Climbing Together 14

I don’t own Ranma, Street Fighter, or SNK. Sadly.

This has been edited by Grammarly and Hiryo. I found and deleted a program google chrome downloaded without my permission, and it seems to have helped the speed of Grammarly by a LOT.  Now if only I’d kept the name of the program around to make sure it couldn’t come back…

Stallion is about halfway done? I should be done it by Sunday at the latest depending on Grammarly and real-life stuff.  Did not get nearly as much done Tuesday as I should have, unfortunately.

On Shampoo’s Name: Hiryo and a reader over on A03 mentioned how Shampoo should just become Shan Pu in Chinese.  I agree that it more correct in terms of how it would be translated to (or be translated back to) Chinese. However, I think Xian is a better way of showing the difference in the mangled Japanese version of her name and the real one in written format.  I have, however, changed it’s meaning to Jade rather than jewel.   

With that said, here’s the chapter. It was really fun to work on, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Chapter 14: Claws Strike Deep

Once Mai had navigated the Rising Star out of the harbor, Ranma took over at the wheel for the first time without her looking over his shoulder. Both Ranma and Shampoo had spent a few hours a day learning to steer and operate the ship's controls, as it headed to Hainan Island. Shampoo hadn’t really taken to it yet, but by this point, Ranma at least could manage all the controls and steer the ship relatively well while being on the lookout for bad weather. For short amounts of time, anyway.

The problems the pair faced in terms of navigating the ship were very different. Shampoo got frustrated by the need to keep one hand on the wheel and had yet to get used to the controls, a problem stemming from the little technology in her home village. Ranma had gotten used to them and seemed to enjoy it when the ship was at speed but also got bored very, very quickly.

However, he could also be bribed.

Giggling quietly as she watched the taller woman hop down to join her in the open area at the back of the ship, Shampoo jerked her chin up towards where Ranma stood at the wheel, his back ramrod straight, his pigtail sticking out like a handle from the back of his head. Heh, a look like that can mean only one thing.

“What did you say to our Airen to make him so… stiff~?” she asked, her tone turning into a purr that, she was pleased to see, made Ranma shiver enough to be visible from where Shampoo stood at the back of the ship.

Joining the other girl, Mai licked her lips a little. “MMm~, he’s definitely stiff in all the right ways, heh, which ties to what I told Ranma I’d do if he mans the wheel for three hours without complaint.”

Understanding at least loosely what that meant and deciding her joke would be funnier with her original accent in Japanese, Shampoo slipped into that language, widening her eyes to seem even more simple. “Aiyah, but Shampoo hear being stiff three hour be bad and sign of drug use. Ranma need too too much help if that the case.”

Both women broke out into laughter at that, which deepened as Ranma shouted over his shoulder, “Hah! I don’t need any drugs in that area, thank you so much, especially with the two of you around.”

Biting back still more chuckles, Mai hummed, then judged, “I think I’ll rate that a six out of ten, lover. Decent recovery from how I left you red-faced and nodding like a bobblehead and I approve of the compliment. However, the actual retort to Shampoo’s teasing left much to be desired.”

“Want to give him a redo?” Shampoo got into the teasing, then smirked, her eyes going heavy-lidded for a moment as she looked at Mai and Ranma’s back. “Then again, perhaps I shouldn’t tempt fate. If Ranma ever accidentally took one of those pills, neither of us would be walking straight for a week. Even in the bedroom, he can still out-endurance both of us. I also doubt it’d do our future as martial artists any good. If we lived through the experience, Airen would certainly’ve gotten us pregnant by the time he calmed down, regardless of our injections.”

“Death by snu-snu. Maybe not altogether pleasant, all those sticky fluids, but still, that has to be in the top ten best ways to go.” Mai giggled wickedly, before compulsively leaning forward to give Shampoo a loving kiss on the lips, the shorter woman returning the kiss.

Ranma’s face had turned bright red as he listened to the pair, but he remained silent, unable to either join in their repartee or try to stop them. Thankfully, while both Shampoo and Mai enjoyed teasing him, they preferred to do so physically, and their love of the Art was much greater than even that. So, after a few moments of kissing, the pair stepped back from one another. They spent a few moments setting up trailing ropes in the water in case they fell in, then hopped up onto the safety railing along the sides of the ship.

Both of them struggled there for a moment, to get used to the up and down motion of the ship and the wind hitting them. That was part of the point of this particular spar, though, as Shampoo pointed out, along with listing the other limitations they had agreed to that morning at breakfast with Ke Lun before leaving port. “No Shadow weapons and no unarmed strikes. We also promised to try and keep to the safety railings and the combat at mid-range, right?”

This training was to practice balance for Mai and midrange combat for Shampoo. Her bout with Mousse had shown her she was lacking in offensive capabilities beyond her needles in that range, and Mai’s balance had proven to be less than Shampoo's and Ranma’s several times in their travels, even if her basic footwork and agility were better than Shampoo’s.

That, and Ranma had felt both needed work on staying mobile, which he shouted out now. “You’re also supposed to be switching sides every two minutes, girls.”

“Ugh, right, not looking forward to hitting that landing. I’ve only really trained on flat surfaces, not rounded ones like this,” Mai agreed, looking down at where she balanced on the railing. The railing itself was raised from the rest of the hull by an inch, with small metal pylons in places to connect it to the back wall of the ship’s sides. Just don’t think about it, darn it.

“Only the weapons we start with for the first thirty minutes. Then we switch to any weapons we’ve got in our ki space. That means your needles and my various fans. Forty minutes of that, then we end with ki-assisted weapons, all while keeping the midrange rule.”

Now it was Shampoo’s turn to be annoyed, but she still nodded, knowing this was mainly for her. For a moment, the ship was silent as the two women stared across at one another, then the pair of young women, who had just a few moments earlier been exchanging loving kisses, hurled weapons across the intervening distance with the intent of doing bodily harm to one another.

One weakness the two ladies quickly realized they had in common was that their footwork did indeed need work when landing on moving surfaces that weren’t flat. Even Shampoo, who had gone into the spar thinking she had an advantage there, realized this wasn’t the case when it came to dealing with the ups, downs and sudden shifts of a small yacht at sea coupled with a thin safety railing. More than once, Ranma heard a hasty “Aiyah” or a more expressive curse as the two girls flailed or lost their footing entirely on the safety railing.

Mai didn’t use many curse words but rather phrases. Some of which were quite hilarious.

In the air, Mai’s agility and ability in midair were far higher than Shampoo’s, but Shampoo’s hand-eye coordination was fast enough to keep up, and her greater hand speed actually gave her a bit of an edge. At midrange, though, as they shifted position either in the air or on the safety railing, Shampoo found herself quickly pressed onto the defensive, having expended her needles and not using her chui in this fight.

Ke Lun had gifted Shampoo with a new pair to replace the two she had lost in battle against the two ancient jiangshi. Despite that, throwing them at someone like Mai would just end up with them disappearing into the ocean, a fact Shampoo lamented as her last needle flashed over Mai’s shoulder.

Quickly realizing the problem, Mai pointed out that Shampoo had neglected training with her meteor hammer. Worse, she didn’t use the ki-based extending technique like Ranma or even Mai could, which she should have learned from their time at Master Nawa’s school. “You need to do better at that, Shampoo! Your needles can be nasty, but they lack stopping power.”

“Gah, say that again when I have access to the hundreds I have in my ki space!” Shampoo shouted back, whirling her meteor hammer in a defensive array around her body, blocking several fans from Mai.

Meanwhile, Mai couldn’t hit Shampoo hard enough to matter. Her toughness training was to the point that no amount of hurled fans would do more than make her flinch, and only then if they hit her in the face. Several times when she landed on the same railing as Mai, this let Shampoo gain the initiative, but the eyes were a different matter, and right before they were set to switch to the weapons in their ki spaces, Mai turned the tables on Shampoo right as she was smacked off the side of the ship by Shampoo’s meteor hammer.

Shampoo fell backward onto the deck with a loud yelp of pain, and for once cursed just as much as the taller woman. “GRRR!! Damn all fans to become matchsticks in their next life, that was my fucking eye, argh!”

“Ha,” Mai barked out as she wound her arms around one of the trailing lines. She then gagged a bit as a wave went over her head before Ranma started to cut power to the engine, and she was able to get her head out of the water. A tug and the rope went taut before another arm twitch flung Mai out of the water, landing on the now-wet safety railing.

Mai balanced there for a moment, her arms pinwheeling to either side and setting her chest to jiggle in a way that, even in pain, Shampoo could only stare at, before jumping over to a less wet area of the railing. “I think that one was a win for you despite that last hit.”

Barely holding back the urge to shake her head at how sexy Mai had looked a moment ago, Shampoo grit her teeth, scowling up at Mai, although the glare lacked any real power now. “No aiming for the eye. That hurt like blazes.”

“Hmm, we might need to work on fighting blinded or with our eyes in pain,” Mai thought aloud before hopping down to help Shampoo to her feet, apologizing as she finished the motion by pulling Shampoo into a hug. “Sorry, I was aiming for your mouth. You were grinning just a little too much at dumping my rear over the side for me to ignore.”

“Ugh, it’s fine, I suppose, you’re irritatingly hard to be angry at, you know,” Shampoo muttered, leaning into the drenched Mai, shivering as she felt a thrill of delight as her curves pressed into the other woman’s. “I am going to get you back, though.”

Mai snorted as if Shampoo had just informed her the sky was blue, and the two took their positions again.

During the second match, it became clear that Mai could adjust her style to how Shampoo fought in midair with her meteor hammer better than vice versa, though even as the fight turned her way, Mai knew she was getting the worst of it when it came to taking damage. Shampoo’s needles, imbued with her ki, could completely bypass Mai’s toughness training, something she complained bitterly about when she lost feeling in one arm. Worse Shampoo was a good deal stronger in terms of sheer muscle than Mai to begin with, and her meteor hammer hit like a mace wielded by a giant.

Defensively, Shampoo’s also had a bit of an edge in her meteor hammer, allowing her to redirect Mai’s fire, and her explosion-infused fans didn’t mean much. She ducked, dodged or redirected them so much that Ranma idly wondered if the ship looked like it was on fire or shooting off random short-ranged fireworks as it raced through the waves.

Their footwork on the heaving safety railing was still an issue for both girls throughout. That, coupled with Mai’s greater maneuverability, eventually overcame Shampoo’s defensive style. Near the end of the three hours, it was Shampoo who fell into the ocean, despite Mai’s right arm being useless from the shoulder down temporarily. Thankfully, Shampoo was able to get herself back onto the ship just as easily as Mai could.

“I would say this for this for fighting aboard our ship, it’s quite nice on a warm day to take a dip, planned or no,” Shampoo said, more to keep her own spirits up than anything else. She then scowled as she pointed at Mai, who was moving a little gingerly, more than just her dead arm implied. “You need to work on your defense more. I could see several times in our back-and-forth when you should have defended, but instead tried to keep up your offensive. If this were a real fight, you’d be down your arm right now, and I know I nailed you in your side and in your thigh a few times.”

“I know, it’s a mental thing. I’ve always preferred to set the tone in a fight by keeping the initiative. It backfired on me here, and occasionally in that fight we had in Hong Kong when we were undercover. I’ve been able to break the habit whenever I face multiple opponents, taking on a more balanced approach, but when it’s just one-on-one, I tend to revert,” Mary grumbled, shaking her head.

“I understand. I was once the same. When I first began using the full-weight chui, I thought I was invincible. Then I fought Do Wel for the first time when I was fourteen.” Shampoo shivered. “I clocked her a good one right in the chest, and even though it knocked her off balance, that was all. I was ready to follow up, and didn’t even see her own chui coming down on top of me until they slammed into my head.”

Her lips curled into a vicious and, in Mai’s eyes, sexy sneer. “That was the last time anyone in my age range or even that directly above ever beat me before Airen came along, though.” Shampoo then shook her head, frowning a little. “I don’t have any other specific observations. Midrange combat’s your specialty, and it showed from the start, so I can’t comment on your style there. Um, maybe regulate your strength, and don’t rely so much on misdirection because when that fails, it leaves you vulnerable.”

Shampoo then became more solicitous as she saw a black and blue mark developing on Mai’s bare thigh. “On that note, is the toughness training fading for you for some reason? You’re, you’re looking a little bruised.”

While all three wanted to put themselves through the toughness training, Shampoo’s blows should not have been able to injure Mai all that much, but she was clearly limping a little, although she wasn’t favoring her side, thankfully. “Or is your leg still bothering you? I would’ve thought Grandmother’s healing would’ve solved that issue, but…”

“No, Elder Cu Lonxi’s healing worked fine. But… I noticed during some of our first spars aboard ship back when we left Hong Kong that my body doesn’t seem to have taken to that training as well as you and Ranma’s bodies had.” Mai scowled a bit, rubbing at her thigh with both hands where Shampoo had caught her not once, but four times with her meteor hammer. “I’m afraid it’s because my ki lends itself to the spiritual side of things so much. I might never be able to learn the toughness technique beyond a certain point, unfortunately. Doesn’t mean I won’t try though.”

Shampoo scowled at that, but it made sense. Unlike Shampoo, who had begun to cultivate her inner ki barely a few weeks before meeting Ranma, Mai had begun to use it consciously far earlier in her training, and, more than that, her whole style was based off spiritual type attacks and defenses. That undoubtedly built a preference for the yin side of things rather than the yang, which would take a long while and a great deal of dedication to overcome. Dedication and time concentrating solely on it. Way more than the week we hoped to devote to the technique on Hainan.

“We’re gonna need to make that a priority sometime soon, then, Mai-chan. I won’t have you being the only one who can’t handle fighting enemies like that crazy Yamazaki guy. I know you’ll get there eventually,” Ranma stated firmly, still not turning away from his present job. More because he was worried about what would happen if he looked away than Mai’s earlier promise. Ranma was honest enough with himself these days to know there was also a bit of that there.

Mai flushed faintly, a warm feeling building up inside her at Ranma’s words and Shampoo’s firm nod of agreement. The pair weren’t just saying that, Mai could tell by the look on Shampoo’s face. They were both certain she could overcome this weakness and were willing to help as best they could. “Erm… thanks, you two.”

Shampoo giggled at her, seeing how flustered the normally flirty, poised Mai had gotten for a moment. Mai pouted at her, but soon Mai regained her self-control. “Alright, well, for you, Shampoo, I think you still need to work to defend your lower body… which I realize is kind of ironic since you caught me on my leg. Still, most of the time, I was able to hit you or push you off-balance when I targeted your legs. Ranma doesn’t when he spars with you, but not everyone will be willing to go just for your center or face.”

That caused Shampoo to lose her smile for a second, but she nodded, and Mai continued. “Your strength’s incredible, but as the fight went on, your self-control faded. I think you need to work on your emotional control, too. That was how I was able to get a hit on your eye, too. As for midrange combat…”

Mai dissected Shampoo’s style further, showing her greater understanding of that type of combat. She gave Shampoo several ideas on where to take her own shadow multiplication technique and a few more ideas on how to use her meteor hammer better in combat. Since Cu Lonxi had already started Shampoo on the road of using earth-based attacks, that was all she needed to do at present.

She did add on a major positive, though. “When I tried to block them, your needles wrecked most of the fans I keep in my ki space, meaning you were able to sharpen their edge beyond what I could reinforce my fans to. I’m going to have to repair them, which is always a chore. You also saw through most of my own shadow fans, so your ki sense is already advanced.”

Humming thoughtfully, Shampoo thanked Mai for her observations, then pulled out another acupuncture needle and pressed it into several spots on Mai’s arm. “Your arm should be all right in less than twenty minutes now, rather than two hours from the time I hit it. And I think I’ll take your idea of practicing the rope-lengthening technique during meditation time to heart. I could survive being in midair combat with you in a real fight, but if I fought someone like you who can keep the range open, I’d definitely be in a bad way.”

“Well, that’s what we’re here for, right? We’re all going to learn from one another as much as any masters we come across. Just like Ranma told us about the various bits of his Undertow technique. I still find it amazing that your grandmother recognized the name the jiangshi used for it, Chíxù Yǒng Dòng, right?” Mai said with a smile, which Shampoo returned despite her outfit still being soaked through. “Which tells us it’s an actual style from thousands of years ago. Really fascinating.”

At that point, Ranma’s voice interrupted them. “I didn’t wanna interrupt your post-battle breakdown, but you sound finished, and it’s been three hours. You two can talk while Mai’s at the wheel. It’s my turn to get some exercise in, drat it. Gah, I feel like my legs are gonna revolt if I sit here any longer.”

“I think I’ll go change into a bikini first,” Shampoo snickered, looking down at her wet clothing. “Your idea of how being dunked in normal clothing would make us fight harder was foolish, Ranma.”

Shampoo had been fighting in a pair of Daisy Dukes (a name Shampoo had to ask about) shorts that Mai had bought her. Shampoo actually loved wearing them, as they showed off both her tights and her ass, but would never ever think of wearing them around other people. Still, the poleaxed look Ranma had given her when she came out of the boat that morning, despite his having seen her in them several times before, had been very nice indeed.

Today, she paired them with a t-shirt that Fei Long had given her, along with the rest of the movie production team. It was pink, and somewhat tight, with the words ‘Real > Fake’ on it, which she had laughed at the time, sending a snide look Mili Wong's way at the double meaning.

For her part, Mai wore a pair of exercise pants which, strangely, were the baggy kind rather than the skintight version she normally chose. With her previous dunking, though, they had started clinging to her nicely, though not as nicely as Shampoo’s Daisy Dukes. On the other hand, her muscle-t, which was red, clung to her far worse than Shampoo’s t-shirt and didn’t cover nearly as much skin.

Now Mai laughed, shaking her head as Shampoo headed down into the boat, while she hopped up onto the tiny bridge. “Hah, Shampoo might not’ve mentioned it, but you didn’t fool either of us when you brought up that idea, you know?”

“OhHHH,” Ranma replied, the word coming out in a slightly higher octave as Mai leaned over the back of the chair, feeling two very soft somethings pressing into the back of his head and neck. “And um, w, what was my real reason?”

Mai hummed as her breasts pressed into the top of his shoulders and neck while her arms wound around him. One hand slowly caressed his upper chest, while her other reached further down to Ranma’s firm, muscled stomach. her fingers making slow circles there. “You were worried about being distracted~ mid-bout,” she murmured, kissing the back of his neck, then his lips as he turned to her before pulling back.

When he did, she murmured into his neck, her tongue flicking out between words to lick his skin right where his hairline began. “And you’re right, Shampoo or I in bikinis would be very distracting. But so is our clothing being stuck to our skin by the water.”

“Y, you could have chosen less sexy outfits,” Ranma protested, but if he actually meant the words, Mai would eat one of her fans. While it was on fire. Ranma’s next words, though, were more pointed. “Besides, I don’t want us all to get into the habit of being so open about, well, everything. Out here on the open ocean, sure, there’s no one to see. But the idea of other guys looking at the two of you like that annoys the hell out of me.”

“Hmm…it didn’t when we were on the beach,” Mai observed even as she continued, kissing his neck and collarbone from behind as Ranma kept his eyes on the direction the ship was going. Meanwhile, her hands were also moving, caressing, and moving lower.

“You’re right, because there on the beach it was, well, there were a lot of other people dressed the same and it fit. You weren’t getting all the attention, just a lot of it, and I was in my female form and getting some attention too, which, oddly, made it better and worse at the same time,” Ranma fumbled attempting to put his thoughts into words. “After all we’ve done together, I just feel like I don’t want to share, not even that much.”

“That’s sweet, but I hope you’ll get over it,” Mai stated firmly, pulling back from her ministrations for a moment. “A good bit of my style is based around taking advantage of other people being distracted by my body, and I’m not going to change that for you, Ranma.” Not until we’re a lot older than we are now and you give me and Shampoo rings, Mai mentally amended, a giddy feeling going through her at the idea. That was for the future, however. “Besides, should we get all defensive about you if you turn into a girl and do that whole Mooch-fu of yours?”

“Eh, okay ya got me there,” Ranma laughed, leaning slightly to the side, and then kissing Mai on the lips again, his tongue darting into her mouth for a few seconds, before he pulled back and turned back to look in the direction they were going once more, his hands having been steady on the wheel the entire time. “I never said that my jealousy was all that logical, you know. It’s just there. I’ll deal with it. On the other hand, I don’t know if I’ll ever get over how much you and Shampoo can tease me, and I don’t know if I want to… which probably means I’m in for a few beatdowns in the future.”

Mai snorted at that, mumbling into Ranma’s neck, her lips curving into a wicked smirk. “Smooth. Although, perhaps you just need some… desensitization therapy.”

Her hands had continued to do circles on Ranma’s chest and stomach, moving lower and lower down Ranma’s front, until first one, then the other reached their final destination. Shifting her head to the side and forward a bit, Mai watched with some amusement as Ranma’s eyes flew wide and his pigtail shot out straight behind his head, so fast, his hair swished over her cheek for a moment as it did so.

Despite his arousal, Ranma was still able to think things through, and despite a surprisingly large part of him looking forward to what Mai had promised, the rest of him was concerned about the specific timing of it. “Er, is this a good idea when I’m, you know, piloting the boat? I meanNN—"

“I don’t know if it's still called piloting the boat once we’re out of the harbor,” Mai mused, even as her hand began to work, interrupting Ranma’s words. “And like I told you, desensitization. Keep your attention on what you’re doing, while I have some fun~.”

Behind them, Shampoo came back out on deck. She wasn’t dressed in one of her more attention-grabbing bikinis, but rather a simple swim race-style swimsuit. She glanced up at their way, and was about to open her mouth, before Shampoo decided against it, seeing how stiff Ranma was and wondering what Mai was up to. She hopped up silently onto the bridge and sat on the sofa behind the real control area of the ship, wondering mentally about the nomenclature for a moment, before settling back, her eyes avidly watching as Mai’s other hand slowly started to pull at Ranma’s pants, then the first hand she had been using on his member disappeared inside.

Ranma lasted a longer time than Mai would’ve thought, even with just using her hands. All the prior ‘training’ they’d done had helped his endurance, but eventually, he finished, and Mai quickly caught what she could of his release in her hand. There was still more than enough to mess up the front of his pants as he shuddered and twitched, and she smirked. “I think you might want to go change before you start exercising with Shampoo, darling.”

“Mmm…unless you want to continue that type of exercise down below.”

Shampoo’s voice startled both of her lovers to the point where Ranma accidentally lost control of the ship, sending them into a swift turn. Mai almost lost her balance and would have if not for Ranma’s arm around her waist, while Shampoo, grabbing at the sofa, kept her seat under her, laughing.

Recovering, Ranma rolled his eyes. “Okay, point one. I think I’m gonna put my foot down on any more shenanigans…” He was interrupted as both girls laughed loudly at his use of that word, but he continued doggedly. “Of that nature up here. Nothing to distract the actual pilot or steersman, whatever the term is.”

“Aww, you and Shampoo can’t put on a show for me while I am at the wheel? That seems cruel and unusual punishment,” Mai quipped as she pulled her hand out of his pants, idly looking at his cum gathered there. For some reason, thanks to his diet or perhaps his general level of fitness, Ranma’s cum tasted decent to Mai. It wasn’t her favorite flavor, sure, but the look in Ranma’s eyes was worth it in her opinion. Yep, definitely gonna follow up on that type of thing more later.

That feeling intensified as Ranma leaned across and kissed her on the cheek. While Mai and Shampoo enjoyed the taste of his cum, Ranma hadn’t the one time they’d had an accident in that direction and Mai knew it. “And two, I am going to pay you back for that.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Mai smiled at him saucily before gently pushing at his shoulder. “For now, though, go change, and have fun with Shampoo. Martial arts type fun, or the other type, your choice.”

Shaking his head, Ranma rolled his eyes at that, but shifted out of the captain’s chair, if that was the proper term, allowing Mai to take his place at the wheel. His front was still covered with a good deal of his excess, but instead of going down to change, Ranma, seeing Shampoo snickering, jumped up over her head and over the side of the boat, landing slightly to the side of its wake. There, he slipped into the water, triggering the change as she grabbed at one of the trailing lines. A second later, with the help of the taught rope, Ranma was back on the ship, wringing her hair out, and gesturing at Shampoo. “Come on, full-on spar time.”

As Shampoo hustled back down into the ship to grab the chui her grandmother had given her to replace the ones destroyed by the jiangshi, Ranma reflected that she might need to talk to both girls about when sexy times were appropriate. While he was all for that kind of thing in its proper place(s) and time(s), the Art needed to take precedent during the day when they had sunlight to see by and to practice with. Admittedly, they couldn’t truly go all out on the ship, but they still could get a good deal of balancing and speed-type training that they could do while aboard the Rising Star.

Being distracted by sexy times all the time they were aboard ship would be a waste.

Mai and Shampoo took their Art seriously, which was one of the things that had made Ranma fall in love with them in the first place, and when he brought it up after off training for the evening and heading in for dinner, even Mai had to agree with it. “It’s just, I have so many different ideas of fun stuff to do with the two of you from all the time I wasted chasing after Andy. It’s hard to rein myself in.”

At that, Shampoo pulled Mai into a sideways hug, giving her a gentle kiss on the cheek. “Honestly, I have a few fun ideas of my own, too. Some fantasies I’d love to work out. But while we’ve laid down a few rules of our relationship before this, maybe we should add a little more to it? That was hot this morning but it could have been dangerous.”

Ranma agreed, and for the next hour, as they ate, the trio discussed what they did and did not like in terms of bedroom-type play, as well as the fantasies the two girls and Ranma had that the others would be willing to act out. Shampoo and Mai had a few of those in common, but Ranma had put his foot down on several. While he was okay with the girls showing off to a certain degree, as he did indeed know that it was part of her general combat style, outright exhibitionism like groping the girls in public or being groped in turn was right out. It just felt more troublesome than it was worth to Ranma, and frankly, he didn’t like the idea of others watching while he did so.

“Normally, I’m one of the last people to care about other people’s opinions, but not caring what people think when I jump up onto a rooftop is one thing, wondering what they think seeing stuff like me squeezing your butts another.”

“You know you can say ass, right?” Shampoo giggled, wiggling her hips at the kitchen sink to emphasize the point.

That made Mai and Ranma laugh, but both girls still agreed with his point on that score. A few other do's and don’ts in the bedroom were brought up, but the most important topic of conversation they hit on was that all three of them would need to remain aware of when they needed to have their shots adjusted so that nothing permanent came of their playtime. Condoms were also discussed and agreed upon for the future, but they didn’t want to rely solely on them, and Ranma agreed to keep getting his own shots, just like the girls.

Once everything from dinner was cleaned up, the trio retired to their bed for the evening. Once in bed, such as it was aboard ship, Ranma did indeed pay Mai back for earlier, and then some, before both devoting attention to Shampoo as the ship gently moved with the waves all around them.

The next morning, it was Shampoo’s turn to be at the wheel, with Mai supervising her from nearby, working on a few speed exercises that didn’t need much space to do them in that Cu Lonxi had shown them all. Ranma, meanwhile, was at the back of the ship, working on a few katas, continuing his work on adding his rope dart to his Anything Goes style more completely, as Cu Lonxi had told him he needed to. After a bare hour, he jumped into the ocean, swimming along beside it for another hour, pushing herself pretty hard since Shampoo ramped up the ship’s speed.

That afternoon, with Mai at the wheel, Ranma and Shampoo practiced some of Ranma’s Undertow technique for a bit before Ranma watched Shampoo do weight training in the water. Shampoo then reciprocated, helping Ranma practice controlling his Undertow technique. The two of them were just about to start a weaponless spar when Mai, who had been listening to them absentmindedly, peered ahead of their course, spotting something on the horizon.

Now, if we’ve been able to keep on course, that should indeed be the island of Hainan. Mai kept her eyes on the horizon for a time, even as Shampoo began to take a page from her book and tease Ranma relentlessly while they sparred. When it became clear that it was indeed land in the distance, Mai looked down at her speed, estimating how much longer it would be before they got there. “Land ho, we should reach Hainan in another thirty minutes. From there it’ll be another hour or so before we get to the port were heading for.”

Sanya was one of two major cities on Hainan that served mostly as ports. It was the one most devoted to tourism, while the other was more local and commercial, according to Mai’s research. The city of Sanya wasn’t anywhere as large as most were in China, as not only was Hainan province one of the least populous districts of China, but its agriculture was important enough that the Chinese government was truly draconian when it came to making certain that the urban sprawl didn’t spread beyond a certain point.

Sanya was also a relatively new city, having grown to its current size since WW2 ended and tourism became a thing. Thus, it didn’t have any massive skyscrapers, but it did have several large buildings designed to show off the local architect’s work in various ways, and a very built-up harbor area, made for lots of ships of various sizes, ranging from a massive cruise liner down to several ships the same size as the Rising Star.

Nearby, several beaches looked remarkably both inviting and extremely busy. A series of gondolas could be seen moving throughout the city beyond, and several dozen billboards advertised this or that tour into the island’s interior.

The dockyard area itself was very busy, and the trio had to wait for a time before they were assigned a berth by radio. Luckily, Mai had set this up in advance when they decided to make Hainan one of their target stops, and soon, the Rising Star slowly wound its way through the traffic until it pulled up at the docking area they had been ordered to.

Still in his female form from earlier, Ranma jumped across to the wharf, while the ship was still several yards out, pulling behind her one of the ship’s guide ropes, which she deftly used to tie up the ship, nodding to the man waiting for them. She and the other girls had all changed into more normal-looking outfits, but even so, the man’s eyes trailed down Ranma’s body, then to the other ladies aboard the ship, but this look wasn’t just licentious. It was calculating, the man having seen Ranma make the jump a moment ago.

“Yo, we’ve got a reservation for a slip here, under Shiranui trio,” Ranma stated, her lips twitching as she remembered the argument the three of them had over that name. Ranma had been arguing more to argue as he didn’t care and felt Mai deserved to use her own name when it came to planning things, but Shampoo had been adamant on using a more descriptive name, one that was tied to all three of them but not their real last names.

The man looked at his clipboard, making certain that it matched the information he had been given before being sent out to greet them. Then, after a second’s hesitation, he simply held out a hand, the idea of demanding a kickback leaving his mind even if he couldn’t quite stop his eyes from flicking over to Shampoo and Mai, and then back to Ranma. “IDs.”

Shampoo tossed hers to Ranma, and she caught it out of the air, holding it and her own out to the man, while Shampoo and Mai finished shutting down the ship and tying it up at the back of the ship to match Ranma’s earlier work before joining the redhead on the docks. Mai’s ID was also handed over.

She and Ranma gained a few blares from the man when he reached them. Shampoo’s ID listed her as a Chinese national, and she looked the part, but Ranma and Mai were both Japanese, and there were still millions of people in China who had issues with the Japanese. And vice versa, Ranma admitted ruefully, remembering both several instances when he and Genma had been traveling through the country and his father’s own opinion of the locals.

However, the passports prepared for them by MAB (Martial Arts Bank) still passed muster, and as they hadn’t left Chinese waters yet and already had a stamp for when they arrived in Hong Kong, he handed them back, unable to find any issue. “Reason for your visit to our island? Your reservation also informed us you’d either be sleeping on your ship or making your own alternate arrangements. No connection to any existing tour or tourist group, nor booked into any of our hotels,” he nearly demanded suspiciously.

“We’re here more for recreation and a stopover than we are for tourism,” Shampoo said. Despite the argument about the name their reservation was under, the group had agreed that Shampoo should do the talking with any officials they met here. “We’ll be staying here two weeks, leaving early on the fourteenth.”

“Payment must be upfront for use of our docks. Also, your foreign friends should know they will be held accountable for lawbreaking within Sanya,” the man stated, quickly filling out some paperwork even as he threatened the two Japanese.

Shampoo agreed, handed over the money, then demanded a receipt, two copies of it. The man scowled a little at that, evidently having thought of trying to come back for more or charge them more than he should have, but agreed. Ranma was given one copy to keep in his ki space, while the other was placed on the boat's dashboard, visible to anyone who came by.

Satisfied professionally if not monetarily, the man soon marched off, a perfunctory ‘enjoy your stay’ lingering behind him for a moment before Ranma turned to the two girls. “So, should I stay like this as we go around for a little while, or can I change back now? I’d like to get the lay of the land.”

Both girls agreed with that idea, and they spent the rest of that day moving around the city, martial-artist style, via the rooftops, taking in the lay of the land. They bought some local maps and, between people-watching and getting a feel for the city, made specific plans for where they wanted to set up the toughness training. The city itself didn’t interest them much, but some of the restaurants and the gondolas were kind of interesting. They enjoyed those a few times before retiring back to their ship for the night, eager for the next day to come.

OOOOOOO

That same evening, Genma crawled away from the shore where he had ended up, groaning in agony. He had numerous cuts and bruises, along with several broken fingers and toes. Even the bone in his thigh and bicep on his left side was broken. Yet for all that, the real pain came from his stomach due to how stuffed he was. Genma had fought crabs, and well, crabs made good eating, so waste not want not.

Yet the impossible had happened. The Saotome stomach, original version, had been sated, and then some. The panda’s stomach now bulged so much that had anyone seen it, such a watcher might well have thought Genma’s panda form was both female and very pregnant.

It was so bad that Genma could hardly move at all, especially with one leg aching so much. However, he did so, pushing into the jungle beyond where he had come ashore, not at all eager to see if there were more crabs about. He pushed on until he couldn’t see the ocean through the intervening foliage, then began looking for a place to hold up until his metabolism worked its magic. Then, I have to start searching for the boy. Thankfully, pandas are native to Hainan, I think, so I should be able to keep a low profile. UGHH…

His thoughts broke off as his stomach shifted, as if one of the larger crabs he’d eaten had come alive. But only after I’m healed, and my stomach has mastered all that crab. Stupid boy, stupid crabs!

OOOOOOO

The next day began with a discussion over breakfast, taken outside on the bridge as they watched the business of the port, on whether or not Sanya was safe. Given their experience in Hong Kong, none of the three was willing to assume their ship would remain unmolested.

Mai did some online research, while Ranma headed out to talk to a few dozen cruise liner crewmen and Shampoo headed deeper into the city to speak with the local vendors and smalltime shop owners. All of them told her that, while Sanya was relatively safe, there was still corruption and criminal groups that targeted small groups or single individuals, despite the city being devoted to tourism. The locals were rarely bothered by them in Sanya, but Shampoo warned her lovers that there had been a few examples of small yachts being stolen or people coming back and finding that they had been ransacked.

With that in mind, Ranma and Mai began going around the ship, removing a few things it would need for the engine to work or for the wheel to turn. Meanwhile, Shampoo gathered the various expensive pots, pans, solar panels, and anything else that could be called expensive and stuffed them into the same room as the weights that Shampoo and Mai used. Well, more Mai than Shampoo, but even Mai was at the point where the weight machines there weren’t doing much.

With that done, Shampoo then dragged one of the machines over and placed it so that it blocked the door to the point that someone could only get a single arm in. Someone as strong as Ranma could push it out of the way, but even he would find it hard to do so at the angle the machine was set against the door.

Once they were certain the ship couldn’t be sailed away and that everything was hidden, the trio headed out, racing through Sanya and out into the forests beyond. Sanya wasn’t a large city by any means, and they were quickly out into the more agrarian areas, the cut-off point stark and swift. Those farms, though, covered a lot of area, shifting slowly from what most people could recognize as farms to more wilder areas.

Around midafternoon, the ground slowly began to rise, and the road they had been running along turned to gravel. The farms also changed slowly, becoming more overgrown and almost hidden within the jungle that dominated the island. The people working those farms also changed.

As they passed through a few of these farms, Ranma glanced to the side almost idly, as if he was checking out Shampoo as the three of them raced on. But in reality, he was gazing at a very well-camouflaged guard post set near where one of the farms met the road. “That’s the fourth of those I’ve seen so far. Mai, Shampoo, what about you?”

“I’ve seen seven, and a few patrols out in the fields,” Mai observed, with Shampoo nodding agreement to the last part, saying she’d seen at least six men in cars stopped ostentatiously along the roads they were racing along a few minutes ago.

“They all flinched when we passed them, their hands disappearing below where I could see them. But they didn’t do anything for the most part. I did see a few of them pull out walkie-talkies, though. And the one patrol I saw was heavily armed,” Shampoo finished grimly. “How far have we come from Sanya?”

“Hmm… around a hundred and forty kilometers all told? We’re not heading directly to Wuzhi Mountain and the road for sure hasn’t been going in a straight line,” Mai mused. All three of the martial artists could run at least thirty kilometers an hour on easy terrain without much effort, or around sixty if they really pushed things. They’d started soon after ten that morning, and it was pushing two now. “One of you’d need to get out a phone to check. My phone’s back on the Rising Star.”

Mai had insisted that they buy new phones back in Xuwen, which had built-in GPS systems that could be paired with one another, unlike the ones they’d had previously, which hadn’t had any map function. They’d gotten a pretty good deal, despite buying real American phones rather than Chinese products, since their old phones had also been brand-new, even though not top-of-the-line like the new ones.

With the GPS on, they could track each other down using their phones, although, as Chun Li had discovered, signals could not pass through Ki space. However, since there were three of them, the trio had thought it prudent to leave one of the phones plugged in back on the ship, hidden in with the rest of the more expensive stuff.

“More importantly, though, Shampoo’s right. They are all armed with submachine guns. They look like things I’ve seen in old action movies but I don’t know enough about guns to tell you more,” Mai finished, causing her lovers to grimace but not disagree.

Ranma was the only one among the trio who could be called bulletproof, but only for handguns, and probably not all of those. Mai wasn’t at all bulletproof, and knew it, while Shampoo could probably take small caliber bullets, but nothing major or moving that fast. Machine guns and rifles, on the other hand, would be deadly unless they could dodge and that would be tough for any of them.

“Yeah, these guys would definitely be a threat to us at any kind of range. Anyone wondering what they’re growing here that deserves all that?” Ranma scoffed. “Note I ain’t mentioning how we’re running into it all less than four hundred kilometers from a city devoted to tourism of all things. Hong Kong very obviously was not an exception to the rule when it comes to corruption.”

“Hainan’s known for producing fruits, herbs and medicines. I’d be willing to bet my new chui that those drugs aren’t always the legal kind,” Shampoo agreed.

Not having gone that far in his speculations, Ranma scowled at that, glancing around at the fields they were racing between speculatively. “Okay, that explains why some of these farms are worked into the forest like they are. And makes me wanna wreck them something fierce, too.”

“Probably not a good idea. Remember in Hong Kong? The local police and government will definitely be getting a kickback to not go looking for trouble,” Shampoo said, while ahead of them, the road continued to degrade. “And I wouldn’t think about doing anything to the farms or anything like that. Even setting a fire would probably not cause all that much trouble for the locals, and it would be a quick way to get into trouble with the local government if we were recognized.”

“I wasn’t thinking that,” Ranma retorted as they rounded the curve and saw a truck going the other way. It was a pickup truck with built-up sides to its loading area, and it was equally loaded with men. Day workers heading home from a shift, maybe or heading to a shift, Ranma wasn’t certain.

He very carefully did not look to either side of him, as he felt the stares of both of his lovers, but just as the truck’s passengers began to hoot and holler at the trio, he caved. “Okay, so maybe I was thinking something like that. But still…”

“Ranma. We’re not vigilantes. We can’t go looking for that kind of trouble all the time. If they make trouble with us, then paying them back tenfold is something else altogether. But starting stuff that is almost certainly going to make the local government try and detain us isn’t something we should be doing…” Mai began, before going on, smirking just a little. “Not unless we can get away with it anyway.”

“Message received,” Ranma snorted.

Soon after that, they came to an intersection where the road, such as it was, split into four, forcing the group to stop. Thanks to Mai’s research, the trio had a specific place they were aiming towards, an abandoned construction area well up into the mountains that dominated the center of the island, where someone had been trying to build an observatory of some kind before the money dried up. They had been heading that direction from the start, but now were wondering which way to go.

Shampoo pulled out the map they’d been given of the area, humming thoughtfully as she tried to figure out where they were in relation to where they wanted to go, while Ranma raced over to a nearby tree and up it into the upper reaches. The farms here were all worked into the surrounding jungle. Several of them used lines of trees, haphazard ones anyway, as borders, which meant there were always trees nearby.

Still, Shampoo had noticed that a few of the smaller, separate areas were not being patrolled, watched or worked by armed men. “I’m going to ask where we are. I think this road curved away from the route we should have taken a few intersections ago. We might need to backtrack.”

“I don’t think so. I’ve got a pretty good sense of direction, and I think we’re still going in the right direction, but I can’t say for sure. Go on, love, I’ll wait for Ranma here.” Mai shrugged, wiping sweat away from her forehead, absent-mindedly noting how drenched her, thankfully, dark red exercise shirt was. Damn it, but it’s hot as a demon’s armpit here, and we’ve been out in the sun for most of the day. I have to admit, though, that my endurance has gone way up since meeting Ranma and Shampoo. There was a time I’d have been gassed after a run like this one. Now, it’s barely registering except on my feet. It might be time for some new shoes.

Chuckling quietly to herself at the route her thoughts had taken, Mai took the opportunity to pull out a bottle of water from her ki space, hydrating with several slow, long sips. The heat of being this near the equator was far more than even Mai had ever needed to deal with before, and she wasn’t enjoying it all that much.

“I'd best get used to it,” she murmured to herself, ignoring the sound of another truck in the distance coming towards her from the left. It soon reached the intersection and sped on toward one of the rightmost roads, giving the finger to them as she hooted and hollered as she passed by. “We’re going to be even nearer to the equator than we are now soon enough.”

Even as the men in the back of the truck laughed or cursed her back, the truck kept going, but behind it was another car. This one looked like someone had taken a very nice, high-end BMW, the type that execs used before someone else had come along and modified it to have big, chunky tires. It was suitable for the back roads they were currently on, but also ugly and expensive-looking, more than refined.

Unfortunately, while Mai would have loved to ignore this car like she had the truck, the abomination stopped as it reached her. The front passenger door opened, and a large, well-muscled man in a pair of pants and a muscle-T stepped out of the car, smiling like a shark who had just seen a meal, a gun of some kind hanging over his shoulder. “What are you doing out here, little miss?”

“Training for a triathlon,” Mai said glibly, it being one of the excuses the trio had decided to use when asked that question whenever they were a little too far away from the beaten path. She then added, “I’m just waiting for my friend to check where we are, and then we’ll be on our way,” and gestured to where Shampoo’s purple hair could be seen well back the way they had come from, hoping to stop or at least forestall what she knew was going to happen.

Unfortunately, she was quickly proven right in what was going to happen, and sadly optimistic about her odds of making the gangster or whatever within the odd car think twice about it. As her hand fell back to her side, the obvious bodyguard made his own gesture towards the car. “Well, your training is done for the day, miss. My boss wants to talk to you.”

“No thanks. I’m not interested.” Mai shook her head in denial even as she put the cap back on her bottle, letting that hand fall to her side for a second.

“That wasn’t a request, foreigner,” the man growled, moving to raise his slung machine gun to point in her direction. His expression was one of cold contempt and disdain, as if the fact that Mai hadn’t realized what was going on or that she was not getting a choice here was a sign of low intelligence.

That expression didn’t have a chance to shift beyond his eyes widening slightly as Mai’s hurled water bottle slammed into the center of the machine gun with enough force to shatter metal, metal and bottle exploding with the amount of ki she had pushed into the plastic, sending bits of metal, plastic, and water everywhere. That was an interesting sight, one Mai noted as the man stumbled back.

“AIIIEEE!!!” a howl of agony barely left the bodyguard’s lips before Mai’s fist crashed into his badly gashed face, sending him flying up and over the car.

At the same time, someone else in the back tried to hastily open the door. Before it was halfway open, Mai’s foot slammed like a piledriver into it, denting the metal and crushing the man’s arm even as he tried to raise another gun, this one a shotgun, in her direction.

He began to scream, a sound that carried away, even as Mai jumped up and over the car to deal with the driver, who was now trying to hastily exit the vehicle armed with a pistol. Twin fans slammed down into the man from on high, breaking his shoulder and elbow, before smashing the pistol, which he had dropped as he lost feeling in his hand, away through the air.

The truck that had passed by a bare minute ago hastily whirled around, losing some of the day workers on the back. More piled out, all of them pulling out sub-machine guns and beginning to fire even before they had turned their guns in her general direction. Before their fire could range on her, Mai ducked around the car to the back, using it as cover from their fire.

The machine guns hit all around the car and even a few into it, but for the most part, now that they had gotten the first bursts out of the way, the gangsters seemed unwilling to fire at the car itself, presumably because of whoever was inside. Mai could see at least two people in the back, quailing, huddling down behind the seats before she ducked back down.

What, don’t trust your own men’s fire? she thought caustically, cursing how many guns were here. Seriously, what the hell? I thought the CCP were death on anyone but their own troops having so many guns!

“Spread out, pin the Wàiguó biǎo zǐ (foreign bitch) in place and fill her full of lead!” shouted someone, as still more day workers at the back of the truck piled out. Most of this second batch weren’t armed with guns, but rather machetes and hoes, yet they ran out, eager for violence, spreading out in either direction with their gun-toting brethren as their fellow’s fire became more aimed. Many of both gunmen and knife-wielders kept lo, using the cover of the trees or ditches on either side of the road, fearing return fire.

Yet, while they had no worries in that area, they weren’t looking in the proper direction for the real danger. Like the men on the truck, Shampoo had heard the screaming of Mai’s victims, and none of the men on the truck had noticed Shampoo, where she had been standing well down a side road, talking to one of the more reputable-looking locals for their location. Now, as that worthy raced towards his house to take cover, Shampoo came up behind the rapidly spreading gangsters.

Two men had fallen behind and to the right of the rest, and now became the first to fall to Shampoo. They fell heavily, causing a few of the others to glance back at them, but then Shampoo launched hundreds of needles from her ki space into them and the backs of others who had not, sending them sprawling, gagging, paralyzed, or simply screaming as the acupuncture needles stabbed into them like so many thin, small stilettos. Shampoo hadn’t held back much, although only one of them died immediately, an errant needle going higher than it should have and slamming into and through one gunman’s eye.

Half of the gunners remaining turned in her direction, but before they could fire on her, she was among them. Her two chui appeared from her ki space, one of them slamming into a chest so hard that he was flung back boneless through the air to crash into three other men, carrying all of them into a ditch.

Even as Shampoo was forced to duck into cover behind the truck, Ranma also arrived. Jumping through several trees to be directly above the battle, Ranma paused for a brief second, taking in the battle.

Seeing a few guns poking out from the driver’s side of the truck, and Shampoo not making any effort to dodge, Ranma came down from on high straight onto the top of the truck, smashing into it with all the force of a wrecking ball. He couldn’t quite burst straight through the metal feet first, but the strike dented the roof of the truck enough for the warped metal to crack down onto the heads of the two gunmen inside, causing them to cry out in pain.

Twisting around to one side, Ranma reached in and pulled a man out bodily over the open window, hurling him through the air to crash into a nearby tree with enough force to break bones. As his companion was flying in the air, the other man inside the truck had enough wherewithal to twist around and aim his machine gun towards Ranma, but Ranma ducked underneath the window. Crouching there, with a grunt and an effort of ki to enhance his muscles, Ranma lifted the truck onto its side.

There it crashed, causing the man inside to scream and for several of the other gunmen to turn in his direction, having been too busy trying to shoot at Shampoo and Mai, to realize another martial artist had appeared. They had been keeping Mai under cover and had forced Shampoo to roll into a ditch to avoid their fire.

Now, Ranma was forced to flip himself up and over the truck, the bottom of which served as a good shield against the incoming fire for a few seconds. A second later, he whirled around it, his rope darting out and slamming into arms, chests and legs as he ducked in and out of cover. Though blunted, his rope dart still struck like a blunted spear, smashing people off their feet.

Splitting their fire three ways and the general disarray of the gangsters let Mai and Shampoo go on the offensive. Mai’s fans appeared from underneath the limo, lighting on fire as they flew, crashing into the legs of two of the remaining gunmen. The impact hurled both men off their feet, the fire spreading around them. They screamed and rolled, trying to put out the blaze.

This left five men still remaining upright but two fell as Shampoo’s meteor hammer came up ever the lip of the ditch she’d used as cover. Both men fell, screaming as the large, metal balls shattered one man’s hip and another man’s side. This was swiftly followed by two of the men, who had charged towards Ranma’s position with machetes, missing the pair of hurled fans that crashed into the side of their heads, dropping both men.

This left one lone gunman still up and firing. Realizing he was alone, he sprayed fire in Shampoo and Mai’s direction in a wild parabola before he tried to turn and run. Only for Ranma’s rope dart to wrap around his arms, pulling them tight against his body. A second later, he was yanked into the air towards Ranma, who shouted, “Get over here!” because it just felt appropriate, before his fist pummeled the man’s face into unconsciousness.

With all the enemies down and writhing, Ranma and his lovers darted out of cover, moving around to knock them out as best they could. More because the noise was annoying than anything else, really. Not even Ranma, who was a bit less willing to kill than Mai or Shampoo, wasn’t willing to try and help the wounded or be very gentle at all towards these people who had fired on his two girlfriends.

Once most of the wailing and moaning had been dealt with, the trio met up in the center of the impromptu battlefield beside the strange off-road limo thing. It had its engine block shot through in a few places, but wasn’t leaking gas, and there didn’t seem to be any danger it would suddenly explode like Ranma had seen in so many action films.

“What exactly sparked this?” Ranma inquired, looking over at Mai. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m always down for a fight, but this seemed rather sudden.” And there were a lot more guns involved than I like, he added mentally, unwilling to say that aloud if someone was still conscious inside the car and able to hear him.

“Someone in this unholy amalgamation of a Jeep in a limo decided he wanted to give me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I still refused it,” Mai drawled, thumping the side of the strange car, causing a yelp from inside. “Now, Mister, are you going to come out, or are we going to have to come in?”

“Also, if you try to attack us again, we’ll probably become a little more aggressive,” Shampoo growled. “Most of your folk out here are still alive, bar three, though their medical bills are going to be through the roof. If you want to go for fully unfriendly, we can do that.”

“No, no, we talk yes, I’m sorry, pretty one, I’m sorry,” the voice shouted inside, his Chinese sounding odd, with an accent even Shampoo hadn’t heard before. “Truce. Truce. But, but if you do something to me, you’ll never be safe again on Hainan.”

“On the one hand, the guy at least knows the extent of his reach. On the other hand, can we really trust that he’ll leave us alone if we leave him to tell tales?” Mai mused, looking over at her lovers.

Ranma shrugged. “I doubt it, but maybe this’ll scare him enough to leave us alone if we let him go. I do know, though, most gangs care way more about their bosses' lives than their peons, so doing more to him would probably matter more.”

Shampoo hummed thoughtfully, then reached over and wrenched the door of the love child of a jeep entirely off, staring inside. “All right,” she said pleasantly, staring at the still-conscious individual within. He was one of two there, with the other crumpled on the floor of the limo, with a mangled arm and a nasty lump on his head from something that was bleeding out.

The conscious man was middle-aged with a paunch and heavily tanned skin, like most of the locals. He had a scar on his face that did absolutely nothing for his countenance one way or the other in Shampoo’s eyes, deep-set eyes and well-muscled arms. Despite that, he seemed to be fully aware of the balance of power right now, given how terrified he looked.

“We will be heading on our way now. You can call for backup to help you clean up your men, again, I think only three of them are really dead… so far. Given some of their injuries, there might be a few more deaths before help can arrive,” Shampoo continued coldly.

“Yeah, that one guy I threw hit that tree a little too hard,” Ranma admitted, looking guilty despite his lackadaisical tone and words, despite that he did so out of the way of the gang boss’s line of sight. Ranma hadn’t meant to hurl that guy that hard, but the man had been trying to aim a gun at Shampoo a moment before threatening Ranma, and that wasn’t something Ranma was going to let lie. “He kind of came apart a bit.”

“It's fine, I didn’t know you were martial artists. If I knew you were, were dangerous, I would never have---" the man babbled, and Mai interrupted him, holding up a hand.

“Saying that doesn’t make me feel any better about letting you live,” she said bluntly, and very, very dangerously. “It means you would still be trying to accost someone who couldn’t defend themselves, and that makes you very punchable. However, in the interest of this once keeping the peace, I won’t. If I see you again, all bets are off, and you and yours will start to have very, very bad days. Understood?”

The man nodded, and after a moment, Ranma, Shampoo and Mai walked off, picking up speed as they went.

By the time the man had his phone out, they were almost out of sight along the road, and he watched them as they suddenly shifted to one side, the purple-haired one pointing. As one, all three leaped up into the air, landing on a few tree branches on that side of the road, and then racing on through the forest.

The middle-aged gang boss shuddered, looking around at the devastation that the trio had wrought, cursing his own libido for the first time in a very long while. And here I thought I was beyond the point where my desire for young flesh could get me in trouble. Turns out, there are always bigger fish, and sometimes they just wander into your pond from out of nowhere. I’ll have to meet with Lǎo Dà (big Boss). If this is what they can do when they are undoubtedly taken by surprise, I shudder to think what a trio of such people would be able to do if they took it in their heads to be truly aggressive towards us.

As for the three martial artists in question, they continued on their way through the trees following Shampoo’s directions. The road they had been following was indeed the correct one, as Mai had thought; it was just that there was a great deal more distance between where they were going and where that road split than the map she had found indicated. Shampoo had been able to figure out where an observatory had begun to be built, and where the road designed for such had been in relation to the road they had been on.

She’d also gained some more information about the locals and the local gangs, who, thankfully, didn’t bother the legitimate farmers all that much, regardless of the size of their farms. According to the man she had spoken to, so long as they were on their own property, they weren’t bothered at all, and even pretty women or girls could walk between farms without too much trouble other than getting whistled at.

Foreigners, on the other hand, or strangers from other areas of Hainan or the mainland, were fair game, as Mai had been learning at the very moment Shampoo had been told that. The sheer size of the various criminally controlled farms didn’t paint a nice picture, but the three weren’t in the business of simply going around smashing local gangsters, especially if those local gangsters were in with the local government, as the local farmer had told Shampoo.

Indeed, in his words, “It’s hard to tell sometimes where the local police start and the gangsters end. They’ve got a lot of pull, and they really don’t need to come down on anyone hard to protect their secrets, as everyone’s learned there’s no point in reporting them.”

Thus, trying to change the status quo around here would just bring more trouble from the government. Something none of the three were willing to deal with.

“Not until we have developed the toughness training to the point where were bulletproof anyway,” Ranma added, causing both of the other girls to smile dangerous little smirks. “At that point, I figure we can cut back on the toughness training and do some good for the local community instead… although honestly, we probably won’t get to that point while here in Hainan. Not unless we stay here for months.”

“Too right. And I’m still far more interested in hunting down those antiquity dealers than dealing with local idiots, so if we need to wait until we hit Thailand, I’m fine with that. As for the drug trade, that doesn’t bother me as much as it seems to bother you, Ranma. There will always be fools who decide to play with their own minds like that, or those who are so weak-willed that they succumb to the momentary hit of happiness that such gives them. We’ll never be able to do away with the problem entirely.”

“I don’t care so much about doing away with the problem entirely, as making sure that the people who are peddling such shit in front of me don’t get a chance to do it again,” Ranma drawled back.

As the trio raced through the trees, the land began to turn into a mountainside, sharply rising in places, then falling back only to rise again. They occasionally pushed up out of the tree line to stare around them from on high, and with that, Ranma was the first to spot where they were aiming for. They shifted in that direction and soon hit the old, badly overgrown road they had thought the original road they had been on would lead them to. Judging how overgrown it was, though, that had been a somewhat foolish assumption.

Soon, following that cleared-out area, they reached the half-built Observatory. Like the road, this area had been slightly reclaimed by the jungle around it, with a few actual trees, albeit young ones, poking up here and there around the half-finished building. Only two of that building’s outer walls looked at all serviceable. There were also a few still-tarp-covered piles of stuff here and there around the area. No vehicles or anything similar, unfortunately, which meant they would need to build everything for the toughness training from the ground up, including the large boulder necessary to smash into them.

Still, Ranma felt the area would serve them well. “I think this will do. Those two rocks there that had been pulled out, if we put them together, they’ll do for the wrecking ball portion.”

“I wonder how much actual concrete mix is still around and usable under those tarps. With that, we could build up one of those walls sufficient for us to be hung on… while wrecking balls slam into us, and I can’t believe I just said that aloud, and worse meant it. What is my life becoming?” Mai groaned.

“Something awesome,” Ranma snickered, shaking his head. “Still, I think everything we need is here, well, bar food obviously.”

“I’ll head back to the ship and get some food then, and I’ll take the time to move the ship, I think. That middle-aged idiot who tried to kidnap Mai might be the type to be smart enough to keep his head down while we're around, but who knows if whoever he answers to is the same,” Shampoo volunteered.

“Do you know what we did to the wheel and the engine enough to undo it?” Ranma asked skeptically. “It’s a good idea, but I don’t know if you’re the one to do it, Shampoo-chan.”

Shampoo frowned at that and then admitted that she probably didn’t. That meant Ranma would need to be the one to head back, as he had been the one to disable the engine. Mai didn’t have enough technical know-how to deal with the engine, while part of Martial Arts Construction dealt with construction equipment and repairing it.

At the time, Ranma had wondered aloud why, and Master Ishiku had laughed. “HAH! A lot of the time, we’re called when some equipment or other in the boondocks has broken down on-site. After you’re done with the job, finishing by repairing the equipment that’s broken down, after you’ve finished the contract they were given originally, is the best cherry on top of sticking it to any normal construction company. You should see their freaking faces, it’s hilarious.”

That had been enough for Ranma. After all, part of Anything Goes was to piss off your enemies at need. Plus, that just sounded amusing as hell.

“In that case, why don’t Shampoo and I start setting up a campsite here. We’ll set up the pulley system at least, and can have everything else done by the time you get back,” Mai said, frowning a little as she kept looking around, although this time she was concentrating on the denser jungle around the observatory. “We might want to set up something to combat snakes and bugs, too. I bought some bug nets yesterday, and we can set them up around the area where we’ll be sleeping and cooking, at least. When it comes to snakes, though, I’m open to suggestions. I’ve never camped in a jungle where they’re a problem.”

Shampoo gestured to herself. “Leave that to me. That won’t take me very long, and then I can start work on a hut for us… so long as there’s not a leopard or something living in there.” She then smiled over at Ranma, pulling him into a hug and a kiss before stepping back and pulling out her phone, waving it under his nose. “Go on. And remember, use your phone’s GPS to find us. I’ve got mine on me.”

Cutting through the jungle, Ranma made even better time heading back than they had coming out, basically going in a straight line for as much as possible, and only skirting around a few of the more dubious-looking farms. He only had to do that twice before he was back within sight of Sanya, but it was also nighttime by then.

Still, that just meant it was easier for Ranma to race along the rooftops and head towards the docks without anyone spotting him.

There, Shampoo’s worries proved accurate, as he saw a few disreputable-looking fellows already near the docks leading to the wharf where their ship was tied up. They weren’t, however, making any move towards it. Rather, the five men were hiding around in the area, watching for anyone coming and going. This meant they weren’t watching their own six, and Ranma snuck up on a few of them, knocking them out. Once the way was clear, Ranma used the deeper shadows nearest the wharf to slide down into the water.

Once in the murky water of the harbor, Ranma swam underneath the water until she was on the opposite side of the boat from where the remaining watchers were, and silently pulled herself up. Once inside the boat, Ranma did what she needed to do to repair the steering before cutting the ropes that tied the ship to the docks. The ship then began to bob away from the wharf.

To the watchers, it looked as if the lines had simply come undone, and several of them raced down the wharf towards it. But by the time they were close enough, the ship was far enough away that they couldn’t jump across thanks to Ranma pushing it through the water from underneath.

A few of them began debating whether they should swim out to it, but Ranma kept pushing it through the water, grimacing a little. This was actually a pretty good exercise for her, as she was working against the tide here for a bit.

Something that finally made a few of the remaining men ashore rub their brain cells together and come up with an observation. “Wait, what the, it should be getting pushed inland, not out… there’s something going on!”

“But there’s no power aboard the ship, its engines aren’t on, or we would’ve heard it,” another man retorted.

“Oy… there should be seven of us here. Where’re Fei and Li?” a third man noticed.

By the time the unconscious gangsters were found, Ranma had pushed the yacht far enough away that the locals weren’t likely to shoot at him, for fear of hitting some of the other boats around them. Thankfully, it seemed the locals wanted to keep a low profile when it came to Sanya and the larger tourist groups there, so this proved to be correct.

Now, Ranma pulled herself up out of the water, heading down into the engine room. There, she groaned. “Right, gotta get the parts out of the weight room. Drat.”

Putting the parts he had taken out when the trio left took a while, and it was around twelve at night by the time she was done. But once the engine was on, Ranma steered the ship close to the shoreline, propping his phone up in front of her. Taking a moment to transform back into his original body with a cup of hot water, Ranma then slowly moved the ship around the island until he was as close to where the other two signals on the phone beeped at him as he possibly could.

There, Ranma shifted closer to shore and found a small river flowing down from the forest’s edge, which here was quite close to the water. The area around here didn’t have any farms, beaches or houses, and indeed he hadn’t seen anything similar in a bit. There were a lot of rocks jutting out from the beach, making it not exactly worth the effort to cultivate. Crap… I need to make sure the ship doesn’t take any damage below the waterline…

With that, and an audible groan of annoyance, Ranma turned off the ship, then headed out to the ship’s tip, dropping a sounding line. After a second, he groaned again, louder. “Well yeah, there’s not much depth there at all. Joy. Life was so much easier when Pops and I just swam everywhere.”

Hopping out into the water, Ranma slowly pushed the ship forward until it hit something solid enough to stop. There, she moved forward and pulled it to the side a bit between two rocks, then had to siphon a decent amount of ki into her muscles to lift it higher and out of the water. Once she was certain it could be wedged there without being battered or pulled out of the defile, Ranma dumped some large tree leaves and fronds on top of it, hiding its shape still further, especially from the water.

“That should do,” she muttered, heating up another cup of water. “I saw too many ships out there to want it spotted from there, but I doubt anyone is going to come at us from the landward side here. Jeez, Hainan really isn’t populated much, is it?”

Once he was a ‘he’ again, Ranma then went back into the ship and gathered as much of the food as he could into his ki space, to the point where his ki space was actually feeling a little overfull and giving him a very odd feeling. Once that was done, he grabbed some more useful stuff like toilet paper and other bits. With both, his ki space was definitely very much full, and Ranma found himself needing to divert some more ki into it, as if he was creating another ki pocket in another outfit.

With his phone in hand, Ranma once more oriented himself and headed towards where Shampoo and Mai were.

It was around three in the morning by the time he found the old road leading into the observatory, which had been used by the construction crews, making for easier travel despite Ranma startling a few snakes as he went. The howler monkey he’d run into earlier had been far more annoying. Dodging poo in the darkness of a jungle at midnight had not been pleasant.

Exiting the forest into the remains of the construction zone around the observatory, not half an hour later, Ranma found that his two lady friends had not been idle, nor had they turned in without him, something that made him smile happily as he realized it. Shampoo had added several more layers to one of the still-standing walls, while Mai had started work on a makeshift wrecking ball, creating what looked almost like a trebuchet from a history book. One of them had also set up several bug nets over a cook fire and a hut, with a few stakes driven into the area around them, each with a dead snake.

With everything but the heavy lifting done, Mai had turned her attention to cooking over an open fire. Several more dead snakes hung nearby, along with some large furry devil-type creature. That it was dead, and indeed had been skinned, made him feel marginally better, and indeed, feel even warmer and fuzzier emotions toward Mai and Shampoo.

“Hey, you. What time of night do you call this to come in?” Mai teased.

Turning from her own work putting the final touches on the large hut built behind the built-up wall, Shampoo got into it, shaking her head sadly as she looked up from where she had been “Aiyah, when you and I first got together, husband, I would never have thought you’d be the kind to go out and party at all hours, leaving your wives at home alone.”

Ranma’s eyes narrowed, and his warm smile shifted to a mock scowl. “You know what, I could just turn around and return all the food I brought along from the ship. I’m sure the two of you would be happy to live off the meat and whatever else you can find in the jungle.”

“Oh, fine, we’ll stop teasing. Come on, I’m starving, and Shampoo decided we shouldn’t eat without you for some reason,” Mai waved Ranma toward her.

Grinning, Ranma settled down next to her at the fire, with Shampoo moving over from the makeshift hut/cabin to join them quickly. They settled down to a meal as Ranma distributed the items they would need to keep cold into their various ki spaces. As the meal slowly started to fade out, Shampoo crawled into Ranma’s lap, hugging him for a moment as she stared up into the stars.

“What are you thinking?” Ranma asked, his arms shifting into a hug around her middle.

“I’ve always loved watching the stars. At first, because they were pretty, but then, just a sign of how some things will never change. At that time, well, dealing with all the changes my body was going through, I liked that idea. Now, looking at them from here, I still can take comfort in it, you know?” When Ranma made an interrogative noise, she went on. “No matter how much our lives change, no matter how high we climb, the stars are always going to be the same, waiting to guide us if we need it, or just look pretty when we need that too.”

Ranma didn’t really have a response to that, but he tightened his arms around her all the same, his chin resting on her shoulder as he looked over at where Mai was cleaning up. “Me, I prefer to take pleasure in the fact that we’ll always be together, no matter how far we go in the Art, or no matter how far we travel. You, me and Mai.”

Mai nodded, but her eyes widened as Ranma went on. “But speaking of that, I’m wondering if both of you would like to go on a date? Like a real, go out to a restaurant type date while we’re here. Pick some really upscale area in Sanya or one of the other cities, a place where the local criminals can’t make trouble or else, they’d be bothering the rich and we should be all right.”

He flushed a bit as Shampoo beamed at him from a few inches away, and Mai smiled happily from across the fire. I, I haven’t taken either of you out on specific dates since we got together back in Hong Kong. We’ve had lots of moments together since, but not real date type romance. If that makes sense. Unless ya wanna count the time you and I were doing that contest before we ran into the jiangshi, Mai.”

“It does make sense, that doesn’t count, and I approve wholeheartedly,” Shampoo said, with Mai nodding agreement. “Besides, going through the toughness training is so annoying that getting some comfort food, in this case, expensive drinks and food that we normally wouldn’t get, sounds like a great present to us all.”

OOOOOOO

Ranma, Shampoo and Mai had been correct in that the locals they had tangled with were not just a gang of local toughs running a few illegal farms, and Le Chen, the middle-aged man who had thought to proposition Mai with a bullet, was indeed somewhat high up in terms of the local criminal underworld. What they were wrong about was that this would be the local criminal underworld, rather than a larger group.

Indeed, the Wúshēng Fèngzhēn (Silent Needles) had connections that went far beyond the waters around the island of Hun on, or even China. For they were part of Shadaloo. Indeed, they were somewhat important to Shadaloo for the agricultural products they provided. They were one of four criminal gangs worldwide that could produce a few ingredients for several different types of drugs, one of which was essential to the programming used to create the special infiltration Dolls favored by Bison as hidden assassins and spies.

However, this only made Le Chen even more leery of trying anything with the trio. He knew full well how strong and volatile martial artists could be. So, even as he reported to Lǎo Dà Fuyu, he knew the smart thing to do was to let them go. Soon after giving his report in person, Le Chen became happy as Fuyu agreed they would not pursue the three wandering martial artists. “As perfect as the two girls are for the Doll program, we don’t have the means here to bring them under our control.”

Hainan only produced a few of the ingredients for such, not the actual drug used to lower inhibitions and weaken the mind of the individual in charge. Indeed, they didn’t even know the chemical composition of the drug in question.

“I agree wholeheartedly, my lord,” Le Chen used his good hand to wipe sweat away from his forehead. While not quite as south as Sanya was, Haikou was still hot, and his injuries were bothering the hell out of him. “I would like your permission to silence the men who were so brutalized by the martial artists. While not our normal procedure, they knew about the trio in question, and if we don’t move against the trio, well, it might spark some of those men to question my leadership in the future or, passively even worse, take matters into their own hands.”

Fuyu was about to reply when the door to his office burst open. He reached under the desk for a holdout pistol, but paused as one of his men ran into the warehouse office that they were using for the meeting. Both older men stared at the runner, clear distaste and anger in their eyes, and Fuyu growled, “What is the meaning of this interruption? You know I do not like such.”

Instead of kowtowing as he should have, the man gave an almost perfunctory bow before gesturing towards the door he had burst through so precipitously. “Lǎo Dà, Bàzhǔ (Lord, or Overlord)mVega is here. Personally. He, he just showed up outside the warehouse and asked to speak to you.”

Chen and Fuyu both paled, “Vega is here!? The assassin? That is… we have not been told of his arrival! If he needs help then…” Fuyu controlled himself quickly, scowling. “We have had no warning of his arrival, and I would not think that Vega would be the person FANG or the Zhìgāowúshàng zhě (Supreme One) would send to either request a specific item or inspect our work.”

“I am not here on a specific mission from the General, nor your immediate overseer,” a calm, almost debonair voice intoned from outside the office door in Chinese, albeit with an odd accent. “I am rather here on something of a personal mission. May I come in? This whole speaking to a closed door is rather frustrating.”

Glaring one final time at the messenger as Chen hissed out, “You didn’t tell him us he was right behind you, fool!” Fuyu answered quickly with an affirmative.

A moment later, as the man raced past, Vega entered. He was wearing a rather nice, anachronistic white suit at present, his hair done up in his normal long braid to one side of his chest, the blonde hair gleaming in the light of the office’s overhead light. He looked a cross between a royal aristocrat from the industrial era and a Playboy, with his handsome looks and smile. His appearance was helped by the fact that he wasn’t sweating as much as either of the locals, a surprising feat from a European of any stripe.

Yet, both locals were very good at reading people, and Chen shivered, trying to make himself appear as small as possible in the chair set in front of Fuyu’s desk. For all of his arrogance and unthinking cruelty to those who were weaker than him, Chen was not, at least in his own mind, crazy. It only took him a second to stare into Vega’s eyes and realize that this man was a psychopath. There was something off, something not right in the man’s face, his expressions, his eyes. Something that set Chen, hardened criminal though he may be, to shiver in disgust and fear.

Unfortunately for Chan, despite his attempt to look small, Vega’s attention went from Fuyu’s humble apologies to him in an instant as he recognized that Chen was injured. “My word. I do apologize. I did not realize what kind of meeting I was interrupting. And this would be?”

“This is Mr. Chen, he is one of my chief lieutenants, particularly when it comes to many of our farms. And it does not matter, the meeting was nearly over,” Fuyu hastily said.

“Truly, someone so important was injured so badly? Are you having internal troubles, or…” Vega’s smile widened slightly, and both men across from him could not help but flinch as the dangerous air around the man suddenly turned even sharper, even more prevalent. “Did you suddenly run into something unexpected?”

Realizing he had to answer, Chen nodded violently. “I, you could say that my, Lord Vega. I attempted to, to solicit the time of a young woman, who I had presumed was simply a random tourist who didn’t know whose territory she had wandered into. Unfortunately, she and her two friends proved to be martial artists of extreme skill. They not only rejected my offer but dealt a severe blow to my manpower in that sector. But they were so good, we had basically decided to, to leave them be, unfortunately.”

“Oh, that sounds most unfortunate indeed. But tell me, what did these three look like?” Vega asked, his interest sharpening further.

Chen floundered for a bit. He hadn’t really been in his right mind to notice the appearance of the other two when they left him behind, but he did remember Mai quite vividly. He described her, but soon into his description, Chen’s words turned into a gurgle as Vega crossed the intervening distance between where the Spaniard had been standing near the doorway and where Chen was sitting. There, his hand clamped down over Chen’s broken shoulder, his grip grinding the bones within despite looking like a friendly shoulder touch.

“I see! Indeed, they are here, as I had hoped they would be. Excellent. But do not speak so of the lovely Mai Shiranui like that. Neither you nor any other man will ever touch that precious flower. She is mine to pluck,” Vega hissed, his voice possessive and near euphoric.

He had learned the names of the trio easily enough once they left Hong Kong. Having their real names to give to Xian Pu, his precious Jade, and Mai Shiranui, the quintessential Yamato Nadeshiko, had been most pleasant. Vega looked forward to seeing what manner of poem he could create for their headstones.

For a moment, Fuyu, who had been watching all this with worry, could only frown, his confusion as to what the Spaniard’s words meant overriding his sense of self-preservation and need to stay silent around a much bigger predator. “Er, do you mean that in a sexual way or—”

“Bah, of course not. No, I mean it in the purest way possible. Killing her so that her beauty will never fade through age,” Vega said, his tone calm now as if he was talking about the weather rather than murder.

He raised his hand away from Chan’s ruined shoulder and smiled widely. “Indeed, I can wager that the other two are also known to me. One of them had purple hair, did she not, a Chinese woman of surpassing beauty, her gorgeousness only surpassed by that of Mai?”

“I, yes, yes, and the other one was a young man, Japanese by his features, he, he had a pigtail, I think,” Chen babbled.

“All three…. Hmmm, less than ideal. I had hoped that they would separate at some point, but I never really put too much stock in the idea. Yet now that it comes to it, perhaps three to one odds is not something I would like to face. Not after last time.”

Vega knew he had underestimated Shampoo and Mai, along with Chun Li, the woman whom he’d originally been there to assassinate. He wasn’t going to do that again.  Even if he had gone into that fight with full knowledge of what he was facing as well as the element of surprise, Vega, who, despite his arrogance knew his limits, felt that it was only a 50-50 chance that he would’ve been able to do any better.

That didn’t mean he was going to leave, though. Mai and Shampoo had caught his attention. With no further orders to kill Chun Li coming his way, Vega was determined to give them the ultimate gift of eternal beauty and death.

“Now, if I am to have both ladies and their… male companion, I must think of ways to separate them, or overcome them in some spectacular fashion.” Ignoring the confusion on the two locals’ faces as to why Vega had paused there, Vega tapped his chin thoughtfully. The locals didn’t know about Ranma’s strange magical malady, which Vega thought was one of the most disgusting things he’d ever heard of.

“Leave them alone for now. Simply have them watched from afar. Especially whenever they come into any of the cities on Hainan. Do not get close to them at all. Use drones or people with binoculars from a very long distance away. Many martial artists can feel intent or even simply when someone is looking at them.”

Both Mafia bosses nodded at that, one rapidly, the other cautiously, and Vega continued. “Beyond that, tell me about the most romantic and scenic restaurants on the island. As well as what local resources you have in terms of indirect, yet violent, action.”

That was too much for Fuyu, and he held up a hand firmly. “Now wait a moment. We have a lot of contacts in the government and military, but even so, there’s a limit to what we can get away with. Especially considering that our output is tied to Shadaloo, not the greater Triad. We can’t be too open about this atta—GGHHH…”

Before Fuyu could blink, Vega had jumped up over his head, and now his thumb stabbed into the side of his neck, tearing out and releasing a spurt of blood to the shock and fear of Chen. Vega pulled the dead man’s chair away from his desk, dumping him out to the side, where Fuyu flailed, trying to cover the massive wound in his throat with no effect. He gurgled, but couldn’t even get enough air through the blood to shriek, let alone do anything else.

Smiling faintly but very, very coldly, Vega turned to look at Chen. “Do you have any objections to using all available resources for my little mission?”

“I, I, no, my lord,” Chen answered quickly.

“Excellent. Take your seat, Lao Dà Chen. You’re in charge now. I expect results and will be back in the morning.” Vega waited until Chen stood up and moved to the empty chair on the other side of the desk, then patted him companionably on the shoulder, wiping off his bloody thumb at the same time, before walking towards the door without another backward glance.

Over the next few days, Vega’s words about the trio of martial artists knowing they were being observed proved true. Chen lost five more men to the hospital, replacing the men who he’d had silenced there. Each of them had ventured too close to the abandoned construction area that the three martial artists had taken over, curious about what they were doing more than they could see with binoculars. A few others were left largely uninjured, but lost their binoculars. Still, drones and long-range watchers had better luck observing the three.

What they were doing there was bizarre in the extreme, and no one, not even Vega, truly understood why the trio were taking turns hitting one another with large wrecking ball-sized boulders, but that was indeed what they were doing, as odd as it might seem. That didn’t stop Ranma or Shampoo, however, from hunting down the watchers if they got too close.

After a few days, thanks to their contacts around the island. The Wúshēng Fèngzhēn discovered that someone named Ranma had made the reservations at an Italian restaurant, one of the most expensive and high-end restaurants on the island. Whereupon Vega’s plans began to take further, blood-soaked shape...

OOOOOOO

Honestly speaking, the three martial artists weren’t all that bothered by being observed from afar. They did react when they sensed such, of course, but knew it was probably seen as a necessity given the run-in they’d had. Rather than worry about it, the three martial artists put themselves through the toughness training as long and as often as possible. Ranma spent the next morning upgrading and finishing the build that Mai had begun, so two of them could be put through the training at a time, and then that afternoon, they began, with four hours on and four hours off, with the person switching out being chosen by a random number creator on Mai’s phone.

Despite the much better conditions in terms of the weather and, indeed, the food thanks to Mai’s planning and Shampoo’s hunting skills, the training was just as annoying as it had been over the winter when the trio (although they hadn’t been so then), Natsumi and Kurume, had camped out. That seemed a lifetime ago to Mai, but it had only been barely two months, which Mai commented on as she released the two pulleys that sent boulders towards where Ranma and Shampoo were chained up against the built-up wall. “It really feels like it’s been a lot longer than that. That we’ve been together for longer than that. Heck, has it only been… two weeks, if that, since we officially got together?”

“It has,GUH,” Shampoo grunted as the boulder, larger than her and which had taken all three of them to lift into position on the trebuchet system, crashed into her. As it swung back, though, she continued, pushing through the pain. “ Yet you’re right, given how well we fit together, it seems as if we should’ve been going out for longer, doesn’t it?”

“True. Looking back, I think the first sign that I was getting over Andy, even before our final confrontation, should have been how happy and comfortable I was traveling with you and Ranma beforehand. That really should’ve been a clue to me that there was more than just friendship building there.”

Ranma snorted, pushing through his own anger as the second large boulder crashed into him. “Dumbass. Honestly, how hard it is to talk things out with the person who…” he paused as he saw the look Shampoo was giving him. “Right. Kodachi, Akane. How hard it was for me to be romantic with ya occasionally. Shutting up now.”

“Good boy,” Shampoo cooed, before grimacing as the boulders crashed into them again.

Mai bit back a snicker, trying hard not to act like she was taking enjoyment in her lover’s pain. “Looking back on it, I wonder if my forcing Andy to finally admit that he wasn’t attracted to me was caused not just by the example of your relationship and how they should be, but rather my growing attraction to the pair of you warring with my waning affections for him.”

“Does it matter?” Ranma asked, watching as the boulders were pulled away. Only some two hundred and ninety more blows to go before it’s time for one of us to switch out.

“No, I suppose not,” Mai murmured, working the pulley again to catch the rope, hold the boulders in place, then release them once more.

Beyond the toughness training, each of the three martial artists worked on something separately during brief, one-hour intervals. Well, one of them would take that time to make up a meal, but that was a task they all joined in willingly. Ranma took over lunch, Mai breakfast, and Shampoo dinner most of the time, with the two girls switching off occasionally. While they missed some of the more modern accouterments they had on the yacht, the girls still enjoyed themselves as always.

For her part, Shampoo practiced launching her needles faster and more precisely at range under Mai’s instruction, while also practicing her Shotgun Shadow Needle attack, getting better at it. Another ki exercise she worked on, was pushing her ki down into the ground, as her grandmother had begun to teach her back in Xuwen. This was the start of several powerful Earth-based techniques that the Amazons used. By the end of six days, the day they had decided would be their date night, Shampoo was only getting a slight tremor directly under her feet, and it took all her concentration. Not something that she could use in combat.

But that was progress. Beyond that, with Mai helping, she also began to build up her ki reserves and work on her projection still further into her shadow needles and meteor hammer.

That was also something Ranma was doing. Meditating, getting in touch with his ki, and pushing it out into various weapons. He’d already seen a marked improvement in how to use his rope dart as part of his permanent style. It was not entirely integral, but like throwing a punch or a kick, he could integrate it without even thinking about it anymore.

Beyond that, Ranma worked at the speed at which he could use his Undertow or Blue Burst. He even figured out an entirely new trick, one he refused to share with Mai and Shampoo yet, much to their chagrin. Still, his Blue Waves wasn’t something that they would get much out of and he said so. Knowing he wouldn’t lie about that, the ladies were willing to let it go for the time being.

In contrast, Mai worked on her speed and strength, her basic stats, so to speak, to go with the toughness training. Her basic style was more advanced than the other two. She was already near mastery in it and had several attacks she had yet to become proficient at, but knew how to achieve. Ranma’s was an ever-evolving style, and Shampoo hadn’t been all that far along in the mastery of the Amazon Wushu when she left the village despite her position as champion of the non-blooded warriors. Yet, while her style lent itself to midrange and long-range combat, which Mai acknowledged would always be her specialty among the trio, she didn’t want to be left behind in terms of speed and strength either.

All in all, the six days since they reached the observatory were incredibly packed, and truly, all three barely got any sleep at night, heading to be at around three every night, like they had that first night, and getting up before down. And not because they spent half the night having sexy-type fun. Rather, enamored with how much training they could do now that they had the space and materials available, the trio, without even talking about it, decided to burn the candle at both ends as much as possible.

Even Mai, who would hold up her hand as, as she put it once, “the resident horny,” was fine with this when it occurred to the trio what they were subconsciously doing. They wanted to get as much as they could out of the weeks they’d be spending here before moving on.

However, they still wanted at least one date while on Hainan. Thus, the sixth evening of their stay on Hainan, found Ranma putting on the same suit he’d worn when he first came to the ship that first night. Only this time, I don’t have any flowers. Damn. Maybe I can slip away and grab some?

“I’m done out here, ladies. How’s it going in there?” he inquired, directing his words to the hut.

“We’re almost done here, too,” Mai answered, suiting action to word as she walked out of the hut a moment later. “What do you think?”

“GUH…” Ranma grunted, staring.

Mai had put on a bit of makeup, eyeliner to go with bright red lipstick, which really made her lips pop. She was dressed in a black skintight dress that fell from her shoulders down to her knees, with a slit up one side. It looked just incredible on her, even though the dress didn’t actually show much in the way of her cleavage beyond a small diamond cut out directly underneath her throat. Instead, it set off her hips and legs to good effect, which, while amazing, were certainly not the first feature that had ever grabbed anyone’s attention when looking at Mai.

That just proves that the whole package is equally as amazing, Ranma thought, regaining control of his higher functions enough to say she looked amazing, before reaching over to pull Mai into a kiss.

She pulled back after a very brief second, though, shaking her head and pushing at his chest very, very lightly. “None of that. You’re going to mess up my makeup.”

Ranma seemed to think about it for a moment, then swooped in for another kiss before she could protest a second time. His hands around her waist, pulling Mai into the kiss as he opened her mouth with his tongue, their tongues dueling for a few seconds.

“Aiyah, that looks like fun. But I think it’s my turn now,” Shampoo teased as she came out of the hut a few minutes later. It had taken her a bit longer to get ready because she’d wanted to do something really elaborate with her hair, completely unlike Mai’s simpler ponytail.

Over the ten months since Ranma and Shampoo had become a couple on the Tendo Dojo’s rooftop, her hairstyle had changed numerous times. Most of the time when she wasn’t doing anything special, Shampoo had a portion of her hair up in twin odango, with the rest falling down her back. Gone were the days she would have some of it trailing down her front in two strands tied with a yellow string or bells.

Now, Shampoo had it pushed back from her forehead, with some of her hair piled up into three interconnected buns. Into these buns a hairpin was pressed, with the foremost hairpin showing a series of small gold flowers. The two on the side of the buns had three trailing gold chains, each ending in a tiny pearl, with only a single flower from which the chains dangled down to chin-height. Another hairpin, this one a hair comb, was worked into her hair at shoulder height, gathering her hair in a thing waterfall down Shampoo’s back.

These four hair ornaments were given to Shampoo by Cu Lonxi when they met in Xuwen, as a present for finding her husband. They were family heirlooms, each from a different era, with one, the hair comb, older than even the Elder.

To go with the hairpins, Shampoo had foregone any kind of makeup beyond some peach-colored lipstick and a Chinese cheongsam, one far more elaborate than her usual ones. Gold cascaded down from one shoulder to the opposite waist in a series of swirling waves to match the hairpins, while there were images of tigers fighting on her chest to one side, and a mountain on her hip on the other side. The cheongsam hugged her figure almost as tight as Mai’s and showed a very large amount of cleavage thanks to a swooping neckline, making it seem like the two women had sort of changed styles for the night. The cheongsam even went down to below Shampoo’s knees, but was slit along one side just like Mai’s dress.

Ranma just stared, stunned, a small part of his brain wondering where the hell Shampoo had gotten that, as he’d never seen it before. Next to him, Mai hummed, nodding approval. “I’d like to say I do good work, but I was more building upon magnificence already, Shampoo. You look stunning, my dear.”

“From you, that sounds like a compliment worthy of being put into jade,” Shampoo said, clapping her hands together and bowing formally towards Mai even as she grinned at the other woman’s compliment, preening more than a little bit. She always enjoyed those kinds of things coming from Mai, who was easily one of the most attractive women that Shampoo had ever seen. To know that in the eyes of Ranma and Mai, the two people whose opinion mattered most to her in the world, that she was just as gorgeous as Mai was uplifting in the extreme.

Not so uplifting as Ranma’s response a second later was, though. He took a few steps forward, then lifted Shampoo into the air, whispering, “God, you’re gorgeous!” coming from his lips right before they impacted Shampoo’s own with almost bruising force as Ranma tried to convey the depth of his love beyond those words in the only way he could.

Shampoo eagerly returned the kiss, her legs locking around Ranma’s upper waist directly under his arms, while Mai watched on in amusement as the two lost themselves in one another for a few moments. Then, as the moment between her two lovers continued, she looked around for a second, scratching at her chin as something occurred to her that had nothing to do with the show Ranma and Shampoo were putting on. A second later, she began to laugh.

Her laughter, warm and genuine, broke Ranma and Shampoo out of the moment they were having, and Shampoo looked over at her sister-wife, a little annoyed. “What are you laughing at, Mai?”

“Well, we got all dressed up, but we’re going to have to travel through a jungle to get to Qionghai. We didn’t think this all the way through, did we?” she pointed out, still chuckling. Qionghai was another city to the east of Sanya and deeper inland, sitting on the island’s circular train system, known for its restaurants and sports complexes.

That brought wide-eyed looks from both Ranma and Shampoo, and Shampoo in particular began to curse, one hand going up to her hair for a moment. “Drat, how slow would I have to be moving to keep this in place?”

“Don’t worry about that. Mai and I will help you put it together at the other end. But I’m afraid Mai’s right. I don’t think I could move through the jungle at speed without damaging my clothing or at least causing a few sweat stains,” Ranma said regretfully. “I think we just need to change into our normal clothing, then find someplace near the restaurant to change back.

Even in the evening, the heat on Hainan was incredible. None of the three had gotten used to it yet, and Ranma doubted they would get used to the weather this close to the equator for a while.

The two women agreed and promptly reentered the tent, leaving Ranma outside to get changed in his own way.

Swiftly, he was done, and the girls followed one after another in the same order that they had come out before, with only their lipstick and Mai’s makeup remaining in place. The three of them raced off through the jungle, following Shampoo’s phone to the city of Qionghai. Thankfully, Qionghai was closer to the observatory by about sixty kilometers. Better, the old road went in that direction for a while before peeling off, making the going much easier.

And Ranma saw no sign of the howler monkey this time, which was nice. The damn thing had made several appearances before.

From there, they headed back to the city and the restaurant there. Once they reached the city’s outskirts and found the restaurant they were going to, which was set in the center of its own personal farm, Ranma headed off to find a public restroom to change into.

Mai and Shampoo followed, figuring to do the same, but the instant they reached the public restroom, Shampoo recoiled, one hand going up to her nose. “Nope! We’ll find some other place to get back into our outfits. One of the nearby rooftops, maybe.”

Ranma shrugged. “Meh, I’ve smelled way worse. Call me when you need help getting Shampoo’s hair ready.” And if I hurry, I might be able to grab up a few flowers. Huh… come to think of it, we might need to go trolling sometime soon. I’m running low on money. I know Mai’s got some, but better for us all to have our own resources.

With that, he left the two women, sidling past a few other men who were coming in and out of the restroom, all of whom gave the two women glances, along with a few other women who were entering the bathroom as if the smell wasn’t bothering them at all. Mai and Shampoo ignored all the looks they were getting, looking instead at one another. “Who do you think is responsible for Ranma not being horrified by that smell? Being on the road with his old man, or that Akane girl’s cooking?”

Shampoo snorted, knowing Mai had a special disdain for Akane thanks to the damage the short-haired girl had done to her family’s dojo. Not that Shampoo’s opinion of the girl was any better. “I’d say a combination of both. After all, Ranma wasn’t the only one that she forced her cooking on, heh, I don’t think it should be called cooking at all, honestly, more of a science experiment. But whatever you call it, I’d wager the results probably included a great deal of gas, and I’d wager Genma’s was even worse than the cooking on its own.”

Allowing the moment of sassy disdain for the absent girl to pass, Mai gestured with her head. “Come on, I saw a roof over there that looked clear enough for us to use, and we’re already a bit late for our reservation.”

The two of them exited the park, heading first back towards the restaurant, then up onto the nearby rooftops. Soon, the pair found a place where they couldn’t be seen… or so they thought. In reality, a seven-story building several buildings away did have a view of that particular rooftop. As the two of them began to put on their earlier outfits, they accidentally gave a few people quite a view. Or rather, Shampoo did. Mai had mastered a quick-change technique and could swiftly transform from one outfit to another.

As Shampoo changed, a few boys there just stared. They were so short that Mai and Shampoo had missed them, but now they were standing on tiptoes to look over the solid safety railing at the gorgeous woman below doing a striptease. Meanwhile, an old man, who had just pushed up from a lounge chair, also gawked before blood began to gush from his nose, and he collapsed backward, grasping at his heart.

Shampoo caught this action out of the corner of her eye and turned just in time to watch the old man collapse backward. Her eyes locked onto the two boys who had been watching them. “Shit… we just flashed at least three people because we were in a rush!”

Both of the boys ducked out of sight as Mai joined her in looking in that direction. The two women sweat dropped a little, and Shampoo reported what she had seen. “I think I even saw an old man up there having a heart attack. Should we check on that?”

Mai looked in that direction, then back to Shampoo. “I’m sure it was a joke. It had to be, right? People don’t have heart attacks like that in real life, do they?”

For a moment, the two of them were silent, then they bolted, leaping from terrace to terrace until they reached the porch where the old man had collapsed. After giving him some hasty chest pulses and a bit of mouth-to-mouth, they were relieved when he gasped, and his heart began to beat again. So grateful were they that the duo didn’t even bother to smack him upside the head for taking in the eyeful that they were giving him at the time, before they jumped away, heading back to where they had changed a moment ago.

There, they gathered their clothing and were just stuffing it into their ki spaces when Ranma joined them, having tracked the GPS signal from Mai’s phone.

He looked at their still-embarrassed faces for a second, then around at the buildings that topped the one they were currently on. “I don’t want to know, do I? I feel as if I ask, I’ll be obliged to poke certain people’s eyes out for staring at what they shouldn’t have.”

“We didn’t see any flashing cameras, so that’s a bonus,” Mai muttered somewhat lamely. That will teach us to be in too much of a rush!

Shaking his head, Ranma gestured to four Shampoo to stand in front of him. “Come on, let’s fix your hair, Shampoo.”

While Ranma wasn’t all that good at hairstyling, fashion or anything like that, he did have a bit of experience thanks to the various disguises he’d used during Mooch-fu expeditions and a few things that had happened in Nerima. On top of that, he did have a very good memory for physical details, and he remembered where all the hairpins Shampoo had been wearing went and what her hair looked like.

Shampoo shivered, quickly becoming grateful that her outfit came with a built-in bra. Otherwise, her nipples would be making an appearance right now. Feeling Mai and Ranma’s hands, both sets, moving through her hair, pulling, tying, binding, and then slowly sliding the hairpins into position was possibly the most erotic thing she’d ever felt that didn’t involve having her clothes off. And even then, it’s in the top ten, she thought with a whimper, widening then lowering as she fought back the urge to whimper at the sensation.

Behind her, Ranma and Mai were not blind to the effect they were having on Shampoo, and Ranma leaned into it a little, letting a bit of his ki out through his fingers, warming them as he worked them through her hair. Mai didn’t, but she did slow down, and her fingers began to massage Shampoo’s scalp rather than just tug and pull at her hair in different directions.

However, despite their own desires, they did have a reservation, and such work couldn’t take all that long. Eventually, with the old man still watching them avidly from above, and the two boys who had hidden themselves away nowhere in sight, not even with cameras, the job was finished, and Ranma and Mai stood back, with Mai murmuring, “Done. But I think I want to play with your hair a bit more in the future, darling. That was fun.”

“Oh, I’ll do the same to you as well,” Shampoo said, looking over to Mai. She then leaned up and gave Ranma a very quick kiss on the cheek, before doing the same to Mai. “Wo ai ni, Airens.”

“And I love you, my precious Xian,” Ranma murmured, giving her a kiss of his own.

Shampoo trembled a little at that. Paired with the earlier treatment, hearing Ranma use her real name like that was almost enough for her to throw caution to the wind and start a make-out session as they’d had back at the camp, but she refrained. Instead, she tugged at Ranma’s arm, leaning into it from one side as she turned them towards the side of the rooftop facing the restaurant. “Come on, I think that food is calling my name, and after, well, I don’t know about you two, but I certainly didn’t just dress up like this to just go out to dinner.”

Mai laughingly agreed with that, while Ranma shrugged nonchalance, slowly diverting them a bit from a direct route to the restaurant. He hadn’t needed to dress up all that much, but he was more than willing to let the two girls take the lead when it came to stuff like that. “Sure, whatever you want. A night out on the town at a dance club? Fine by me. Finding a rooftop nearby so that the three of us can dance alone without anyone bothering us would be even better. I don’t think there’s any amusement parks here, and we’re not exactly dressed for those anyway, but maybe there’s a tour around the city or something?”

“I’d be up for rooftop dancing…” Mai hummed, coming up to Ranma’s other side and leaning in lightly, pressing her now completely clad breasts into his shoulder, the three of them didn’t care as they moved to the side of the rooftop and leaped down, bouncing off an awning to land among a crowd of pedestrians. They garnered some strange looks, but the three of them kept moving, and most of those looks quickly shifted from surprise and shock at their sudden arrival from on high to introspection and jealousy as the crowd took in the sheer beauty of the two women Ranma was with.

That Ranma himself was garnering as many looks from the female side of the crowd as the two girls were from the male side was not lost on either of his companions. When a woman surreptitiously tried to take out her phone to snap a picture, a sudden glare from Shampoo caught her like a snake with a mouse, freezing her in place. Similarly, a few men who had pulled out phones to take pictures as the trio passed by found them smashed from their hands by tiny pebbles hurled at high speed.

After a moment, though, Ranma smirked and pulled his arms away from the two girls. He then moved over to a small potted plant set outside a store, where he grabbed up two wrapped roses. “Here, these are for you.”

One of the roses was pink, fading into white along the edges of the petals. The other was a deep, dark red, almost black. He’d hoped to find one to match Shampoo’s hair color only to be told matching hair colors like that wasn’t fashionable by the florist, while Mai had always been upfront that red was her favorite color.

Both girls gasped, taking the roses from his hand, almost stunned. “Airen…” Shampoo whispered.

“Thank you, Ranma. I’ll treasure it,” Mai murmured, taking the rose for her. She then deftly worked it into her hair on the right side of her head so it rested just above her forehead. Once she was done, she looked over at Shampoo. “Do you want me to replace one of your hairpins with it? Its thorns have been removed, so...”

Wordlessly, Shampoo nodded, and the three moved toward an awning outside the entrance to a hotel. There, Mai gently removed the frontmost hairpin, tucking it into her own tiny boob window with a wink, which startled Shampoo out of her momentary fugue and into a giggle. With Ranma holding her shoulders and ignoring the looks they were still getting from the pedestrians around them, Shampoo tried to stand still as Mai went to work.

Soon she was finished, and Shampoo turned into Ranma’s arms, looking up at him with a look that could only be described as ‘smoldering’ in her face, biting her lip. “You, Mister, are going to get so lucky tonight, we’re going to have to take all day off tomorrow to get over it!”

“Hear, hear,” Mai chortled as she joined in, linking her arm with Ranma’s once more.

“Er, I, I’ll do my best, both with that kind of thing, and with romance. You’re worth it. Both of you.” Ranma still wasn’t good at responding to things like that, but hoped his words would still get his thoughts about the two women across.

The way both girls beamed at him and leaned into him as the trio resumed their walk made it clear they had, and he smiled happily.

Moments later, they arrived at the restaurant. This was a two-story building set into its own garden area, where numerous examples of the island’s various peppers, pineapples, herbs, bananas and more grew. There was a queue in front of them, with groups of diners being let in and led away by a rotating series of concierges, a style of sitting people that Ranma had only seen in movies, which he said now.

“That is the right word, right?” Ranma finished his observation with a question as the man at the podium change again. “The guy who greets you at the front of the restaurant is a concierge?”

“No, Ranma, that’s a maître d’. A concierge is the person who greets you at a hotel,” Mai droned, giving her words an almost depressed tone, as if she couldn’t believe Ranma had to ask, causing her lovers to laugh.

As the trio reached the front of the queue, the blonde man who had been speaking to the original man took over for him, while the other headed back into the restaurant with the group in front of the three martial artists. The blonde man was somewhat handsome, Mai acknowledged, equal in height to Ranma and well-built. Yet something in his face, or body language, was making Mai frown a little. There was a feeling about the man, but not anything she could put her finger on.

When Shampoo looked at her quizzically as Ranma spoke to the man, she shrugged her shoulders, answering her lover’s question in a whisper, “I don’t know, I, there’s just something about that guy. Maybe, maybe he’s giving me the vibes of the type of person to flirt with and maybe not take no for an answer? I don’t know, just something’s off.”

“We’ll watch what we eat and watch him closely then,” Shampoo mused, although she hadn’t detected anything like that. Mai, though, was the better of the two when it came to body language and reading someone’s personality in their faces, and Shampoo was more than willing to follow her lead.

It wasn’t actually anything about his body language that had made Mai wary. Her ki sense was more yin-based than yang, leaning more towards feeling the emotions of other people than their raw ki levels. While Vega’s wrongness wasn’t anywhere near the level of someone like Yamazaki and thus couldn’t be felt by Shampoo or other, more balanced ki sensor techniques, it was still there. Mai, alas, didn’t know that just yet.

Ranma also didn’t detect anything wrong, even as the blonde raised an eyebrow at him, looking at the two women over his shoulder. “A part of me feels extremely jealous, but another part says to warn you that a man who tries to grasp two roses all too often only feels their thorns. I take it you have a reservation?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that phrase too, but thankfully, in this case, the roses chose me. And my reservations under Ranma Saotome,” Ranma answered, chuckling a little.

“Ah, definitely jealous then,” the blonde man murmured as he made a point of looking down at his list for a second, while inwardly, Vega exulted. None of the trio had recognized him, as he had known it would be. Even his blonde hair wasn’t so remarkable as to be recognizable without his mask, and his perfect Chinese was also a further mask, given the accent Vega the assassin was known to have in languages other than his original Spanish.

“Yes, I have you on my list. If you will follow me?” Vega said aloud, taking three menus and sliding them under one arm as he bowed the trio grandly into the restaurant with the other. Another man was already standing nearby, waiting to take over, and Vega led the trio of unsuspecting martial artists towards the table.

Normally, if someone nearby was feeling bloodthirsty or violent thoughts towards them, any of the trio would be able to pick it up. However, Vega wasn’t feeling any such thing. He rarely did when he killed someone, as his desires had nothing to do with blood. Rather, he wished to leave behind beautiful corpses. That wasn’t at all the same thing, and this wasn’t the first time Vega had fooled his fellow martial artists.

The interior of the restaurant was designed to almost look like a European sitting room, with a high, vaulted ceiling and stone walls, floor, and roof. Eight pillars rose at various places to support the ceiling and provide lighting, along with scattered lights set into the roof. Vines grew up each of those pillars, along with flowers here and there, almost as if they were supposed to continue the garden-like feel from outside. There were dozens of tables out in the open, and more around the edges in little alcoves.

Vega led the trio to the carefully prepared table near the back corner of the restaurant, facing the gazebo. Once they sat down, he quickly poured them some water, handed the trio their menus while reciting the day’s specials by rote, then asked if any of them had allergies and whether they wanted bread and oil or bread and butter to start. This wasn’t the first time he’d acted the part of a waiter to observe a target. Indeed, he was happy the trio had chosen an Italian restaurant, as a local place would have made him stand out far more.

When Mai ordered a bottle of wine and bread with oil, he smiled pleasantly, marked it down, and bowed from the waist. “Your regular waiter will be with you shortly. Please, enjoy your night.”

As he walked away, Vega allowed his smile to widen just a little, enough that a young woman who had been looking at him somewhat dreamily from nearby thought he was smiling for her, and preened, but he walked past her without acknowledging it. If one bomb will not work, then two hopefully will. I have no desire to fight the three of them at once, in particular the young Ranma, not after he survived a bout with the Mad Dragon. But explosives should at least kill one or two and wound the final. It is not the proper way to send such roses on to their proper resting place but needs must.

Yet, even as he embraced the necessity, Vega found such crudeness annoying. I will have to spend some time painting the corpses of these two lovelies when I return home.

The date proceeded smoothly for the three lovers. The waiter arrived, took their orders and brought them a plate of bread and oil.

Shampoo approved of the wine Mai had chosen, even though Ranma refrained. Like their first night as a trio, he very much did not want to get into the habit of drinking like his old man had and said so aloud. “Even when I’m out with the two of you, that’s not something I’m ever going to indulge in.”

“Eh, you could get away with a little bit, I’d think. In fact, you could almost say that wine should have a special place in our hearts,” Mai snickering. “Remember that first night we had together, how giggly we got? I don’t know if I would’ve had the courage to go through with my confession to the two of you without a bit of liquid courage.”

“I think ya would’ve,” Ranma chuckled even as he dug into his food. He’d ordered a steak, something he rarely had gotten before, while Shampoo had gotten chicken carbonara, and Mai had gotten a fish dish Ranma had missed. All of them shared with one another, which just added to the air of closeness. “You’re more courageous than I think you give yourself credit for. After all, opening yourself up, offering your heart to Shampoo and me after what happened with Andy couldn’t have been easy.”

“Maybe, but I still think I needed that last bit of courage,” Mai mused, biting back a whimper as Shampoo’s hand started to play up and down her thigh. Her own hand fell into Shampoo’s lap, kneading her thigh and then tracing her thumb on Shampoo’s stomach. After getting used to that sensation and deciding Ranma was being left out, Shampoo surreptitiously pushed off one of her shoes and raised her fake foot up to play with Ranma’s crotch a little, which caused him to stiffen in several ways, made worse when Mai let her other hand drop onto his thigh for a second before she went back to eating with that hand.

They didn’t go further than that. The food was too good for them to truly want to ignore in favor of footsie-type fun, but more than once they did interrupt the meal to lean sideways and kiss one another on the cheek, neck and even lips. This drew some looks from all around, as public displays like that were considered gauche in normal Chinese society for even a normal couple, let alone a trio, itself a very odd occurrence in this day and age.

Despite one of them being Chinese like the locals, though, those looks and the whispers that reached their ears were ignored with ease. Almost losing sight of the world around them entirely, the trio lost themselves in one another’s company for the night.

Ranma wasn’t used to taking so long to eat, but he couldn’t deny that taking his time like this with two friends was amazing, and he didn’t begrudge the extra time it took to eat his meal. Shampoo was also having a lot of fun, and Mai was enjoying herself too. She hadn’t had Italian all that often before this, nor had Shampoo or Ranma, and the meal was quite fun for that reason and the company.

Eventually, though, all the food was eaten. The trio had cleared their plates and some dessert, a massive chocolatey confection that had the girls teasing Ranma about how he should have come as a girl to get the full effect. Ranma raised a hand to ask for the check as Shampoo finished off a bottle of wine, but Mai stood up. “I need to go to the girls’ room. Don’t wait for me if the check comes too quickly. I’ll meet you outside.”

Ranma nodded affably, handing over the check and his MAB bank card to the blonde man who had come over to check and make sure they were satisfied with the night’s service. “Sure, love. We’ll need to walk around a bit to find a dance club, or a rooftop near one, anyway.”

Taking the check and Ranma’s credit card, Vega gave them a final bow before turning away, exulting inside. Yes, grace has smiled upon me! My explosives will take care of the two of them, and then I will be able to handle Shiranui on my own!

With that, Vega made his way back to the front of the restaurant, where he would need to be to be clear of the two explosions. This took him a few moments as the restaurant was pretty packed, but once there, he reached into a pocket. Without another moment waiting, he thumbed the detonator one after another.

Back at the table, Ranma had just stood up when explosions shattered the lovely feeling between Ranma and Shampoo at that moment, as well as the rest of the restaurant. The explosion from below went off first, hurling Ranma and Shampoo backward as it turned the area around them into a sea of fire and brimstone. Then the explosion in the roof followed, bringing the entire second story down with a thunderous crash.

Having already been on his feet, Ranma tried to smash bits of the falling debris aside, even as his head was ringing from the explosion and searing agony was going through his legs from the first bomb, and he looked over at his companion, realizing with a sinking heart that Shampoo was far worse off. She had been a little bit drunk, as well as still sitting at the table waiting for Ranma to come around to pull her chair out, and her legs had been broken, and her skin had been almost burned off from the first explosion.

Pushing through the agony as she lay on the ground where the first explosion had flung her, Shampoo was barely able to raise her hands above her head as the ceiling above them exploded, sending debris flying down on them like junk shot out of a cannon, slamming her down, pushing her arms away from her head and then slamming into her head, filling her world with even more pain, and then finally blessed unconsciousness even as Ranma, with desperate energy, reached her, grabbing Shampoo up with one arm as the rubble from on high continued to come down, burying him.

All around the epicenter of the two explosions, the other restaurant goers fared even worse. The nearest diners to their table had all died, perforated or torn apart by the first explosions, and now, dozens of men and women died as the ceiling collapsed, burying everyone save for an area near the front of the restaurant in debris, bringing down still more men and women from the second floor with it.

As screams, shouts, and howls of pain and terror resounded, Vega observed his handiwork.

To his surprise, as the dust and debris settled, Vega could see Ranma had been able to thrust up an arm through the debris. Not by much, but at least one hand was sticking out and still moving.

“That will have to do, I suppose,” Vega murmured in Italian.

With that, Vega reached into his pocket again and pulled out his mask, slipping it on his head, then let his hand run up through his hair, undoing the tight, unobtrusive bun that he had kept his hair in, letting it fall loose into its normal ponytail.

With an air of theatricality, Vega then reached into the space behind the podium, pulling out his claw gauntlets and sliding them onto his hands. Once armed, he sauntered towards the doors leading into the bathrooms.

A second later, Mai emerged, and he kicked a random waiter’s tray up off the ground and towards her, following up by charging after it to close quickly. “Ah, Belladonna!”

OOOOOOO

Due to where the bathroom was in relation to the chair that had been set up as the kill zone, Mai and a few other ladies and men using them were left relatively unbothered by the explosions. Even the roof in that area of the restaurant hadn’t come down, much like the roof around the front of the restaurant. Mai had just been ignoring the whispering and jealous muttering from two catty middle-aged women, as she washed her hands, cheerfully thinking of what they’d look like hung up from their ankles, when the explosions occurred one after another.

As the other ladies screamed and flung themselves to the ground, or, in the case of one unfortunate lady still sitting on a toilet, almost brained herself on the door to her stall, Mai reacted by taking a brief second to breathe in and cycle her ki through her body, getting rid of the buzz she had from the alcohol. This was an old trick she’d been trained in to deal with poisons and other things that got past her basic immunity to all poisons or drugs Jubei could get his hands on.

As the buzz left her, Mai reached for the small boob window her current outfit had. I am so glad Ranma and Shampoo convinced me to invest ki in all my outfits instead of just my combat gi! she thought.

Ki spaces were maintained by the ki in the body of the person wearing the clothing in question. Of course, if that person changed clothing like a normal person did every day (unlike Genma who had probably never changed his gi as far back as Ranma remembered) then the ki matrix of the expanded space would fade away. But if Mai or the others worked on it, Mai could keep the matrix going for a good even when she wasn’t wearing a particular item of clothing. No longer than a day, though.  

Twin fans appeared in her hands, flicking open, glowing the light orange of her yin inclined ki for a second as she exited, only for Mai to be forced into a roll as a waiter’s tray came at her, hard enough to bury itself in the door behind her. Her attacker came out of the scattered fires, mixed dust, smoke, and turmoil of the partially wrecked restaurant, leaping up and over a fleeing couple.

Landing, he bowed theatrically, one clawed hand crossed his stomach, the other arm outstretched to one side. “Ah, belladonna, so good of you to survive and give me, Vega, a proper dance after the last time when I found my card overfull. I will make certain it is as glorious as the corpse you will leave behind, my rose.”

Oh buggering barnacles, it’s that masked blonde who attacked me, Shampoo and Chun Li in her apartment! Mai realized, wary and now very concerned, she hadn’t brought along nearly enough fans. Worse, all of us left our combat outfits behind at the observatory. All three lovers had gotten used to using their usual combat gear for their toughness training, and then not again for the rest of the day. Mai had been dressed in a pair of long shorts and a t-shirt.

Unfortunately, there was a problem with being without her combat gi. It had the vast majority of her fans in it, most of her emergency supplies and a few other nasty surprises Mai would really have liked to break out right now.

At that point, fan met iron claw, and she had no more time to think, only act.

Vega’s first strike nearly did her in as his tekko-kagi’s claws were blazing with dark-orangish energy impacted her hastily raised fan. She was able to deflect the blow, but not the kick that followed, which struck her chest and sent Mai backward.

Flipping herself midair, Mai landed lightly and kicked off the door behind her, shattering it off its hinges at the same time, but doing so let Mai dodge a follow-on cut from the masked assassin’s other weapon, and this time, in midair, she rolled up and over the sideways kick that came right after. Landing, she was startled to find Vega already having turned, a knee rising up to impact her elbow. Mai redirected the blow, then Shampoo’s hairpin that she had been holding onto became tangled with one set of claws, before she was forced to dodge to the side of another strike.

Her leg came up into a high kick, but was blocked and redirected. Showing a frankly crazy level of speed that Mai knew she wouldn’t have been able to match without the extra training she had been doing since meeting Ranma and Shampoo, Vega slashed at her with both hands, ducking and dodging around her and Mai did the same. A second later, Vega bounded up and over her, trying to force her to turn around, but instead, Mai flung herself forward and kicked off the ground before whirling in the air. The two of them met midair, with Mai sacrificing her already wrecked fan, overloading it with her ki for a second as she hurled it point-blank into Vegas chest.

He still dodged, but Mai almost got one of his arms into an arm bar before needing to roll forward over that arm to avoid a stabbing strike from his other hand. Still in midair, she lashed out backward with a kick that caught him in the stomach, but found her foot grabbed, and his other hand’s tekko-kagi coming down.

“Foxfire!” she shouted, her other foot coming up into a kick that crashed into that hand’s palm, both limbs brimming with ki, but hers also exploding with fire as it moved through the air. The resultant impact hurled them both away from one another, but they landed easily,

Vega even did a little pirouette in midair as he did. He stood almost like a matador that Mai had seen once in a comedy, his iron claws shifting slightly as if daring Mai to charge. Internally, though, he was somewhat annoyed. My word, but this young woman has so much ki control it is honestly amazing. She was able to pull out that much ki so quickly, and she can ignite it? I have rarely seen that trick before outside of Shadaloo or that arrogant bastard Bernstein’s group. She could truly be something… if I were not here to make certain this rose stops growing at the height of her beauty rather than power.

Not falling for the goading motion of her masked opponent, Mai held her last fan in front of her face. Pumping some more ki into it, the fan lit it on fire, the fire growing and growing until it was encompassing half of her body, before she hurled it forward. Thank goodness my yin mastery comes with a resistance to my own flames!

“Hahaha, bigger does not mean your fire will be more effective than before, my dear!” Vega laughed wildly, his own claws starting to gleam with yellow ki at the same time, and he slashed through the fireball, but Mai hadn’t intended that as a real attack.

Rather, it had been meant to give her time to change. Really freaking missing my combat gi right now, Mai thought, whirling in place as she ripped off the dress she had been wearing, ruining it in the process, even as she pulled out the outfit she’d been wearing earlier that day. It had four of her fans in its ki pocket, her manriki, a flashlight, and a few throwing knives that she and Ranma had idly made one night to see how much effort it took to make from bits of scrap around the abandoned construction site.

Shampoo’s hairpin disappeared inside her ki pocket before Mai’s manriki flicked out, twirling up one arm in a form of makeshift armor, stuck there with her own version of Ranma’s clinging gecko technique, something she had been using for years to make certain her ki never showed too much. A second later, she hurled out one fan, which multiplied as it left her hand into several dozen.

“Ah, glorious! Strain, struggle, it will make you even more beautiful in death!” Vega chortled. Charging forward, he ignored the shadow fans for the most part, which bounced off his skin and disappeared, leaving only small bruises. His claws, meanwhile, unerringly found the single real fan.

The two that were on fire a second later, as he jumped in midair, were a little more dangerous, but he twisted between them in a sign of raw agility that was almost a match for anything Mai had seen from Ranma, and Mai barely twirled a portion of her manriki off of her arm and twirled it into place to block his strike. Even so, one of them got through, nearly catching her in the chest, slicing across her breasts. This caused a good deal of bouncing that should have distracted her opponent, even as it didn’t cut into her skin, but didn’t divert Vega’s murderous attention at all.

His next strike nearly took her in the head, but Mai ducked to the side, her own knee coming up into a strike that hurled Vega off his feet. Her attempt to go for a Grapple missed, and the two exchanged a few blows, dodging and moving before Vega overextended. His claws stabbed into the ground, and Mai, who had twirled to her side and then flipped away from another strike, kicked out with her legs, grabbing Vega’s head between her feet. With just her stomach and leg muscles, she hurled Vega up and over, intending to pile-drive him.

However, Vega broke her grip, and she was forced to roll away once more from a series of slashing attacks from his tekko-kagi. The two of them sprang up from the ground and into the air again, with Mai’s manriki whirling this time, giving her the distance advantage while still wrapped around one arm, giving Mai a shield as well. Let’s hear it for that ki lengthening technique we learned from Master Nawa!

While the two of them continued to battle, people began pushing into the restaurant to help the wounded. There’d been several small groups out in the gardens, both just walking through them after eating or waiting to be seated, and these became the first to enter the restaurant, only to fall back in confusion as they saw the two fighters going at it in the middle of the less ruined area of the restaurant.

However, there was no distant siren sound, a sign of first responders and police worldwide. Unfortunately for the buried, injured and critically wounded in the restaurant, the police and the emergency responders of this area of Qionghai had their orders. No help would be coming from that score for a while.

Instead, several dozen gunmen came out from hiding places in cars, nearby alleyways, or from buildings, cordoning off the restaurant. They warded off more of the locals, who backed away rapidly, as some of those gunmen were actually from the local police force. They started confiscating cameras and phones, which were quite common in the crowd that had begun to gather around the disaster, while also keeping an eye on the interior. However, they didn’t move in time to stop the first group that had charged in to try to help.

While Mai and Vega started fighting in midair once more, one of the first responders saw a hand twitch near what looked like the epicenter of the disaster, well away from the battle going on between the blonde man and black-haired woman. It was, in fact, the only sign in that area of anyone still alive under the rubble of the roof.

Grabbing a few of the other civilians, he skirted around the fight, racing towards the hand. Reaching it, he hesitantly reached down, hoping to find a pulse, only to yelp as that hand twisted at his touch, practically pinning his hand to the debris. “W, we’ve got a live one, ge, get him up and out of there,” He yelled, pulling his hand out from under the buried one with some difficulty. “Let’s move this rubble.”

Buried as he was with one arm around Shampoo and Ranma had barely been able to get one arm up above his head before the rubble came crashing down on him, and once it had, he’d lost any leverage he could use to put his prodigious strength to work. Now, though, as more bits of the rubble moved, his arm was finally able to move, no longer just vibrating in place. Twisting it fully around, Ranma pushed his hand down as he flexed upward, growling.

With a roar, Ranma pushed upward, freeing himself a little more, other hand still held Shampoo to his chest. She was still limp there, but Ranma didn’t look at her just yet. Having gotten enough space under him, Ranma was able to bunch his legs up enough to burst out of the rubble from the roof and the floor above in a cascade, freeing both himself and Shampoo.

In the light of a few fires nearby and the city lights beyond the restaurant, Ranma hastily set Shampoo down, examining her closely, wincing at the injuries she’d taken. Her legs were… well, they were just broken. Gentle touching from her waist down to her foot found more broken bones than whole, and the breaks in her feet and ankles were particularly bad. The toughness training meant that Shampoo’s legs hadn’t been simply torn apart, but the explosion underneath the table had been just as powerful as the one that Shampoo had smacked out of Chun Li’s apartment.

The second-degree burns on her leg were just as bad, but Ranma could feel Shampoo’s ki healing going to work, if only slightly. It would probably take her a full day, maybe more, given the severity of the injuries and the fact that her ki healing wasn’t nearly as experienced or ingrained as Ranma’s, but her legs would be all right in the end.

The sight of Shampoo’s head was a little more worrisome. Her incredibly intricate hairstyle had come apart, and the hairpins that she had been using were bent and mangled, missing most of the small strings of beads, as if they had been driven into her head with great force, which they had. The debris from above had been hurled down at the pair with the full force of the second explosion, and it showed, far exceeding Shampoo’s durability from the toughness training. Thankfully, not a great enough force to penetrate much, but she had several shallow cuts under her hairline and one across the back of her neck where it met her shoulders.

Fortunately, Ranma couldn’t find any actual weak points in her skull, but her head injuries were bleeding way too much for Ranma’s liking. Nor did Shampoo look close to coming to, which hinted at some brain trauma. The bleeding, though, looked as if it was stopping.

Seeing Shampoo was in no danger of dying, Ranma looked at the four responders, thanking them for their help, only then becoming aware of the fight going on nearby. “I’m going to leave Shampoo here for a bit,” he growled. “She'd better still be here when I’m done with the blonde asshole, got it?”

Seconds later, Ranma announced himself via his rope dart flashing through the smoke and dust in what remained of the restaurant, following up when it stabbed deep into the floor as Vega dodged. Twisting, Vega ducked and dodged through Ranma’s punches, only to find his claw sticking to the boy for a few seconds, and a vicious snarl of, “Undertow, Wave Crest!” Heralding a blast of ki that exploded out of the point of impact with a force that nearly broke bone.  

Only moving with the explosion of power even as it landed saved Vega’s arm, and he launched a kick that caught Ranma in the center of his chest, staggering him, but not doing any real damage. He nearly lost his leg to another blow, but pulled back in time to avoid that, using his knee to block a kick, then forced to redirect two more, pushed on the defensive.

“Mai, any idea who this asshole is? He looks familiar but I can’t place him,” Ranma growled, annoyed that his Undertow technique was having such trouble grabbing onto this guy.  And my Wave Crest technique doesn’t do enough damage, darn it.

The blonde man looked almost like a Dark Side version of Andy to Ranma. Yet he couldn’t deny that the tekko-kagi and the mask were somehow familiar, even if he had never seen them before in his life.

“That’s the assassin that attacked Chun Li, me and Shampoo in Hong Kong! The waste of monkey droppings must be here for the two of us again,” Mai shouted as she charged back into the fight.

While Vega knew of ki, or hado, as he called it, as that was what Bison called it, he didn’t usually use hado much to enhance his strength or striking power outside of covering his weapons. However, he did have a few set techniques that he used to enhance his body with hado and leaping upwards, Vega rebounded off a still existing portion of the roof, coming down into a twirling drill kick, his legs and body lined with yellow energy for a second.

Ranma rolled out of the way, but Mai was out of the range of the attack and attacked quickly. One end of her manriki crashed into Vega as he struck the ground with enough force to create a large crater.

Hissing, Vega came out of the twirl, his hand throbbing from where he had blocked that strike at the last second, only for his eyes to widen as Ranma’s foot came flashing towards his head. He barely got his arm up to block and saw his tekko-kagi shatter right behind his wrist, saving his forearm, but no long useful in any way. Thinking fast, Vega hurled the bits at Mai, who blocked them equally quickly with the other side of her manriki, still coiled around her left arm. A kick flashed out, which she blocked, but Vega used that to push off and away from her and back towards Ranma.

The two of them passed one another midair, exchanging sidekicks, the impact of which hurled Vega sideways.

In contrast, Ranma used the momentum of Vega’s kick to hurl himself up through the air, where he pressed up and off the top of a pillar that was still standing despite the rooftop around it having collapsed, hurling himself downward towards Vega faster than Vega could recover from the kick. This time, a punch crashed down into Vega’s chest, hard enough to hurl him backward, grunting in agony as he felt something break.

Rolling, he raised his now unarmed hand to his chest, glaring hatefully at the two of them as Mai became distracted for a second by a feeble cry for help right by where she was standing. Even as Mai turned away from the fight for a second, Ranma closed in hard, and Vega cursed. Dammit! The boy doesn’t even look all that battered.

Ranma’s leggings had been seared off by the explosion, as had Shampoo’s skirt, and his legs were very reddish-looking in the remaining lights of the ruined restaurant and the garden around it. But he was still using them, still pushing forward, and what other bruises his still-existing shirt hid were obviously minimal at best.

For all of his pride and psychopathic tendencies, Vega was not stupid. Devoted he might be to his art, to leaving behind beautiful corpses, Vega certainly did not want to become one himself, and even only two on one, Vega knew that this fight was going to go against him quickly, particularly now that he was sporting at least two broken ribs in his upper chest.

Even as his still-clawed hand raised and sent out several ki slashes towards Ranma, forcing him to hop up and over them, slowing his assault, Vega reached into his pocket with his other hand and pulled out a small radio. He shouted into it even as Ranma finished crossing the distance, another kick being redirected away from Vegas’s chest by his remaining tekko-kagi, which didn’t even penetrate the youth’s bare foot. “Get in here!”

Twisting around from where she had just pulled a middle-aged man and his dead wife out of the rubble, Mai barely got her manriki armored arm up in time to block several bullets coming their way. Quickly, Mai directed some ki into her manriki again, lengthening it until she could whirl it in place in front of her, creating a shield of metal that intercepted the bullets aimed at her and the man she had saved. She grimaced a bit at the impact, each of which drained her ki from that segment of the chain to keep it intact.

However, the moving shield served its purpose, and she reached inside her ki pocket to pull out the throwing stars she and Ranma had made, hurling them towards the attackers who had just raced in from beyond the garden. Each tripled in midair as they left her hand, as much as she could do quickly.

There were nine of those attackers, all armed with AKs. They fired as fast as they could everywhere at once, uncaring of who they hit. Most fired at Mai, the closer of the two targets, while another fired toward Ranma and Vega.

Vega ducked behind the ruins of another stone pillar. This one hadn’t fared as its fellow, which Ranma had used a moment before, being only half its normal size. Still, that was enough for Vega to hide as the bullets flowed.

Ranma was forced to jump into the air, his rope dart flashing out, smashing into one of the gunmen’s heads, hitting with enough force to shatter skull and brain alike, sending the man to the ground practically headless. A quick twist, and the rope of the dart wrapped around the second man’s neck. A swift tug, and the man’s neck snapped.

However, this gave Vega enough time to hop up onto the pillar and then hurled himself through the air at a near supersonic speed, using his ki to push his speed even higher than normal, so fast that even Ranma would have had trouble reacting in time if he had been looking at Vega at the time. What Vega called his Flying Bull Attack crashed into Ranma’s side and back before Ranma could set himself, Vega’s claws digging into his skin for a second.

But only for a second, as, to Vega’s astonishment, even caught off-balance and in midair, Ranma was able to use the momentum of the strike to deaden much of its cutting force. The next thing he knew, Vega found his arm grabbed, and a knee smashing into his face with so much force that it shattered his mask, the bits of it cutting across Vega’s skin as he was sent flying to the side.

He rolled there, and two of the gunmen twisted around from firing at Mai to firing at Ranma, causing Ranma to yelp and roll into cover. One of the bullets still found his shoulder, punching through the meat of his arm, while several others grazed his side and even coming close to hitting his neck, causing him to hiss in pain.  “I still have a long way to go in our toughness training, I guess.”

Remaining where he was, Ranma probed the injury gingerly as more bullets flew overhead, digging into the wound with rapidly red-coated fingers to pull the bullet out. This was hard and painful as hell, but Ranma’s finger dexterity was such that he could do it. Soon, he pulled the bullet, warped by the impact, out, hurling it back with enough force to crack bone, sending one of the gunners to the floor with a howl as it caught him in the midriff.

For his part, Vega had not landed nearly as adroitly as Ranma, even though his injuries weren’t as severe. To anyone else, anyway. For Vega, they were almost mortal. His hands went to his face, screaming in more psychological agony than real pain in his native Spanish as he writhed on the debris strewn floor. “//My face, my face! You have marred my beautiful face!//”

Lunging to his feet, Vega crouched for a moment, his hands still covering his still somewhat masked face, bits of it falling away to reveal his scratched and bleeding visage beyond in a few places. In all honestly, there weren’t many injuries there. If untreated, only one or two would leave scars, Vega’s mask having deadened much of the force of Ranma’s blow.

Still, the fact that his face had been damaged at all was enough for Vega. “//You, you have marred perfection, the most magnificent face God has ever created to grace this world! I will not forget this, pigtailed one!//”

Her thrown daggers having taken out five of the gunmen by this point, Mai launched herself forward, not towards the last remaining gunmen, but towards Vega, tossing several more shadow fans and her sole remaining real one at the last gunmen firing on Ranma. That gunman decided the better part of valor, and ducked into cover to avoid the shadow fans as her foot crashed into Vega’s side.

Vega moved with the blow, his still-armed hand coming around as he howled rage and fury. Fueled by that rage and hate, Vega pushed more ki into his claws than he would have normally, and this time, his claws sliced across Mai’s side, cutting deeply and sending blood flying.

Ignoring the wound, Mai flipped herself up and over Vega as he tried to follow on with his other fist, coming up in a palm strike aimed at her chin. Landing, she hurled herself back towards him in a body check, her elbow crashing into his other side. As her elbow hit, she felt ribs crack, and Vega was flung backward.

Even as Vega rolled on the ground in real pain now from at least four broken ribs, Ranma was in no position to help, unfortunately. More gunmen had appeared, firing at him, and the one time he tried to break out of cover had his hand and his forearm hit by bullets.

Mai was also soon forced to duck back and away from the assassin rather than finish him off. One hand went to her injured side as she ducked under cover, but thankfully, in the distance, finally, finally, there was the sound of police sirens.

The new group of gunmen heard this too and began to back out of the ruins. They still continued to lay down cover fire for a few seconds, though, as Vega pushed himself to his feet. “//You, you two, will pay for this. I will pluck you one day, my beauty! And you pigtailed one, Ranma, your corpse will be a thing of horror for thousands of years for what you have done today!//”

With that shriek, done in Spanish and therefore completely insensible to anyone there, Vega twirled around and leaped away into the night. A last-ditch effort from both Mai’s and Ranma’s rope weapons trailed after him, but both cut back on the ki in the weapons quickly, knowing the manriki weight and rope dart wasn’t flying fast enough to catch the man.

Pulling his rope dart back in, Ranma ducked his head out from behind cover for a second, before pulling back quickly, scowling in anger as still more bullets flashed through where his head had been.  

The gunmen continued to lay down covering fire before they pulled back, following their chief attacker to make a clean getaway.

After regaining control of himself, Ranma realized that was probably a good idea. The trio weren’t locals, and Ranma and Mai in particular were foreigners, and Japanese to boot. They very much should not be here to deal with any questions that would arise after this attack, especially considering that the attack had been very obviously backed by the local organized crime syndicate.

No, it was better for them to get out of here, and for the locals to make up whatever story they wanted rather than try to stay and explain things. With that, as the last of the gunmen disappeared into the small crowd that had gathered outside of the restaurant’s garden, Ranma pushed himself to his feet, hissing only slightly as the pain of his legs started to register now that the fighting seemed to be dying down, coupled with his mangled shoulder.

Thankfully, his ki healing was good enough that he had already begun to heal the damage, even if, oddly, he could feel the bullet wounds in his shoulder, hand and forearm closing far faster than the burn marks on his leg were disappearing. It looked like gross surface damage like that would actually take a little longer than a smaller number of specific, deadly injuries, and Ranma’s legs would still be paining him for a while. Still, I can push through it.

Ignoring his own injuries, Ranma raced over to Shampoo, lifting her into his arms. She still had not woken up from the hits to the head she’d taken, a fact that had his scowl growing. Looking over at Mai, he was pleased to find that she was already moving in his direction, though her side was bleeding around her hand, and he shook his head, a wry twist coming to his lips that under other circumstances, perhaps, could have been called a smile. By people who were very, very charitable, anyway. “What, you don’t keep any bandages in your non-combat outfits? For shame.”

“No, although that’s an oversight I might look into repairing in the future,” Mai retorted through clenched teeth, pressing her hand into her side. “Though probably not for this outfit. It’s slashed to hell and back and not worth the effort of saving.

Gently setting Shampoo back down again, Ranma moved to her side and swiftly pulled out some of his own bandages from his ki space, thankful that his pants had only been destroyed up to where his privates began, leaving enough to both keep his modesty and retain his pockets. Otherwise, fighting Vega would’ve been both humiliating and worrisome on an entirely different level, he thought, letting his mind wander for a second as he worked, wincing as he surveyed the damage for a brief second.

The gash on Mai’s side had started near her waist, becoming deeper as the three gashes traveled upwards, stopping just below the normally enticing swell of her left breast. They were somewhat deep at that point, and bleeding profusely, but thankfully, the tekko-kagi’s tips hadn’t struck anything vital.

Using his good and and his own wrapped hand, Ranma quickly finished wrapping Mai up, then moved over to pick up Shampoo again in a fireman’s carry as the first police car arrived at the front of the restaurant. “Let’s get out of here.”

The two of them made a clean getaway, racing towards the back of the restaurant and out the other side before the policeman pushed into the garden, let alone the wreckage of the restaurant itself. By the time they did that, the two martial artists were up and on a nearby rooftop, bounding away through the night.

They kept going, pushing out of Qionghai to the areas beyond. Like with Sanya, the change from an urban environment to a rural one was pretty abrupt, which let them pour on even more speed, pushing up and deeper into the hilly, mountainous jungles beyond the farms that surrounded Qionghai. Here, they didn’t notice any change from legitimate, commercial farms to gang-owned farms as he pushed into the forest, something all three of them had remarked upon when they came in for their now-interrupted date night.

Soon after they left the last of the farms behind, Ranma called a halt to their pell-mell rush, gesturing Mai to join him in a small hollow declivity set between two trees that had grown together, their branches working together to block sight of the crevice from above. Once they were within the small defile. He pulled out an emergency flashlight, hanging it by one of the tree branches above. “Let me examine Shampoo’s head again, and then I’ll take a look at your side, okay?”

“What about your legs?” Mai asked, able to see by the light of the flashlight that his legs had barely begun to heal from the nasty heat wounds that he’d sustained.  In contrast, the wound in his hand was nearly gone, and the one in his forearm was also nearly gone. The wound to his shoulder was still there, but even it had begun to heal at a rate more like something from an RPG than real life.

“I can feel my ki healing going to work on it slowly, but I don’t wanna concentrate and direct the work right now. It might take longer, but I’ll still be right as rain, and you know that yours and Shampoo’s doesn’t work nearly as well as mine,” Ranma nearly growled that last sentence out, already bent over Shampoo and examining her head again. “Which, like the toughness technique, is something we’re going to be looking into, damn it!”

Mai joined him, and her lips quirked for a second as she pulled a ingle rose petal out of Shampoo’s hair, followed by squashed bits of stem which had stained Shampoo’s hair with its pulp. She then pulled out the rest of the pins, slowly straightening them with small grunts of effort, knowing Shampoo would not want to lose them, and they were already far too damaged for her liking.

With that done, she gently pressed her fingers into various parts around Shampoo’s skull. “I don’t detect anything deeper, thankfully.”

“No, nor do I, although her legs… she’s going to be laid up for a while. Two, maybe three days.”

“He says, as if most normal people wouldn’t take months or even years to get over such injuries, if they ever could,” Mai drawled, shaking her head. “I’ve known for a long time that your idea of common sense is skewed, but come on, Ranma.”

“I suppose. Still, let’s look at your injury now,” he ordered.

Nodding, Mai knelt down in front of Ranma, allowing him to move around to her side and undo the wrappings he had done a few hours ago. The pair had been moving for a while since leaving Qionghai, and it was at least three in the morning by now if Mai’s estimate was at all accurate. It’ll take us most of the night to get back to the observatory, drat it. Which makes me wonder if we should go there at all.

Looking at the injuries, Ranma shook his head. “I’m going to spray it with some anti-infection stuff. Just to make sure, I don’t need to worry about poisons or anything?”

“No, it really doesn’t matter how such is put into the system, orally or via weapons, I’m immune to nearly everything out there,” Mai said, tilting her head sideways to look past her boob to her side. “Damn, but that looks like it’s going to scar.”

“It will give you more character,” a weak voice interjected, causing Ranma to nearly whirl away from Mai’s side, as Mai’s head whipped around to look at where Shampoo was now looking at them, her eyes open, but narrowed with pain.

“H, Hah, I much prefer laugh lines to scars or worry lines. So, if you could make certain that this is the last time you take such injuries and look so bad, Shampoo, I’d appreciate it,” Mai grumbled, her retort lacking her normal flare, as she reached over Ranma’s shoulder to grip Shampoo’s hand where it lay at her side.

“That goes double for me, love. You were already unconscious by the time I grabbed you and pulled you to me, and I couldn’t even check your pulse or anything. I didn’t have room to move even that little,” Ranma said.

He didn’t turn to look at Shampoo just yet, instead spraying Mai’s side with disinfectant and then rewrapping it, noting absently that Mai had a dozen small, but very nasty looking bruise.  Ricochets, maybe? One was right on her knee, another two on the same thigh, and he knew that eventually, Mai was going to need to slow down thanks to them. Neither they, nor the gashes left behind by Vega’s weapon, showed any sign of healing.

Ranma didn’t have a needle and thread on him to help close those wounded, but he did have some more gauze. This, Ranma put underneath the new wrapping, hoping that Mai’s ki healing would be up to the task of removing the injuries to the point that they wouldn’t leave scars, as the two girls had been joking about.

“Well, next time, I suppose we’ll need to be aware that there are other ways that we can be attacked other than directly. Mai and I were looking for things put into our food by that strange waiter, but we didn’t expect explosives. On the other hand, we could also take this as a sign we need more toughness training,” Shampoo attempted to sound upbeat, but failed, the pain in her legs too much.

“I don’t know how much toughness training we’d need to be immune to heat as well as concussive force from an explosion right at our feet, but it’s definitely a goal, right up there with becoming bulletproof,” Ranma agreed, finishing his work and turning around to move to Shampoo’s side as Mai did the same across from him. He gently helped her up, then, when she indicated she wanted to, he propped her up against one side of the small defile, leaning in to give her a gentle kiss.

Mai did the same thing, whispering that she had recovered most of Shampoo’s hairpins, to which Shampoo was very grateful. They were like a window to the past, each one from a different generation of her family, and she would have hated losing them. “Thankfully, they weren’t infused with any ki, or else, I would be facing quite a bit more pain than simply my legs and the bruises on my head.”

Leaning back, Ranma crossed his arms and let the two girls joke about for a few seconds before he directed the conversation to the ambush and what they should do about it. “So, that happened. And I think we all know Vega wouldn’t have set this up, couldn’t have, even, without the local criminal gang being involved. All in favor of finding some of the local gangsters and making our unhappiness plain, raise your hand?”

Twin snarls, like that of lionesses on the prowl, answered him, the combined sound almost enough to invoke his fear of cats for a second, but not quite, as it wasn’t directed at him. Instead, Ranma found his own lips peeling back into a snarl. “I’d say the ayes have it.”

So, let’s make some decisions. Do you think we can head back to the observatory?”

“I think if we start off now, maybe. The Triad or whatever knew we were there, but they couldn’t observe us all that closely, thanks to the two of you, which is probably why they didn’t try to attack us there. Now, I can set up so many traps in the surrounding jungle to stop an army.” Mai’s lips quirked a bit. “Traps for snakes, never had to deal with those. Traps for humans, oh yes. Those, I can do.”

Ranma and Shampoo could also help with that and agreed with the idea, though Ranma cautioned that he would go into the abandoned construction area first to make sure no one had left any booby traps behind, just in case. Still, it would do as a base of operations. And if the enemy decides to attack us there, they’ll deserve all the pain we give them.

“Beyond that, I think we need to start getting more of the lay of the land here, enough to go on the offensive. If we do, though, we’re gonna have to give up on hitting that tournament in Manila and even Jakarta. That’ll give us a month to spend here putting ourselves through the toughness training for longer, and dealing with the local criminals as best we can before we need to leave to head to the tournament in Thailand. We’ll have to be very careful not to do too much, though, or else we’ll get the government on our asses, just like we agreed on the second day on Hainan. And they’ve got frigates and other things they can send after us at sea, which would not be fun.”

Mai shook her head. “I don’t think we should be too indiscriminate when we go after the gangsters. We should be after information, not just violence. Oh, cause a few days of violence, but after that, I think we need more information than anything else. Or else we really do run the risk of getting a military response to come down on arrears.”

“As much as I hate to admit it, Mai’s got a point. The violence tonight is bound to have drawn a lot of eyes from the local government, regardless of how connected they are to organized crime. Anymore may draw a response from the mainland,” Shampoo grumbled. “And in events like this, the CCP, note I’m not saying it’s my government or anything so foolish, is known to believe in the idea that a very big hammer solves all problems.”

“Right? Better get some information than more trouble on our pert, sexy rears,” Mai agreed, causing Shampoo to giggle before she winced as the pain in her legs got to her again. “Specifically, how did that masked son of a whore, Vega, get the locals to agree to help him? Was he after the two of us for some reason from the start, rather than Chun Li, as we all thought at the time? How far does the criminal group he represents reach?”

“And do they have access to any other fighters like him?” Ranma added, his tone both worried and more than a little intrigued. “Yeah, that makes sense. Still, we’ve got a plan for now.”

With that, Ranma leaned forward, scooping Shampoo up into his arms in a princess carry, much more gentle than the one-armed grip on her he’d had coming out here. “Let’s get a move on. I want us to be in the observatory before dawn, with those traps of yours set up, Mai.”

Mai agreed, and with Shampoo leaning her head against Ranma’s chest, the two of them were off once more, racing through the night. True to Ranma’s worries, though, Mai was forced to slow down soon after, perforce making the trek across the jungle much longer than it should have been. 

Worse, the group still underestimated how much pull the local criminals had with the government. At this point, with Vega out of action, Mr. Chen was willing to pull any string he had to make certain that the trio did not come after him.

Mai was the first one to notice the noise, a distant thumping noise. She paused, hissing out Ranma’s name to pull him to a halt as well, and he did so a few trees ahead of her. For a moment, he looked back at her quizzically, and she held up a finger to her lips, joining him there in a few bounds.

They stood silent, and Ranma was about to open his mouth when Shampoo’s hand clamped over it, not staring around them, but up into the sky, her brows furrowed. “I, I’ve heard that noise before, when I passed a military base at one point chasing after you, Ranma…”

There was a distant phone sound, and Ranma, scowling, handed Shampoo over to Mai, looking around hurriedly for the largest tree in sight. Finding it, he raced in that direction and upwards, until he was perched on at the very top, balancing on a tree limb that had no business holding his weight as he stared into the distance where the sound came from. He watched as a gout of flame erupted coming up from below, and, hissing, dropped back down to join the others who had moved to follow him.

“Something just hit the observatory camp, something large. I think…” Ranma paused as the noise got louder, and he and Mai raced to the jungle floor, hiding as best they could, while above them, an attack helicopter of all things flew by, heading to who knew where.

OOOOOOO

Barely a yard away from the hellfire that had engulfed the abandoned construction area around the observatory, Genma raced away as rapidly as his panda feet could take him. It had taken him days to heal from the injuries he’d sustained during his heroic battle against the mutant crabs, and then a few days more to travel around the island searching for news of his boy. A chance meeting in a dive bar and a complaining Triad member had pointed him in the right direction, only to find his son and the two whores who had seduced him away from his honor were gone.

Finding a few signs that the boy and his companions had only gone out for the evening, Genma settled in to wait, hiding his presence with an ease that anyone would have envied, let alone a panda of his size. Genma knew that he couldn’t fight all three, and the boy had proven impervious to the words of his elder before, so he would need to wait not just for the trio to return, but for an opportunity.

He had soon fallen asleep only to be woken by the noise of the incoming helicopter. As he had once been chased by such when training with the Dread Master, he knew the sound well. Then Genma had watched as the helicopter had hovered for a brief moment before unloading at least four missiles into the construction zone, blowing everything within to tiny, tiny pieces. It was only luck that the area had been hit by a squall early that night and the explosions didn’t cause a forest fire.

What the hell have you gotten yourself into, boy?! he roared internally as he raced on.

OOOOOOO

Staring up after the helicopter as it disappeared into the distance, Mai slowly shook her head. “I think we badly underestimated how in bed with the local government the criminals here are. If they can call in a freaking helicopter strike on our observatory, then…”

“We’re badly outgunned,” Ranma growled angrily. “There’s no way they know where I stashed the boat, though, so it should still be fine.”

Using the last known location on which still remained on the boat, Ranma directed Mai to follow him as he took Shampoo from her, the purple-haired girl shaking her head. “I think, I think we need to put any thoughts of vengeance on hold, loves. Not unless we want to face military-grade weaponry.”

“Makes me wish I had the phone number of that Heidern guy that Chun Li called in raiding the Triad headquarters,” Mai agreed, scowling inwardly. “I’m surprised they are or would be willing to go to such lengths.”

“I don’t think it’s all that much length to go to, so to speak,” Shampoo disagreed as they came to a series of large boulders sticking up out of the rest of the mountainside, before jumping back down into it on the other side. “I few bribes to the helicopter crew, a few bribes to supply officers, a few fudged numbers in their computers, all that probably mounts more to money than anything else. That observatory wasn’t exactly on the beaten path, you know? Heck, I don’t know if that strike would garner any interest at all, unless it causes a forest fire.”

“Still, it is not a nice sign. Funny thing is, I would‘ve assumed they’d simply be willing to let us go, if not for that Vega guy,” Mai mused. “I’m thinking that guy’s way more important than just a random assassin. He had pull, and the attack on us, it smacks way too much of overkill for someone who’s running a local business, you know?”

“That would make sense, and tie back to what happened in Hong Kong,” Shampoo nodded into Ranma’s chest, trying to concentrate on the discussion. Her injuries were taking it out of her, and it was all she could do to keep awake.

“Maybe.” Ranma was silent for a while, then he shook his head. “But I think we’ve definitely overstayed our welcome. If they’re willing to break out helicopters, missiles, and such against us, we really can’t stay here. And not just for us either. Look what happened at the restaurant earlier. All those people Vega was willing to kill just to get at us. Who’s to say they wouldn’t do the same thing in a crowd or if we attack them in one of their bases?”

Ranma was furious. He was angry, and he wanted to lash out. But he had no desire whatsoever to pull innocent people into his vendetta against Vega and his local patsies, or whatever. “What do you two think? Stay here, or cut and run when we get to the ship?” he asked. The words stuck in his craw, but needed to be spoken aloud despite that.

Shampoo quickly shook her head. “The locals are a little too entrenched with the government for me to want to fight. And your point about fights like that splashing out onto the local populace is a good one, Ranma. It hurts, but I think we need to retreat for a time. Push on to Manila, spend time there that we would have here.”

“You realize that means you’re writing off the two maces that your grandmother gave you, right?” Mai asked, rhetorically. “A good deal of our cooking equipment, and lots of other little things, including some of our toiletries and more than a third of my fans, blast it.”

Shampoo’s growl showed she hadn’t thought of that, but Mai continued uninterrupted as she and Ranma raced through the night, one hand moving to rest lightly on her injured side, thankful that she couldn’t feel any dampness there from blood seeping through the gauze and bandages. “But I agree with you two. Better to cut and run than stay here any longer. If the Triad or whatever are in two of the cities, they’re in all of them, and the attack helicopter angle horrifies me.”

It was around dawn by the time they reached where Ranma had stashed the ship. Setting Shampoo up in the bridge area, still undercover from the various fronds that Ranma had put on the ship to disguise its shape, Ranma and Mai moved around the ship. They examined it for a while, making certain that the exterior hadn’t been damaged by its stay.

Then, with Mai helping as much as she could without aggravating her injury, Ranma, now in his female form, pushed and pulled the ship out of its hiding spot and further out to the open ocean until it bobbed in the water clear of the water rocks and the sandbar. Ranma pushed it out to sea for a little bit, then joined the other two aboard.

At the wheel, Mai powered up the engine, turning them out towards the ocean. Their stay on Hainan had been a disaster, and all that any of the trio could hope for was that heading to Manila would remove them from Vega’s gaze and those who backed him.

For now, anyway, Ranma thought. But sometime in the future, it’s gonna be time for us to go hunting Vega, and you and whoever you’re connected to is gonna regret this!

End Chapter

I had initially intended for this chapter to include a small war against the local gang, letting the group learn about Shadaloo.  However, I decided that Ranma and co. should learn about Bison and the others from the Sagat arc, which will indeed occur.  Shampoo wants to find those Chinese antiquities, but Ranma will not be taking Ryu’s place as Sagat’s primary rival.