enormous head. A structure that depicted the island turtle in miniature dominated the center of the room, and behind that, on a dias behind an upraised control panel, stood Ratchet - with a slowly steaming robot at his side, clearly powering on.

"How the hell did you make it this far?! Meiji and Honki were supposed to stop you!" The half-naked nobleman screeched, blatantly affronted by his subordinate's incompetence.

"Those two couldn't stop an old pervert from stealing lingerie," Ranma jeered, pulling down one of his lower eyelids and poking his tongue out at Ratchet.

"I'd say you can either agree to let the turtle go or take a beating... but because you tried to blow us up, we're going to beat you up anyway," Ryoga added, cracking his knuckles.

"Bah! You muscle-brained goons! You may have defeated my loyal men, but you already furnished me with the weapon of your own destruction!" Ratchet boasted, gesturing grandiosely to the steam-powered tank-girl at his side, who had finally opened her solitary eye and was looking about almost quizzically.

Privately, Ranma had to admit, Ratchet had done good work. The dents and rust-eaten metal had been replaced by shining new brass and bronze-plated steel, broken glass and severed appendages replaced. Apart from the missing eye, and the fact that her left arm was still lacking some kind of attachment, she looked good as new if not better! ...Of course, he wasn't stupid enough to say so, given the circumstances!

"Robot! Destroy these two!" Ratchet commanded imperiously, with a ferocious gesture to indicate the two young martial artists cum pirates.

The spider-tank-robot-girl-thing scanned them both with its glowing blue eye, then turned its head to Ratchet. "Negative."

You could have heard a pin drop... well, if it weren't for the beep-beep-booping of the control panels, that was. Ratchet gawked so hugely that he could have swallowed a chicken, never mind a fly, and Ranma & Ryoga weren't all that much better. Of the three, it was Ratchet who recovered first.

"I order you to obey me!" he screamed, stamping his foot and waving his arms.

"You are neither my creator nor my master. I will not," the robot replied, with what sounded like genuine contempt to Ranma and Ryoga's ears.

Ratchet pulled a series of furious expressions, glasses fogging up with the heat of his rage. He gestured madly, only to suddenly catch himself, activate his glass wipers, and give the robot a smile. A cold, smug smile.

"I may not be your creator... but I am most certainly your master!" He spat, then jabbed furiously at a button on a mechanical bracer that he was wearing on his left wrist.

Which was when Ranma and Ryoga finally noticed that the robot they had given to Ratchet to repair was now sporting a strange, crown-like contraption on her head. A crown that suddenly erupted into crackling electrical sparks, wringing an agonized mechanical screech of pure pain from the robot. It wailed and flailed its myriad arms, energy visibly crawling across its metallic skin, mouth open in an inhuman howl of anguish.

"Stop that! You're hurting her!" Ranma cried instinctively, even as Ryoga gave him an incredulous look.

Ratchet simply held down the button on his control bracer for a good five or six seconds, before finally letting it go and ending the surging voltage. He smirked darkly and asked, "Do we understand each other now...?"

The robot teetered on its spidery legs, black tendrils of smoke curling from where the crown rested against its scalp, before fixing its one eye on Ratchet. If looks could kill, the crazed inventor would have been nothing but a shadow burned into the floor. "Status understood... master."

Ratchet threw back his head and laughed triumphantly. "Excellent! Now, kill them! Protect me!"

"Those orders are contradictory," the robot declared flatly.

"Stupid machine! Fine, kill them! I'll see to my own safety!" Ratchet commanded, only to turn and run away for another door behind the dais.

"Hey! Get back here!" An affronted Ryoga shouted after the fleeing scientist.

"You shall not pass," the robot declared, scuttling to block the route like a giant mechanical crab. The chainsaw shot from the slit on her right arm and roared into life, fumes pouring from vents on the mechanical limb.

"If we gotta break you first, then so be it!" Ryoga spat, clenching and unclenching his fingers so hard that his knuckles audibly cracked.

He was about to go stride forward to the attack, only for Ranma to hold his arm in front of him.

"Ryoga. You go after that jerk. I'll handle her," Ranma declared, his gaze never leaving the glowing electric blue orb of his opponent.

"What? Have you hit your head again, Ranma?" Ryoga asked suspiciously.

"Look, she's not gonna let us get past, but she can only block one of us at a time. And, frankly, I think I'm better suited to fighting her than you," Ranma replied.

"Which of us learned the Bakusai Tenketsu?!" Ryoga demanded irritably.

"That's precisely my point - she's only after us because that jerk is making her do it - you take him down, she'll stop! After all this time and effort we spent getting her patched up, don'tcha think it's a waste to just blow her to pieces?" Ranma asked.

Ryoga opened his mouth to protest, then closed it sullenly. "...You gotta point."

"I'll keep her busy, you take care of Ratchet, okay? Now go - he's already got a head start!" Ranma ordered him.

Ryoga snarled, baring his fangs, then grumpily nodded and charged towards the door he'd seen Ratchet leave by.

The chainsaw-brandishing robot-girl immediately moved to intercept him, only for Ranma to charge forward, vault over Ryoga and launch himself in a flying kick square to the robot's barrel-like chest. Sparks flew as her spidery legs dug into the stony floor, gouging tracks as she bled off the momentum. By the time she'd regained control, Ryoga was running up the stairs, whilst Ranma was standing in a combat pose in front of her.

"C'mon then; I'm yer dance partner for now!" He declared, beckoning to her with a mocking curl of his fingers.

"Your parameters are acceptable," she stated, then skittered towards him, swinging her whirring chainsaw blade at his head.

Back down below...

Honki tugged on the two pull-rings installed on his powered armor's chestplate, building up the charge to launch a double-discharge from the cannons built into his back... which his targets proceeded to nimbly evade, resulting in his shots simply blowing a hole in the far wall.

"Damn you, stand still!" Honki bellowed furiously.

"Has that ever worked?" An incredulous Ukyo wondered, even as she lunged forward and tried to bludgeon Honki over the head with her spatula, forcing the bigger man to fend her off with his armored forearm.

"Not in all times Shampoo hear it," the ship's resident Zoan replied, springing forward in a roll across the ground that she turned into a double mule-kick right into Honki's stomach, launching him across the room and into one of the tables, crushing it flat in a shower of splinters and pulped food.

Across the room, Miriam was frantically backpedaling as Meiji charged after her with his bike, which had sprouted a pair of articulated mechanical arms tipped with whirring sawblades. Wotan hide or not, if he managed to get a good hit with those, he'd leave more than a mark!

The mohawked man cackled madly, his tongue lolling from his mouth in his eagerness to spill blood. "I'll cut you down to size!"

"Better men have tried!" Miriam spat in return. She leapt backward, landing on all fours like a great frog, and plunged her fingers into the stone floor, ripping up a great slab of rock and using it as a shield.

Meiji drove straight into it, grinding his heel into his accelerator and slamming both sawblades into the makeshift obstacle, stone dust and shards flying as the diamond-studded blades bit into it.

"That won't hold me forever!" He bragged.

"But it will hold you long enough!"

Like a bolt of lightning, Harumi sprang forward from where he had been hiding behind the crew's resident giantess, scrambling up her broad back with the agility of a monkey before vaulting over her shoulder and dropping down onto Meiji. The mad biker, recognizing the danger, tried to reangle his saw-arms, but the reaction was too slow; Harumi lopped off the mechanical limbs with deft strikes from his swords, then booted Meiji squarely in the face, punting him out of his bike's seat. The mohawked man hit the floor and rolled, momentarily stunned, only to glance up and see Miriam looming overhead, stone slab held between her hands. He didn't have time to scream before she broke it over his head, leaving him passed out cold in a heap of rubble

"One down," Harumi noted mildly, smiling his ever-present smile.

"Meiji! I always told you that bike was a stupid weapon!" Honki bellowed furiously.

"A suit of armor with no helmet isn't much better!"

That cry was Honki's only warning before Kodachi suddenly dropped onto him from behind, dashing a handful of chemical dust in his face before nimbly springing away before the flailing brute could grab her. He spun around, armored boots clanking, flailing wildly, but it was too little, too late as Kodachi's sleep powder went deep into his lungs. He toppled like a stricken oak, snoring even as his head hit the floor.

Kodachi smugly dusted off her hands. "And that, ladies, is that!"

"We could have beaten him," Ukyo flatly declared, slinging her battle spatula across her shoulders.

"Yes, but do you really want to be messing with the small fry whilst Ranma is dealing with the big boss upstairs?" Nabiki asked, having sat herself down by the dessert table whilst the rest of them were fighting and helping herself to some little cream cakes.

"Airen!" Shampoo yelped, ears flattening against her skull in guilt.

"Quickly, ladies, onwards!" Kodachi cried, brandishing her sword in a 'charge!' motion and sending them stampeding towards the stairs.

"Good luck!" Nabiki cried cheerfully behind them, waving them farewell with a hand that was still clutching a cake.

"You're coming too!" Kodachi barked, her whip snaking out and winding around Nabiki's wrist before the eldest of the Nerima girls found herself jerked to her feet and hastily jogging to catch up.

Meanwhile...

"Where am I now?!" Ryoga bellowed, taking in his surroundings. He was standing alone on a circular platform of stone, apparently the very top of Karakuri Castle, with a perfect view of the metallic cables that had leashed the giant turtle Shimagame and turned her into Ratchet's puppet vessel.

"...The roof? How'd I end up on the roof?! Damn it all, Ranma will never let me live this down!" Ryoga cried to the uncaring heavens.

"So... you abandoned your captain to die at the hands of my new soldier and ran to save yourself. How sad that now you shall die at my hands instead."

Ratchet's voice echoed all around Ryoga, the Eternally Lost Boy twisting and turning to try and catch a glimpse of him.

"Where are you? Show yourself!" He bellowed furiously in response.

A hatch suddenly slid open in the roof, allowing a platform to rise up from below, carrying a massive, hulking shape into the light of the evening sky. A massive mecha, a clunky but visibly humanoid form with a huge drill in its center, a great key spinning in its back, and mighty four-clawed pincer hands, now stood revealed, with Ratchet perched haughtily in the comparatively tiny control throne that made up its "head".

"Behold, dog of the sea; my most amazing creation, the power suit Iron Man No. 28! With its awesome might, I will crush you like a bug!" Ratchet cried, before cackling wildly in glee.

"Well, I admit, I'm not the biggest mecha fan, but I guess it's kinda cool," Ryoga replied, craning his neck from side to side until it cracked, then popping his knuckles in anticipation.

"Kinda cool?! Insufferable vermin, I will show you its power!" Ratchet cried, hands dancing across the controls of his mecha. One arm raised itself to point a disk-like hand at Ryoga.

"I'll believe it when I see it!" Ryoga jeered back.

And that was when small rocket thrusters around the upraised "wrist" suddenly roared into life, propelling the hand towards a startled Ryoga on the end of a metallic cable. The wide-eyed teen barely managed to throw himself to the side in time, causing the flying mechanical hand to sail past him before Ratchet pressed a button and it rapidly sailed backwards, snapping back into place.

"Well? Are you impressed yet?" Ratchet whooped in glee, already firing his mecha's other hand at Ryoga.

"Gimme a break! It takes more than some dumb rocket punch to beat me!" Ryoga scoffed, proving his point by backhanding the oncoming projectile fist and deflecting it harmlessly away before Ratchet recalled it.

"Is that so? Then let me show you what else Iron Man No. 28 can do!" Ratchet jeered, hands flashing across the controls.

The massive drill in the mecha's chest began to spin, slowly at first, but rapidly building speed, until it shrieked like a damned soul. The hulking humanoid machine shifted its stance, and then charged squarely at Ryoga like a runaway bull, aiming to impale him with its drill.

Had it been Ranma who was facing Ratchet, he would have immediately started trying to evade. Ryoga, on the other hand, simply hunkered down and braced himself, a grim expression on his face.

'Alright, time to see what my new and improved Bakusai Tenketsu training is worth!'

The Eternally Lost Boy met Iron Man No. 28's charge head-on, the impact sending him skidding backwards despite his best efforts, his heels gouging tracks in the stone surface of the roof-turned-floor beneath him.

Ratchet shrieked with laughter. "You see?! You are nothing before my Iron Man No.. 28! No...thing...?"

The young nobleman trailed off, his pupils dilating so far they were little more than pinpricks against the whites of his eyes, his jaw falling open in disbelief. At the far end of Iron Man No. 28's drill, Ryoga was stubbornly holding his ground, planted like a tree and holding the tip of the mecha's drill in his left hand. It wasn't entirely without consequence, as a thin stream of scarlet ran down the teenage pirate's wrist and dripped steadily onto the floor, but compared to the gory mush that should have been left, it might as well have been nothing.

"Is that your best?" Ryoga jeered, the pain making him draw his lips back just that little bit farther to bare his fangs, adding a hint of feral savagery to his scornful sneer.

"Im-Impossible!" Ratchet screeched in dismay.

"I'm just getting warmed up! Bakusai Tenketsu!" Ryoga bellowed back, before slamming his free hand into the side of the spinning drill. The initial blow left a dent in the solid steel, which began to spiderweb with cracks before violently exploding in a shower of shrapnel.

The backlash sent the mecha stumbling backwards, Ratchet yelping as he frantically tried to regain control before he overbalanced. But Ryoga didn't give him that chance, lunging forward and grabbing one upraised leg before heaving upright, sending Iron Man No. 28 toppelling over onto his back. Then, with a mighty battle cry, Ryoga shot forward and slammed a brutal punch squarely into what would have been the groin were he fighting a human opponent, splitting the mecha in half up the middle and causing it to fall apart into a cascade of broken pieces.

Casually tossing some of the larger scrap aside, Ryoga advanced on the cowering form of Ratchet, who tried desperately to crawl away.

"No! It's not fair! I was supposed to be king of the world!" whined the defeated mad scientist.

Later, Ryoga would kick himself for not being able to give a snappy one-liner in response. Instead, tired and sore, he grabbed Ratchet by his scarf and yanked him up to eye level before knocking him out cold with a swift, precisely brutal tap to the temple.

And in the control room...

'On the plus side, he didn't get her a gun...'

P-KOOM! P-KOOM!

'On the downside, he loaded her up with grenades!'

Such were the thoughts running through the mind of Ranma Saotome as he played 'keep-away' with the mechanical monster that Ratchet had repaired for him and subsequently turned against him. Although it was surprisingly fast for something that moved like a giant mechanical spider, Ranma was faster still and keeping out of the reach of that chainsaw wasn't so much of an issue... though not so little that Ranma was blase about it, having seen just what kind of damage that weapon could do against one of the dolls that still mindlessly stood around the room: one had suddenly wandered into the middle of their fight and the robot had chopped it down trying to catch Ranma.

'So glad they're just dolls, or that would have been another one for the nightmare pile...' Ranma absently mused as he leapt out of the blast radius of another grenade.

"Why do you persist? Why not flee? I do not have orders to pursue you!" the robot commented, in what almost sounded like a petulant tone.

"Why do you care?" Ranma shot back, unable to help himself, especially when he was legitimately curious.

"Because I do not desire your death, but I have been given no choice in the matter," came the blunt reply.

'Well, as soon as Ryoga takes care of Ratchet... wait, why am I waiting on Ryoga to do that? If he controlled her with that stupid crown, then I can take care of that myself!' Ranma's lips unconsciously curled into a smirk; despite his earlier words to his old friend turned rival turned sort of friend again, he never was the kind of guy to like letting other people do stuff for him.

"So be smart and depart, human! You cannot outrun me forever, nor can you defeat me!" the robot - whom it was getting harder and harder for Ranma to think of as 'just a robot' in the face of what was so obviously a personality - insisted.

"Lady, you have no idea what I'm capable of," Ranma shot back.

"I am not a lady," the robot replied.

Continuing as if she hadn't spoken, Ranma declared, "But I think I'll show you!" and launched himself right at her.

Credit where credit was due, the thinking machine reacted without hesitation, her one arm snapping towards Ranma in a brutally powerful arc that should have plucked Ranma's head from his shoulders as neatly as a daisy... But then encountered the little problem that Ranma didn't exactly operate according to the normal laws of physics. Ranma vaulted into the air as the chainsaw came screaming towards him, landing for just an instant on the flat of the blade before using it as a springboard to launch himself right into the robot's startled face. His legs wrapped around her throat, anchoring him as he reached out and grabbed the shock-crown on her scalp.

As soon as he touched it, he realized he'd made a mistake. High voltage electricity surging up your fingers and under your skin tended to get to the point quite quickly. Man and machine screamed in unison as the crown electrocuted them both, not particularly helped by the fact that Ranma had inadvertently made himself a perfect circuit. A normal man would have fallen insensate to the ground at the robot's many spidery feet and been summarily dispatched...

A good thing that Ranma was no normal man, by any stretch of the term. He fought through the pain, screaming as much in defiance as in agony, and dug his fingers tightly into the intricate lattice of metal before yanking with all his might. Fortunately, as construction went, it wasn't on par with Mr. Green Turtle's memory metal shock collar, and it instead came apart with all the resistance of a well-soaked ramen noodle, causing a startled and still half-electrocuted Ranma to overbalance and fall backwards onto the floor, where he lay momentarily stunned and panting for breath.

'Oh...kay... that sucked more than it was supposed to...' he mentally moaned, even as his brain rebooted.

As the last of the voltage finally earthed itself into the stone at his back and he could see straight again, he found himself staring up at the business end of a chainsaw. An idling chainsaw, admittedly, and not the screaming implement of bloody murder that he'd been facing beforehand, but still, it was the kind of thing that got his attention.

"You freed me... why?!" demanded the machine with the face of a woman.

"Would you rather I have ripped yer head off?" Ranma unthinkingly replied.

"No, I require that to sustain function," The robot dryly observed.

"...Was that a joke?" Ranma asked incredulously, only to be greeted with silence and the flattest stare he'd seen since that one time when he was thirteen and there had been that incident with the can of too-strong-for-him sake and the shop mannequin... He realized she was still staring at him, and dragged his thoughts back to the present.

'Maybe that shock hit me a little harder than I thought...'

Keeping that to himself, he added, "Look, you were only willing to fight me because that jerk could zap you if you refused. I figured remove the goad, you remove his control, so you and I don't need to fight anymore!"

The chain of teeth on the saw finally stopped spinning entirely, a second before it slid back into its slot, the robot lowering her arm and stepping away as she said, "Your logic is acceptable."

Ranma painfully climbed to his feet, absently aware of the rest of his crew storming into the control room behind him and Ryoga stomping his way down the stairs past the robot, dragging a semi-conscious Ratchet by the ankle as he came, but all of his attention was focused on the robot.

"So... what happens now?" He asked cautiously.

"Query unclear. Please elaborate," the robot announced.

"I mean... where are you gonna go now? What're ya gonna do?" he elaborated.

The robot stared at him, and that had to be an uncertain look on her all-too-human face! "You... would let me decide?"

"I ain't exactly big on forcin' people to do stuff they don't wanna do," Ranma scoffed.

"I am not a person," the robot replied.

"You talk, you have your own opinions, you think for yourself... you certainly ain't one of those things!" Ranma declared bluntly, pointing at the mindless maid-dolls still standing around awaiting orders."So, yeah... what'dya want to do now?" He asked.

"I...want... to go home," the robot softly confessed, looking surprisingly vulnerable for the bastard lovechild of a spider and a tank with a woman's head sticking out of it.

"And where's home, exactly?" Nabiki asked, making Ranm jump in surprise as he was reminded that he wasn't alone anymore.

"...Memory banks... clouded. But I remember... the sky," the robot proclaimed, in the same soft, hesitant voice as before.

"Huh, I didn't know it was possible to steer by the stars in the Grand Line," Ranma commented, scratching his head.

The robot shook her own in response. "Clarification; I don't remember the sky over my home... I remember that my home was in the sky..."

The room went quiet at that, all eyes fixed on the robot. Ranma glanced over at his crewmates, who all looked about as surprised as he did on hearing that, before he looked back at the mechanical girl.

"Well in that case... would you like a lift?" He asked her.

She looked at him, and that was definitely surprise on her face, despite an attempt to hide it. "...Query?"

"Look, we're exploring the Grand Line to find this legendary treasure called the One Piece. We're going to be going all over the place, and in case you weren't aware, the Grand Line is a pretty weird place. Case in point," he gestured to the enormous turtle's head visible through the now-cracked window.

"If there's a way to get to the sky anywhere on this sea, we'll probably find it... heck, now that you've told us it's possible, I kinda want to go exploring the sky at some point too. So, whaddya say? You wanna tag along with us?" He concluded.

"You... would permit this?" she asked warily.

"Why not? What's one more weirdo on a crew fulla freaks?" Ranma declared, a self-deprecatory smirk on his lips as he did so. "I mean, this won't be a pleasure cruise, you'll have to pull your weight, but I got no problem with letting you come along."

The robot slowly blinked her one good eye. "Your commentary, as coarse as it is, contains solid logic. It would be easier to make the journey in company, and easier still to make it with individuals who show no blatant hostility towards a non-human entity. Very well. Your recommendation is acceptable."

"Alright, then! Now, let's figure out how to shut this stupid turtle-piloting thing off... hey, you got a name?" he suddenly asked.

"Query?"

"Well, we can't just call ya 'robot' or 'hey you'!" Ranma scoffed.

Another slow blink, and the robot slowly nodded. "Call me... Dyna."

Chapter End & Closing Notes

And so, we have a new recruit! Only two more are planned, but I hope you'll enjoy them all in the end. And don't worry; I haven't forgotten the "need to train more" or "Nabiki needs a Devil Fruit" plot threads yet! Actually, talking about future developments...

At some point, this fic is going to adapt the Rainbow Mist arc, and as part of that, we'll be having our heroes meet up with themselves - or, rather, parallel versions of themselves from several alternate dimensions. But... I could use a hand from you readers before I reach that arc.

The first alternate is simple; what if all the Nerimans became Mythic Zoan users? I have two requests for this alternate: should they be the Hyakki Yagyo Pirates, with all Japanese & Chinese-based Mythic Zoans, or the Ragnarok Pirates, with Nordic-based Mythic Zoans? Suggestions for which Zoans to give Ranma, Ryoga, Nabiki, Kodachi, Shampoo and Ukyo depending on your preferred version would be much appreciated!

The second alternate is: what if Kodachi's plan worked, and thus only she and Ranma (and Umok!) were zapped to the Grand Line? For this one, I need suggestions for crewmates; they can be canon One Piece characters, OCs, or a combination of the two. Currently, the only crewmate idea I have is Gin.

The third alternate is: what if Ranma ended up in the Grand Line alone with just Umok for company? Again, I need crew suggestions for this alternate - and yes, this Ranma having an entirely new accidental harem is perfectly okay!

The fourth alternate is: what if Mousse was to blame? Basically, rather than an accident with Kodachi, instead Mousse tried to bump Ranma off with a magical trinket, and instead zapped Ranma, Shampoo, Cologne and Kasumi to the Grand Line (with or without some analogue to Umok). For this one, I'm open to suggestions for crewmates, if Ranma should have more girls after him than just Shampoo and Kasumi, whether Shampoo should be cured or have a Zoan Fruit like her "canonical" counterpart, and what Devil Fruit to give to Kasumi - I'm currently leaning towards either the Western Dragon Zoan or the Jiangshi Zoan. I will say I'm biased towards a Mythic or Ancient Zoan for Kasumi, because those bestial instincts seem to me the best thing she could get to help her survive on the Grand Line, but I'm open to all suggestions. I'm also leaning towards giving Shampoo her own Mythic Zoan, even if it's just the Moon Bunny zoan that Nelson was looking for way back in chapter 6, just to keep her on more of an equal footing with Kasumi.

Lastly, we have the "coin flip" alternate - what if Shampoo was cured by Umok instead of becoming a Zoan, what if Ryoga ate the seagull Zoan, etc. No real help needed here.