Author's Notes: Reviews were surprisingly sparse for the last chapter, but I'm glad folks seemed to enjoy it! Especially Mr Miliardo! Also, here's a challenge; there's homages in this chapter to the Neverending Story cartoon from the 90s and to D&D 4th edition's core setting. Can anyone figure them out? Consider me impressed if you can!
Tellemicus, there's actually no more plans for any new recruits. Since nobody voted off Penelope or Lilith, the Kamikaze Pirates are now currently at their full complete size... what? The Straw Hats are only about 10 members in total, barring any last-minute official additions during the Final Saga, the Kamikaze Pirates don't need to be much bigger...
Chapter 30: The Great Museum Fire
"Ah... z'ere is being nothing like ze museum, non? Ze gathering of knowledge ancient and recent in one place, put on display for ze edification of all... it is tre magnifique!"
Penelope's eyes glittered with excitement, her veiled lips curled into a huge grin; if she hadn't strapped it up against her back and under her shirt, her tail would have been wagging with her joy at their choice of venue.
Such enthusiasm couldn't be said for her companion. Dyna simply stared at the gathered displays of artifacts with her usual expression of indifference, ignoring the uneasy glances and muttered whispering from the other visitors as they beheld the hissing, clanking, mechanical monster.
"Query; why was this unit selected to accompany you? Would the organic members of the crew not have made a more logical choice?"
"Non, non, mademoiselle Dyna! You must not be putting yourself down! I simply wished to enjoy some time with you and moi, is it not so?" The mink protested, a hand demurely raised to her breast in a gesture of wounded innocence.
It turned out that Dyna could look even colder, her one eye burning bright blue as she stared into Penelope's soul.
"The other units of this crew were all busy, affirmative?" Came the dry, deadpan response.
Penelope winced. "Well... ze captain and his girlfriends were discussing ze date day... and Miriam and 'arumi were doing ze same. Ryoga is practicing his Bakusai Tenketsu on island-cloud, and Umok said something about visiting ze library, and Lilith... well, she went out, and I was not bold enough to ask where. She is being beautiful, yes, but I admit, zat woman is also being trop effrayant, non?"
"This unit was all that was available, then. Logical," Dyna calmly assessed, eye-shine diminishing.
"Non! You were being my first pick regardless!" Penelope insisted, instinctively reaching out and grabbing the fembot by her mechanical arm.
"...Query?" Came the slow, almost hesitant response from Dyna.
"Please do not misunderstand me; I am loving being here just for what it can tell me about the history of the White-White Sea. But I am also here looking for clues to your home, and without you, how could I know them?" Penelope asked even as she released the fembot and shrugged her shoulders.
Dyna simply stared at her, eye-shine flickering like a candle in the wind, before quietly asking, "...Why?"
"Je suis désolé? Pardon my Fraucen, I meant to be saying, I'm sorry?" The confused mink tilted her head, looking in confusion at Dyna's face, trying to read the subtle hints on her doll-like features.
"Why do you care? Why do any of you care about the mad dream of a broken machine?" Dyna demanded, her eye blazing and steam whistling from her vents, the sound drawing a handful of reproachful hisses from those less concerned with self-preservation.
Penelope simply stared levelly into Dyna's eyes, slowly inhaling and then exhaling before she spoke.
"...I will not presume to be speaking for ze rest of ze crew, but as for moi? I am not viewing you as...as... some kind of glorified screwdriver! And I sincerely doubt ze others do, either! Secondly... I care about your dream because I understand it."
"...Illogical," Dyna slowly replied, but even by her standards, there was no real heat in the denial.
Penelope glanced around, seeing that none were apparently trying to listen in on their little discussion. "Can you be keeping a secret?"
"This unit possesses that function, affirmative," Dyna folded her arms across her barrel-like chest, a hint of sarcasm in her dry, monotonous voice.
"...I love my parents. Believe me, I am loving them with all of my heart. But... I was the only mink in Frauce - in the whole of the East Blue. I know what it is being like, to be the only one; the outcast. The reject. The freak. I studied archaeology at the Great Academy of Frauce for many reasons... but first of all was being to learn more about myself, about where I am coming from. And do you know what I am learning there? Almost nothing. There is being more on ze fishmen then there is on ze minks... and what they tell about fishmen would fit in a pamphlet," Penelope noted, with visible disdain.
"All I could be finding was that minks live on an island somewhere in ze New World..."
"...And that is why you came to the Grand Line. To find your people," Dyna slowly replied, her eye-shine dwindling to the faintest glow.
"There are being other reasons - I am still an archaeologist, non? - but to find ze homeland of ze minks, to learn about my people, to discover if maybe there is still blood of my blood in this world..." Penelope sighed longingly.
Dyna couldn't nod - the articulation of her body didn't really permit such a human gesture. But she still bobbed her torso back and forth in as close an imitation as she could get. "This unit... I... offer apologies. You do understand..."
"To a lesser degree, I will concede. After all, I know there are other minks in this world..." Penelope sighed again, before shaking her head in dismissal. "But we cannot be giving up hope, non? If we continue to poke and pry, to delve and explore, then eventually, we will find that all-important clue. Such is the foundation of archaeology, non?"
"...A reasonable argument. After all, we will not simply randomly stumble into a clue leading us to my homeland, after all," The fembot conceded.
"The new exhibit is closed? Aw, man - I wanted to take a look!" Complained a random sky-islander from further up the hall.
"Don't tell me you believe that nonsense about there being some ancient lost sky-island called Hestavar?" Scoffed his buddy.
Island-cloud had a lot of properties in common with stone, starting with the obvious physical durability, but there were some key differences. One of the more prominent being the relatively muted acoustics; island-cloud tended to absorb noise. As such, rather than an unholy clattering as Dyna suddenly lurched towards the duo as fast as her spidery body could carry her, it was more a soft, irregular thumping. The sudden whistling shriek of steam blasting from her vents more than made up for it, though, causing them to almost leap out of their skin in shock.
"Clarification demanded! Query Hestavar exhibit!" Dyna's face wasn't very emotive, but her voice was snarling, and both men's faces went white as a newly watched sheet... Although that might have something to do with the gatling gun she was brandishing in their direction.
"I-i-it's some kind of box of old scrolls! Belongs to Lord Pomplemuse! Said to prove the existence of the lost sky-island of Hestavar!" They babbled in near-unison.
"Dyna! What's gotten into you?! You can't just be threatening random people!" Penelope yanked the gynoid's gun-arm away, mink muscles curling with inhuman power as she bodily dragged Dyna back, giving the civilians a chance to run.
Dyna didn't even look at her, single eye staring off into nothingness as she moaned in the most mournful tones that Penelope had ever heard from her. "Home..."
"Pardon?"
"I remember... Home... So much data, still corrupted, but key files are now restored... Hestavar! Hestavar is my home!" Dyna said, and in that simple declaration was untold years of pent-up hope, despair and loneliness finally boiling to the surface.
Then she stopped, her single porcelain eyelid gently sliding back and forth across her glassy eye. "...Why are you hugging this unit?"
"Because I am being so happy for you, idiote! We are finally having a real clue to your home! We must be be seeing these scrolls, right now!" Penelope cheered, the back of her shirt rippling in an uncanny manner as she instinctively tried to wag the long, fluffy tail that she had stuffed up under it.
"But the exhibit is now closed," Dyna pointed out.
"Ce n'est pas grave! Don't forget, I am being a fully licensed archaeologist, a graduate from ze Royal Academy of Frauce! They will be happy to let a fellow academic examine the exhibit in private, you will see!"
Minutes later...
"Absolutely not!" Thundered the museum director, a Mister Hans Hasenpfeffer. He was an older man, whose spindly limbs were at odds with his almost spherical body, which he had squeezed into a frumpy tweed jacket. He had a heavy-jowled face whose flabby lips were curled into a disdainful sneer, thinning white hair vainly combed over his slightly pointed forehead in a desperate attempt to obscure his baldness. A huge handlebar mustache had clearly become fixated upon as a replacement symbol of masculinity, but even it failed to disguise his blotchy, rotten beetroot of a nose and the weak, watery gray eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses that he doubtlessly thought made him look stern and severe.
"...Quoi?" Came the dumbfounded response from Penelope, who was sitting politely on the (very uncomfortable) chair that had been provided to her, with Dyna looming ominously behind her.
"The ancient scrolls of Hestavar were entrusted to this museum for restoration and a brief display to the public by none other than Lord Pomplemuse himself! Our lease of them has expired, and they are to be returned to him first thing tomorrow morning - I can't be letting some random riffraff rifle through them!" Blustered director Hasenpfeffer, steepling his fingers in front of him like a pair of spiders locked in a conjugal duel.
Penelope politely bowed her head, putting on her most winning voice.
"But sir, I am not being some 'random riffraff'! I am being a fully accredited archaeologist, with my doctorate in ancient texts in particular! Here are being my credentials..."
She handed to him a carefully folded set of papers from a waterproof pouch tucked away in one of the interior pockets of her jacket. Director Hasenpfeffer took them and looked them over, adjusting his spectacles with one hand before sneering and tossing them roughly onto his desk - genuine wood, and obviously a bragging symbol.
"Bah! As if I would trust documentation from some backwater mudball from the Blue Sea world! Besides, were you not seen disembarking from that pirate ship that weighed anchor in our harbor this morning? The ancient scrolls of Hestavar are far too precious to be trusted to such grubby hands as yours! Take your papers and remove yourself from my office this instant, you smelly woman!"
Penelope instinctively snatched up the papers and stuffed them back into their concealment, even as she protested, "You can't just - smelly? Smelly!? Why, you bâtard suceur d'œufs gonflé, I'll-!"
"Withdraw to the ship," Dyna dully interjected, snatching up Penelope by her jacket's collar with her clunky cybernetic crab's claw and hoisting her into the air before starting to skitter towards the door.
"Put me down! Dyna! You can't do this!" Penelope protested, waving her arms in an instinctive, if futile, attempt to break free of the fembot's grip. She was carried effortlessly out through the door; though she managed to grab onto the edge, all she achieved was to pull it shut, forcing her to release it before it slammed shut on her fingers.
"Diplomacy has failed us. It is time to turn to other measures... We shall consult the captain," Dyna announced in her usual monotone.
"...Oh. Yes, that is making sense," Penelope conceded, ceasing her struggles."...Um... You can be putting me down now, though... Please?"
That evening...
"Why, that bloated piece of rancid pork!" Snarled Kodachi, echoing the sentiment around the galley table now that Penelope had finished recounting her earlier misadventures.
"Why you not beat him up and take scrolls?" Shampoo demanded.
"This unit thought it ill-advised to begin conflict with this island without the captain's orders," Dyna stated simply.
"...Oh. Yes, that is good point," Shampoo conceded.
"Yer absolutely certain that this box is from yer homeland, Dyna?" Ranma asked, steepling his hands like that one guy from this anime he'd seen about the wussiest giant robot pilot he'd ever imagined... Though, with a dad like that, Ranma could honestly sympathize a little. What was the prick's name again? Sounded kind of like 'Gendo'?
"Affirmative. This unit... I... I cannot describe what it is like to have files uncorrupted, but when I heard that word... It was like clarity after spending so, so long in a daze..."
Ranma nodded solemnly, eyes closed and arms folded across his chest. "Then the answer is obvious. I'll sneak into the place tonight and take the box; this Pomplemuse prick doesn't deserve it, an' neither does this Hasen-whatsit guy."
'Wow, I haven't the heart to tell him he looks so much like his daddy when he does that,' Nabiki privately observed.
"You... You mean it, captain Saotome?" Dyna asked, her voice almost a whisper.
"I've said it before, I'll say it again; yer part of the crew, Dyna. We stick up for each other! Because, like it or not, we're all we got," came the firm, fiery-eyed response.
"Well said, my darling! And on that note, I will add one alteration to your plan; we will be making the heist tonight," Kodachi declared.
"What?! I can't ask -" Ranma started, only for Kodachi to sharply cut him off.
"Going into an unfamiliar building on a stealth mission with no prior study is the definition of risky! You need backup on a mission like this, and of us all, I am the one who comes the closest to matching you in stealth! No offense, girls."
"None taken," Ranma's pseudo-harem chorused dryly in response, but despite the sarcastic edge to their voices, each realized that she couldn't really disagree with Kodachi's assessment.
Ranma grimaced, lips moving as if he'd bitten into a lemon, but finally he sighed and nodded. "Alright then, you and me, tonight. So, before we start; what can you tell us about what we should be looking for, Penelope...?"
"Unfortunately, I am not having ze chance to see ze box of scrolls with mine own eyes, alas. All I can be telling you is that it would be in the rear of ze museum, where ze storage is kept..."
"And you can't tell us anything about that, as you haven't seen it," Ranma concluded.
"It is being so, sadly," The skunkette sighed forlornly.
"Ain't yer fault. We'll do just fine winging it," he assured her.
"I can use the Bakusai Tenketsu on island-cloud with no problems now. Why not just smash-and-grab?" Ryoga interjected from where he had been sipping his cup of sweetened citrus juice.
"That'd bring a lot more trouble down on our heads than a clean, surgical retrieval," Nabiki pointed out, guzzling down a tankard full of something very red, rivulets of crimson running down her cheeks and over her chin to drip onto her breasts from the sheer enthusiasm of her drinking, and everybody else pointedly not looking.
"Exactly, so it's a last resort. Kodachi an' me will be in and out of there, no worries, you'll see," Ranma confidently proclaimed, pointing his thumb at himself for emphasis.
Around midnight...
The widespread availability of light dials meant that Yskalmerie Island's streets after dark were lit up in a way that reminded Ranma and Kodachi far more of Tokyo than any of the villages they'd seen down on the Grand Line. Not that this stopped the two martial artists turned thieves in the slightest. They were virtually invisible as they moved through the darkness, zipping between the shadows and leaping in soaring arcs from rooftop to rooftop.
The Great Museum of Yskalmerie loomed ahead of them, but they never even slowed in their break-neck advance, hurtling up its sides as easily as if they were horizontal to begin with. Only the large skylight that crowned the museum's main hall remained as an obstacle between them and the museum's interior... and it might as well have not been there for all it troubled them.
"I wonder if this is real glass, or some kind of local substitute?" Ranma mused absently, reaching out and running his fingers across the surface, a ki-infused fingernail slicing through the crystal like a hot knife through butter as he cut them an entryway.
"They do seem to do truly remarkable things with island-cloud," Kodachi observed absently, more interested in admiring the play of muscles under Ranma's shirt by the light of the moon as he caught the disk of glass before it could fall inward and shatter, lifted it out and placed it gently aside.
It was a twelve meter drop from the roof to the floor, but Ranma and Kodachi had been making such descents since before they measured their age in double digits. They casually stepped into the hole and fell to the floor, landing so gently that even if the floor had been real marble, there wouldn't have been a whisper of an impact. Silently, the two took in their surroundings, looking for any hint of an alarm system or a nightwatchman that they might have missed during their observation through the skylight. Seeing nothing, they set off.
'Never was a museum type of guy... don't see what Penelope finds so fascinating about the place. Just looks like a bunch of old pottery an' junk... some bones, critters in pickling jars... some books here an' there... well, I guess the paintings are kind'a nice?'
The museum was almost disappointingly empty of any major threat or challenge as the two martial artists turned pirates turned thieves sped through its halls like a pair of ghosts. As Penelope had suggested, they headed for the building's rear, the most obvious place for the storage rooms, and within moments all that stood in their way was the door.
A large set of double-doors, clearly constructed with ease of access in mind for when the museum was adding or removing large exhibits, stood taller than either of the Kamikaze Pirates, a keyhole in the door substituting for something as primitive as a lock and chain. Not that either would have held out for long in the face of Ranma, who took a handle in either hand and pulled with all his considerable might...
And promptly smacked himself in the face as the doors flew open without any resistance in the slightest. He spat a curse and staggered back, clutching his face and grimacing in pain.
"It's not locked? That's not normal," Kodachi observed patiently, ignoring Ranma as he continued to hiss and mutter curses beside her.
"Must be a night watchman back there. C'mon, let's go," Ranma said, wiping away the last of the blood from where he'd cut his lip on his own teeth.
The storerooms were... well, honestly, nothing to really talk about. An enormous hall that had been turned into a makeshift labyrinth of shelving and crates, with only the absence of dust proving that people regularly bothered to interact with this part of the building.
'Where to start looking... this could be like finding a needle in a haystack...' Ranma mused to himself. 'Ah well, only thing we can do is pick a direction and go!'
Ten minutes later...
"This is getting ridiculous... have these people never heard of organizing?!" Kodachi grumbled, ducking under a stuffed creature that looked like a cross between a crab and a squid.
"I'll say... we might have to find the night watchman and take them hostage just to find what we're looking for," Ranma groused.
They turned down an L-shaped corridor between the shelves, and found themselves face to face with the first sign of life they'd seen since entering the museum. A short, stocky man with a sharp, hooked beak of a nose and a blocky face turned dark with five o'clock stubble blinked at them in surprise, working the stub of a thick, unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth. Next to him stood a tall, lanky man with overly large hands adorned with a tattoo that matched a design emblazoned on his forehead, a long, slimy-looking tongue dangling obscenely from the corner of his mouth.
"...Huh. They dress their janitors up real good in this place," Ranma blurted, taking in the tailored suit that each stranger was wearing - black-and-white pinstriped for the short man, magenta with a yellow cravat and a black coat being worn like a cape for the tall man.
"Oh, hardy-har, wise-guy," sneered the shorter stranger. "You two obviously ain't the night watchmen either."
"We're just looking for something ourselves - no need for a fight," Ranma assured him, holding his hands up to emphasize they were open and devoid of any weapon. Of course, Ranma's hands were a deadly weapon in their own right, but most pirates seemed to not recognize that at first.
"Oh yeah? And just what you might be after?" Cigar-chomper replied, working the unlit tobacco stick from one side of his mouth to the other.
"Box full of old scrolls belonging to some stuck-up jerk named Lord Pomplemuse," Ranma casually admitted, shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly as he did.
The short man just stared at him in confusion, as if he couldn't believe that Ranma would just play along with him like that. "What, like dis one here?"
He held up a small treasure chest, maybe a foot across at the most, with the characters "Hestavar Scrolls" burned into the woodwork, and Ranma's and Kodachi's eyes went wide in shock.
"You found it! Can we have it?"
The stranger simply rolled his eyes, even as his lanky companion let out a strange "Nyororo" sort of sound, evidently some kind of laugh. "Fuhgeddabahtit! If nothing else, these babies will make me somethin' on the black market to make up for this waste of a trip. Why would I give these to youse? Ain't like youse is gonna give me what I want!"
"And what do ya want?" Ranma immediately asked him.
"I want Lord Pomplemuse's family jewels!" Came the gruff reply.
The two teens turned matching expressions of disgust on the shorter thief, and even his taller companion looked a little put out by the wording, prompting the cigar-chomping burglar to roll his eyes in a put-upon manner.
"Ain't like dat, ya bums! I mean his actual family jewels! He sent them here ta get polished! Little chest like dis worth."
Kodachi looked thoughtful for a moment, and then demurely thumped her fist into her palm in realization. "Pray, give me a moment."
Before anyone could speak, she had disappeared into the shadows so quickly she simply seemed to evaporate like a reflection in a disturbed pond. And then, a heartbeat later, she reappeared, now cradling a small chest in her arms.
"Is this what you desired?" She asked in her most innocent terms, even as she lifted the lid. Sure enough, it was filled with rings and necklaces - nothing too fancy, compared to some of the stuff Ranma had stolen from other pirates even in the East Blue, but considering where they were, they probably were quite an impressive haul.
"...Yeah, dat's what I'm here for alright," came the wary response.
Ranma held out a hand, and Kodachi closed the chest before placing it on his outstretched palm.
"Here ya go."
Even as Ranma was speaking, he casually lobbed the chest at their fellow burglars. The taller thief snatched the chest from the air with a single massive, apeish hand, whilst his smaller companion stared at Ranma with naked surprise.
"Why'd youse...?"
Ranma shrugged nonchalantly. "Why not? We don't want it, and this Lord Pomplemuse guy sounds like a real jerk, so if you want it, go ahead and take it."
The cigar did another circuit of the stubble-shaded mouth before the small thief's lips quirked into a crooked smile and he barked out a single short laugh. "Ha! Youse alright, kid. Well, I suppose since youse did me a solid, I can do youse one too... it'd be a real pain in the ass to find somebody ta fence these old scrolls off on anyway, probably wouldn't even make any money worthwhile..."
He traded his chest for the one that the tall, leering man was carrying, chewing on his cigar before he added, "What crew do youse run with, anyway? I'm da don of da Firetank Pirates, Capone Bege, an' this is my advisor, Vito."
"I'm Captain Ranma Saotome of the Kamikaze Pirates, an' this is Kodachi Kuno," Ranma politely replied, with Kodachi even sketching a formal bow that showed her noble roots.
Bege suddenly froze, his smile melting away instantly into a cold-eyed scowl. "...Da Kamikaze Pirates? Da crew what took down da Sisterhood of da Golden Serpent? Da kids what cost me a small fortune in guns?!"
Ranma and Kodachi froze, eyes widening in shock as Bege's vengeful tones rolled over them like a verbal wave. Then Ranma's shoulders slumped and he sighed mournfully. "Why do I keep bothering with this diplomacy stuff?"
"Because you're a good person," Kodachi assured him, reaching out to place a conciliatory hand on his shoulder.
Bege snarled and held out his free hand imperiously in their direction. Suddenly, his palm unhinged itself, swinging downward like a portcullis to reveal a cluster of at least half a dozen tiny men - all of them armed with rifles that they were pointing squarely at the two teenagers. The sight was bizarre enough that Ranma and Kodachi were still staring in shock even as the Lilliputian gangster-pirates opened fire on them.
Unfortunately for the Devil Fruit user, Ranma wasn't that easy to get rid of. The young martial artist turned pirate captain became a vaguely human blur, hands flashing through the air at impossible speeds. When the barrage ended and the smoke cleared, Ranma still stood there, completely unharmed, smirking at his opponent, his arms folded across his chest into an X-shape.
"I think ya dropped these," he jeered, spreading his arms and opening his hands to let the bullets he'd caught cascade onto the floor. Which, being made of island-cloud, denied him the satisfactory tinkle of lead on stone that a proper granite or even concrete floor would have done.
Bege chewed his cigar, eyes following the tumbling bullets before snapping back to Ranma. "Well, I guess dat's how you took down them crazy broads."
"Nyororo! But it doesn't mean much if you can't watch your back while you're doing it-lelo!"
Ranma twisted with a snarl, feeling the blood boil in his veins as he saw a seething Kodachi pinned against the lanky form of Vito, who had an oversized pistol pointed squarely at Kodachi's temple.
The Firetank Pirate's tongue lolled obscenely out of the corner of his grinning mouth as he laughed at Ranma's rage. "Nyororo! You should have remembered you were playing with the big boys, kid-lelo! Got any last words-lelo?"
As the pirates of the Grand Line were slowly learning, there were certain rules about facing off against the Kamikaze Pirates. Don't let Ryoga Hibiki get a grip on you. Never punch Miriam in the mouth (even if she will say sorry afterwards). Don't call Ukyo a "flatchested one-note cook". You really don't want to pull Shampoo's ears. For the love of whatever god you believe in, don't de-pants Penelope. And Vito had just broken one of the more crucial ones... don't give Ranma Saotome a verbal opening.
"You look like an extra from a budget porno flick. The kind where everyone gets tested afterwards. Even the cameraman!"
Vito's jaw dropped in sheer shock. Even Kodachi looked amazed at Ranma's insult. From behind, Ranma heard tiny little voices drifting through the silence.
"Oh my god, somebody finally said it!"
"Shaddap, Vinnie!"
Vito's teeth snapped together so tight it was a minor miracle he didn't bite his tongue off, face going purple with rage.
"Why, you little wise-guy!" He snarled, snapping the hand-cannon around to point at Ranma.
And by doing so, he broke a second rule. If you have a Kamikaze Pirate within their arm's length of you, whatever you do, don't take your eyes off of them. Especially if it's one of the women, and you're threatening Ranma in front of them.
"Corpse Bouquet!"
Thick, oily, purple-black smoke suddenly exploded outwards as Kodachi snatched a black rose from her hidden arsenal and crushed it, enveloping her and Vito before rushing out to engulf Ranma and Bege as well. With the smoke came an unbelievably foul smell, hitting him in the nostrils with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the face. Hot tears flooded from his agonized eyes, his throat burning as the greasy tendrils of miasma clawed their way into his lungs. Fortunately for Ranma, this wasn't his first exposure to this particular technique. Not even his tenth. And familiarity had bred a certain resistance. Enough that he could smile as he listened to the distinct song of pain from within the cloud's epicenter as Kodachi first dislocated Vito's elbow and then mulekicked him squarely in the crotch.
Even as the first of the Firetank Pirates crumpled to the floor in agony, Ranma was already spinning to face their leader, who was choking and spluttering in disgust, vainly pawing at the fumes in a desperate attempt to wave them from his face and give himself some clean air to breathe.
"Yoink!"
Ranma snatched the precious chest containing the clues to Dyna's homeland from Bege's slack fingers, then ran for the door, Kodachi at his side. Gunshots echoed behind them, but the bullets whistled harmlessly past them, the thick cloud with its noxious stench making accuracy all but impossible for the Firetank Pirates - even the tiny ones within Bege's body were affected, as they had to be exposed to the smoke to make an attack in the first place.
The two martial pirates (or was it pirate artists?) streaked through the winding halls of the museum's storerooms and back-chambers, forgoing stealth for pure speed. They vaulted over, waved around and ducked under various obstacles as they presented it, taking the breakneck pace as casually as a stroll through the park.
"That stuff smelled worse than usual! You change the formula, Kodachi?" Ranma asked conversationally, jinking his head to the side in mid-stride to avoid being impaled on the tusk of a badly stuffed eel-thing.
"As a matter of fact, yes! Penelope was so kind as to give me some of her musk to experiment with," Kodachi proudly explained, even as she vaulted over the stub of a broken stone obelisk of some type.
And then a gunshot rang out from behind them, the bullet reducing a rather ugly vase to a shower of pulverized pottery. Kodachi scowled, even as she continued to run.
"Evidently, I still need to refine the ratio in the formula..."
More bullets began to fly, the crack-crack-crack of rifles counter-chorused by splintering wood and shattering clay as they whistled past the two running teens and vented their fury on the shelving and bric-a-brac surrounding them.
"Where did these assholes come from?!" Ranma demanded, even as he continued to run.
"Clearly, our foe's Devil Fruit has quite the array of abilities!" Kodachi observed absently, keeping pace with Ranma in their mutual flight.
Reversing their course was easy for the two martial artists, even with the distraction of being fired upon as they ran. Guided by the famous martial artist's sixth sense, they twisted and swerved with uncanny timing, causing bullets to fly past them, mostly harmless. The few that did get close were deflected with impossible blows, Ranma literally swatting them like flies and, in one case that he would forever deny was a lucky fluke, sending a bullet ricocheting back to strike the shooter.
In a chaotic flurry of seconds, Ranma and Kodachi burst through the door into the backrooms and sprinted into the front portion of the museum. With the freedom to finally exploit their speed and agility to their full potential, they at last turned to see their pursuers.
Dozens of men clad in surprisingly nice suits, coats and fedoras poured out of the backrooms like bees spilling from a disturbed hive, the unmistakable forms of Capone Bege and Vito at the center of the swarm. The tall advisor's perpetual grin seemed just that little bit extra toothy, whilst the pirate don's disapproving scowl could have burned a hole in the hull of a Marine warship, given time.
"End of da road, punks... You shouldn't oughta stuck your noses into my business..."
"Oh, please - you idiots couldn't hit us when we were in those tunnels, what makes you think you can hit us now?" Ranma jeered right back. There were very few people who could intimidate Ranma, and Capone Bege wasn't even in the top ten.
"Talk is cheap, wise guy!" Sneered Bege, who snapped his fingers. With, frankly, better discipline than many of the marines that Ranma and Kodachi had fought to get this far into the Grand Line, the Firetank Pirates snapped up their rifles into a proper firing line before they opened up on the two teenagers.
Ranma seemed to become a vaguely human-shaped blur, hands moving so fast that they seemed to ignore the interstitial spaces as he snatched bullets from the air, torso jinking back and forth at impossible speeds to evade what few projectiles slipped past his defensive parrying.
Kodachi, in comparison, simply snatched up her sword, which went from a solid blade to a razor-edged ribbon in mid-flick of her wrist. Then she began to twirl it in a high-speed spiral around herself, an adaptation of the Upward Spiral Ribbon Defense technique that turned her sword from a weapon into a shield. She seemed to transform into a pillar of greenish-black metal, bullets whining as they ricocheted off of her warding whip.
The Firetank Pirates fired until their guns were empty, and as they scrambled to reload, Ranma and Kodachi went still again, smirking cockily at their assailants.
"Didn't we already do this song an' dance?" Ranma mockingly asked.
"Okay, dat's it! I've had enough outta youse!" Bege thundered furiously, biting his cigar in half and then spitting the stub onto the floor. Suddenly, panels in his body opened up as if he were a human chest of draws; his outstretched palms flipped downwards, as did portions of his body all over his chest and broad stomach. Even a piece of his hat flipped outwards as his forehead lowered itself. And inside each of the dozen-plus little chambers now exposed was a cannon, all of their collective fuses sizzling, and every single muzzle aimed squarely at the two teenagers.
"Are you nuts?!" Ranma yelped in shock.
"Catch these!" Bege demanded, then fired the cannons. First the two in his hands, which whistled through the air and crashed somewhere behind the two nimble teenagers. Then the rest of his artillery began to fire, a staggered barrage that forced the two of them to frantically leap around the room as they desperately attempted to predict which cannons would fire and where they were aiming.
The rolling explosions were almost deafening, bursts of flame lighting up the gloom as exhibits vanished in showers of debris. But the cavalcade of cannonballs failed to do any more damage than the rifles had done, aside from leaving the targets quite unimpressed.
"Are you clueless or what?! The city watch is gonna be here any minute now! And it's a good thing this place is inflammable," Ranma indignantly interjected as Bege stopped firing, evidently needing to reload.
"Um... Ranma darling...?" Kodachi mildly interjected, tapping Ranma on the shoulder.
"What is it - holy hell, it's all on fire!"
Brilliant orange flames were now licking hungrily across the museum, crawling over the floor and slithering up the walls like mad creeper vines that had begun to bloom from the craters dug by Bege's cannonballs.
"How the hell do you set a cloud on fire?! What am I saying?! We gotta get outta here!"
"An excellent idea... pity youse won't be following through wid it!"
Ranma and Kodachi spun to face Bege, just as the drawbridge in his stomach swung shut, sealing away his crew inside himself, and the cannons in his shoulders opened fire at the roof. The high explosive balls slammed into the ceiling and brought it tumbling down in a deluge of burning faux-concrete slabs.
"Kodachi!"
Bege grinned darkly to himself as he watched Ranma throw himself on top of Kodachi the barest instant before the flame-wreathed rubble crashed down on top of him. In a show of mocking respect, he took the brim of his fedora between forefinger and thumb, lifting it partially up off of his scalp before lowering it again.
"Rest in peace, ya snot-nosed punks..."
And with that he turned and jogged leisurely over to a wall he knew for a fact abutted a side-alley. His forehead popped open and a cannonball shot forth, blowing a hole through it that he easily stepped through and off into the cool night air.
Behind him, the rubble pile, now on fire, jittered like a college freshman who'd just tried their first shot of concentrated caffeine and coke, before it suddenly exploded outwards.
"Hot-hot-hot-hot-HOT!" Ranma yelped, dancing back and forth as he tried to pat out the flames singing his shirt. No sooner had he done that then Kodachi nearly knocked him over as she glomped onto him, throwing her arms passionately around his neck.
"Oh, darling, you saved my life!" She cried, burying her face in the crook of his shoulder for a moment, then looking into his eyes with naked adoration. She licked her lips gently with the tip of her tongue, starting to crane her neck in hopes of a kiss.
"Of course I did!" Ranma blurted out, swallowing nervously as he realized what she was about to do. Then the sound of ancient pottery exploding as fire devoured its casing drew him back to reality. "But I ain't done yet! Hold on!"
Before Kodachi could even process what Ranma was saying, he swept her up off of her feet into his arms in a bridal carry, snatched up the precious chest containing the scrolls from Hestavar, and then launched himself up through the hole in the roof. He landed on the smoking roof of the museum for the barest instant, and then sprang through the air again, and then again, hopping from rooftop to rooftop in the direction of the docks.
Down below, Bege blinked as a strange shadow swooped over him, snapping his head skyward just in time to see Ranma and Kodachi sailing overhead.
"These punk-ass kids are tougher than a cockroach!" He spat, before grinning an ugly grin. "But even a roach can get squashed..."
And so he began to jog after them... only to curse to himself as he realized that he was being effortlessly outpaced.
"Geeze Louise, what do they feed these kids?! Aw, screw it; Castle Tank!"
His legs morphed into stone-framed tank treads, and newly equipped, he sped along the roads as fast as he possibly could.
Ironically, the Devil Fruit-using don sped right past a squad of Yskalmerie watchmen as they pounded their way towards the museum, but they didn't even look at the strange figure, their collective intellects slaved to the simple reality that if they didn't get to the museum now, their sergeants would hang their asses out to dry tomorrow.
Soon afterwards...
The docks of Yskalmerie were quiet and dark, the only sound the gentle rustling of the sea-clouds and the creaking of sails as the wind blew through them. The dockworkers were all at home, or at least at whatever bar or brothel was sufficiently hospitable to let them flop there for the night, and the ship crews who weren't in the flophouses were likewise bedded down for the night.
Only the Stormbringer was an exception, light dials turned storm lanterns glowing like beacons, beckoning its wayward children to return home.
'Man, I'll be glad to get home and get to bed... huh, since when did I start thinking of the Stormbringer as "home"?' Ranma mused to himself, even as he and Kodachi dropped from the last of the rooftops abutting the piers so they could approach their ship.
As they expected, Dyna was waiting, the unsleeping gynoid's single eye burning like a torch as she stared with mechanical patience out over the pier.
"Query; pursuit successful?" She called to them, waving her brutish claw-arm.
Ranma grinned almost from ear to ear as he held the chest aloft, crying, "Oh yeah! We got it! The scrolls from Hestavar!"
And that was when the cannonball came shrieking through the air and annihilated the chest in a shower of flying splinters and shredded parchment, most of the detritus blazing into ashes even as it eddied and whirled in the wind, the sparks guttering out in a fleeting flurry of glory.
"No!" Ranma cried in shock and denial, before whirling to see the source.
Capone Bege smirked at him, smoke trailing from both his cigar and the miniaturized cannon protruding from the hatch that had swung open where his palm should have been. His flesh resealed itself and he lowered his arm.
"Shouldn't have double-crossed me, punk..."
"We did no such thing! We treated with you fairly and in good faith!" An insulted Kodachi spat viciously, snatching up her faithful sword.
"Do you know what you've done?! That might have been the last clue to Hestavar's location!" Ranma snarled, hands curling into fists with such ferocity that his knuckles audibly crackled.
"Aw, cry me a river! Youse got bigger problems to worry about now..."
Even as Bege said this, the front of his stomach unhinged itself and fell down like a drawbridge, revealing dozens of tiny men in what even Ranma could identify as "mobster" style outfits. They charged forth, rifles clutched at the ready and leapt fearlessly off of the edge of the drawbridge, suddenly transforming into full-sized men in mid-leap, surrounding the two teenagers.
Ranma simply scoffed, folding his arms haughtily over his chest. "Cute... but you ain't the only one with a crew at their back!"
A thunderous report suddenly split the air, and Capone Bege's hat disintegrated as one of Dyna's "bunker-buster" bullets ripped it to shreds.
Ranma grinned evilly as he added, "And boy, are they ticked off!"
"EX-TER-MIN-ATE!" Dyna screamed in a voice like a rusty grindsaw cutting through sheet metal as she hurtled across the pier like a giant mechanical spider, chainsaw roaring and smoke gushing from her vents as she slammed into the nearest batch of Firetank Pirates like a runaway wrecking ball. Her piston-powered claw scythed with brutal indifference through the air like a steam-powered threshing machine.
But the Firetank Pirates were evidently cut from a different cloth to the countless weakling Marines and no-name pirates that the Kamikaze Pirates had crushed since arriving on the Grand Line. Instead of breaking into a panic and scattering to be easily picked off, the Firetanks broke apart with coordinated ease, withdrawing out of Dyna's reach and repositioning themselves for a counter-attack.
And that came in the form of a towering monster of a man, nearly a meter taller than Miriam, whose right arm had been replaced with a cannon-like construction enclosing three high-caliber rifles. He yanked savagely on a chain that protruded from a slot in his arm-cannon, and the barrels roared into life, spinning around inside their cylindrical casing and spewing bullets at Dyna.
The gynoid immediately snapped up her battle claw to protect her comparatively vulnerable face as the massive bullets slammed into her armored hide. It spoke volumes of the Firetank Pirate's choice of weapon that Dyna's crude yet resilient skin, which had effortlessly shaken off everything thrown at it since she had joined the team, began to visibly dimple as the heavy fire slammed into her. Her legs scraped and clawed at the shaped island-cloud of the pier, fighting to keep her from being pushed back by the sheer force of her assailant's shots, and if he could focus his fire, it seemed inevitable he'd punch a hole clean through into her vulnerable innards.
Fortunately for Dyna, he didn't get the chance. An anchor came whistling through the air and caught the oversized pirate in his arm, knocking it askew and causing him to lose his grip on the pull-chain. Firetank Pirates dove for cover as the chaingun spewed bullets wildly before he got it under control, but by that point Miriam was already charging towards him, undaunted by the near-meter height disadvantage in his favor.
"Pick on somebody your own size!" She cried, anchors in both hands. She swept one towards the cyborg's head, which he blocked with his mechanical arm, and then she forced him to leap backwards as she tried to hook his ankles out from under him with the bladed tines of her anchor.
As the two goliaths clashed, the rest of the Kamikaze Pirates fell on the Firetank Pirates like a storm, denying them the use of their rifles and forcing them into melee combat. An arena that swiftly proved to favor the Kamikaze Pirates far more.
"I don't even wanna know how you messed this up, Ranma!" Ryoga snarled, punching out men who should realistically have outmuscled him nearly two to one with contemptuous ease.
"No blame this on airen!" Shampoo scolded him, even as she seemed almost to levitate through the air in a whirling spin-kick on steroids that she would later admit to having based on the Tatsumaki Senpukyaku. Given the way she mowed through the Firetanks unlucky enough to be caught in her path, it wasn't a bad test run.
"Yeah, roaches like these have a way of turning up when they're not wanted!" Ukyo spat, flattening men with overhead blows from her battle spatula before using it to block a rifle shot.
"Oh, you wanna play rough? Black Tempura Flash!"
A deceptively small cloth bag was whipped out from a hiding space somewhere on Ukyo's body, spilling into a thick, choking cloud of tempura flakes that engulfed easily a dozen men... Before she followed up by pouring fiery ki into her spatula, its blade glowing red hot as she swung it through the outermost edge of the cloud. The heat was enough to flash-ignite the gunpowder and other flammable chemical powders swirling through the air, with Ukyo leaping backwards to avoid being caught in her own explosion.
Harumi's swords danced their dazzling arcs through the air, slicing rifles in half and forcing Firetank Pirates to withdraw, clutching at bleeding wounds across their torsos and limbs. At his side, Penelope swung her machete with less finesse, but a great deal more force, the two working with surprising synchronicity to cut down anyone foolish enough to stand in their path.
"Hey! Keep your paws to yourself!" Lilith snarled as one Firetank attempted to grab her from behind. She snatched his wrist and yanked yard, twisting her hip as she did so, with the end result being that she pulled the startled mafioso-pirate off of his feet and sent him flying through the air into two of his buddies who had been taking aim at her.
The skylander blinked at the sight of the trio of enemy pirates, now a semi-conscious tangle of limbs, and laughed to herself. "Sne-hahaha! Maybe there is something to this martial arts training after all!"
Her skin turned scaly and her teeth extended into fangs, her tongue lolling between her gaping jaws as she ballooned into the monstrous shape of her cobra hybrid form.
"Of course, old tricks still need some love," She amusedly corrected herself, smashing a squad of Firetank Pirates with a sweep of her tail.
Vito of the Firetank Pirates scowled, tongue sticking out in the side of his mouth in concentration as he aimed one of his iconic handcannons at the leader of the Kamikaze Pirates.
'Bad enough that snotnosed little punk disrespects me, but he disrespects the Don too! Look at him... jumping around like a damn flea - sheesh, half the crew's still inside the Don's castle, and they can't even hit him!'
He watched as a murderhole in Bege's right shoulder suddenly flipped open and disgorged a cannonball at Captain Saotome. The younger pirate jinked around it almost contemptuously - and then, for added insult, the ponytailed dame he'd been with in the museum suddenly lashed out with a sword that turned into a whip, snagging the cannonball in midair before she yanked it around and released it, causing to blast some of the Firetank Pirates instead.
'Ouch! Lucky for them the boys is tough... But you won't be laughing for long, punk - the Don's got you right in my sights... an' they don't call me Monster Gun Vito for nothing! Closer... Little closer...'
He was so busy lining up his shot that he didn't realize a dark shadow had fallen over him... Only when something solid suddenly fell onto him from above, velvety folds of something that was disturbingly soft and warm wrapping around his head and blinding him, did he recognize he was under attack. But the realization came too late to save him as razor sharp teeth suddenly buried themselves in his neck, slicing into his artery with almost surgical precision. Dark blood fountained from the cut, each pump of his heart only sending more precious fluid gushing free, as the whatever-it-was began to greedily drink his life away.
A cold that burned spread through his veins like wildfire, numbing as it went, the suckling of his assailant echoing obscenely in his ears. He tried to scream, but the sound was swallowed by whatever had been wrapped around his face.
'No! It can't end like this!'
"Boss Vito!"
"Get the hell offa him, ya monster!"
Gunshots rang out, and suddenly Vito found himself released, collapsing to his knees and clasping desperately at his bleeding neck. He twisted around, squinting slightly through blurry eyes to try and see his assailant, and saw a twisted half-woman squatting like a gargoyle on the cornice of a roof. The monstrous bat-creature grinned sweetly, her teeth gleaming pearly white against the blood caked across her full lips and dribbling down her chin. She extended a long, sinuous tongue and licked her face clean before loudly belching, an act that Vito knew was both deliberate and contemptful, then she spread her wings and took flight.
Vito tried to aim one of his pistols at the monster, but his arm trembled, his vision blurred, and he almost pitched face-first onto the not-dirt of the pier as his weakened body betrayed him.
"You lousy snotnosed punks! I'll fuckin' moida youse!" Roared Bege as he saw one of his most trusted crewmates down, Firetanks frantically administering emergency medical attention to keep him from bleeding out in the middle of the street. Every single gunport on his body flipped open and he unleashed his whole arsenal at once - every last rifleman and cannon in an omnidirectional barrage that had wiped out everything from rival pirate crews to ships full of Marines.
But it was to no avail. The Don of the Firetank Pirates howled in fury as he saw his shots fail to take down even a single Kamikaze Pirate. Some, like their damned captain, dodged or evaded what he threw at them. The flatchested dame with the two swords somehow managed to cut the goddamned bullets out of the air, and worse she did it whilst she was standing protectively in front of the other dame with the tail. The big zoan changed from a giant serpent-woman to a comparatively tiny snake at the last moment, evading the cannonball that by rights should have smashed in her face. And Bege didn't know what was worse; the punk who his bullets literally bounced off of, or that bat bitch who tried to kill Vito, who he saw get shot in the head... and then grew it fucking back!
"What kinda bullshit Devil Fruit power is that?!" He demanded, thrusting a fist at the bloodsucking freak and having the three riflemen in his knuckle-murderholes open fire. All scored direct hits, but the grim satisfaction he felt at the sight died stillborn as he saw her stagger, but fail to fall - three bullets in the heart and she still lived, the wound closing up without even leaving a scar. Worse, she hissed at him, crimson eyes burning in the dark and teeth gleaming like daggers.
"Leave Nabiki alone!"
A boot cracked across Bege's jaw and he staggered backwards, cursing - both the smart-arsed kid who'd gotten the drop on him and himself for getting distracted enough to let him. He fired a cannon from a murderhole in his side, and whilst it didn't hit, it at least made Ranma back away, which was exactly where Bege wanted him.
'Kid packs a punch, alright. And I ain't got no armor unless I'm using Big Father - last thing I want is to let him get a grip on me!'
He turned his attention back to Ranma, only for a sudden chorus of whistles and shouting to cut through the clangor and clamor of battle - the Yskalmeri Watch were on their way!
Ranma grinned viciously. "Well? You wanna add some new dance partners? Or you wanna cut yer losses while ya can?"
Bege's cigar burned to ashes as he sucked fiercely on it. If looks could kill, Ranma would have been a charred smear on the walls as he did the calculations in his head. His men were slowly but surely losing ground - it should have been impossible, they outnumbered the Kamikaze Pirates at least ten to one! And yet, somehow, these snotnosed punks were grinding them away like grist in a mill. Add to that the whole damn island peacekeepers...
The Firetank don's lip curled into a hateful snarl as he saw the writing on the wall. He hadn't been one of the Five Families of the West for not knowing when to get when the getting was good. "Alright, dat's enough'a dis! Retreat! All'a youse! We're pulling out!"
As one, the Firetanks began to retreat - not in a disorganized, panicked mob, as Ranma was used to seeing, but in an orderly fashion. The evident strongest of their numbers pushed forward to cover their flight, whilst those who could grabbed their injured and carried them as they converged on their leader.
Ranma deliberately fell back, watching as the drawbridge in Bege's stomach swung open again. The Firetank Pirates charged towards their leader, leaping into the air as they approached him and shrinking back down like dolls, landing on his drawbridge with their injured before fleeing back inside. Thanks to the split-awareness granted by his Castle-Castle Fruit, Bege knew that Vito was being rushed to his medical ward, already shaping it with everything the doctors of his crew would need to patch up the injured commander.
Externally, even as his stomach sealed itself shut, Bege pointed viciously at Ranma. "Watch your back, kid. I won't forget this!"
"And neither will we - now, go on, get! Before we stop feeling nice!" Ranma jeered back, even as he felt his crewmates step up behind him to present a unified front.
Despite his rage, Bege's pride refused to let him get drawn into a childish jeering match with some stripling. He turned and ran, with as much dignity as he could muster.
Behind him, Ranma threw an obscene gesture at his retreating back, before turning to his crewmates. "That means we better get whilst the getting's good, too!"
An hour later...
Yskalmerie Island vanished into the misty wreath of perpetual fog that shrouded it as the Stormbringer cruised out into the open expanse of the White-White Sea. As Kodachi double-checked her bearings, Ranma left his former position by the helm to walk over to Dyna, who was staring silently into the milky surface of the White-White Sea.
"Hey, Dyna?" He began uncertainly.
"This unit's audial receptors remain functional," came the clipped, monotonous response.
"Ah, geeze... Look, I'm not good at this kind of stuff, but I just wanted to say I'm sorry. But you gotta hang in there - we'll find your homeland some day! And hey, at least now you know what it was called! That's a big step up from just knowing you came from some nameless island up here, ain't it?"
"...Your logic is erratic, but foundationally sound," Dyna conceded.
"So cheer up, Dyna - we'll keep looking until we find your home! And... well, even if we can't, you'll always have us, okay?"
Unthinkingly, Ranma reached out and patted Dyna on one of her bulky main arms, then turned and walked back over to Kodachi. Dyna watched him go out of her one good eye, as subtly as she was capable of.
"That is... not so bad an eventuality, Captain," she softly whispered to herself. Then she turned and resumed staring into the opaque surface of the White-White Sea.
Chapter End & Closing Notes
Not sure what to say here; this is the first "heist" chapter I've ever written (well, technically second), so I really hope that it worked out for you readers! And don't worry; the finish line for this arc of the story is visible on the horizon now - I do hope you've been enjoying it! As always, reviews keep me going, and there's a TVtropes page in need of love. I've got a Ko-fi account at Ko-fi dot com slash Rewind Gone Nuts (no spaces) if you want to throw a coin in my cup for fanart - and talking of fanart, I've gotten some new pieces recently, including the first of several experimental drafts of what Nabiki's hybrid form might have looked like if she got the Fafnir Zoan instead of the Vampire Zoan! Also, I updated one of my older stories, a "Ranma & girls in Sigil from Planescape" themed crossover called Love Opens Many Doors - if you like my work here, check it out, you may like it too, and it also has a TVtropes page in need of love.