Authors Notes: The crossover... in many ways, this is both the most traditional Ranma 1/2 fic I've done, and yet also the most novel. Truth be told, I'm actually a pretty recent fan of One Piece - I actually got into it because of This Bites! And frankly I'm not sure how I wound up reading that fic in the first place. But, since I love Ranma, I've a fondness for the world of One Piece (forgive me, but I call it the Grand Blue), and I'm unimpressed with what I've seen in this particular crossover section before, I felt it couldn't hurt to show my vision of one way in which to cross this particular pair of anime over.

An enormous shout-out of gratitude and well-wishes to the good folks of SpaceBattles who have chosen to assist me in bringing this project to life, in particular to CV12Hornet, Innortal and Ilalthal!

Chapter 1: The Gathering Storm

It was a beautiful spring day in the East Blue when it happened. On three insignificant islands - Oodako, Becop, and Shincurid - something extraordinary occurred, the likes of which even the Grand Blue had never seen before. In the untouched wilderness of all three islands, scintillating auroras bloomed into life, filling the forests with blinding rainbow hued light, before vanishing as mysteriously as they had come. In their wake, the world would be forever changed... although nobody would know that for quite some time...

Oodako Island.

Ranma groaned softly as he forced himself awake again. "Oh, my head is killing me... blegh, and why do I feel like I just ate one of Akane's cookies?" he moaned, scraping his tongue against his teeth in a vain attempt to scrub the nasty taste from his mouth. Opening his eyes, he blinked until he adjusted to the light, and then took in his surroundings: rocks, green grass, shrubs and towering trees, a very far sight removed from the urban environment where he had been dueling with Ryoga mere moments ago.

"...Where the hell am I?" he asked aloud, sitting up. "How'd I get here?"

In fact, the more he looked around, the less certain he was of where 'here' actually was. The vegetation was nothing like the stuff he was used to seeing in the wilderness of Tokyo. If anything, it reminded him of the times his travels had taken him to Okinawa - subtropical lushness.

As he mulled over that realization, his ears caught the faint sound of moaning coming from close by. On pure instinct, he leapt to his feet and followed the groans, only to screech to a halt when he saw their source: Kodachi Kuno, splayed out on her stomach in the grass.

'Great, of all the people in the world, it had to be her...' Ranma mentally grumbled to himself. 'Maybe I could run...? Oh, who am I kidding; I can't just leave a girl lying here. Even if it is Kodachi...'

He cautiously slunk forward, wary of a possible ambush, and began to gently poke Kodachi in the head with his finger. "Hey. Hey. Kodachi. Kodachi, you awake?"

"Nnngh... I don't wanna eat the pickled plums, momma... they're icky..." Kodachi moaned softly.

A bead of sweat rolled gently down Ranma's cheek. 'OK... not what I was expecting...' He resumed poking her forehead, this time with a little more force. "Kodachi, wake up... please?"

Whether it was the poking or his voice or even just the fact he said 'please', Kodachi finally shifted, pulling her arms underneath her and sitting up before opening her eyes. She glanced around, taking in her surroundings, and then her gaze fixated itself on Ranma, like an iron filing drawn to a magnet. "Ranma...darling... what happened?"

"I was gonna ask you that... are you hurt?" Ranma replied, carefully sweeping his trained gaze over the youngest of the Kuno clan, hoping she didn't spot him in the process.

"Nothing feels sore... although I do admit I have a headache," Kodachi replied, frowning and then pinching the bridge of her nose. "I... what is this place? I don't remember how we got here.."

"Do you remember anything? Cuz I got no clue how we got here," Ranma confessed.

Kodachi went silent, looking thoughtfully off into space. She tapped her pursed lips for a moment, and then slowly announced. "I... I think I remember a fight with that Chinese barbarian, and that crossdressing delinquent from your classroom. And I think you and that Hibiki boy burst into the fray? I'm sorry, Ranma darling, but I simply cannot put the pieces together; it's all a blur."

"Terrific," Ranma grumbled.

Kodachi looked up at him with wide eyes, and for a moment, even Ranma thought she looked genuinely innocent - even scared. "Wh-what's going to happen to us, Ranma darling?"

'Ah, geeze, why do I always have to be the hero...?' Ranma lamented. 'I don't know what to do myself...But I can't tell her that. This is going to be tough enough without Kodachi panicking... gotta try and stay positive.'

"Well, first, we're gonna get our bearings. I mean, we can't be too far from civilization, right?" Ranma replied, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

Evidently, he was more convincing than he thought, because Kodachi visibly brightened. "I knew you'd think of something, Ranma darling," she purred happily. Then she pushed herself to her feet, experimentally stretching as if to take full account of her physical condition. Evidently satisfied with the results, she directed a bright-eyed, hopeful smile to her reluctant crush. "Where do we begin?"

'Good question...'

Before Ranma could think of an answer, he found himself distracted as he noted something hanging around Kodachi's neck. "What is that?" he asked, unable to help himself.

"Hm?" Kodachi blinked, and then followed Ranma's pointing finger to the amulet around her neck. "Oh, this bauble? I found it this morning when I was exploring the family storage rooms," she explained.

At that, Ranma recoiled as if Kodachi were wearing a live viper around her neck. "The same rooms where your brother found that stupid exploding drum? Where those cards that split the old freak into six old freaks came from?"

Kodachi ignored him, being preoccupied as she slid the amulet off of her neck and held it up so that she could study it, scowling as she did so. "They broke it! Those wicked, spiteful girls!" she complained.

And that was when, with almost scripted dramatic timing, crimson smoke began to pour from the face of the amulet. Kodachi squealed in shock and tossed it instinctively to the ground, where it bounced once and then lay still. The ruddy fumes gushed forward, tracing a spiralling pattern as they soared aloft with recognizable purposefulness. Ranma instinctively shifted into a combat stance, with Kodachi likewise withdrawing a pair of gymnast's clubs and readying herself for battle as they watched the thick tornado-shape of sanguine vapors rotate before them.

"Bwaaahahahahaaaa! Free! After so long, freedom at last!" Roared a voice, deep enough that Ranma felt the raucous laughter echoing in his bones, a rumbling snarl that sounded barely human.

Ranma's every nerve tensed, the impulse to leap forward and attack restrained by years of fighter's instincts. His whole body was like a coiled spring, ready to pounce on whatever demonic threat had just been unleashed...

And that was when the vapors dissipated, a small purple hand waving them away, and Ranma finally saw the voice's owner.

"...You have gotta be kidding me..." Ranma declared.

It was... a lot smaller than Ranma had anticipated. Maybe... four feet, four and a half feet, if he was generous? It looked kind of like a little kid... if you ever saw a little kid with bruise-purple skin. It was bare-chested, and bare-footed, but wore long pants. Its long, spindly fingers and toes ended in jagged black nails - not proper talons, but more like the fingernail had grown so long it had splintered and broken at the tip. A stereotypical devil's tail flicked like a whip behind it, and tiny little bat-like wings fluttered absently on its back. The lower half of its face was concealed behind a tightly wound black scarf, but the exposed section revealed large, leaf-shaped ears jutting from the side of its head, no sign of a nose, and three eyes - two where they should be, which were human enough, bar the crimson irises, and a third, shaped like a vertical almond and with a black-on-blue color scheme, situated in the center of his brow. Atop his head sat a battered and bedraggled-looking conical hat, made of some kind of green fabric.

Those three eyes fixated on Ranma, and the little monster whirled to face him, jabbing a finger imperiously in his direction. "Hahahah! Foolish worm, I am free of your bindings! No more shall Umok dance at the whims of others! Now, pay for your forebears' crimes!"

"...What the heck did my father do this time?!" Ranma blurted out, unable to help it.

His words actually seemed to shock the...imp? Whatever it was. It blinked all three eyes in obvious confusion, then shook its head. "...You shall not distract me with petty taunts! Now, die!"

Ranma's body tensed to its utmost, ready to spring from whatever strange attack this monster might launch... only to be underwhelmed as a burst of vermillion sparks erupted from its outstretched digit and then fell harmlessly to the earth.

All three individuals present blinked in confusion, with the monster glancing uncertainly at its own hand. It jabbed its finger at Ranma again... and this time conjured forth a shower of indigo sparks. Twice more it stabbed the air in Ranma's directions, and twice more it failed to achieve anything more than a shower of sparks - first cerulean, then chartreuse.

"...Oh, come on, this shouldn't be happening," the little demon-thing muttered, holding up its hand and glaring at it before shaking its wrist angrily. "What happened to all my power? Gurk!"

Having recovered from his shock, Ranma smirked darkly at the tiny monster now dangling at the end of his fist, little hands scrabbling ineffectually at the fingers locked around its scrawny neck. "Now what was that you were saying about destroying us?"

"Gak! Urk! C-come on, can't you take a joke?" the creature rasped, then let out a strangled gurgle as Ranma pointedly squeezed its neck. "Ack! Glck, alright, alright, I deserved that... I'm sorry? Please?"

'Now that's a novelty... when's the last time I heard somebody apologize? Wait a minute...' Ranma loosened his grip, just enough to be sure he wouldn't throttle his captive by accident. "Alright, I want answers. Who are you, where are we, and why did you bring us here?"

"Kak! You got a funny way of asking - eck-kak! Alright, alright! My name is Umok! And... um... actually, I don't know those last two things..."

"Really? You're going to play games over this?" Ranma asked dryly.

"No games, no games! But I can figure things out! Just lemme go!" Umok pleaded, trying once again to pry Ranma's fingers off of his neck.

Ranma glanced over at Kodachi, who gave him a shrug in response, causing Ranma to sigh. "Alright...but you try anything funny, and I'm gonna bounce you off of every tree in a hundred mile radius, got it?"

"Clear as crystal!" Umok assured him, and Ranma promptly let go. Rather than falling, Umok stayed where he was, floating in the air. He gingerly rubbed his neck, looking between the two teens.

"Alright... well, like I said, my name is Umok. I'm a wizard and a planeswalker... well, I was, anyway. Then I made a mistake in some backwater dimension about a hundred years ago and ran into this stupid BLEEP!"

He stopped in shock, staring at the teens, evidently as surprised as they were to hear a sudden loud electronic beep interrupt his words. His brows furrowed in concentration and he spoke again. "BLEEP! BLEEP? BLEEP! BLEEPing BLEEP on a BLEEP smothered in BLEEP sauce! Oh, that miserable BLEEPing BLEEP - if I get my hands on her, I'm going to wring her BLEEPing neck! I'll peel off her BLEEP and fry it in oil and shove it down her BLEEPing throat! I'll gouge out her motherBLEEPing sisterBLEEPing cousinBLEEPing eyes and BLEEP the BLEEP!"

"And for those of us who don't speak 'bleep'?" Ranma dryly asked.

"Insufferable harridan placed a censorship curse on me!" Umok snarled, and they were struck suddenly by just how odd it was to hear such a deep, threatening voice coming out of such a tiny and harmless-looking little monster. "Anyway, long story short, I ran into a native mage with a stick up her fundament, she took offense to me, we fought and... I lost, and she stuck me in some stupid magical amulet," Umok trailed off, visibly wilting and even drooping several inches lower in obvious shame at admitting that fact.

"You mean that amulet?" Kodachi asked, pointing at the trinket that had so recently adorned her own neck.

"That's the one!" Umok declared, dipping down low and bending over to snatch it from the ground. "And... wow, this thing's been through the wringer. What did you do, drop a building on it?!"

"I believe that Chinese Amazon who calls herself after some haircare product struck it," Kodachi replied.

"...Remind me not to get on her bad side, because she nearly cracked this thing in half! Sheesh, no wonder I'm so drained - I'm BLEEPing lucky to be here!" the impish mage declared, shaking his head.

"What do you mean by that?" Ranma asked suspiciously.

Umok promptly held the amulet out to him. "Look at this! Look at the way it's broken!"

"...So?" Ranma hesitantly responded, after taking in the damage as instructed.

At that, Umok loudly scoffed. "Ah. Non-magi. I should have figured. Small words it is, then. The way this amulet was broken, it didn't just break the spell trapping me in it... tell me, do the words 'explosive discharge' mean anything to either of you?"

"Enough to know that means trouble," Ranma grumbled.

"The way this cursed trinket broke basically ripped out all my mana and just blew it out into its surroundings... okay, I admit it, I'm struggling to find a metaphor here," Umok grumbled. "Long story short, you got a broken amulet, a very drained Umok, and a big discharge of wild magic. Big enough to literally blow you through the blind eternities and into another plane."

Silence fell upon the grove as Ranma and Kodachi both digested the implications of what Umok had said, the full panic-inducing scope of his words sinking in.

"...You mean you zapped the two of us to another world?!" Ranma demanded.

"No, no," Umok corrected him. "For one thing, I wasn't responsible - the magic just did what it did by chance. You're lucky I specialized in planeswalking, or you might have just been vaporized. Secondly, with how much mana got dumped into that wild surge? There's no way it was just the two of you who got scooped up... anybody who was nearby would have been grabbed, too."

"...That's not exactly comforting!" Kodachi snarled.

"Hey, what do you want; sweet little lies, or cold bitter truths? I deal in the latter, sugar," Umok dryly shot back, and then leapt high into the air as Kodachi swung her club at him.

"Impudent imp! Such familiarity is only permissible on the lips of my darling Ranma!" Kodachi hissed.

"Spicy! You picked a wild one there, chief," Umok noted.

"Look, let's focus on what matters here," Ranma interjected, trying to restrain his irritation at anyone thinking he was voluntarily involved with Kodachi Kuno. "Your magic did this to us... can you undo it?"

Umok sat there in the air, staring at Ranma. Without taking his eyes off of Ranma, he took off his hat and rummaged around in it, before withdrawing a cartoony looking cigar and planting his hat back on his head. Lifting the cigar to his masked mouth he somehow bit the tip off and spat it away, then stuck the other end in his mouth through the mask. He snapped his fingers under the bitten end, creating a flame that ignited the cigar. He puffed on it several times, and then exhaled a cloud of greasy scab-colored smoke. "That... ain't as simple as a yes or no, chief."

"Whaddya mean?! How can it be more complex than that?!" Ranma demanded irritably.

"Listen, buddy... you got something special you can do? A trick of some kind that's important to you?" Umok asked, slow and casual.

"Ranma is one of the greatest martial artists in our world!" Kodachi interjected, beaming proudly as she did so and earning a sideways glance from the object of her affection.

"Great, that's real nice... now, how good can you do martial arts with all four limbs broken, one eye blinded, and a concussion?" Umok asked, still with the same casual tone.

"...Not very well," Ranma conceded.

"That's what you gotta understand... breaking that stupid amulet the way you did, it didn't just free me, it almost killed me! This isn't a case of me being tired, this is a case of me being fundamentally broken inside! I can fix this... but it's gonna take time, and I don't even know where to start at the moment. Once I'm fixed up, yeah, I can zap you all home, but right now... well, you saw what little I'm capable of."

Silence fell upon the glade as the two teens digested the implications of that. Kodachi was the first to move, latching onto Ranma's arm and whimpering. "Ranma, darling? What are we going to do now?"

Ranma tried to ignore the way his skin crawled at Kodachi being all over him again. 'For once, I actually kinda can't blame her for being clingy... but I gotta keep it together...' Thinking quickly, he said, "Well, just standing around here ain't gonna do us any good. I say we go exploring; there's gotta be some kind of life out there somewhere, right? Maybe it'll help us get our bearings."

Umok nodded his head, still puffing on his foul-smelling cigar. "Sounds like a decent plan, chief."

"Of course it is; Ranma darling is as brilliant as he is handsome!" Kodachi gushed, smiling proudly at the object of her affections.

Ranma simply bit back another sigh at Kodachi's antics. "Alright, then let's go this way," he declared, picking a direction at random and setting forth, with Kodachi clinging to his arm and Umok drifting passively along behind.

As they made their way through the underbrush, though, Ranma couldn't help but wonder. 'Who else got zapped? And where are they?'

Meanwhile, on Becop Island...

Nabiki looked around, trying her best to be discrete as she did so. 'Well, I'm definitely not in Tokyo anymore... but where am I and how did I get here? I mean, waking up in some bushes was one thing, but this place... I've never seen anything like it.'

The scope of the place was an obvious clue that Nabiki was far from home; even if Furinkan was more suburban than anything, it was still close enough to the big city that Nabiki considered herself a city girl. But this place was a tiny little port village, and when combined with the old-fashioned, weirdly Western-influenced architecture, well, it obviously wasn't Tokyo.

Fortunately, the people crowding the streets seemed to be wearing relatively normal clothes, and so Nabiki's outfit didn't stick out in the slightest. She noticed some people looking her way, but they were the glances of horny young men appreciating an attractive young woman, not hostile in the slightest. That was something she could handle, so she paid it no real attention.

'Last thing I remember, I was coming home from tennis practice, and I stumbled right into one of Ranma's fights - Ryoga and Ranma to the right of me, and a three-way brawl between Shampoo, Ukyo and Kodachi to my left. I don't think that I got hit, but I have no idea what happened after that...'

Grrgllgrr...

Nabiki grimaced and placed a hand on her stomach as it decided to interject its own opinion on things. 'Tennis always makes me hungry... hmm, that looks like a cafe over there... I'll just grab a little snack and work out what to do from there...'

Plan set, Nabiki walked decisively through the doors of a building emblazoned with the legend "Cafe Totoro", found a free table, and sat down. 'Just my luck - wherever this place is, they write in Japanese... a little old-fashioned, but still...' She perused the menu before her, and then looked up as a waitress approached her.

"Hi, can I please have a sweet black coffee, a slice of the chiffon cake with strawberries and cream, a piece of cherry pie, a custard tart, a bannoffee slice, and a half-dozen coconut macaroons?" Nabiki asked, smiling sweetly at her server.

The lady blinked in obvious surprise at Nabiki's appetite, but her professionalism promptly won out and she returned the smile, nodding for emphasis as she replied, "Sure thing, honey! It'll just be a minute, okay?"

Nabiki watched as she sashayed over to the counter and nodded to herself in satisfaction. 'Just a tiny snack to take the edge off, and then to figure out where to go from here... this sort of weirdness obviously has to mean that Ranma's involved, and that means he has to be around here somewhere... but where?'

At the same time, on Shincurid Island...

Two archrivals glared at each other from just beyond their arm's length, each with her arms held up in a combat-ready position, ready to strike in an instant.

"Alright, Shampoo, fess up! What did you do? Where are we?" Ukyo demanded, her gaze burning into the eyes of her Chinese rival.

Shampoo simply snorted inelegantly, rolling her eyes in response. "Oh, yes, because Shampoo would naturally come up with plan to strand Shampoo alone in strange wilderness with Ukyo, of all people... use your head, stupid! If Shampoo want to get lost with anybody, would be with Ranma!"

"Then where are we?!" Ukyo demanded again, just as insistently as before.

"Shampoo not know! Just say that! Last thing Shampoo know, she fighting with Ukyo and Kodachi, because stupid rich girl saying she is having magic...amulet..."

The Chinese Amazon's voice trailed off as her expression shifted into one of horrified realization, which Ukyo grimly realized was probably mirroring the one she was sporting. "Then this must be her doing! Ohhh, if there's one person in this world I trust less with magic than you, it's Kodachi Kuno!"

Shampoo's eyes flashed at the casual insult, but she visibly restrained herself. "Truce, then? We go look for Ranma, make sure he safe from nasty rich girl?"

Ukyo hesitated, mulling it over. 'On the one hand, she's a scheming mountain hag who doesn't even try to pretend she's not vicious as an ushioni when she's crossed... but, on the other hand, I don't fancy my odds against her in hand-to-hand combat. And poor Ranchan, alone with Kodachi? Heaven only knows what that inbred aristocrat will do to him, especially if she has magic! I hate to say it, but I don't have a lot of choice...'

"Alright... truce. Let's go look for Ranchan," Ukyo declared. But she still waited for Shampoo to slip out of her combat stance first before she did the same.

"Okay... we go look this way - it as good a direction as any," Shampoo declared, before she turned around and began striding briskly off.

"Hey, wait!" a startled Ukyo called, before she scrambled to catch up.

Meanwhile, back on Oodako Island...

"Oooh, the beach, Ranma darling!" Kodachi cried in delight, running ahead of her reluctant traveling companion and darting out onto the gleaming white sand.

"So we've reached the coastline... or maybe we're on an island?" Umok mused, chomping audibly on his cigar as he bobbed along like the world's weirdest balloon animal.

"Probably the latter, looking at how sharply it curves," Ranma absently replied. Even as he walked onto the beach, his mind was busily working, a lifetime spent surviving on the fringes of civilization and beyond having honed survival instincts that were already kicking in to analyze his surroundings.

'Looks like the kind of beach you can dig shellfish out of, and by the way those birds are circling out over the water, there's fish offshore. I see rockpools, too; those are always good places to hunt for crabs... if we travel the beach far enough, we should find any rivers that might lead back into the interior, which will take care of fresh water...'

"Ohh! The water is lovely and warm!"

Startled from his musings, Ranma blinked, and then looked over at the shallows, where Kodachi was dancing about barefooted amidst the foaming water with surprising abandon, a look of childish glee on her face... quite a marked change from the sinister slyness or seductively coy looks he usually saw her sporting.

'Huh, guess that's one thing she does have in common with her crazy old man; he likes the beach, too...'

A sudden tapping sensation on his head made Ranma twitch and then glance upwards at Umok.

"Are you sure you should be letting her do that? It could be dangerous, you know," the impish wizard asked him.

"Oh come; it's just the beach, how much trouble could even Kodachi get into?" Ranma asked.

Apparently, this world couldn't resist a straight line like that, because there was a sound of something churning through the water, and Kodachi suddenly let out a scream of fright.

"Ranma darling!"

"Kodachi!" Ranma cried back in response, already leaping to her aid, spurred on by the same cursedly heroic instincts that had made him unthinkingly rescue Nabiki from a fall instead of Akane once upon a time. He lunged forward and grabbed her wrists, the terrified Kuno looking up at him with big, hopeful eyes. "I gotcha! Don't worry, I won't let go!"

In hindsight, Ranma would admit he'd been tempted fate with that line, as the mysterious something that had attacked from beneath the waves suddenly gave Kodachi a mighty yank, snapping not only her but a very startled Ranma through the air and into the deeper water just off shore.

The salt water burned Ranma's eyes, and she knew instinctively that the transformation had occurred, the deeper water having been plenty cold enough to trigger her hated Jusenkyo curse. And, from the way she could see Kodachi's own eyes were open as wide as it was physically possible to get, despite the stinging of salt against sensitive membranes, it was obvious that Kodachi had actually seen the transformation take place.

But Ranma had other things to worry about at the moment. Namely, as they plunged deeper into the briny depths, she could see what it was that was dragging them down. The expression of shock and horror on the transformed boy's face was so intense that it actually penetrated Kodachi's stupor, and she glanced back over her shoulder, only to let out a flurry of bubbles as she tried to scream in fright.

'...Why the fuck is there a giant octopus?!' Ranma screamed in the comfort of her mind, having learned the hard way over many years not to try doing it when underwater. That instinctive complaint aside, she instantly switched over into battle mode. 'Gotta do this quick, or we're lunch!'

Using her grip on Kodachi's wrists for added leverage, Ranma kicked with all her might and rocketed forward, superhuman strength turning her into a human torpedo that plunged towards the oversized cephalopod, her speed letting her shoot past tentacles that were already coiling through the water in an attempt to seize her. She slammed into the bulbous body of the octopus, and grabbed for one of the large, fleshy 'horns' growing above its eyes. Even as a tentacle lashed around her ribs like a cord and fixed itself there, Ranma drew back her free hand, shaped it into a makeshift knife, and then punched her squamous assailant straight in its bulbous eye.

With Ranma's inhumanly powerful muscles driving it, a simple knife-hand punch became a makeshift spear. The eyeball burst like a crushed grape, vitreous jelly caking Ranma's fingers before being washed clean by a gushing torrent of blue blood. Ranma put all she could into the blow, plunging her arm into the octopus' eye socket up to the elbow, groping her way deeper into the body cavity.

'C'mon, where's the blasted brain?!' Ranma snarled, memories of octopus fishing when she was younger having bubbled to the fore at the sight of their assailant. A tiny part of her not concerned with the immediacies of life and death struggle actually felt a surge of gratitude for her eccentric childhood. After all, there weren't many other fathers than Genma who would insist that their ten year old son should learn how to catch octopus in the traditional way of grabbing them and then biting into their brain between the eyes to kill them.

Whether she succeeded in her goal of crushing that vital organ, or the sheer pain of this unexpected assault changed their mind, it didn't matter. The water suddenly grew black with ink and blood, and Ranma felt the tentacle gripping her ribs whip free. Even she couldn't make out anything in the swirling confusion, but she seized her moment and backstroked away from where she had started. Kodachi was just visible at the fringes of the cloud of murk, and Ranma instinctively swam towards her, wrapping one arm around the youngest Kuno's slender waist and kicking for the surface.

Two heads broke the waves, mutually gasping for air with spluttering coughs and gasps. "R-Ranma?" Kodachi gushed, as soon as she had the spare air to waste on words.

"Don't talk, keep swimming!" Ranma barked, already kicking towards shore, one arm still holding Kodachi's waist. Her unwanted suitor responded by draping her arm around Ranma's neck and kicking with all her considerable might, and as a result the two sped back to the shore with a speed normally achieved by a motorboat.

They hit the shallows, which interrupted their flight only insofar as they had to take a moment to adjust to walking rather than swimming. They scrambled onto the shore and didn't stop until they hit where the sand gave way to the higher ground of the coast, and there they collapsed onto their hands and knees, panting and shaking as the adrenaline wore off.

"That... was the second biggest damn octopus I ever saw," Ranma puffed, still riding the high. She wiped the salt from her eyes as best she could, and then glanced hesitantly at Kodachi.

Who, as Ranma had glumly anticipated, was staring at Ranma like she'd just sprouted an extra head. "Ranma? You're the pigtailed girl?!" Kodachi asked... well, 'asked'; her voice was a borderline hysterical shriek, and it made Ranma wince as it dug into her eardrums.

"I... yeah?" Ranma admitted sheepishly.

"All this time, you were... and I was... why didn't you tell me?!" Kodachi demanded.

Ranma actually paused for a moment to consider that question; she'd never had to put her logic into words before. Finally, she shrugged and confessed, "Because I didn't think you'd understand..."

Judging by the way Kodachi was now starting to visibly steam, wisps of ghostly fire playing around her limbs, that answer wasn't sufficient. "Why in the name of all the saints would you think that?!"

"Your brother..."

"...Kindly credit me with possessing a little more common sense than my brother!" Kodachi snapped indignantly. Then she stopped, closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and then exhaled slowly. "Nevertheless... it seems that I do owe you an apology for my actions," she confessed. Then she opened her eyes and looked at Ranma, the faintest hint of a smirk on her lips as she did. "But, in all fairness, you do share some of the fault here. Had you but come clean about this matter to me earlier, then I wouldn't have treated your other half like a rival."

"I... yeah, I guess that is fair," Ranma conceded. 'Huh... who'da thought Kodachi could be reasonable?'

"I still would like to know how this strange transformation occurred, though," Kodachi amended herself, standing up and brushing the sand from her knees.

"It's a long story," Ranma sighed, even as she mimicked Kodachi's actions.

"Well, you got an audience of two who'd like to know, so you might as well give us the abridged version," Umok declared, making both girls start.

"Where'd you come from?!" Ranma demanded.

"And why didn't you try to assist?!" Kodachi indignantly added.

"You two went to play with the fishes too fast for me to keep up. By the time I could even think to join in, all the fun was over," Umok replied flippantly.

Kodachi gave the imp an evil eye, then sniffed haughtily. "Very well. At least my darling Ranma is reliable... which is precisely why you're going to tell us how this little transformation trick works, isn't that right, darling?" Her tone added an uncharacteristic frost to the normal endearment, and the glint in her eye made it obvious that a refusal would not be a particularly wise decision.

'I hate sharing secrets... pops always said that the less people know about you, the safer you are. But... she's right, I do kinda owe her this, and there's not really any point hiding it anymore, is there?'

Ranma sighed and nodded slowly. "Alright, this all goes back to before I arrived in Nerima. Me an' pops were exploring China, and he had this bug up his ass about visiting one training ground in particular..."

Meanwhile, back on Becop Island...

"Mmm!" Nabiki sighed happily, licking her lips of the last delicious morsel of sweetness as the gooey mixture of banana, caramel and whipped cream vanished down her throat. '"That was a nice little snack; should tide me over until dinner..." she absently commented to herself, mood temporarily buoyed by the recent indulgence in sugary goodness.

At least, until she looked down and saw the bill sitting innocuously amidst the demolished plates of her 'little snack'. She flinched, and instinctively glanced around the restaurant, looking for somebody she could hopefully seduce into paying the bill for her. Unfortunately, none of the men in the cafe met her eye, and she didn't have anything on her at the moment that would entice a woman into paying off her debt. As the realization sank in, her shoulders slumped, her temporarily lifted mood crashing into place.

'...Guess I'll have to wring a repayment out of Ranma, or one of his circle of fools,' she mused to herself. Reaching into her wallet, she grabbed the bills and placed them on the table before standing up and walking away, forcing herself not to look at the money she'd left behind.

She was almost to the door when the waitress' voice angrily rang out, "Hey, stop that girl! Thief! Stop her!"

"Thief!?" Nabiki blurted in pure shock. But not shocked enough that she didn't immediately charge forward, racing for the door.

'I have no idea what she's going on about, but I'm not sticking around to find out!'

Soun Tendo's days as a dine-and-dasher were long behind him, and not something he was exactly proud of. But Happosai had no such shame, and whilst it wasn't something Nabiki normally practiced, she'd also paid attention to the old man's ramblings just in case, because it was always handy to know when to get whilst the getting's good and how to get away better. Especially given the kind of superpowered crazies who had seemingly sprung up out of nowhere like a rather nasty fungus infection once Ranma and his father had come to stay.

Now, Nabiki wasn't a true martial artist, and she'd happily admit that. She left that kind of crazy training to the lunatics like Ranma and his crowd - after all, even her own sister wasn't willing to go to the kind of stupid lengths that Ranma did in the name of martial arts. But she had received basic self defense training from her dad when she was a kid, and she did keep herself in decent physical shape. So she wove around the first would-be hero that tried to grab her, and then actually shoulder-barged the second out of her way - the action sent ripples of pain through her tender body, but not enough to stop her from running. The cobbles of the streets were ringing under her boots now, and people fell about in confusion as she rushed past, only delaying the efforts to try and grab her.

'Hah, these idiots couldn't catch a cold! I just have to make it back to the forest...'

And that was when Nabiki's luck went sour. Something snapped against her ankles, and she cried out as she went crashing face-first into the street. Stars flashed in front of her eyes as she hit the ground, and she whimpered in pain, instinctively clutching her throbbing face.

"My nose!" she moaned... and then she froze in mortal terror as she heard an actual kami-damned gun cocking from just behind her ears.

"Don't make a move, criminal scum!" barked a surly voice from above and behind her.

Nabiki didn't move, didn't even dare to blink as somebody grabbed her arms and roughly forced them behind her back, before she was bodily lifted from the street. Fear like she'd never felt in her life, even in those brief moments when she'd been half-convinced that Ranma was genuinely going to hurt her for toying with his heart, flooded her veins, drowning her thoughts and numbing her tongue. She found herself spun around to face the man holding a gun - the biggest man she'd ever seen, as tall as the dojo destroyer who had attacked the Tendo Dojo that one time, and almost as bulky, carrying a rifle that, in Nabiki's eyes, could have passed as a small cannon. His blunt, ugly features twisted into a disgusted grimace, a scar on his left cheek tugging the edge of his snarling lips as he looked her up and down, naked contempt in his gaze.

"You're under arrest! Get moving, scum!" he barked, and gestured with his rifle in the direction he wanted her to go.

Nabiki obediently began walking that way, not daring to look him in the eye lest she somehow provoke his rage. For the first time in a long time, she felt vulnerable and weak, and those were not feelings that she was used to experiencing.

'Ranma, where are you? You're supposed to be here when things like this happen!' Nabiki thought to herself, and even she wasn't sure if she was pleading to him to save her or cursing him for being absent.

She could feel the eyes boring into her as she was led through the streets, and hear the muttering of passers by gossiping on the edge of her hearing. But she didn't stop, or look away, she just marched mechanically along. Only when the nauseating scent of rotting meat made her nose wrinkle did she look up at the towering stone fort she was being led towards. Her blood ran cold as ice-water as she saw the gallows looming ominously over the cobblestones, a kami-damned human corpse hanging by its neck from the noose, its blackening, bloated flesh the source of the foul odor assaulting her senses.

Her escorts didn't even blink at the sight, their jaded reaction to the sight of a human being strung up like a Peking duck and left to rot in the middle of the town square saying volumes about what kind of mess Nabiki was in. Without missing a beat, they marched her on, under the portcullis gate, through the small fortress courtyard and into the heart of it all.

Fear and confusion, two feelings all the worse for how rarely Nabiki experienced them, left her largely indifferent to her surroundings, up until she was finally marched before somebody whom she realized had to be the fort's commander. A surprisingly handsome man - blue-haired and golden eyes, and that was a combination Nabiki had never expected to see outside of an anime, was seated at a desk covered in paperwork, clad in a finely tailored suit and with a long-sleeved white coat with fancy epaulettes worn almost like a cape. He glanced up at Nabiki as she entered, then did a visible double-take before immediately fixing his attention firmly on her.

Such obvious interest should have been reassuring to Nabiki, who was used to guys admiring her - she might not be Shampoo or Kodachi, but she knew how to work what she had. Twisting horny guys around her finger was something she had considerable practice with. But with just how radically the paradigm had been altered, it wasn't really that comforting... besides, there was something predatory in this man's eye. Something that reminded her far more of Happosai than her usual would-be swains... and that made him potentially dangerous, until proven otherwise.

"Report, seaman," the man - now obviously identified as a commanding officer of some description - declared, his eyes never once leaving Nabiki's face.

Nabiki heard more than saw her brutish escort click his heels and snap a sharp salute. "Sir! This woman has been remanded into custody for the act of theft from the Cafe Totoro!"

"Theft, nothing, I paid those people in full!" Nabiki protested immediately.

"Yes, in counterfeit currency!" snarled the brute. He reached into his pocket and slapped the wad of cash triumphantly down on the officer's desk. "This evidence was retrieved from the Cafe Totoro by another of our able seamen, Captain Kintaro! As you can see, it bears absolutely no resemblance to any legal tender recognized by the World Government - these are such obviously forged Beris that they cannot even pass as forgeries!"

"Which is quite a bizarre occurrence, seeing as the punishment for forgery is to be hanged by the neck until dead," Captain Kintaro calmly observed.

The blackened, bloated face of the dead man they had passed to enter the fortress loomed large in Nabiki's mind, fear clutching her spine in an icy grip. Mind racing, she blurted out, "Whoa, wait a minute, you've got it all wrong! I'm not a forger - I'm a tourist!"

"What?!" her guard snapped, incredulity seeping from his very pores.

"I'm from a small, reclusive nation that isn't aligned with the World Government. But I wanted to see the world beyond our borders, so I hired a man to bring me here on a trip... but, obviously, he wasn't a very trustworthy man, because he never mentioned a thing to me about needing to convert my currency so badly!" Nabiki explained, ignoring the thug behind her to plead her case to the man at the desk with her life in his hands.

Captain Kintaro simply stared at her with those hungry eyes, a thoughtful expression forming around the piercing orbs. "I have heard of small nations who refuse to integrate into the World Government... and I must confess, it is far more plausible than that you would do this bad a job forging Beris... especially considering the quality in the finer details of these banknotes, which would be wasted by completely failing to remember the basic details of what the World Government's currency looks like. Very well, Miss...?"

"Tendo. Nabiki Tendo," Nabiki replied, a wave of relief washing over her, chasing the ice of fear from her mind and reigniting her usual sense of confidence. 'You did it again, you clever girl... can't believe I was worried... the muscle-heads brigade would never have been able to talk themselves out of this mess!'

"Miss Tendo, you have our apologies for this unfortunate incident. Normally, I would say you're free to go... but, there is one small issue remaining..."

"And what might that be, Captain Kintaro?"

"The matter of reparations... you see, we are a small island, and we do not have the banking equipment to convert foreign currency such as yours. And this bill from Cafe Totoro is quite a hefty sum indeed... You understand, even if you are a guest in our waters, we cannot simply waive all fees?"

"But of course... Perhaps you can recommend somewhere looking for a temporary hire? I would be more than happy to apply," Nabiki assured him. 'Should have expected that. Ugh, I hate working... but it beats dying!'

At that, Captain Kintaro smiled, a cold smile that showed off too many teeth to be welcoming... unless you were a shark. "As it so happens, I am in need of a personal assistant, and the pay is quite good..."

Nabiki gave him her best polite smile in response. "Is that so? Well, I would be happy to accept the offer," she replied. 'You're as transparent as Kuno... but I'd rather do paperwork and filing than anything heavy. Besides, how bad could you be, creepy eyes aside?'

"Splendid!" the captain responded, his grin somehow widening in the process. "I'll begin work on the paperwork immediately. But, as it happens, I have a uniform already prepared in my quarters. If you'll just follow me, I'll allow you to get changed and you can begin work immediately..."

"Uniform?" Nabiki asked, the question leaking out despite her best intentions. She quickly rallied herself, "That sounds just fine. Please lead the way..."

A few minutes later...

Nabiki looked at herself in the mirror and scowled. She looked like she'd stepped out of a meido doujin - oh, there was nothing technically scandalous about what she was wearing, she could still walk the streets and be treated like a normal girl, at least if she watched out for errant breezes (damn short skirt!), but it was still very much a French maid outfit, and one that hugged her figure quite nicely.

'If anyone from Nerima ever saw me dressed up like this, I'd be humiliated... why didn't this happen to Ranma? Stuff like this always happens to him! Besides, he's the one with the figure for getups like this!'

She pinched the bridge of her nose, inhaled deeply, and then exhaled slowly. 'Keep it in perspective, Nabiki. So what if your new 'boss' is a perv? This beats dying! Besides, he can't possibly be any worse than the losers you ran circles around back in Nerima...'

Thus fortified, she drew herself up haughtily and stepped out of Captain Kintaro's private quarters. The captain was, as she had expected, waiting just outside, and his eyes lit up at the sight of her. "I must say, Miss Tendo, you look quite lovely. That outfit almost seems like it was tailored for you..."

With the control built over many long years, Nabiki bit back her instinctive reaction to such barely concealed lechery. Instead, she gave him what she considered to be a genuinely happy smile. "Why, thank you, Captain Kintaro! It's always better when workmates appreciate each other's company, I think."

"Oh, I couldn't agree more," the middle Tendo simpered, still putting on her best 'bubblehead' act. She started to walk past her new boss, heading for the direction of the office where she had met him...

"Yeep!"

And that was when a pair of fingers suddenly pinched her sharply on the buttocks. She whirled angrily on Captain Kintaro, hands instinctively covering her butt, only to be greeted by a perfectly neutral look.

"Is something wrong, Miss Tendo?" he asked, the apparent genuine confusion in his words undermined by the hint of a sneer on his lips and the cold, greedy delight in his eyes.

'...So, that's the way you want to play this game, is it? 'Personal assistant' means 'plaything', huh?' Nabiki stared daggers back into Kintaro's eyes. For a moment, pride demanded she call him out on his behavior... and then the mental image of the loaded gallows with its macabre fruit swung ominously back into her mind's eye and she shuddered.

"...No. Nothing's wrong, sir," Nabiki gritted out. She turned and resumed walking away, quickening her pace just a little to hopefully keep ahead of grabby hands. 'Why is this happening to me? Ranma, where are you? Why aren't you the one stuck in this mess?!'

And back on Oodako Island...

"And that's the whole story of how I wound up looking like this," Ranma concluded, a note of disgust in her voice as she waved her hands over her now-feminine form.

"I see...truly, Ranma my darling, your life has been full of strangeness and hardship," Kodachi noted, genuine sympathy in her words. "There are so many things I could ask you... but no, only two things are important right now."

"And what might those be?" Umok interjected, asking the question on Ranma's lips.

"Firstly, that my darling Ranma was very heroic when he, or perhaps she, saved my life. And secondly... that in my case, at least, there is a little truth to what they say about Catholic school girls."

Ranma blinked in confusion, the reference flying over her head. "What's tha-mph!"

Ranma's words were cut off mid-sentence as Kodachi suddenly closed the distance between them, wrapped her arms tightly around the petite gender-bender, and enveloped Ranma's lips in a passionate kiss.

Now, there were three very good reasons why Ranma should have pushed Kodachi away. Firstly, Ranma was engaged - three times over, no less. Secondly, Ranma didn't want to cheat on Akane. And thirdly, Kodachi was crazy... albeit apparently a little less crazy than Ranma had believed. But, as valid as all those reasons were, they completely failed to motivate Ranma to fight her way free of Kodachi's liplock, and there was a single simple reason for that.

Ranma wasn't used to being kissed. Affection from women wasn't exactly a major part of his life, despite the multiple engagements. Sad as it was to admit it, Kodachi's kiss was only the second kiss Ranma had ever experienced. Third, if you counted the time Mikado had forced his kiss on an unsuspecting girl-Ranma, but Ranma certainly refused to count that one! And that lack of familiarity only amplified the strange, stupefying powers of a passionate kiss from a pretty girl... and whatever her manifold faults, Ranma couldn't deny that Kodachi was actually quite attractive.

And so it was that the natural instinct to flee was undercut by a tidal wave of surprise, uncertainty, hesitation, doubt, and a treacherous undertone of pleasure, a noxious emotional stew that left Ranma quite incapable of thinking or doing anything. All Ranma could do was just stand there, unwittingly drinking in the sensations of the kiss - the softness of Kodachi's lips, the taste of her on Ranma's tongue (was that black cherry?), the warmth of her embrace and even the strange, not entirely unpleasant feeling of Kodachi's petite breasts squishing Ranma's own larger bosom - until Kodachi finally chose to separate them.

"W-well," Kodachi declared, a blush turning her cheeks a surprisingly cute shade of pink. "That was... not how I imagined my first kiss going, but I'm still glad it was with you nonetheless, Ranma darling."

"If you girls wanna practice some more, we ain't gonna stop ya!" laughed a strange voice, causing both girls to twist around to face the interlopers.

Standing on a higher dune were a pair of men who were all but identical; big, ugly bruiser types with matching scars and broken teeth, pierced ears and tattoos. They loomed, and would have done so even without their current advantage of the high ground, with bulging muscles made plainly evident by the fact that both went shirtless, dressing in matching raggedy blue-and-white-striped pants held up by suspenders. Large, cleaver-like blades strapped to their waists completed the picture of carbon-copy thugs.

"Who're you two?!" Ranma spat at the intruders.

"I'm Jack," said the one on the right.

"And I'm Jock," said the one on the left.

"We're part of a crew that just came ashore to restock on fresh water, and we just happened to find you two ladies," they then elaborated in unison.

"Why didn't you warn us that we were being spied upon?" Kodachi hissed to Umok.

"I tried! You were too busy sucking face to pay attention!" the three-eyed imp hissed back.

Ranma ignored their squabbling, focusing instead on what the strangers had said. "You guys are from a ship? ...Could you give us a lift? We were stranded here and we don't know how to get home," she asked, clasping her hands and putting on her best "cute pout" for good measure.

The...twins? Was that what they were? Regardless, the two men looked at each other, grinned broad, toothy grins, and then turned their attention back to Ranma, still smiling those shark-like grins. "Sure. Come with us; we'll be happy to take you aboard," they said.

To be honest, Ranma didn't trust these two as far as she could throw them. But a ship was a ship, and it sure beat trying to camp in the middle of the wilderness on a deserted island with no tools or supplies! She feigned a polite smile in response, clasping her hands.

"Yay! Oh, thank you, Misters, we deeply appreciate it! ...Don't we, Kodachi?" she amended herself, nudging her would-be paramour with her elbow.

Fortunately, Kodachi continued to show that she was far less scatterbrained than the male members of her family, for she quickly gave the strangers her own winning smile and bowed politely. "Yes, we are truly grateful for your assistance in this, our time of need," she declared.

"Oh, don't mention it," Jack replied.

"Yes, the captain would insist on being a good host," Jock assured them.

The two lost teens stumbled up the beach towards their new 'saviors', with Umok bobbing along behind them. This seemed to be the first time the twins noticed him, for they blatantly stared at the little monster.

"...What are you?" they asked in unison.

"I'm a parrot - polly wanna a cracker," Umok replied flatly, deadpanning even the request.

"Must be a Grand Line breed," Jock muttered to Jack.

"Indubitably, indubitably," Jack replied, nodding his head sagely.

Seemingly satisfied with that answer, the two bruisers turned and trundled off into the undergrowth, with the three dimension travelers following behind them. Ranma glanced over at Kodachi, who gave the transformed boy a smile and a sly wink. Surprised, Ranma started, but then she grinned back wickedly.

'She figured out that I'm just playing along with these two bozos? I always knew she was smarter than she acted...between the two of us, we should be able to handle whatever these two lead us into... Once we have a ship, we can start looking for a place to find out how to make Umok take us home...'

And meanwhile, back on Shincurid Island...

Ukyo pushed her way through the undergrowth, trying not to lose her pace or her footing in the tangled vegetation. Huge oak trees dominated the landscape, but the land between was filled with bushes and shrubs, which combined with piled leaf litter and great, gnarled roots made for a treacherous environment. But, much to her consternation, Shampoo seemed to be actively thriving in it. She glided through the brush as silently as a ghost, seeming almost to melt through the vegetation rather than walk over it. It left Ukyo feeling slow and clumsy by comparison.

'Figures that a savage like her would do well out here... wherever here is... hey, wait a minute...'

"So, are we going somewhere, or-?" Ukyo asked sarcastically.

Shampoo cut her off by sharply raising her hand and hissing, an obvious gesture for silence that stilled the comment on Ukyo's tongue.

"What is it?" Ukyo began, this time quieter, almost whispering in her instinctive curiosity at the Chinese Amazon's actions.

"Listen... can you hear that?" Shampoo asked in the same soft, quiet voice, head pivoting from side to side as she spoke.

Ukyo bit back the instinctive denial, instead trying to focus on what she could hear, even closing her eyes to better hone her senses. The natural sounds of the forest filled her ears, but... there! Now that she was focusing, she could hear something distinctly unnatural...

"Sounds like... chanting? Drums?" Ukyo cautiously ventured, opening her eyes and looking at Shampoo for her opinion.

The Chinese Amazon nodded solemnly. "Come - but be quiet. Sneaky time when in strange lands," she cautioned her crossdressing rival before starting off in the direction of the noises they had heard.

Ukyo followed along behind, doing her best to be as stealthy as possible - this wasn't exactly an environment she'd trained to master, having instead spent her formative years on beaches and in urban environments. Still, she felt confident that she was at least holding her own in the stealth department. As she slipped through the underbrush, however, she couldn't escape one nagging thought...

'Was there something... off... about those voices I heard?'

She had no idea that Shampoo was thinking the exact same thing.

Minutes later...

The two rival girls stareds in mutual silence at the scene unfolding before them, hiding as best they could behind a massive oak tree.

"...Squirrels?" Shampoo muttered incredulously.

"Squirrels with swords," Ukyo whispered in amendment.

And indeed, that was what the duo were looking at. A sizable glade in the forest, packed near to bursting with an army of small, fluffy-tailed rodents - mostly grey in color, with a smattering of reds and blacks. But that was the least odd thing about the sight. As Ukyo had observed, these squirrels were armed, with each carrying a bladed weapon - about the size of a long knife for humans like themselves, but clearly a sizable sword to the small animals.

Carefully constructed braziers burned with crackling flames that illuminated the gloom - a necessity, since this glade was in an area so densely covered by leaves that no natural sunlight made it through the foliage. The squirrels danced and cavorted, chanting in squeaks and chitters, spurred on by more of their kind playing drums and tiny flutes. But that wasn't the weirdest thing about the scene.

No, the weirdest thing was the centerpiece of everything. Hanging upside down from a stone monolith was a half-naked man, swaying helplessly over the crowd of squirrels, his mouth gagged. Tears were streaming from his eyes and falling to the ground below, where a particularly large, solid black-furred squirrel brandished a 'sword' with obvious malicious glee.

"We must help him!" Shampoo hissed. "Ukyo, you help me?"

Ukyo blinked in surprise, but then nodded fiercely. "Yes! C'mon!"

The two girls, now allies of convenience, unslung their familiar weaponry and then charged into the glade, crying out at the top of their lungs. The squirrels were caught quite off-guard as the two warrior-women ploughed into them, chui and battle spatula arcing through the air in great, downward-scything arcs that swept them aside like wheat chaff. With the element of surprise on Shampoo and Ukyo's side, the squirrels never even thought of fighting back, instead erupting into panicked confusion.

It was chaos in the glade as fuzzy little bodies darted in every direction, like a carpet unraveling underneath Shampoo and Ukyo's feet. The air rang with panicked high-pitched chittering and squeals, an assault on the ears that made the girls' heads ring. But they pushed past their pain and fought on, bludgeoning and kicking, pressing the advantage for all their worth and thrusting their way through the press.

And then, as suddenly as the fight had started, it was all over. Aside from the dozens of small furry bodies lying limp in the undergrowth, stunned unconscious by Shampoo and Ukyo's attacks, the girls were alone with the man they had fought to save. Whilst the Chinese Amazon remained watchful, peering into the undergrowth as if she expected a counter-attack at any moment, Ukyo turned her attention to the stranger.

"Hold on, sugar; I'll have you down in a minute," Ukyo assured him. Grabbing one of her smaller spatulas, honed to a razor's edge, she carefully cut the man down and caught him before he could fall, laying him on the ground and severing the bonds around his wrists and ankles before removing the gag.

The stranger - a hardweathered, middle-aged sort of fellow, with a sort of rugged charm despite mismatched eyes and an oft-broken nose, sat up and rubbed his wrists, staring at his saviors all the while. "Oh, thank you, thank you!" he said, tears of gratitude rolling down his ruddy cheeks.

"It was nothing - we couldn't just leave you to those... whatever they are," Ukyo explained.

"Mah name's Billybob - Witzer Billybob. You two shure saved mah bacon! But... what're a pair of fine young women doin' on Shincurid Isle?"

"Shincurid Isle? Is that what this place is called?" Ukyo asked, a sinking feeling in her stomach at the name. 'We definitely ain't in Tokyo any more...'

Billybob nodded his shiny bald head. "Yeah. You mustn't be from local waters; everybody aroun' here knows that the ninja squirrels of Shincurid Isle hate humans! Tormentin' 'em's a sacred rite to 'em. The lucky ones get back on the seas shaved completely bald from head to toe - that's why I was surprised to see women here!"

"Bald?!" the two girls barked in horrified unison. With eerie synchronicity and matching blank stares, each reached up to stroke her own long, flowing locks; a symbol of pride and prowess for Shampoo, and a deep emotional symbol for Ukyo, having been the one small bit of feminine vanity she'd permitted herself over those long dark years when she'd sought vengeance on Genma Saotome.

"Bald as a billiard ball," Billyboy drawled. "S'what happened ta me; Ah had me a bit of a liquid lunch and I drifted too close to this cursed island. Got out ta get mah bearings, and then the next thing Ah new, the little varmints had jumped me!"

"You say you have boat?" Shampoo interjected, eyes gleaming in the torchlight. "You think it still there?"

"A'course! Ah tied it up proper when Ah pulled onta tha beach!" Billyboy replied, puffing his chest out proudly.

"Well, then let's get out of here before those little monsters regroup and come back after us!" Ukyo declared.

"Sounds right dandy tah me!" Billybob declared, nodding. "But lemme jus' give them varmints sometin' else ta worry about..."

He reached down and grabbed something from the ground at the foot of the monolith, and then marched solemnly over to a brazier. He held the object up to the crackling flames, and the girls saw it was a shaggy mass of black hair.

"Ah done spent twenny-free years growin' this here beard... an' those little varmints took it from me! Well, let this be the last one yah'll ever shave!"

And before Ukyo or Shampoo could even think of stopping him, Billybob held his former beard to the brazier, igniting it in a split-second. They didn't even have time to wince at the stink of burning hair before he whipped around and threw it into a corner of the glade piled high with dead leaves and masses of hair, which exploded into roaring tongues of flame!

"Is you crazy?!" Shampoo shrieked in protest.

"Crazy like a fox! C'mon, ladies; we'll beat feet tah the boat whilst these varmints try to smother the flames, or fry!" Billybob cackled wildly, and then raced off into the undergrowth.

As the fire spread like a living thing, a chorus of angry rodent screams and shrieks filled the air. Shampoo and Ukyo needed no further encouragement, and charged after the still-laughing sailor, running as hard as they could as tongues of flame devoured leaflitter and underbrush with insatiable voracity.

Neither girl would remember the panic-fueled flight all that clearly afterwards. Just vague memories of running, screams filling their ears and the heat of flame washing over their backs. They remembered glimpses of a fleeing combat; Ukyo using her spatula as a shield to deflect shuriken made from folded, razor-sharp leaves before they hit Shampoo in the back, and Shampoo smashing away a squirrel that leapt for Ukyo's face like a nobusuma. No, the clearest memory they had was of sand crunching under their feet as they hit the beach and sprinted for the boat; Shampoo leapt an impossible leap to land on the boat's deck before the splashing waves could transform her into a helpless cat, whilst Ukyo and Billybob put their shoulders to the boat and launched it into the deeper water - a feat made quite easy with Ukyo helping. She wasn't the strongest in Nerima, but she had enough muscle to launch the small fishing boat out like it was a rocket, forcing her and Billyboy to scramble aboard, lest it be left behind.

And then the three were all safely aboard. Ukyo and Shampoo were both panting for breath, sharing a mutual look of grudging respect whilst Billybob clung to the gunwale and let out a holler of glee. "Lookit it burn!" he cried, before howling with malicious laughter.

The two girls hauled themselves onto the gunwale and looked back at the island. Sure enough, thick clouds of smoke were billowing fiercely over the trees, and the beach was alive with furious squirrels that jumped up and down and squeaked murine curses after them. But already they were organizing themselves into bucket brigades, using hollowed out coconut shells and crab carapaces to transport seawater back into the forest in an attempt to fight the blaze.

"You think we killed them?" Shampoo wondered aloud.

"Ah doubt it. They're clever little varmints, gotta give 'em that. But it'll be awhile afore they go botherin' innocent folks, that's fer shure!" Billyboy whooped gleefully.

Abandoning the gunwale, he began lumbering across the deck to the helm. "Now, Ah'm mighty grateful tah you two ladies fer saving mah bacon. Anywhere Ah can take yah'll to say thanks?"

"We're... actually, sort of lost," Ukyo admitted, before she added, "Maybe just take us to the nearest port?"

"Becop? Shure! It's a nice enough place... least, iff'n yah'll can avoid trouble with the Marines, damn fancy-suited thugs... But that's mah hometown, and it's where Ah'd be heading about this time'o day, anyways! So you ladies jus' set on back and relax; ol' Billybob'll getcha there, Ah guarantee!" The sailor laughed, taking the ship's wheel and tugging on some rigging that was fixed to the helm, clearly intended to help a lone fisherman manage this little boat without any need for assistance.

The two girls simply sat right there on the deck, and glanced over at each other.

'I can't believe Shampoo actually helped somebody - helped me, even! Maybe she isn't so bad after all... plus, we may be stuck here for a while...' Ukyo mused to herself.

'For all of her faults, Ukyo proved her courage back there. I always suspected she was of superior personal character to that wretched Akane Tendo, but even so I must confess surprise at how she handled herself. Under the circumstances, I could certainly do worse for an ally...' Shampoo pondered.

"Hey, Shampoo? Can we... can we keep this truce thing going?" Ukyo hesitantly asked her rival, looking her squarely in the eyes and watching for any sign of deceit.

Shampoo returned her gaze levelly, and then nodded slowly. "This strange place, and we all alone together. It much safer we work together, no? Shampoo will keep truce as long as Ukyo does."

"Alright, that's fair. Until we find our way back to Ranma; no backstabbing, agreed?"

"Agreed."

Speaking of Ranma, back on Oodako Island...

Ranma, Kodachi and Umok stared flatly at the scene before them. True to their words, Jock and Jack had led the two girls and one imp to their crew. The crew belonged to a small sailing ship, sitting in a cove, and flying a very distinctive flag... a black flag, with a white skull at its center, draped in a netlike mass of green strands. It was, even to somebody with as little familiarity with pop-culture as Ranma, a pirate ship. Which neatly explained the thuggish nature of the dozen men currently gathered in the bay, surrounding their captain; the biggest, ugliest one of them all all, with a long, tangled beard of sea-green hair and a great big black tricorn hat adorned with the same slime-bedecked skull symbol as flew over his ship. The hulking brute leered down at the two teenage girls.

"Well, Jack, Jock, what were you naughty boys up to, eh? Where'd you dig up these lovelies?" he cackled.

"We found them on the beach back that way, Captain Greenbeard. They say that they're stranded," the twins replied.

At that, the newly-named Captain Greenbeard threw back his head and laughed uproariously. "Why, it must be Saturnalia, boys! Look at what wonderful presents we've been given!" His men fell about laughing eagerly alongside their captain.

"Excuse me," Ranma interjected, cutting off the laughter as Captain Greenbeard looked at the redhaired boy-turned girl with an incredulous expression. "I'm guessing you guys are all pirates?"

"Aye! I am Captain Greenbeard, and these are my loyal crew, the Nori Pirates!"

"Oh, good. I don't have to feel guilty about doing this, then," Ranma declared sweetly.

"Doing-?"

Before the hulking pirate captain could finish his sentence, Ranma had surged forward in a charging straight-arm punch straight to the man's solar plexus. Captain Greenbeard seemed to bend around Ranma's fist, before inertia caught up with him and mercilessly blasted him across the beach, dust kicking up in his wake as he soared along like a human rocket, stopping only when he impacted a coconut palm and sent fruits raining down upon the sand.

Shocked silence reigned for seconds, before the pirates roared and collectively brandished fists and weapons... but it was too little, too late.

Ranma was a blur, slipping between taller, stronger-looking men with the agility of an eel and then striking with the ferocity of a thunderbolt. Fists and feet flew in a barrage of punches, kicks and chops, leaving men sprawled in the dust unconscious in Ranma's wake. Whilst Ranma normally liked to play with her opponents, this was one of those occasions where she had decided it was time to get serious.

Jock and Jack tried to grab Kodachi, but the younger Kuno evaded them by casually backflipping into the air over twice her height... and then descended upon the stunned twins in a two-footed diving kick that landed squarely on the back of their respective necks as they gormlessly gawped at the sand where she had been standing, leaving them unconscious and face down in the sand.

In less time than it would have taken to tell it, the beach was a massacre; fourteen groaning bodies covered the sands, with two teenage girls standing triumphantly amidst the carnage. Until Captain Greenbeard suddenly staggered to his feet, groaning and moving slowly, but obviously not down yet.

"What the devil are you?!" he demanded of Ranma.

The boy-turned-girl simply gave him a mocking grin. "Your nightmare," she replied in the same sweet, innocent tones she had used before.

"Buh-big talk for a girl without a weapon! I'll have you know, I'm one of the finest swordsmen in the East Blue, and now I'm ready for you!" Greenbeard snarled, drawing a cutlass and brandishing it at Ranma.

KRAKOW!

Greenbeard yelped as the blade of his cutlass suddenly exploded into useless slivers, instinctively dropping the now-harmless handle. He stared dumbfounded at the hilt lying on the sand, and by the time he thought to look up, it was just in time to catch Ranma's leaping uppercut squarely on his chin. The formidable-looking brute promptly launched straight up into the air as if propelled by a spring, and when he hit the ground this time, it was obvious the fight had been knocked out of him.

Ranma dusted her hands off, then looked over at Kodachi, quirking her eyebrow at the smoking pistol clutched in her unwanted suitor's hand. "I didn't know you could shoot," Ranma confessed.

Kodachi smirked at her genderbending love interest. "I could have qualified for the Olympics, if brother dear hadn't interfered - he insisted it was unseemly for a Kuno to be known to take an interest in such untraditional weaponry..." Her face shifted into a look of haughty disdain as her mind's eye visibly wandered back to old memories. "As if the samurai didn't readily avail themselves of guns once they became available from Western traders... strange, though; this pistol is far more complex than the flintlock it resembles... more accurate, especially..."

"...Yeah, that sounds like Kuno alright," Ranma admitted, not having the background to speak on anything relating to firearm technical details. Then she sighed. "So much for us getting a ride off of this island..."

"Oh, no need to despair, Ranma darling!" Kodachi chirped brightly, snapping back from her reverie with her trademark speed. "I happen to be something of an amateur yachtswoman; the principles should be similar enough that I can sail this vessel..."

"And navigation is something of a specialty of mine," Umok interjected. "So I can definitely help her steer."

"The only issue, then, is what do we do with these ruffians? Shall we simply abandon them here?" Kodachi pondered.

Ranma immediately shook her head. "No... I couldn't do something like that. We'll tie 'em up and lock 'em in the hold, then hand them over to the proper authorities... whoever they are in this crazy place."

"You are as compassionate as you are powerful, my love," Kodachi declared proudly. "Very well; Umok and I shall raid the captain's cabin whilst you secure our captives. I'm certain the proper authorities would reward us for this task, anyway..."

A short while later...

The sails creaked as the wind stretched them, waves splashing against the hull of the ship as Ranma closed the door to the hold. "There we are; prisoners secure," she declared, dusting her hands off.

"Very good, Ranma darling," Kodachi responded from where she was manning the helm.

"So, where are we going, anyway?" Ranma asked, wandering over to the helm in her curiosity.

"I found a map that says the nearest port is a place called Becop Island," Umok declared, from where he was pouring through a bunch of scrolls and books. "Shouldn't take us too long to get there with this wind in our sails."

"That's a relief," Ranma sighed. "Once we get to civilization, we can start worrying about the bigger things... like how we're going to find the others, and then get home."

Silence fell across the deck as the trio contemplated the enormity of the task now awaiting their attention. A long, awkward minute slowly ticked by before Kodachi tried to fight through the gloom. "I... Ranma, darling? Surely you know that you don't need to worry about those other ruffian girls? They can take care of themselves, for all their many other faults..."

Ranma actually chuckled at that. "Actually, I wasn't worrying about them. I was worrying about Ryoga."

At that, Kodachi blinked in surprise. "Ryoga? That lout whom you were fighting with before we were brought here? Whyever would you be concerned for him?"

"Ryoga's got the world's worst sense of direction," Ranma explained. "And now we're in an entirely different world. Poor jerk's gotta be scared outta his mind trying to figure out where he is and how to get home...

At that moment, on Becop Island...

"...Huh. Well, this isn't Yokohama. Pretty enough, but it's not Yokohama," Ryoga mused casually, speaking aloud, as was his wont after a lifetime when he usually had little other than the sound of his own voice to ward off the ever-present loneliness.

The Eternally Lost Boy was currently standing on one of the piers of the Becop Island docks, watching the ships bobbing about on the waves, listening to the cries of seagulls, and generally enjoying the peace and quiet.

"Gotta hand it to Ranma; this is an impressive new trick he picked up. Low-down and dirty even for him, but impressive. But I'm used to having to hunt you down, Ranma! You've merely bought yourself some time!" he warned his absent rival, turning and preparing to march boldly forth to pursue his most hated enemy to the ends of the world...

And that was when a particular large wave crashed against the pier, spraying high into the air... and right over the unprepared Jusenkyo-cursed boy standing there.

Moments later, the tiny black form of P-chan squirmed its way free of Ryoga's too-large clothing and oversized backpack, emitting soft, porcine grumbles.

'...That was just cheap!'

Chapter End & Closing Notes

And thus we have our beginning. Apologies, but this will be something of a slow burn. After all, our heroes will need to find their feet and begin adapting before they can hope to successfully launch themselves in pursuit of the One Piece!

For the curious why I included Umok, the simple answer is that, in a crossover of this kind, with our heroes having absolutely no preconceptions or understanding of the world in which they live, we need a particular kind of "exposition fairy" to kickstart them into making the plot happen. Without Umok, sadly, our heroes would basically end up giving up on ever going home and would just try to settle down on a normal life somewhere.

And, as a final explanatory note; this chapter takes place roughly 1 year before the start of One Piece canon. I have my plans, but suffice it to say that Ranma and Luffy's adventures will take place on very different routes.